The Witching Hour
ANNE RICE
With Love:
FOR
Stan
Rice and Christopher Rice
FOR
John Preston
FOR
Alice
O‘Brien Borchardt, Tamara O‘Brien Tinker, Karen O‘Brien, and
Micki O‘Brien Collins
AND
FOR
Dorothy
Van Sever O‘Brien, who bought me my first typewriter in 1959, taking the
time and trouble to see that it was a good one.
And the rain is brain-colored
And the thunder
sounds like
something remembering something.
STAN RICE
PART ONE
Come Together
ONE
THE DOCTOR woke up afraid.
He had been dreaming of the old house in
And even now in this quiet
hotel room above
The doctor sat up in bed. No
sound but the faint roar of the air conditioner. Why was he thinking about it
tonight in a hotel room in the Parker Meridien? For a moment he couldn’t
shake the feeling of the old house. He saw the woman again -her bent head, her
vacant stare. He could almost hear the hum of the insects against the screens
of the old porch. And the brown-eyed man was speaking without moving his lips.
A waxen dummy infused with life
No. Stop it.
He got out of bed and padded
silently across the carpeted floor until he stood in front of the sheer white
curtains, peering out at black sooty rooftops and dim neon signs flickering
against brick walls. The early morning light showed behind the clouds above the
dull concrete facade opposite. No debilitating heat here. No drowsing scent of
roses, of gardenias.
Gradually his head cleared.
He thought of the Englishman
at the bar in the lobby again. That’s what had brought it all back
— the Englishman remarking to the bartender that he’d just come
from New Orleans, and that certainly was a haunted city. The
Englishman, an affable man, a true
The doctor had turned to him
and said: ‘Yes, you’re right about
Hum of flies in summer;
smell of medicine. That much Thorazine? Could there be some mistake?
But the Englishman had been
respectfully curious. He’d invited the doctor to join him for dinner,
said he collected such tales. For a moment, the doctor had been tempted. There
was a lull in the convention, and he liked this man, felt an immediate trust in
him. And the lobby of the Parker Meridien was a nice cheerful place, full of
light, movement, people. So far away from that gloomy
But the doctor could not
tell that story.
‘If ever you change
your mind, do call me,’ the Englishman had said. ‘My name is Aaron
Lightner.’ He’d given the doctor a card with the name of an
organization inscribed on it: ‘You might say we collect ghost stories -
true ones, that is.’
THE TALAMASCA
We watch
And we are always here.
It was a curious motto.
Yes, that was what had
brought it all back. The Englishman and the peculiar calling card with the
European phone numbers, the Englishman who was leaving for the coast tomorrow
to see a California man who had lately drowned and been brought back to life.
The doctor had read of that case in the New York papers — one of those
characters who suffers clinical death and returns from having seen ‘the
light.’
They had talked about the
drowned man together, he and the Englishman. ‘He claims now to have
psychic powers, you see,’ said the Englishman, ’and that interests
us, of course. Seems he sees images when he touches things with his bare hands.
We call it psychometry.’
The doctor had been
intrigued. He had heard of a few such patients himself, cardiac victims if he
rightly recalled, who had come back, one claiming to have seen the future. ‘Near
Death Experience.’ One saw more and more articles about the phenomenon in
the journals.
‘Yes,’ Lightner
had said, the best research on the subject has been done by doctors - by
cardiologists.’
‘Wasn’t there a
film a few years back,’ the doctor had asked, ’about a woman who
returned with the power to heal? Strangely affecting.’
‘You’re
open-minded on the subject,’ the Englishman had said with a delighted
smile. ‘Are you sure you won’t tell me about your ghost? I’d
so love to hear it. I’m not flying out till tomorrow, some time before
No, not that story. Not
ever.
Alone now in the shadowy
hotel room, the doctor felt fear again. The clock ticked in the long dusty
hallway in
The doctor had never been
inside an antebellum mansion until that spring in
He liked to pause on the
marble steps and look up at the Doric capitals, wreathed as they were by those
drowsy fragrant blossoms. The sun came in thin dusty shafts through the twisting
branches. Bees sang in the tangle of brilliant green leaves beneath the peeling
cornices. Never mind that it was so sombre here, so damp.
Even the approach through
the deserted streets seduced him. He walked slowly over cracked and uneven
sidewalks of herringbone brick or gray flagstone, under an unbroken archway of
oak branches, the light eternally dappled, the sky perpetually veiled in green.
Always he paused at the largest tree that had lifted the iron fence with its
bulbous roots. He could not have gotten his arms around the trunk of it. It
reached all the way from the pavement to the house itself, twisted limbs
clawing at the shuttered windows beyond the banisters, leaves enmeshed with the
flowering vines.
But the decay here troubled
him nevertheless. Spiders wove their tiny intricate webs over the iron lace
roses. In places the iron had so rusted that it fell away to powder at the
touch. And here and there near the railings, the wood of the porches was rotted
right through.
Then there was the old
swimming pool far beyond the garden — a great long octagon bounded by the
flagstones, which had become a swamp unto itself with its black water and wild
irises. The smell alone was frightful. Frogs lived there, frogs you could hear
at dusk, singing their grinding, ugly song. Sad to see the little fountain jets
up one side and down the other still sending their little arching streams into
the muck. He longed to drain it, clean it, scrub the sides with his own hands
if he had to. Longed to patch the broken balustrade, and rip the weeds from the
overgrown urns.
Even the elderly aunts of
his patient - Miss Carl, Miss Millie, and Miss Nancy - had an air of staleness
and decay. It wasn’t a matter of gray hair or wire-rimmed glasses. It was
their manner, and the fragrance of camphor that clung to their clothes.
Once he had wandered into
the library and taken a book down from the shelf. Tiny black beetles scurried
out of the crevice. Alarmed he had put the book back.
If there had been
air-conditioning in the place it might have been different. But the old house
was too big for that - or so they had said back then. The ceilings soared
fourteen feet overhead. And the sluggish breeze carried with it the scent of
mold.
His patient was well cared
for, however. That he had to admit. A sweet old black nurse named Viola brought
his patient out on the screened porch in the morning and took her in at
evening.
‘She’s no
trouble at all, Doctor. Now, you come on, Miss Deirdre, walk for the doctor.’
Viola would lift her out of the chair and push her patiently step by step.
‘I’ve been with
her seven years now, Doctor, she’s my sweet girl.’
Seven years like that. No wonder the woman’s feet had started to turn in at the ankles,
and her arms to draw close to her chest if the nurse didn’t force them
down into her lap again.
Viola would walk her round
and round the long double parlor, past the harp and the Bősendorfer grand layered with dust.
Into the long broad dining room with its faded murals of moss-hung oaks and
tilled fields.
Slippered feet shuffling on
the worn Aubusson carpet. The woman was forty-one years old, yet she looked
both ancient and young — a stooped and pale child, untouched by adult
worry or passion. Deirdre, did you ever have a lover? Did you ever dance in
that parlor?
On the library bookshelves
were leather-bound ledgers with old dates marked on the spines in faded purple
ink: 1756, 1757,1758… Each bore the family name of
Ah, these old southern
families, how he envied them their heritage. It did not have to lead to this
decay. And to think, he did not know the full names of his own
great-grandparents or where they had been born.
And look at the jewels his
patient wore. Heirlooms surely, with those antique settings. What did it mean
that they put that kind of jewelry on a woman who hadn’t spoken a word or
moved of her own volition in over seven years?
The nurse said she never
took off the chain with the emerald pendant, not even when she bathed Miss
Deirdre.
‘Let me tell you a
little secret, Doctor, don’t you ever touch that!’
‘And why not?’
he wanted to ask. But he had said nothing. He watched uneasily as the nurse put
on the patient’s ruby earrings, her diamond ring.
Like dressing a corpse, he
thought. And out there the dark oaks wind their limbs towards the dusty window
screens. And the garden shimmers in the dull heat.
‘And look at her hair,’
said the nurse lovingly. ‘Have you ever seen such beautiful hair?’
It was black all right, and
thick and curly and long. The nurse loved to brush it, watching the curls roll
up as the brush released them. And the patient’s eyes, for all their
listless stare, were a clear blue. Yet now and then a thin silver line of
saliva fell down from the side of her mouth, making a dark circle on the bosom
of her white nightgown.
‘It’s a wonder
somebody hasn’t tried to steal those things,’ he said half to
himself. ‘She’s so helpless.’
The nurse had given him a
superior, knowing smile.
‘No one who’s
ever worked in this house would try that.’
‘But she sits all
alone on that side porch by the hour. You can see her from the street.’
Laughter.
‘Don’t worry
about that, Doctor. No one around here is fool enough to come in that gate. Old
Ronnie mows the lawn, but that’s because he always did, done it for
thirty years now, but then old Ronnie isn’t exactly right in the head.’
‘Nevertheless…"
But he had stopped himself. What was he doing, talking like this right in front
of the silent woman, whose eyes only now and then moved just a little, whose
hands lay just where the nurse had placed them, whose feet rested limply on the
bare floor. How easy it was to forget oneself, forget to respect this tragic
creature. Nobody knew what the woman understood.
‘Might get her out in
the sun sometime,’ the doctor said. ‘Her skin is so white.’
But he knew the garden was
impossible, even far away from the reek of the pool. The thorny bougainvillea
burst in clumps from beneath the wild cherry laurel. Fat little cherubs,
streaked with slime, peered out of overgrown lantana like ghosts.
Yet once children had played
there.
Some boy or girl had carved
the word Lasher into the thick trunk of the giant crepe myrtle that
grew against the far fence. The deep gashes had weathered so that they gleamed
white against the waxy bark. Strange word that. And a wooden swing was still
hanging from the branch of the distant oak.
He’d walked back to
that lonely tree, and sat down on the swing for a moment, felt the rusted
chains creak, then move as he pushed his foot into the crushed grass.
The southern flank of the
house looked mammoth and overwhelmingly beautiful to him from this perspective,
the flowering vines climbing together all the way up past the green shuttered
windows to the twin chimneys above the third floor. The dark bamboo rattled in
the breeze against the plastered masonry. The glossy banana trees grew so high
and dense they made a jungle clear back to the brick wall.
It was like his patient,
this old place — beautiful yet forgotten by time, by urgency.
Her face might be pretty
still if it were not so utterly lifeless. Did she see the delicate purple
clusters of wisteria, shivering against the screens, the writhing tangle of
other blooms? Could she see all the way through the trees to the white columned
house across the street?
Once he had ridden upstairs
with her and her nurse in the quaint yet powerful little elevator with its
brass gate and worn carpet. No change in Deirdre’s expression as the little
car began to rise. It made him anxious to hear the churning machinery. He could
not imagine the motor except as something blackened and sticky and ancient,
coated with dust.
Of course he had questioned
the old doctor at the sanitarium.
‘I remember when I was
your age,’ said the old doctor. ‘I was going to cure all of them. I
was going to reason with the paranoiacs, and bring the schizophrenics back to
reality, and make the catatonics wake up. You give her that shot every day,
son. There’s nothing there anymore. We just do our best to keep her from
getting worked up now and then, you know, the agitation.’
Agitation? That was the
reason for these powerful drugs? Even if the shots were stopped tomorrow it
would be a month before the effects had fully worn off. And the levels used
were so high they might have killed another patient. You had to build up to a
dosage like that.
How could anyone know the
true state of the woman when the medication had gone on for so long? If only he
could run an electroencephalogram…
He’d been on the case
about a month when he sent for the records. It was a routine request. No one
noticed. He sat at his desk at the sanitarium all afternoon struggling with the
scrawl of dozens of other physicians, the vague and contradictory diagnoses
— mania, paranoia, complete exhaustion, delusions, psychotic break,
depression, attempted suicide. It went all the way back to the girl’s
teens apparently. No, even before. Someone had seen her for ‘dementia’
when she was ten years old.
What were the specifics
behind these abstractions? Somewhere in the mountain of scribble he found that
she had borne a girl child at eighteen, given it up, suffered severe paranoia.’
Is that why they had given
her shock treatments in one place and insulin shock in another? What had she
done to the nurses who over and over again quit on account of ’physical
attacks’?
She had ’run away’
at one point, been ‘forcibly committed’ again. Then pages were
missing, whole years uncharted. ‘Irreversible brain damage’ was
noted in 1976. ‘Patient sent home. Thorazine prescribed to prevent palsy,
mania.’
It was an ugly document,
telling no story, revealing no truth. And it discouraged him, finally. Had a
legion of other doctors talked to her the way he did now when he sat beside her
on the side porch?
‘It’s a
beautiful day, isn’t it, Deirdre?’ Ah, the breeze here, so
fragrant. The scent of the gardenias was suddenly overpowering, yet he loved
it. Just for a moment, he closed his eyes.
Did she loathe him, laugh at
him, even know he was there? There were a few streaks of gray in her hair, he
saw that now. Her hand was cold, unpleasant to touch.
The nurse came out with a
blue envelope in her hand, a snapshot.
‘It’s from your
daughter, Deirdre. See? She’s twenty-four years old now, Deirdre.’ She
held the snapshot out for the doctor to see too. A blond girl on the deck of a
big white yacht, hair blowing in the wind. Pretty, very pretty. ‘On
Nothing changed in the woman’s
face. The nurse brushed the black hair back from her forehead. She thrust the
picture at the doctor. ‘See that girl? That girl’s a doctor, too!’
She gave him a great superior nod. ‘She’s an intern, going to be a
medical doctor just like you some day, that’s the truth.’
Was it possible? Had the
young woman never come home to see to her own mother? He disliked her suddenly.
Going to be a medical doctor, indeed.
How long had it been since
his patient had worn a dress or a real pair of shoes? He longed to play a radio
for her. Maybe she would like music. The nurse had her television soap operas
on all afternoon in the back kitchen.
He came to distrust the
nurses as he distrusted the aunts.
The tall one who wrote the
checks for him — ‘Miss Carl’ — was a lawyer still
though she must have been in her seventies. She came and went from her offices
on
‘Oh, yes,’ the
nurse said one afternoon as she was brushing Deirdre’s hair very slowly,
very gently. ‘Miss Carl’s the smart one. Works for Judge Fleming.
One of the first women ever to graduate from the Loyola School of Law. She was
seventeen years old when she went to Loyola. Her father was old Judge McIntyre,
and she was ever so proud of him.’
Miss Carl never spoke to the
patient, not that the doctor had ever seen. It was the portly one, ‘Miss
Nancy,’ who was mean to her, or so the doctor thought.
‘They say Miss Nancy
never had much chance for an education,’ the nurse gossiped. ‘Always
home taking care of the others. There used to be old Miss Belle here too.’
There was something sullen
and almost common about Miss Nancy. Dumpy, neglected, always wearing her apron
yet speaking to the nurse in that patronizing artificial voice. Miss Nancy had
a faint sneer on her lips when she looked at Deirdre.
And then there was ‘Miss
Millie,’ the eldest of them all, who was actually some sort of cousin - a
classic in old lady black silk and string shoes. She came and went, never
without her worn gloves and her small black straw hat with its veil. She had a
cheery smile for the doctor, and a kiss for Deirdre. ‘That’s my
poor dear sweetheart,’ she would say in a tremulous voice.
One afternoon, he had come
upon Miss Millie standing on the broken flags by the pool.
‘Nowhere to begin
anymore, Doctor,’ she had said sadly.
It was not his place to
challenge her, yet something quickened in him to hear this tragedy
acknowledged.
‘And how Stella loved
to swim here,’ the old woman said. ‘It was Stella who built it,
Stella who had so many plans and dreams. Stella put in the elevator, you know.
That’s just the sort of thing that Stella would do. Stella gave such
parties. Why, I remember hundreds in the house, tables over the whole lawn, and
the bands that would play. You’re too young, Doctor, to remember that
lively music. Stella had those draperies made in the double parlor, and now they’re
too old to be cleaned anymore. That’s what they said. They’d fall
apart if we tried to clean them now. And it was Stella who had paths of
flagstones laid here, all along the pool. You see, like the old flags in the
front and along the side…’ She broke off, pointing down the long
side of the house at the distant patio so crowded by weeds. It was as if she
couldn’t speak anymore. Slowly she looked up at the high attic window.
He had wanted to ask, But
who is Stella?
‘Poor darling Stella.’
He had envisioned paper
lanterns strung through the trees.
Maybe they were simply too
old, these women. And that young one, the intern or whatever she was, two
thousand miles away…
Miss Nancy bullied the
silent Deirdre. She’d watch the nurse walking the patient, then shout in
the patient’s ear.
Tick up your feet. You know
damn good and well you could walk on your own if you wanted to.’
‘There’s nothing
wrong with Miss Deirdre’s hearing,’ the nurse would interrupt her. ‘Doctor
says she can hear and see just fine.’
Once he tried to question
Miss Nancy as she swept the upstairs hallway, thinking, well, maybe out of
anger she’ll shed a little light.
‘Is there ever the
slightest change in her? Does she ever speak… even a single word?’
The woman squinted at him
for a long moment, the sweat gleaming on her round face, her nose painfully red
at the bridge from the weight of her glasses.
‘I’ll tell you
what I want to know!’ she said. ‘Who’s going to take care of
her when we’re no longer here! You think that spoilt daughter out in
‘Send her to
Ah, so the young woman did
not know, he thought, but he said nothing.
‘Let Carl and Nancy
stay here and take care of things!’ The woman went on. ‘That’s
the song in this family. Let Carl write the checks and let
She gave a deep ugly laugh,
and went past him into the patient’s bedroom, gripping the broom by its
greasy handle.
‘You know you can’t
ask a nurse to sweep a floor! Oh, no, they wouldn’t stoop to that, now,
would they? "Would you care to tell me why a nurse cannot sweep a floor?’
The bedroom was clean all
right, the master bedroom of the house it appeared to be, a large airy northern
room. Ashes in the marble fireplace. And what a bed his patient slept in, one
of those massive things made at the end of the last century, with the towering
half tester of walnut and tufted silk.
He was glad of the smell of
floor wax and fresh linen. But the room was full of dreadful religious
artifacts. On the marble dresser stood a statue of the Virgin with the naked
red heart on her breast, lurid, and disgusting to look at. A crucifix lay
beside it, with a twisting, writhing body of Christ in natural colors even to
the dark blood flowing from the nails in his hands. Candles burned in red
glasses, beside a bit of withered palm.
‘Does she notice these
religious things?’ the doctor asked.
‘Hell, no,’ Miss
Nancy said. Whiffs of camphor rose from the dresser drawers as she straightened
their contents. ‘
There were rosaries hung about
the carved brass lamps, even through their faded satin shades. And it seemed
nothing had been changed here for decades. The yellow lace curtains were stiff
and rotted in places. Catching the sun they seemed to hold it, casting their
own burnt and sombre light.
There was the jewel box on
the marble-top bedside table. Open. As if the contents weren’t priceless,
which of course they were. Even the doctor, with his scant knowledge of such
things, knew those jewels were real.
Beside the jewel box stood
the snapshot of the pretty blond-haired daughter. And beneath it a much older
and faded picture of the same girl, small but even then quite pretty. Scribble
at the bottom. He could only make out: ‘
When he touched the velvet
cover of the jewel box, Miss Nancy had turned and all but screamed at him.
‘Don’t you touch
that, Doctor!’
‘Good Lord, woman, you
don’t think I’m a thief.’
‘There’s a lot
you don’t know about this house and this patient. Why do you think the
shutters are all broken, Doctor? Almost fallen off their hinges? Why do you
think the plaster’s peeling off the brick?’ She shook her head, the
soft flesh of her cheeks wobbling, her colorless mouth set. ‘Just let
somebody try to fix those shutters. Just let someone climb a ladder and try to
paint this house.’
‘I don’t
understand you,’ said the doctor.
‘Don’t ever
touch her jewels, Doctor, that’s what I’m saying. Don’t touch
a thing around here you don’t have to. That swimming pool out there, for
instance. All choked with leaves and filth like it is, but those old fountains
run into it still, you ever think about that? Just try to turn off those
faucets, Doctor!’
‘But who -?’
‘Leave her jewels
alone, Doctor. That’s my advice to you.’
‘Would changing things
make her speak?’ he asked boldly, impatient with all this, and not afraid
of this aunt the way he was of Miss Carl.
The woman laughed. ‘No,
it wouldn’t make her do anything,’
He looked at the bearded
Jesus, the finger pointing to the crown of thorns around his heart.
Maybe they were all crazy.
Maybe he would go crazy himself if he didn’t get out of this house.
Once, when he was alone in
the dining room, he’d seen that word again - Lasher - written in the
thick dust on the table. It was done as if by fingertip. Great fancy capital L.
Now, what could it possibly mean? It was dusted away when he came the following
afternoon, the only time in fact that he had ever seen the dust disturbed
there, where the silver tea service on the sideboard was tarnished black. Faded
the murals on these walls, yet he could see a plantation scene if he studied
them, yes, that same house that was in the painting in the hall. Only after he
had studied the chandelier for a long time did he realize it had never been
wired for electricity. There was wax still on the candle holders. Ah, such a
sadness, the whole place.
At night at home in his
modern apartment overlooking the lake, he couldn’t stop brooding on his
patient. He wondered if her eyes were open as she lay in bed.
‘Maybe I have an
obligation —’ But then what obligation? Her doctor was a reputable
psychiatrist. Wouldn’t do to question his judgment. Wouldn’t do to
try anything foolish -like taking her out for a ride in the country, or
bringing a radio to the porch. Or stopping the sedatives to see what would happen!
Or picking up a phone and
contacting that daughter, the intern. Made Ellie sign a paper. Twenty-four years old was plenty old
enough to be told a few things about one’s own mother.
And surely common sense
dictated a break in Deirdre’s medication once in a while. And what about
a complete reevaluation? He had to at least suggest it.
‘You just give her the
shots,’ said the old doctor. ‘Visit with her an hour a day. That’s
what you’re asked to do.’ Slight coldness this time around. Old
fool!
No wonder he was so glad the
afternoon he had first seen the man visiting her.
It was early September, and
still warm. And as he turned in the gate, he saw the man on the screen porch
beside her, obviously talking to her, his arm resting on the back of her chair.
A tall, brown-haired man,
rather slender.
The doctor felt a curious
possessive feeling. A man he didn’t know with his patient. But he was
eager to meet him actually. Maybe the man would explain things that the women
would not. And surely he was a good friend. There was something intimate in the
way he stood so close, the way he inclined towards the silent Deirdre.
But when the Doctor came out
on the porch there was no visitor. And he could find no one in the front rooms.
‘You know, I saw a man
here a while ago,’ he said to the nurse when she came in. ‘He was
talking to Miss Deirdre.’
‘I didn’t see
him,’ the nurse had said offhandedly.
Miss Nancy, shelling peas in
the kitchen when he found her, stared at him for a long moment, then shook her
head, her chin jutting. ‘I didn’t hear anybody come in.’
Well, isn’t that the
damnedest thing! But he had to confess, it had only been for an instant —
a glimpse through the screens. No, but he saw the man there.
‘If only you could
speak to me,’ he said to Deirdre when they were alone. He was preparing
the injection. ‘If only you could tell me if you want to have visitors,
if it matters…" Her arm was so thin. When he glanced at her, the
needle ready, she was staring at him!
‘Deirdre?’
His heart pounded.
The eyes rolled to the left,
and she stared forward, mute and listless as before. And the heat, which the
doctor had come to like, seemed suddenly oppressive. The doctor felt
light-headed in fact, as though he was about to faint. Beyond the blackened
dusty screen, the lawn seemed to move.
Now, he’d never
fainted in his life, and as he thought that over, as he tried to think it over,
he realized he’d been talking with the man, yes, the man was here, no,
not here now, but just had been. They had been in the middle of a conversation,
and now he’d lost the thread, or no, that wasn’t it, it was that he
suddenly couldn’t remember how long they’d been talking, and it was
so strange to have been talking all this time together, and not recall how it
started!
He was suddenly trying to
clear his head, and have a better look at the guy, but what had the man just
said? It was all very confusing because there was no one there to talk to, no
one but her, but yes, he’d just said to the brown-haired man, ‘Of
course, stop the injections…’ and the absolute rectitude of his
position was beyond doubt, the old doctor — ‘A fool, yes!’
said the brown-haired man — would just have to listen!
This was monstrous all this,
and the daughter in
He shook himself. He stood
up on the porch. What had happened? He had fallen asleep in the wicker chair. He
had been dreaming. The murmur of the bees grew disconcertingly loud in his ears
and the fragrance of the gardenias seemed to drug him suddenly. He looked down
over the railing at the patio to his left. Had something moved there?
Only the limbs of the trees
beyond as the breeze traveled through them. He’d seen it a thousand times
in
Slowly, awkwardly, a monarch
butterfly climbed the screen in front of him. Gorgeous wings. But gradually he
focused upon the body of the thing, small and glossy and black. It ceased to be
a butterfly and became an insect - loathsome!
‘I have to go home,’
he said aloud to no one. ‘I don’t feel right exactly, I think I
should lie down.’
The man’s name. What
was it? He’d known it just a moment ago, such a remarkable name —
ah, so that’s what the word means, you are — Actually, quite
beautiful — But wait. It was happening again. He would not let it!
‘Miss Nancy!’ He
stood up out of the chair.
His patient stared forward,
unchanged, the heavy emerald pendant gleaming against her gown. All the world
was filled with green light, with shivering leaves, the faint blur of the
bougainvillea.
‘Yes, the heat,’
he whispered. ‘Have 1 given her the shot?’ Good Lord. He had
actually dropped the syringe, and it had broken.
‘You called for me,
Doctor?’ said Miss Nancy. There she stood in the parlor door, staring at
him, wiping her hands on her apron. The colored woman was there too, and the
nurse behind her.
‘Nothing, just the
heat,’ he murmured. ‘I dropped it, the needle. But I have another,
of course.’
How they looked at him,
studied him. You think I’m going crazy, too?
It was on the following
Friday afternoon that he saw the man again.
The doctor was late, he’d
had an emergency at the sanitarium. He was sprinting up
The man was standing in the
shadows of the open front porch. He watched the doctor, his arms folded, his
shoulder against the porch column, his eyes dark and rather wide, as though he
were lost in contemplation. Tall, slender, clothes beautifully fitted.
‘Ah, so there you are,’
the doctor murmured aloud. Flush of relief. He had his hand out as he came up
the steps. ‘Dr Petrie is my name, how do you do?’
And - how to describe it?
There was simply no man there.
‘Now, I know this
happened!’ he said to Miss Carl in the kitchen. ‘I saw him on that
porch and he vanished into thin air.’
‘Well, what business
is it of ours what you saw, Doctor?’ said the woman. Strange choice of
words. And she was so hard, this lady. Nothing feeble about her in her old age.
She stood very straight in her dark blue gabardine suit, glaring at him through
her wire-rimmed glasses, her mouth withered to a thin line.
‘Miss Carl, I’ve
seen this man with my patient. Now the patient, as we all know, is a helpless
woman. If an unidentified person is coming and going on these premises -’
But the words were
unimportant. Either the woman didn’t believe him or the woman didn’t
care. And Miss Nancy, at the kitchen table, never even looked up from her plate
as she scraped up the food noisily onto her fork. But the look on Miss Millie’s
face, ah, now that was something - old Miss Millie so clearly disturbed, her
eyes darting from him to Carl and back again.
What a household.
He was irritated as he
stepped into the dusty little elevator and pressed the black button in the
brass plate.
The velvet drapes were
closed and the bedroom was almost dark, the little candles spluttering in their
red glasses. The shadow of the Virgin leapt on the wall. He couldn’t find
the light switch immediately. And when he did, only a single tiny bulb went on
in the lamp beside the bed. The open jewel box was right next to it. What a
spectacular thing.
When he saw the woman lying
there with her eyes open, he felt a catch in his throat. Her black hair was
brushed out over the stained pillowcase. There was a flush of unfamiliar color
in her cheeks.
Did her lips move?
‘Lasher…’
A whisper. What had she
said? Why, she’d said Lasher, hadn’t she? The name he’d seen
on the tree trunk and in the dust of the dining table. And he had heard that
name spoken somewhere else… That’s why he knew it was a name. It
sent the chills up his back and neck, this catatonic patient actually speaking.
But no, he must have been imagining it. It was just the thing he wanted so to
happen - the miracle change in her. She lay as ever in her trance. Enough
Thorazine to kill some’ body else…
He set down the bag on the
side of the bed. He filled the syringe carefully, thinking as he had several
times before, what if you just didn’t, just cut it down to half, or a
fourth, or none and sat by her and watched and what if - He saw himself
suddenly picking her up and taking her out of the house. He saw himself driving
her out into the country. They walked hand in hand on a path through the grass
until they’d come to the levee above the river. And there she smiled, her
hair blowing in the wind
What nonsense. Here it was
Suddenly something pushed
him. He was sure of it, though where he had been pushed he couldn’t say. He
went down, his legs buckling, and the syringe went flying.
When he caught himself he
was on his knees in the semidark, staring at motes of dust gathered on the bare
floor beneath the bed.
‘What the hell -’
he’d said aloud before he could catch himself. He couldn’t find the
hypodermic needle. Then he saw it, yards away, beyond the armoire. It was
broken, smashed, as if someone had stepped on it. All the Thorazine had oozed
out of the crushed plastic vial onto the bare boards.
‘Now, wait a minute!’
he whispered. He picked it up and stood holding the ruined thing in his hands.
Of course he had other syringes, but this was the second time this sort of
thing
… And he found himself
at the bedside again, staring down at the motionless patient, thinking, now how
exactly did this — I mean, what in God’s name is going on?
He felt a sudden intense
heat. Something moved in the room, rattling faintly. Only the rosary beads
wound about the brass lamp. He went to wipe his brow. Then he realized, very
slowly, even as he stared at Deirdre, that there was a figure standing on the
other side of the bed. He saw the dark clothes, a waistcoat, a coat with dark
buttons. And then he looked up and saw it was the man.
In a split second his
disbelief changed to terror. There was no disorientation now, no dreamlike
unreality. The man was there, staring at him. Soft brown eyes staring at him.
Then the man was simply gone. The room was cold. A breeze lifted the draperies.
The doctor caught himself in the act of shouting. No, screaming, to be
perfectly frank.
At
‘These old families,
you can’t argue with them. And you don’t want to tangle with
Carlotta Mayfair. The woman knows everybody. You’d be amazed how many
people are beholden to her for one thing and another, or to Judge Fleming. And
these people own property all over the city, if you only…"
‘I tell you I saw this!’
the doctor found himself saying.
But the old psychiatrist was
dismissing him. There was a thinly concealed suspicion in his eyes as they
measured the younger doctor up and down, though the agreeable tone of his voice
never changed.
‘These old families.’
The doctor was never to go to that house again.
The doctor said nothing
more. The truth was, he felt foolish. He wasn’t a man who believed in
ghosts! And he could not now bring himself to mount any intelligent argument
about the woman herself, her condition, the obvious need for some periodic
evaluation. No, his confidence had been dashed altogether.
Yet he knew he’d seen
that figure. Seen it three times. And he could not forget the afternoon of the
hazy, imagined conversation. The man had been there, too, yes, but
insubstantial! And he had known the man’s name, and yes, it was…
Lasher!
But even if he discounted
the -dreamlike conversation — blamed it on the quiet of the place and the
infernal heat, and the suggestion of a word carved into a tree trunk - the
other times could not be discounted. He had seen a solid, living being there.
No one would ever get him to deny it.
As the weeks passed and he
failed to distract himself sufficiently with his work at the sanitarium, he
began to write about the experience, describe it in detail. The man’s
brown hair had been slightly wavy. Eyes large. Fair skin like the poor sick
woman. The man had been young, no more than twenty-five at best. The man had
been without discernible expression.
The doctor could even
remember the man’s hands. Nothing special about them, just nice hands. It
struck him that the man, though thin, had been well proportioned. Only the
clothes seemed unusual, and not the style of them, which was ordinary enough.
It was the texture of the clothing. Unaccountably smooth like the face of the
man. As if the whole figure — clothes, flesh, face — were made from
the same thing.
One morning, the doctor
awoke with the curiously clear thought: the mysterious man hadn’t wanted
her to have those sedatives! He’d known they were bad. And the woman was
defenseless of course; she could not speak in her own behalf. The specter was
protecting her!
But who in God’s name
will ever believe all this? the doctor thought. And he wished he were home, in
He tried to ’keep busy.’
But the truth was, the sanitarium was a boring place. He had little to do. The
old psychiatrist gave him a few new cases, but they were not challenging. Yet
it was essential that the doctor continue, that he erase all suspicion from the
old psychiatrist’s mind.
As fall turned to winter,
the doctor began to dream of Deirdre. And in his dreams, he saw her cured,
revitalized, walking swiftly down a city street, her hair blowing in the wind.
Now and then when he woke up from such a dream, he found himself wondering if
the poor woman hadn’t died. That was the more likely thing.
When spring came around, and
he had been in the city a full year, he found he had to see the house again. He
took the
It was all exactly the same,
the thorny bougainvillea in full bloom over the porches, the overgrown garden
swarming with tiny white winged butterflies, the lantana with its little orange
blossoms pushing through the black iron fence.
And Deirdre sitting in the
rocker on the side porch behind her veil of rusted screens.
The doctor felt a leaden
anguish. He was as troubled, perhaps, as he’d ever been in his life. Somebody’s
got to do something for that woman.
He walked aimlessly after
that, emerging finally on a dirty and busy street. A shabby neighborhood tavern
caught his eye. He went into it, grateful for the icy air-conditioning and the
relative quiet in which only a few old men talked in low voices along the bar.
He took his drink to the last wooden table in the back.
The condition of Deirdre
Mayfair tortured him. And the mystery of the apparition only made it worse. He
thought of that daughter in
‘Besides, you have no
right to interfere,’ he whispered aloud. He drank a little of his beer,
savoring the coldness. ‘Lasher,’ he whispered. Speaking of names,
what sort of name is Lasher? The young
It seemed to him suddenly
that the bar was getting warm. It was as if someone had opened the door on a
desert wind. Even the old men talking over their beer bottles seemed to notice
it. He saw one of them wipe his face suddenly with a dirty handkerchief, then
go on arguing as before.
Then as the doctor lifted
his glass, he saw straight in front of him the mysterious man seated at the
table near the door to the street.
The same waxen face, brown
eyes. The same nondescript clothes of that unusual texture, so smooth they shone
faintly in the subdued light.
Even as the men nearby went
on with their conversation, the doctor felt the keening terror he had known in
Deirdre Mayfair’s darkened room.
The man sat perfectly still
gazing at him. Not twenty feet separated him from the doctor. And the white
daylight from the front windows of the bar fell quite distinctly over the man’s
shoulder, illuminating the side of his face.
Really there. The doctor’s mouth was filling with water. He was going to be
sick. Going to pass out. They’d think he was drunk in this place. God
only knew what would happen — He struggled to steady his hand on the
glass. He struggled not to panic completely as he had done in Deirdre’s
room.
Then, without warning, the
man appeared to flicker as if he were a projected image, then vanish before the
doctor’s eyes. A cold breeze swept through the bar.
The bartender turned to keep
a soiled napkin from blowing away. A door slammed somewhere. And it seemed the
conversation grew louder. The doctor felt a low throbbing in his head.
‘… Going mad!’
he whispered.
No power on earth could have
persuaded him to pass Deirdre Mayfair’s house again.
But the following night, as
he was driving home to the lakefront, he saw the man again, standing under a
street lamp by the cemeteries on
Just a glimpse but he knew
he wasn’t mistaken. He began to tremble violently. It seemed for a moment
he could not remember how to work the controls of his car, and then he drove it
recklessly, stupidly, as if the man were pursuing him. He did not feel safe
until he had shut his apartment door.
The following Friday, he saw
the man in broad daylight, standing motionless on the grass in
As the days passed, the
doctor had ceased to be frightened so much as horrified. He couldn’t eat
or sleep. He could concentrate on nothing. He moved perpetually in utter gloom.
He stared in silent rage at the old psychiatrist whenever their paths crossed.
How in God’s name
could he communicate to this monstrous thing that he would not come near the
miserable woman in the porch rocker? No more needles, no more drugs from him! I am no longer the enemy, don’t
you see!
To ask the help or
understanding of anyone he knew was to risk his reputation, even his entire
future. A psychiatrist going mad, like his patients. He was desperate. He had
to escape this thing. Who knew when it might next appear to him? What if it
could come into these very rooms!
Finally on Monday morning,
his nerves frayed, his hands shaking, he found himself in the old psychiatrist’s
office. He had not made up his mind what he would say, only that he could stand
the strain no longer. And he soon found himself rattling on about the tropical
heat, headaches and sleepless nights, the need for quick acceptance of his
resignation.
He drove out of
Only when he was safe in his
father’s office in
‘There was never
anything menacing in the face,’ he explained. ‘On the contrary. It
was strangely unlined. It was as bland as the face of Christ in the portrait on
the wall of her room. Just staring at me. But it didn’t want me to give
her the injection! It was trying to scare me.’
His father was a patient
man. He did not answer at once. Then slowly he began to talk of the strange
things he’d witnessed over the years in psychiatric hospitals - doctors
seemingly infected with the neuroses and psychoses of their patients. He’d
seen a doctor go catatonic one day in the midst of his catatonic patients.
‘The important thing,
Larry, is that you rest,’ his father said. ‘That you let the
effects of this whole thing wear off. And that you don’t tell anyone
else about it.’
Years had passed. The doctor’s
work in
As for the specter, he had
left it behind him in
Yet there remained in him a
lingering fear that he might some place or other see that thing again. There
was the lingering fear that if such a thing had happened once, it might happen
another time for entirely different reasons. The doctor had tasted real horror
in those damp, dark
Now, as he stood beside the
window in the darkened hotel room in
Was the thing really
stalking him in
Maybe the man had not tried
to scare him at all. Maybe it had in fact been pleading with him not to forget
that woman! Perhaps in some way it was a bizarre projection of the woman’s
own desperate thoughts, an image sent to him by a mind which knew no other
means of communication.
Ah, there was no comfort in
such an idea. Too awful to imagine the helpless woman pleading with him through
a spectral emissary, who, for reasons never to be known, could not speak, but
only appear for brief moments.
But who could interpret
these strange elements? Who would venture to say the doctor was right?
Aaron Lightner, the
Englishman, the collector of ghost stories, who had given him the card with the
word Talamasca? He had said that he wanted to help the drowned man in
Yes, that would help, wouldn’t
it? To know that others had seen ghosts too?
But that was not the worst
of it, seeing a ghost. Something worse than fear had taken him back to that
screen porch and to the wan figure of the woman in the rocker. It was guilt,
guilt which he would bear all his life - that he had not tried harder to help
her, that he had never called that daughter out west.
The morning light was just
breaking over the city. He watched the change in the sky, the subtle
illumination of the soiled walls opposite. Then he went to the closet and
removed the Englishman’s card from his coat pocket.
THE TALAMASCA
We watch
And we are always here.
He picked up the telephone.
It was an hour in the
telling, which surprised him, but all those details had come tumbling back. He
had not minded the little tape recorder going, with its tiny red eye blinking.
After all he had used no names, no street numbers, not even any dates.
Lightner had proved an
excellent listener, responding gently without ever interrupting. But the doctor
did not feel better. In fact, he felt foolish when it was over. As he watched
Lightner gather up the little recorder and put it in his briefcase, he had half
a mind to ask for the tape.
It was Lightner who broke
the silence as he laid down several bills over the check.
‘There’s
something I must explain to you,’ he said. ‘I think it will ease
your mind.’
What could possibly do that?
‘You remember,’
Lightner said, ‘that I told you I collect ghost stories.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I know of that
old house in
The doctor was speechless.
The words have been said with utter conviction. In fact, they had been spoken
with such authority and assurance that the doctor believed them without doubt.
He studied Lightner in detail for the first time. The man was older than he
seemed on first inspection. Perhaps sixty-five, even seventy. The doctor found
himself captivated again by Lightner’s expression, so affable and
trusting, so inviting of trust in return.
‘Others,’ the
doctor whispered. ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’ve heard
other accounts, some very like your own. And I tell you this so you can
understand that you didn’t imagine it. And so that it doesn’t
continue to prey on your mind. You couldn’t have helped Deirdre Mayfair,
by the way. Carlotta Mayfair would never have allowed it. You ought to put the
entire incident out of your mind. Don’t ever worry about it again.’
For a moment the doctor felt
relief, as if he’d been in the Catholic confessional and the priest had
spoken the words ‘I absolve.’ Then the full import of Lightner’s
revelations struck him.
‘You know these people!’
he whispered. He felt his face color. This woman had been his patient. He was
suddenly and completely confused.
‘No. I know of them,’
Lightner answered. ‘And I shall keep your account entirely confidential.
Please be assured. Remember, we did not use names on the tape recording. We did
not even use your name or mine.’
‘Nevertheless, I must
ask you for the tape,’ the doctor said, flustered. ‘I’ve
broken confidentiality. I had no idea you knew.’
At once Lightner removed the
small cassette and placed it in the doctor’s hand. The man seemed
entirely unruffled. ‘Of course you may have it,’ he said. ‘I
understand.’
The doctor murmured his
thanks, the confusion intensifying. Yet the relief was not altogether gone.
Others had seen that creature. This man knew it. He wasn’t lying. The
doctor was not, and had never been, out of his mind. A faint bitterness
surfaced inside him, bitterness towards his superiors in
‘The important thing,’
said Lightner, ’is that you do not worry about it any more.’
‘Yes,’ said the
doctor. ‘Horrible, all of it. That woman, the drugs.’
No, don’t even…
He went quiet, staring at the cassette, and then at his empty coffee cup. ‘The
woman, is she still —’
‘The same. I was there
last year. Miss Nancy died, the one you disliked so much. Miss Millie went some
time ago. And now and then I hear from people in the city, and the report is
that Deirdre has not changed.’
The doctor sighed. ‘Yes,
you do indeed know of them… all the names,’ he said.
‘Then please do
believe me,’ Lightner said, ’when I tell you others have seen that
vision. You weren’t mad, not at all. And you mustn’t worry
foolishly about such things.’
Slowly the doctor studied
Lightner again. The man was fastening his briefcase. He examined his airline
ticket, appeared to find it satisfactory, and then slipped it into his coat.
‘Let me say one thing
further,’ said Lightner, ’and then I must catch my plane. Don’t
tell this story to others. They won’t believe you. Only those who have
seen such things believe in them. It’s tragic, but invariably true.’
‘Yes, I know it is,’
said the doctor. So much he wanted to ask, yet he could not. ‘Have
you…?’ He stopped.
‘Yes, I’ve seen
him,’ said Lightner. ‘It was frightening, indeed. Just as you
described.’ He rose to go.
‘What is he? A spirit?
A ghost?’
‘I don’t know,
actually, what he is. All the stories are very similar. Things don’t
change there. They go on, year after year. But I must go, and again I thank
you, and if you should ever wish to talk to me again, you know how to reach me.
You have my card.’ Lightner extended his hand. ‘Good-bye.’
‘Wait. The daughter,
what became of her? The intern out west?’
‘Why, she’s a
surgeon now,’ Lightner said, glancing at his watch. ‘Neurosurgeon,
I believe. Just passed her examinations. Board-certified, is that what they
call it? But then I don’t know her either, you see. I only hear about her
now and then. Our paths did cross once.’ He broke off, then gave a quick
almost formal smile. ‘Good-bye, Doctor, and thank you again.’
The doctor sat there,
thinking, for a long time. He did feel better, infinitely better. There was no
denying it. He had no regret that he had told the tale. In fact, the entire
encounter seemed a gift to him, something sent by fate to lift from his
shoulders the worst burden he’d ever borne. Lightner knew and understood
the whole case. Lightner knew the daughter in
Lightner would tell that
young neurosurgeon what she ought to know, that is, if he hadn’t done it
already. Yes, the burden was lifted. The burden was gone. Whether it weighed upon
Lightner didn’t matter.
Then the most curious
afterthought came to the doctor, something which hadn’t occurred to him
for years. He’d never been in that big Garden District house during a
rainstorm. Why, how lovely it would have been to see rain through those long
windows, to hear rain on those porch roofs. Too bad about that, missing such a
thing. He’d thought about it often at the time, but he always missed the
rain. And rain in
Well, he was letting go of
it all, was he not? Again, he found himself responding to Lightner’s
assurances as if they had been words spoken in the confessional, words with
some religious authority. Yes, let it all go.
He signaled the waitress. He
was hungry. He would like a breakfast now that he could eat. And without
thinking much about it, he took Lightner’s card out of his pocket,
glanced at the phone numbers — the numbers he might call if he had
questions, the numbers he never intended to call - and then he tore the card
into little pieces and put them in the ashtray, and then set them afire with a
match.
TWO
Through the clear, unadorned
windows he could see the lights of downtown
He had ‘restored’
this house. He knew every nail, every beam, every cornice. Shirtless in the
sun, he had laid the tiles of the roof. He had even poured the concrete of the
sidewalk.
Now he felt safe in his
house, and safe nowhere else. And for four weeks he had not been out of this
room, except to enter the small adjacent bathroom.
Hour by hour, he lay in bed,
hands hot inside the black leather gloves which he could not and would not take
off, staring at the ghostly black-and-white television screen in front of him.
He was letting the television shape his dreams through the various video tapes
he loved, the video tapes of the movies he’d watched years ago with his
mother. They were ‘the house movies’ to him now, because all of
them had not only wonderful stories and wonderful people who had become his
heroes and heroines, but wonderful houses. Rebecca had Manderley. Great
Expectations had Miss Havisham’s ruined mansion. Gaslight had the lovely
Yes, the house movies, the
movies of childhood dreams, of characters as great as the houses. He drank beer
after beer as he watched. He drifted in and out of sleep. His hands positively
hurt in the gloves. He did not answer the phone. He did not answer the door.
Aunt Vivian took care of it.
Now and then Aunt Vivian
would come into his room. She would give him another beer, or some food. He
rarely ate the food. ‘Michael, please eat,’ she would say. He would
smile. ‘Later, Aunt Viv.’
He would not see or speak to
anyone except Dr Morris, but Dr Morris couldn’t help him. His friends
couldn’t help him either. And they didn’t want to talk to him
anymore. They were tired of hearing him talk about being dead for an hour and
then coming back. And he certainly did not want to talk to the hundreds who
wanted to see a demonstration of his psychic power.
He was sick to death of his
psychic power. Didn’t anyone understand? It was a parlor trick, this
taking off his gloves and touching things and seeing some simple, mundane
image. ‘You got this pencil from a woman in your office yesterday. Her
name’s ‘Gert,’ or ‘This locket’. This morning,
you took it out and you decided you’d wear it but you didn’t really
want to. You wanted to wear the pearls, and you couldn’t find them.’
Just a physical thing, this,
an antenna that maybe all human beings had thousands of years ago.
Didn’t anyone
appreciate the real tragedy? That he could not remember what he saw when he was
drowned. ‘Aunt Viv,’ he would say, still trying now and then to
explain it to her, ‘I really did see people up there. We were dead. All
of us were dead. And I had a choice about coming back. And I was sent back for
a purpose.’
Pale shadow of his dead
mother, Aunt Vivian would only nod her head. ‘I know, darling. Maybe in
time, you’ll remember.’
In time.
His friends had gotten more
harsh at the end. ‘Michael, you’re talking crazy. This happens that
people drown and they’re brought back. There’s no special purpose.’
‘That’s nuthouse
talk, Mike.’
Therese had cried and cried.
‘Look, there’s no use me being here, Michael. You’re not the
same person.’
No. Not the same person.
That person drowned. Over and over he tried to remember the rescue — the
woman who had got him up out of the water and brought him around. If only he
could talk to her again, if only Dr Morris would find her… He just wanted
to hear it from her own lips that he’d said nothing. He just wanted to
take off his gloves and hold her hand in his when he asked her. Maybe through
her he could remember…
Dr Morris wanted him to come
in for further evaluation.
‘Leave me alone. Just
find that woman. I know you can reach her. You told me she called you. She told
you her name.’
He was through with
hospitals, with brain scans and electroencephalograms, through with shots and
pills.
The beer he understood. He
knew how to pace it. And the beer sometimes brought him close to
remembering…
… And it was a realm he’d
seen out there. People - so many of them. Now and then it was there again, a
great gossamer whole. He saw her… who was she? She said… And then
it was gone. ‘I will, I’ll do it. If I die again trying, I’ll
do it.’
Had he really said that to
them? How could he have imagined such things, things so very far afield of his
own world, which was full of the solid and the real, and why these odd flashes
of being far away, back home, in the city of his boyhood?
He didn’t know. He didn’t
know anything that mattered anymore.
He knew he was Michael
Curry, that he was forty-eight years old, that he had a couple of million
socked away, and property that amounted to almost that, which was a very good
thing because his construction company was shut down, cold. He could no longer
run it. He’d lost his best carpenters and painters to the other crews
around town. He’d lost the big job that had meant so much, the
restoration of the old bed-and-breakfast hotel on
He knew that if he took off
his gloves and started touching anything - the walls, the floor, the beer can,
the copy of David Copperfield which lay open beside him - he’d
started getting these flashes of meaningless information and he’d go
crazy. That is, if he wasn’t already crazy.
He knew he had been happy
before he drowned, not perfectly happy, but happy. His life had been good.
The morning of the big
event, he had awakened late, needing a day off, and it was a good time for it.
His men were doing just fine out there, and maybe he wouldn’t check on
them. It was May I and the oddest memory came back to him - of a long drive out
of
What he remembered was the
clear green water on that white beach, and how warm it had been, and that the
sand was like sugar under his feet.
They had all gone down to
the waves to swim at sunset; not the slightest chill in the air; and though the
great orange sun still hung in the blue western sky, there was a half-moon
shining straight overhead. His mother had pointed it out to him. ‘Look,
Michael,’ Even his father seemed to love it, his father who never noticed
such things had said in a soft voice that it was a beautiful place.
It had hurt him to remember
this. The cold in
Nevertheless he’d
gone. Alone to be at Ocean Beach on this dim, colorless afternoon with visions
of southern waters, of driving with the top down on the old Packard convertible
through the soft caressing southern wind.
He didn’t turn on the
car radio as he drove through town.
So he didn’t hear the
high tide warnings. But what if he had? He knew
Maybe he’d been
thinking a little about that when he went out on the rocks just below the Cliff
House Restaurant. Treacherous, yes, always, and slippery. But he wasn’t
much afraid of falling, or of the sea, or of anything. And he was thinking
about the south again, about summer evenings in
The wave must have knocked
him unconscious. He had no memory at all of being washed out. Just that
distinct recollection of rising into space, of seeing his body out there,
tossed on the surf, of seeing people waving and pointing, and others rushing
into the restaurant to call for assistance. Yes, he knew what they were doing,
all of these people. Seeing them was not really like looking down on people
from above. It was like knowing all about them. And how purely buoyant and safe
he’d felt up there; why, safe didn’t even begin to describe it. He
was free, so free he could not comprehend their anxiety, why they were so
concerned about his body being tossed about.
Then the other part began.
And that must have been when he was really dead, and all the wonderful things
were shown to him, and the other dead were there, and he understood, understood
all the simplest and the most complex things, and why he had to go back, yes,
the doorway, the promise, shot down suddenly and weightlessly into the body
lying on the deck of the ship, the body that had been dead drowned for an hour
out there, into the aches and the pains, and come back alive staring up,
knowing it all, ready to do exactly what they had wanted of him. All that
splendid knowledge!
In those first few seconds,
he tried desperately to tell of where he’d been and the things he’d
seen, the great long adventure. Surely he had! But all he could remember now
was the intensity of the pain in his chest, and in his hands and his feet, and
the dim figure of a woman near him. A fragile being with a pale delicate face,
all of her hair hidden by a dark cap, her gray eyes flickering for a second
like lights in front of him. In a soft voice, she’d told him to be calm,
that they would take care of him.
Impossible to think that
this little woman had gotten him out of the sea, and pumped the water out of
his lungs. But he had not understood that she was his savior at that moment.
Men were lifting him,
putting him on a stretcher, and strapping him down, and he was filled with
pain. The wind was whipping his face. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. The
stretcher was rising in the air.
Confusion after that. Had he
blacked out again? Had that been the moment of true and total forgetting? No
one could confirm or deny, it seemed, what had happened on the flight in. Only
that they had rushed him to shore, where the ambulance and the reporters were
waiting.
Cameras flashing, that he
did recall, people saying his name. The ambulance itself, yes, and someone
trying to stick a needle into his vein. He thought he heard his Aunt Vivian’s
voice. He begged them to stop. He had to sit up. They couldn’t strap him
down again, no!
‘Hold on, Mr Curry,
just hold on. Hey, help me here with this guy!’ They were
strapping him down again. They were treating him as if he were a prisoner. He
fought. But it was no use; they’d shot something into his arm, he knew
it. He could see the darkness coming.
Then they came back, those he had seen out there;
they began to talk again. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘I won’t
let it happen. I’ll go home. I know where it is. I remember…"
When he had awakened, it was
to bright artificial light. A hospital room. He was hooked to machines. His
best friend, Jimmy Barnes, was sitting next to the bed. He tried to speak to
Jimmy, but then the nurses and the doctors surrounded him.
They were touching him, his
hands, his feet, asking him questions. But he couldn’t concentrate on the
proper answers. He kept seeing things — fleeting images of nurses,
orderlies, hospital hallways. What is all this?
He knew the doctor’s name - Randy Morris - and that he’d kissed his
wife, Deenie, before he left home. So what? Things were literally popping into
his head. He couldn’t stand it. It was like being half awake and half asleep,
feverish, worried.
He shrugged, trying to clear
his head. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I’m trying.’ After
all, he knew what this was all about, the touching, that he’d been
drowned and they wanted to see if there had been any brain damage. ‘But
you needn’t bother. I’m fine. I’m all right. I’ve got
to get out of here, and get packed. I have to go back home immediately…’
Plane reservations, closing
the company… The doorway, the promise, and his purpose, which was
absolutely crucial…
But what was it? Why did he
have to get back home? There came another flash of images — nurses
cleaning this room, somebody wiping the chrome bar of the bed a few hours ago
while he’d been asleep. Stop it.’ Have to get back to the point,
the whole purpose, the
Then he realized it. He
couldn’t remember the purpose! He couldn’t remember what he’d
seen while he was dead! The whole thing, all of it — the people, the
places, all he’d been told — he couldn’t remember any of it.
No, this couldn’t be. It had been wondrously clear. And they were
depending on him. They’d said, Michael, you know you do not have to
return, you can refuse, and he’d said that he would, that he… that
he what? It was going to come back in a flash, like a dream you forget and then
completely remember!
He had sat up, brushing one
of the needles out of his arm, and asked for a pen and paper.
‘You have to lie still.’
‘Not now. I have to
write it down.’ But there was nothing to write! He remembered standing on
the rock, thinking of that long-ago summer in
All of it gone.
He had shut his eyes, trying
to ignore the strange warmth in his hands, and the nurse pushing him back
against the pillows. Somebody was asking Jimmy to go out of the room. Jimmy didn’t
want to go. Why was he seeing all these strange irrelevant things - flashes of
orderlies again, and the nurse’s husband, and these names, why did he
know all these names?
‘Don’t touch me like that,’
he said. It was the experience out there, over the ocean, that’s what
mattered!
Suddenly he reached for the
pen. ‘If you’ll be very quiet…’
Yes, an image when he
touched the pen, of the nurse getting it out of the drawer at the hallway
station. And the paper, image of a man putting the tablet in a metal locker.
And the bedside table? Image of the woman who’d last wiped it clean, with
a rag full of germs from another room. And some flash of a man with a radio.
Somebody doing something with a radio.
And the bed? The last
patient in it, Mrs Ona Patrick, died at
‘What’s wrong,
Michael?’ said Dr Morris. ‘Talk to me.’ Jimmy was arguing in
the hall. He could hear Stacy’s voice, Stacy and Jimmy were his best
friends.
He was trembling. ‘Yeah,
sure,’ he whispered to the doctor. ‘I’ll talk to you. Just so
long as you don’t touch me.’
In desperation he had put
his hands on his own head, run his fingers through his own hair, and mercifully
he felt nothing. He was drifting into sleep again, thinking, well, it will come
as it did before, she’ll be there and I’ll understand. But even as
he nodded off, he realized he didn’t know who this she was.
But he had to go home, yes,
home after all these years, these long years in which home had become some sort
of fantasy…
‘Back to where I was
born,’ he whispered. So hard now to talk. So sleepy. ‘If you give
me any more drugs, I swear I’ll kill you.’
It was his friend, Jimmy,
who brought the leather gloves the next day. Michael hadn’t thought it
would work. But it was worth a try. He was in a state of agitation bordering on
madness. And he had been talking too much, to everybody.
When reporters rang the room
direct, he told them in a great rush ’what was going on.’ When they
pushed their way into the room, he talked on and on, recounting it again and again,
repeating ‘I can’t remember!’ They gave him things to touch;
he told them what he saw. ‘It doesn’t mean anything.’
The cameras went off with
their myriad shuffling electronic sounds. The hospital staff threw the
reporters out. Michael was scared to touch even a fork or a knife. He wouldn’t
eat. Staff members came from all over the hospital to place objects in his hands.
In the shower, he touched
the wall. He saw that woman, that dead woman again. She’d been in this
room three weeks. ‘I don’t want to take a shower,’ she’d
said. ‘I’m sick, don’t you understand?’ Her
daughter-in-law had made her stand there. He had to get out of the stall. He
fell down exhausted in the bed, shoving his hands under the pillow.
There had been a few flashes
as he first smoothed the tight leather gloves over his fingers. Then he rubbed
his hands together slowly, so that everything was a blur, image piling upon
image until nothing was distinct, and all the various names tumbling through
his mind made a noise — then quiet.
Slowly he reached for the
knife on the supper tray. He was seeing something but it was pale, silent, then
gone. He lifted the glass, drank the milk. Just a shimmer. All right! These
gloves were working. The trick was to be quick about every gesture.
And also to get out of here!
But they wouldn’t let him. ‘I don’t want a brain scan,’
he said. ‘My brain is fine. It’s my hands that are driving me crazy.’
But they were trying to help
- Dr Morris, the chief resident, and his friends, and his Aunt Vivian who
stayed at his side by the hour. At his behest, Dr Morris had contacted the
ambulance men, and the Coast Guard, the Emergency Room people, the skipper of
the boat who had revived him before the Coast Guard had been able to find her -
anybody who might have remembered his saying something important. After all, a
single word might unlock his memory.
But there were no words.
Michael had mumbled something when he opened his eyes, the skipper had said,
but she hadn’t been able to make out a specific word. It began with an L,
she thought, a name, maybe. But that was all. The Coast Guard took him up after
that. In the ambulance he’d thrown a punch. Had to be subdued.
Still, he wished he could
talk to all those people, especially the woman who’d brought him around.
He told the press that when they came to question him.
Jimmy and Stacy remained
with him late each night. His Aunt Vivian was there each morning. Therese
finally came, timid, frightened. She didn’t like hospitals. She couldn’t
be around sick people.
He laughed. Wasn’t
that
Scared, don’t like you, you’re the centre of attention,
knock it off all this, 1 don’t believe you drowned out there, ridiculous,
I want to get out of here, I, you should have called me.
‘Go on home, honey,’
he said.
Sometimes during the silent
hours, one of the nurses slipped a silver pen into his hand. He’d been
sound asleep. The gloves were on the table.
‘Tell me her name,’
she said.
‘I don’t get her
name. I see a desk.’
‘Try harder.’
‘A beautiful mahogany
desk with a green blotter on it.’
‘But the woman who
used the pen?’
‘Allison.’
‘Yes. Where is she?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Try again.’
‘I tell you I don’t
know. She gave it to you, and you put it in your purse, and this morning, you
took it out. It’s just images, pictures, I don’t know where she is.
You’re in a cafe, and you’re drawing on the napkin with the pen. You’re
thinking about showing it to me.’
‘She’s dead, isn’t
she?’
‘I don’t know, I
told you. I don’t see it. Allison, that’s all I see. She wrote a
grocery list with it, for Chrissakes, you want me to tell you what was on the
list?’
‘You have to see more
than that.’
‘Well, I don’t!’
He put the gloves back on. Nothing was going to make him take them off again.
He left the hospital the
following day.
The next three weeks were an
agony. A couple of Coast Guard men called him, so did one of the ambulance
drivers, but they had nothing really to tell him that would help. As for the
rescue boat, the woman wanted to remain out of it. And Dr Morris had promised
her that she would. Meantime, the Coast Guard admitted to the press that they
had failed to record the name of the craft or its registry. One of the
newspapers referred to it as an ocean-going cruiser. Maybe it was on the other
side of the world.
Michael realized by this
time that he had told his story to too many people. Every popular magazine in
the country wanted to talk to him. He could not go out at all without a
reporter blocking his path and some perfect stranger placing a wallet or
photograph in his hand, and the phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Mail piled
up at the door, and though he kept packing his suitcase to leave, he could not
bring himself to do it. Instead he drank — ice-cold beer all day long,
then bourbon when the beer did not make him numb.
His friends tried to be
loyal. They took turns talking to him, trying to calm him, trying to get him to
lay off the drink, but it was no good. Stacy even read to him because he couldn’t
read himself. He was wearing everybody down and he knew it.
The fact was, his brain was
teeming. He was trying to figure things out. If he couldn’t remember, he
could understand about all this, this earthshaking thing, this awful thing. But
he knew he was rambling on and on about ’life and death,’ about
what had happened ’out there,’ about the way the barriers between
life and death were crumbling in our popular art and in our serious art. Hadn’t
anybody noticed? Movies and novels always told you what was going on. You just
had to study them to see it. Why, he’d seen it before this even happened.
Take Bergman’s film Fanny
and Alexander. Why, the dead just come walking in and talk to the living.
And the same thing happened in Ironweed. In Cries and Whispers
didn’t the dead just get up and talk? And there was some comedy out now,
and when you consider the lighter movies, it was happening with even greater
frequency. Take The Woman in White, with the little dead girl
appearing in the bedroom of the little boy, and there was Julia with
Mia Farrow being haunted by that dead child in
‘Michael, you’re
bashed.’
‘It isn’t only
horror movies, don’t you see? It’s happening in all our art. Take
the book The White Hotel, any of you read that? Well, it goes on right
past the heroine’s death into the afterlife. I tell you, something is
about to happen. The barrier is breaking down, I myself talked to the dead and
I came back, and on some subconscious level we all know the barrier is breaking.’
‘Michael, you have to
calm down. This thing with the hands…’
‘I don’t want to
talk about that.’ But he was bashed, that he had to admit, and he
intended to stay bashed. He liked being bashed. He picked up the phone to order
another case of beer. No need for Aunt Viv to go out for anything. And then
there was all that Glenlivet Scotch he’d stashed away. And more Jack
Daniel’s. Oh, he could stay drunk till he died. No problem.
By phone he finally shut
down the company. When he’d tried to work, his men had told him pointedly
to go home. They couldn’t get anything done with his constant talking. He
was hopping from subject to subject. And then there was the reporter standing
there asking him to demonstrate the power for the woman from
A certain free-floating
telepathy it seemed; and there were no gloves to shut it off. It wasn’t
information he received; it was merely strong impressions of like, dislike,
truth or falsehood. Sometimes he was so caught up in this, he only saw people’s
lips moving. He didn’t hear their words at all.
This highly charged
intimacy, if that was the proper thing to call it, alienated him to the core.
He let the contracts go,
transferring everything in the space of an afternoon, making sure all his men
got work, and then closing his small shop on Castro which sold vintage
Victorian fixtures.
It was OK to go indoors, to
lie down, to pull the curtains, and drink. Aunt Viv sang in the kitchen as she
cooked for him meals he didn’t want to eat. Now and then he tried to read
a little of David Copperfield, in order to escape from his own mind.
At all the worst moments of his life, he had always retired to some remote
corner of the world and read David Copperfield. It was easier and
lighter than Great Expectations, his true favorite. But the only
reason he could follow the book now was that he knew it practically by heart.
Therese went to visit her
brother in
When his old girlfriend
Elizabeth called from
He did not want to confide
in anybody. He did not want to describe the new intensity of feeling. He
certainly didn’t want to talk about his hands. All he wanted to talk
about were the visions, and nobody wanted to hear about that, nobody wanted to
hear him talk about the curtain dropping that separated the living from the
dead.
After Aunt Viv went to bed,
he experimented just a little with the touching power. He could tell a great deal
from an object when he allowed himself to handle it slowly; if he asked
questions of his power - that is, tried to direct it - he could receive even
more. But he did not like the feel of it, of these images flashing through his
head. And if there was a reason he had been given this sensitivity, the reason
was forgotten along with the vision, and the sense of purpose regarding his
return to life.
Stacy brought him books to
read about others who had died and come back. Dr Morris at the hospital had
told him of these works — the classic studies of the ‘Near Death
Experience’ by Moody, Rawlings, Sabom, and Ring. Fighting the
drunkenness, the agitation, the sheer inability to concentrate for any length
of time, he forced himself through some of these accounts.
Yes, he knew this! It was
all true. He too had risen out of his body, yes, and it was no dream, yes, but
he had not seen a beautiful light; he had not been met by dead loved ones; and
there had been no unearthly paradise to which he was admitted, full of flowers
and beautiful colors. Something altogether different had happened out there. He
had been intercepted as it were, appealed to, made to realize that he must
perform a very difficult task, that much depended upon it.
Yes, back there, where it
all started.
Why had he loved that music
so much when nobody around him did? Different from the start, that’s what
he’d been. And his mother’s breeding could not account for it. To
her all music was noise, she said. Yet he had loved that music so much that he
stood here conducting it with a stick, making great sweeping gestures in the
dark, humming.
It was in the Irish Channel
that they lived, hard-working people, the Currys, and his father was the third
generation to inhabit the small double cottage in the long waterfront
neighborhood where so many of the Irish had settled. From the great potato
famine Michael’s ancestors had fled, packed into the emptied cotton ships
on their way back from
Into the ’wet grave’
they’d been dumped, these hungry immigrants, some of them dressed in
rags, begging for work, and dying by the hundreds from yellow fever,
consumption and cholera. The survivors had dug the city’s
mosquito-infested canals. They had stoked the boilers of the big steamboats.
They had loaded cotton onto ships and worked on the railroads. They had become
policemen and firemen.
These were tough people,
people from whom Michael had inherited his powerful build, his determination.
The love of working with his hands had come from them and finally prevailed in
spite of years of education.
He’d grown up hearing
tales of those early days, of how the Irish workingmen themselves had built the
great parish
Michael’s grandfather
had worked as a policeman on the wharves, where his father had once loaded
cotton bales. He took Michael to see the banana boats come in and the thousands
of bananas disappearing into the warehouse on the conveyor belts, warning him
about the big black snakes that could hide in the banana stalks right until
they hung them up in the markets.
Michael’s father was a
fire fighter until his death one afternoon in a fire on
There was never the
slightest doubt in his mind that
But even if his dad had
never died, Michael’s life would not have been a fireman’s life.
There were things stirring in him that had not ever stirred at all, it seemed,
in his forebears.
It wasn’t just the
music that summer night. It was the way he loved books from the time he learned
to read, how he gobbled up Dickens when he was nine years old, and treasured
ever after the novel Great Expectations.
Years later in
He used to fall into Great
Expectations or David Copperfield in the school library where
other boys threw spitballs and punched him on the arm and threatened to beat
him up if he didn’t stop acting ‘simple,’ the Irish Channel
word for someone who did not have the good sense to be hard, and brutal, and
disdaining of all things that defy immediate definition.
But nobody ever beat up
Michael. He had enough healthy meanness from his father to punish anyone who
even tried. Even as a child he was husky and uncommonly strong, a human being
for whom physical action, even of a violent sort, was fairly natural. He liked
to fight too. And the kids learned to leave him alone, and also he learned to
hide his secret soul enough that they forgave him the few slips and generally
liked him.
And the walks, what about
those long walks that nobody else his age ever took? Even his girlfriends later
on never understood. Rita Mae Dwyer laughed at him. Marie Louise said he was nuts.
‘What do you mean, just walk?’ But from the earliest years, he
liked to walk, to slip across Magazine Street, the great dividing line between
the narrow sunbaked streets where he’d been born and the grand quiet
streets of the Garden District.
In the Garden District were
the oldest uptown mansions of the city, slumbering behind their massive oaks
and broad gardens. There he strolled in silence over the brick sidewalks, hands
shoved in his pockets, sometimes whistling, thinking that someday he would have
a great house here. He would have a house with white columns on the front and
flagstone walks. He would have a grand piano, such as those he glimpsed through
long floor-length windows. He would have lace curtains and chandeliers. And he
would read Dickens all day long in some cool library where the books went to
the ceiling and the blood-red azaleas drowsed beyond the porch railings.
He felt like Dickens’s
hero, the young Pip, glimpsing what he knew he must possess and being so very
far from ever having it.
But in this love of walking
he was not entirely alone, for his mother had loved to take long walks, too,
and perhaps it was one of the few very significant gifts she had given him.
Houses she had understood
and loved, just as he always would. And when he was very small, she had brought
him to this quiet sanctuary of old homes, pointing out to him her favorite
spots, and the great smooth lawns often half concealed by the camellia shrubs.
She had taught him to listen to the cry of the birds in the oaks, to the music
of hidden fountains.
There was one dark house she
dearly loved which he would never forget, a long grim town house affair with a
great bougainvillea vine spilling over its side porches. And often when they
passed, Michael saw a curious and solitary man standing alone among the highly
unkempt shrubs, far to the back of the neglected garden. He seemed lost in the
tumbling, tangled green, this man, blending with the shadowy foliage so
completely that another passerby might not have noticed him.
In fact, Michael and his
mother had played a little game in those early years about the man. She would
always say that she couldn’t see him. ‘But he’s there, Mom,’
Michael would reply, and she would say, ‘All right, Michael, tell me what
he looks like.’
‘Well, he has brown
hair and brown eyes, and he’s very dressed up, as if he’s going to
a party. But he’s watching us, Mom, and I don’t think we should
stand here and stare at him.’
‘Michael, there is no
man,’ his mother would say.
‘Mom, you’re
teasing me.’
But there had been one
occasion on which she had seen that man, for certain, and she hadn’t
liked him. It wasn’t at the house. It wasn’t in that ruined garden.
It was at Christmastime when
Michael was still very small, and the great crib had just been set up at the
side altar of St Alphonsus Church, with the Baby Jesus in the manger. Michael
and his mother had gone up to kneel at the altar rail. How beautiful the
life-sized statues of Mary and Joseph; and the Baby Jesus himself, smiling,
with his chubby little arms extended. Everywhere it seemed there had been
bright lights and the sweet, softening flicker of candles. The church was full
of the sound of shuffling feet, of hushed whispers.
Perhaps this had been the
first Christmas that Michael could remember. Whatever the case, the man had
been there, over in the shadows of the sanctuary, quietly looking on, and when
he had seen Michael, he had given him that little smile he always did. His
hands were clasped. He wore a suit. His face looked very calm. Altogether he looked
the same as he did in the garden on
‘Look, there he is,
Mom,’ Michael said at once. ‘That man, the one from the garden.’
Michael’s mother had
only glanced at the man and then fearfully away. She’d whispered in
Michael’s ear, ‘Well, don’t stare at him.’
As they left the church, she’d
turned to look back once.
‘That’s the man
in the garden, Mom,’ Michael said.
‘Whatever are you
talking about?’ she’d asked. ‘What garden?’
The next time they’d
walked down
They had laughed. It was all
right. It didn’t seem to mean much at the time, though he never forgot
it.
Much more significant that
Michael and his mother were fast friends, that they always had so much fun
together.
In later years, Michael’s
mother gave him another gift, the movies she took him to see downtown at the
Civic Theater. They would take the streetcar on Saturdays to the matinees.
Sissy stuff, Mike, his father would say. Nobody was dragging him into those
crazy shows.
Michael knew better than to
answer, and as time passed he found a way to smile and shrug it off so that his
father left him alone, and left his mother alone too, which meant even more to
him. And besides, nothing was going to take away those special Saturday
afternoons. Because the foreign movies were like portals into another world,
and they filled Michael with unspeakable anguish and happiness.
He never forgot Rebecca
and The Red Shoes and The Tales of Hoffmann and a film from
It was frustrating that he
sometimes couldn’t understand these films, that sometimes he couldn’t
even follow them. The subtitles invariably went by too fast for him to read; and
in the British films, the actors spoke too fast for him to understand their
crisp accents.
Sometimes his mother
explained things on the way home. They rode the streetcar past their stop and
all the way uptown to
Ah, the quiet pain of those
leisurely rides, of wanting so much and understanding so little He caught the
crepe myrtle blossoms now and then with his fingers through the open streetcar
window. He dreamed of being Maxim de Winter. He wanted to know the names of the
classical pieces he heard on the radio and loved, to be able to understand and
recall the unintelligible foreign words spoken by the announcers.
And strangely enough, in the
old horror films at the dirty Happy Hour Theater on
Try as he might not to do
it, Michael came to loathe the Irish Channel. He loved his folks. And he liked
his friends well enough. But he hated the double houses, twenty to a block,
with tiny front yards and low picket fences, the corner bar with the jukebox
playing in the back room and the screen door always slamming, and the fat women
in their flowered dresses, smacking their children with belts or naked hands on
the street.
He loathed the crowds that
shopped on
Michael was ashamed of this
hate. He was ashamed as Pip had been ashamed of such a hate of his own in Great
Expectations. But the more he learned and the more he saw, the more the
disdain grew in him.
And it was the people,
always the people, who put him off the most. He was ashamed of the harsh accent
that marked you as being from the Irish Channel, an accent, they said, which
sounded like
Michael even disliked the
nuns, the crude, deep-voiced sisters who smacked the boys whenever they felt
like it, who shook them and humiliated them at whim.
In fact, he hated them in
particular for something they had done when he was six years old. One little
boy, a ‘troublemaker,’ was dragged out of the boys’ first-grade
classroom and taken over to the first-grade teacher in the girls’ school.
Only later did the class find out that there the boy had been made to stand in
the trash basket, crying and red-faced, in front of all the little girls. Over
and over the nuns had shoved at him and pushed at him, saying ‘Get in
that trash can; get in it!’ The girls had watched and told the boys about
it afterwards.
This chilled Michael. He
felt a sullen wordless terror that such a thing could happen to him. Because he
knew he would never let it happen. He would fight and then his father would
whip him, a violence that had always been threatened but never carried out
beyond a couple of licks with a strap. In fact, all the violence that he had
always sensed simmering around him - in his father, his grandfather, all the
men he knew -might rise, like chaos, and drag him down into it. How many times
had he seen the kids around him whipped? How many times had he heard his father’s
cold, ironic jokes about the whippings his own father had given him? Michael
feared it with a horrid, paralyzing speechless fear. He feared the vicious
catastrophic intimacy of being hit, being beaten.
So in spite of his general
physical restlessness and his stubbornness, he became an angel in school long
before he realized that he needed to learn in order to fulfill his dreams. He
was the quiet boy, the boy who always did his homework. Fear of ignorance, fear
of violence, fear of humiliation drove him as surely as his later ambitions.
But why hadn’t these
elements driven anyone else around him? He never knew, but there was no doubt
in retrospect that he was from the start a highly adaptable person. That was
the key. He learned from what he saw, and changed accordingly.
Neither of his parents had
that flexibility. His mother was patient, yes, and kept in check the disgust
she felt for the habits of those around her. But she had no dreams, no great
plans, no true creative force to her. She never changed. She never did much of
anything.
As for Michael’s
father, he was a brash and lovable man, a brave fire fighter who won many
decorations. He died trying to save lives. That was his nature. But it was his
nature, too, to shrink from what he didn’t know or understand. A deep
vanity made him feel ‘small’ before those with real education.
‘Do your lessons,’
he’d say, because that was what he was supposed to say. He never dreamed
that Michael was drawing all he could from the parish school, that in the
overcrowded classrooms, with the tired, over-worked nuns, Michael was actually
acquiring a fine education.
For no matter how abysmal
the conditions, the nuns taught the children how to read and write very well.
Even if they had to hit them to do it. They gave the children a beautiful
handwriting. They taught them how to spell. They taught them their arithmetic
tables, and they even taught Latin and history and some literature. They kept
order among the toughs. And though Michael never stopped hating them, though he
would hate them for years after, he had to admit that now and then they did
speak in their own varying simple ways about spiritual things, about living a
life that mattered.
When Michael was eleven,
three things happened which had a rather dramatic effect upon him. The first
was a visit from his Aunt Vivian from
The visit of Aunt Vivian was
brief. His mother’s sister came to town on a train. They met her at Union
Station. She stayed at the Pontchartrain Hotel on
Michael went, the little
man, all dressed up, walking through the Garden District with his mother.
The Caribbean Room quite
astonished him. It was a near silent, eerie world of candlelight, white
tablecloths, and waiters who looked like ghosts, or better yet, they looked
like the vampires in the horror movies, with their black jackets and stiff
white shirts.
But the true revelation was
that Michael’s mother and her sister were entirely at home in this place,
laughing softly as they talked, asking the waiter this and that about the
turtle soup, the sherry, the white wine they’d have with dinner.
This gave Michael an
enhanced respect for his mother. She wasn’t a lady who just put on airs.
She really was used to that life. And he understood now why she sometimes cried
and said she’d like to go home to
After her sister left, she
was sick for days. She lay in bed, refusing everything but wine, which she
called her medicine. Michael sat by her, reading to her now and then, getting
scared when she didn’t speak for an hour. She got well. She got up, and
then life went on.
But Michael often thought of
that dinner, of the easy and natural way the two ladies had been together.
Often he walked by the Pontchartrain Hotel. He looked with quiet envy at the
well-dressed people who stood outside, under the awning, waiting for their
taxis or limousines. Was he just greedy to want to live in their world? Wasn’t
all that beauty spiritual? He puzzled over so many things. He was bursting with
desires to learn, to understand, to possess. Yet he wound up next door in Smith’s
Drugstore reading the horror comics.
Then came the accidental
discovery at the public library. Michael had only recently learned about the
library itself, and the accidental discovery came in stages.
Michael was in the children’s
reading room, roaming about, looking for something easy and fun to read when he
suddenly saw, open for display on top of a bookcase, a new stiff-backed book on
the game of chess - a book that told one how to play it.
Now, chess had always struck
Michael as highly romantic. But how he knew of it he couldn’t have told
anyone. He’d never seen a chess set in real life. He checked out the
book, took it home, and began to read it. His father saw it and laughed. He knew
how to play chess, played it all the time, he said, at the firehouse. You couldn’t
learn it from a book. That was stupid.
Michael said that he could
learn it from the book, he was learning it.
‘OK, you learn it,’
his father said, ’and I’ll play it with you.’
This was a great thing.
Another person who knew chess. Maybe they would even buy a chessboard. Michael
finished the book in less than a week. He knew chess. For an hour he answered
every question his father put to him.
‘Well, I don’t
believe this,’ his father said. ‘But you know how to play chess.
All you need is a chess set.’ Michael’s father went downtown. When
he returned home, he had a chess set that surpassed all Michael’s
visions. It was made up not of symbols — a horse’s head, a castle,
a bishop’s cap — but of fully delineated figures. The knight sat
upon his horse with its front feet raised; the bishop held his hands in prayer.
The queen had long hair beneath her crown. The rook was a castle riding upon
the back of an elephant.
Of course it was made of
plastic, this thing. It had come from D.H. Holmes department store. But it was
so much finer than anything pictured in the book on chess that Michael was
overcome by the sight of it. Never mind that his father called the knight ’my
horse man.’ They were playing chess. And thereafter they played often.
But the great accidental
discovery was not that Michael’s father knew how to play chess, or that
he had the kindness in him to buy such a beautiful set. That was all very well
and good. And of course playing chess drew father and son together. But the
great accidental discovery was that Michael could absorb something more than
stories from books… and they could lead him to something other than
painful dreaming and wanting.
He had learned something
from a book which others believed must be learned from doing or practice.
He became more courageous in
the library after that. He talked to the librarians at the desk. He learned
about the ‘subjects catalog.’ And haphazardly and obsessively, he
began to research a whole spectrum of subjects.
The first was cars. He found
lots of books in the library on cars. He learned all about an engine from the
books, and all about the makes of cars, and quietly dazzled his father and his
grandfather with this knowledge.
Then he looked up fire
fighters and fires in the catalog. He read up on the history of the companies
that developed in the big cities. He read about the fire engines and ladder
trucks and how they were made, and all about great fires in history, such as
the
Michael was thrilled. He
felt now that he had great power. And he proceeded to his secret agenda, not
confiding this to anyone. Music was his first secret subject.
He chose the most babyfied
books at first — this subject was hard - and then he moved on to the
illustrated histories for young adults which told him all about the boy genius
Mozart, and poor deaf Beethoven, and crazy Paganini who had supposedly sold his
soul to the devil. He learned the definitions of symphony and concerto and
sonata. He learned about the musical staff, quarter notes, half notes, major
and minor key. He learned the names of all the symphonic instruments.
Then Michael went on to
houses. And in no time, he came to understand the Greek Revival style and the
Italianate style and the late Victorian style, and what distinguished these
various types of buildings. He learned to identify Corinthian columns and Doric
columns, to pick out side hall houses and raised cottages. With his new
knowledge, he roamed the Garden District, his love for the things he saw deeply
and quietly intensified.
Ah, he had hit the jackpot
with all this. There was no reason to live in confusion anymore. He could
‘read up’ on anything. On Saturday afternoons, he went through
dozens of books on art, architecture, Greek mythology, science. He even read
books on modern painting, and opera and ballet, which made him ashamed and
afraid that his father might sneak up behind him and make fun of him.
The third thing that
happened that year was a concert at the Municipal Auditorium. Michael’s
father, like many firemen, took extra jobs in his time off; and that year he
was working the concession stand at the auditorium, selling bottled soda, and
Michael went with him one night to help out. It was a school night and he
shouldn’t have gone at all, but he wanted to go. He wanted to see the
Municipal Auditorium and what went on there, so his mother said OK.
During the first half of the
program, before the intermission during which Michael would have to help his
father, and after which they would pack up and go home, Michael went inside and
up to the very top of the auditorium where the seats were empty, and he sat
there waiting to see what the concert would be like. It reminded him of the
students in The Red Shoes, actually, the students in the balcony,
waiting up there with such expectation. And sure enough the place began to fill
with beautifully dressed people — the uptowners of
What followed swept Michael
away. Isaac Stern, the great violinist, played that night, and it was the
Beethoven Concerto for Violin and Orchestra, one of the most violently
beautiful and simply eloquent pieces of music Michael had ever heard. Never
once did it leave him in confusion. Never once did it leave him out.
Long after the concert was
over, he was able to whistle the principal melody, and to remember as he did so
the great sweet sensuous sound of the full orchestra and the thin heartbreaking
notes that came from Isaac Stern’s violin.
But Michael’s life was
poisoned by the longing created in him by this experience. In fact, he
suffered, in the days that followed, possibly the worst dissatisfaction with
his world that he had ever experienced. But he did not let anyone know this. He
kept it sealed inside of him, just as he kept secret his knowledge of the
subjects he studied at the library. He feared the snobbishness growing in
himself, the loathing he knew that he could feel for those he loved if he let
such a feeling have life.
And Michael couldn’t
bear not to love his family. He couldn’t bear to be ashamed of them. He
couldn’t bear the pettiness and the ingratitude of such a thing.
He could hate the people
down the block. That was fine. But he had to love, and be loyal to, and be in
harmony with, those under his own roof.
Reasonably, naturally, he
was devoted to his hard-working grandmother who always had cabbage and ham
boiling on the stove when he came in. She spent her life it seemed either
cooking or ironing or hanging out clothes on backyard lines from a wicker
basket.
And he loved his
grandfather, a little man with tiny black eyes who was always on the front
steps waiting for Michael after school. He had wonderful stories to tell of the
old days and Michael never tired of them.
And then there was his
father, the fire fighter, the hero. How could Michael not appreciate such a
man? Often Michael went over to the firehouse on
How his mother managed to
love these people was another story, and one Michael could not entirely
understand. He tried day in and day out to mitigate her quiet unhappiness. He was
her closest and only friend. But nothing could save his mother, and he knew it.
She was a lost soul down there in the Irish Channel, a woman speaking better
and dressing better than those around her, begging to go back to work as a
sales clerk in a department store, and always being told no; a woman who lived
for her paperback novels late at night -books by John Dickson Carr and Daphne
du Maurier and Frances Parkinson Keyes — sitting on the living room
couch, dressed only in a slip on account of the heat, when everyone else was
asleep, drinking wine slowly and carefully from a bottle wrapped in brown
paper.
‘Miss San Francisco’
Michael’s father called her. ‘My mother does everything for you,
you know that?’ he’d say to her. He stared at her with utter
contempt on the very few occasions when she drank too much wine and her voice
became slurry. But he never moved to stop her. After all, she rarely got that
bad. It was just the idea - a woman sitting there drinking like a man, from a
bottle all evening long. Michael knew that was what his father thought, no one
had to tell him.
And maybe Michael’s
father was afraid she’d leave if he tried to boss her or control her. He
was proud of her prettiness, her slender body, and even the nice way that she
talked. He even got the wine for her now and then, bottles of port and sherry
which he himself detested. ‘Sticky sweet stuff for women,’ he said
to Michael. But it was also the stuff that winos drank and Michael knew it.
Did his mother hate his
father? Michael never really knew for sure. At some point in his childhood, he
came to know that his mother was some eight years older than his father. But
the difference was not apparent, and his father was a good-looking man and his
mother seemed to think so. She was kind to her husband most of the time, but then
she was kind to everyone. Yet nothing in the world was going to make her get
pregnant again, she often said, and there were quarrels, awful muffled quarrels
behind the only closed door in the little shotgun flat, the door to the back
bedroom.
There was a story about his
mother and father, but Michael never knew if it was true. His aunt told him the
story after his mother’s death. It was that his parents had fallen in
love in
‘He looked like you,
Mike,’ his aunt said years later. ‘Black hair and blue eyes and
those big arms, just like you. And you remember your father’s voice, it
was a beautiful voice, kind of deep and smooth. Even with that Irish Channel
accent.’
And so Michael’s
mother had ’fallen hard’ for him, and then when he went overseas
again he had written Michael’s mother lovely poetic letters, wooing her
and breaking her heart. But the letters had not been written by Michael’s
father. They had been written by his best friend in the service, an educated
man on the same ship, who had laid on the metaphors and the quotes from books.
And Michael’s mother never guessed.
Michael’s mother had
actually fallen in love with those letters. And when she’d found herself
pregnant with Michael, she went south trusting in those letters, and was
received at once by the common good-hearted family who prepared for the wedding
in St Alphonsus Church immediately and had it all done right as soon as Michael’s
father could get leave.
What a shock it must have
been to her, the little tree-less street, the tiny house with each room opening
onto the other, and the mother-in-law who waited hand and foot on the men and
never took a chair herself during supper.
Michael’s aunt said
that Michael’s father had one time confessed the story of the letters to
his mother when Michael was still a baby, and that Michael’s mother had
gone wild and tried to kill him and she had burned all the letters in the
backyard. But then she’d quieted down and tried to make a go of it. Here
she was with a little child. She was past thirty. Her mother and father were
dead; she had only her sister and brother out in
Her mother-in-law in
particular she had loved for taking her in when she was pregnant. And that part
- about the love between the two women - Michael knew had been true, because
Michael’s mother took care of the old woman during her final illness.
Both his grandparents died
the year Michael started high school, his grandmother in the spring and his
grandfather two months after. And though many aunts and uncles had died over
the years, these were the first funerals that Michael ever attended, and they
were to be engraved forever in his memory.
They were absolutely
dazzling affairs with all the accoutrements of refinement which Michael loved.
In fact, it troubled him deeply that the furnishings of Lonigan and Sons, the
funeral parlor, and the limousines with their gray velvet upholstery and even
the flowers and the finely dressed pall bearers seemed connected to the
atmosphere of the elegant movies Michael so valued. Here were soft-spoken men
and women, fine carpets and carved furniture, rich colors and textures, and the
perfume of lilies and roses, and people tempering their natural meanness and
crude ways.
It was as if when you died
you went into the world of Rebecca or The Red Shoes or A Song
to Remember. You had beautiful things for a final day or two before
they put you in the ground.
It was a connection that
intrigued him for hours. When he saw The Bride of Frankenstein for a
second time at the Happy Hour on
He saw that same look in her
eyes that he had seen so often in his father’s eyes. It wasn’t fear
of the unknown thing. It was disgust. And he didn’t want to be
disgusting.
Besides, he was in high
school now. Everything was changing. Sometimes he was really afraid that maybe
now was the time that his dreams were supposed to die and the real world was
supposed to get him. Seems other people felt that way. Marie Louise’s
father, sitting on his front steps, looked at him coldly one night and
demanded: ‘What makes you think you’re going to
college? Your daddy got the money for Loyola?’ He spat on the pavement,
looked Michael up and down. There it was again, the disgust.
Michael had shrugged. There
was no state school in those days in
‘Bull Durham!’
the guy muttered under his breath. ‘Why don’t you think about being
half as good a fireman as your father?’
And maybe they were all in
the right, and it was time to think of other things. Michael had grown to
almost six feet, a prodigious height for an Irish Channel kid, and a record for
his branch of the Curry family. His father bought an old Packard and taught him
how to drive in a week’s time, and then he got a part-time job delivering
for a florist on
But it was not until his
sophomore year that his old ideas began to give way, that he himself began to
forget his ambitions. He went out for football, made first string, and suddenly
he was out there on the field in the stadium at
And these were good days for
Michael still hit the books,
but the games were the real focus of his emotional life that year. Football was
perfect for his aggression, his strength, even his frustration. He was one of
the stars at school. He could feel the girls looking at him when he walked up
the aisle at
And then the dream came
true. Redemptorist won the City Championship. The underdogs had done it, the
kids from the other side of Magazine, the kids who spoke that funny way so that
everyone knew they were from the Irish Channel.
Even the Times-Picayune
was full of ecstatic praise. And the gymnasium drive was in high gear, and
Marie Louise and Michael went ’all the way’ and then suffered
agonies waiting to find out if Marie Louise was pregnant.
Michael might have lost it
all then. He wanted nothing more than to score touchdowns, be with Marie
Louise, and make money so he could take her out in the Packard. On Mardi Gras
day, he and Marie Louise dressed as pirates, went down to the French Quarter,
drank beer, snuggled and necked on a bench in
Michael didn’t know
what to do. He felt he belonged with Marie Louise, yet he could not talk to
her. She hated the movies he took her to see — Lust for Life, or
Marty, or On the Waterfront. And when he talked about college, she
told him he was dreaming.
Then came the winter of
Michael’s senior year. It was bitter cold, and
Kids played in the streets;
cars drove slowly on the ice, skidding dangerously at the corners. For hours
the lovely carpet of snow stayed on the ground; then Michael finally went home,
his hands so cold he could scarcely turn the key in the lock. He found his
mother crying.
His dad had been killed in a
warehouse fire at three that afternoon; he’d been trying to save another
fire fighter.
It was over for Michael and
his mother in the Irish Channel. By late May, the house on
Now Michael would get to
have ’nice things’ and go to college and mix with people who spoke
good English. All this turned out to be true.
His Aunt Vivian lived in a
pretty apartment on
Michael loved
Taking summer courses at the
downtown extension of the state college, to make up for the math and science
which he lacked, he had no time to miss home, to think of Marie Louise, or of
girls at all. When he wasn’t studying, he was busy trying to figure
things out - how
It seemed the great
underclass to which he had belonged in
When he went to Golden Gate
Park, Michael marveled at the nature of the crowds, that they seemed to add to
the beauty of the dark green landscape, rather than to be invading it. They
rode their glamorous foreign bicycles on the paths, picnicked in small groups
on the velvet grass, or sat before the band shell listening to the Sunday
concert. The museums of the city were a revelation, too, full of real Old
Masters, and they were crowded with average people on Sundays, people with
children, who seemed to take all this quite for granted.
Michael stole weekend hours
from his studies so that he could roam the De Young, and gaze in awe at the
great El Greco painting of Saint Francis of
‘Is this all of
And here Michael’s
mother was happy, really happy as he had never seen her, putting money in the
bank from her job at I. Magnin where she sold cosmetics as she had years ago,
and visiting with her sister on weekends and sometimes her older brother, ‘Uncle
Michael,’ a genteel drunk who sold ’fine china’ at Gumps on
Post Street.
One weekend night they went
to an old-fashioned theater on
Michael was entranced with
all this. Uncle Michael promised him that when the opera season came he would
take him to see La Boheme. Michael was speechless with gratitude.
It was as if his childhood
in
He loved the downtown of San
Francisco, with its noisy cable cars and overflowing streets, the big dime
store on Powell and Market, where he could stand reading at the paperback rack,
unnoticed, for hours.
He loved the flower stands
which sold bouquets of red roses for almost nothing, and the fancy stores on
He loved having coffee with
other summer students in the big garishly lighted Foster’s Restaurant on
Sutler Street, talking for the first time in his life with Orientals and Jews
from New York, and educated colored people who spoke perfect English, and older
men and women who were stealing time from families and jobs to go back to
school just for the sheer joy of it.
It was during this period
that Michael came to comprehend the little mystery of his mother’s family.
By bits and pieces he put it together that they had once been very rich, these
people. And it was Michael’s mother’s paternal grandmother who had
squandered the entire fortune. Nothing was left from her but one carved chair
and three heavily framed landscape paintings. Yet she was spoken of as
something beyond wonderful, a goddess one would think, who had traveled the
whole world, and ate caviar, and managed to put her son through Harvard before
going completely bankrupt.
As for the son - Michael’s
mother’s father - he had drunk himself to death after the loss of his
wife, a ’beautiful’ Irish-American girl, from the Mission District
of San Francisco. Nobody wanted to talk about ‘Mother’ and it soon
came clear that ‘Mother’ had committed suicide. ‘Father,’
who drank unceasingly until he had a fatal stroke, left his three children a
small annuity. Michael’s mother and her sister Vivian finished their
education at the Convent of the Sacred Heart, and went into genteel
occupations. Uncle Michael was ‘the spitting image of dad,’ they
said with a sigh, when he had fallen asleep from his cognac on the sofa.
Uncle Michael was the only
salesman that Michael ever knew who could sell people things while he himself
was sitting down. He would come back to Gumps, drunk from lunch, and sit there,
flushed and exhausted and merely point to the beautiful china, explaining
everything from his chair, while the young customers, couples soon to be
married, made up their minds. People seemed to find him charming. He did know all
about fine china, and he was a terribly nice guy.
This gradual education
regarding his mother’s family illuminated much for Michael. As time went
on he came to see that his mother’s values were essentially those of the
very rich though she herself did not know it. She went to see foreign films
because they were fun, not for cultural enhancement. And she wanted Michael to
go to college because that’s where he ’ought* to be. It was
perfectly natural to her to shop at Young Man’s Fancy and buy him the
crew-neck sweaters and button-down shirts that made him look like a prep-school
boy. But of middle-class drive or ambition she and her sister and her brother
really knew nothing. Her work appealed to her because I. Magnin was the finest
store in town, and she met nice people there. In her leisure hours, she drank
her ever increasing amounts of wine, read her novels, visited with friends, and
was a happy, satisfied person.
It was the wine that killed
her eventually. For as the years passed she became a ladylike drunk, sipping
all evening long from a crystal glass behind closed doors, and invariably
passing out before bedtime. Finally one night, late, she struck her head in a
bathroom fall, put a towel to the wound and went back to sleep, never realizing
that she was slowly bleeding to death. She was cold when Michael finally broke
down the door. That was in the house on
But in spite of her own
lassitude and final indifference to the world at large, Michael’s mother
was always proud of Michael’s ambition. She understood his drive because
she understood him, and he was the one thing that had given her own life true
meaning.
And Michael’s ambition
was a raging flame when he finally entered San Francisco State College in the
fall as a matriculating freshman.
Here, on an enormous college
campus amid full-time students from all walks of life, Michael felt
inconspicuous and powerful and ready to start his true education. It was like
those old days in the library. Only now he got credit for what he read. He got
credit for wanting to understand all the mysteries of life which had so
provoked him in years past when he’d hidden his curiosity from those who
might ridicule him.
He could not believe his
luck. Going from class to class, deliciously anonymous among the great
proletarian student body with their backpacks and their brogans, Michael
listened, rapt, to the lectures of his professors and the stunningly clever
questions asked by the students around him. Peppering his schedules with
electives in art, music, current events, comparative literature, and even
drama, he gradually acquired a true old-fashioned liberal arts education.
He majored in history
finally because he did well in that subject and could write the papers and pass
the tests, and because he knew that his latest ambition - to be an architect
-was quite beyond him. He could not master the math, no matter how he tried.
And in spite of all his efforts, he could not make the grades that would admit
him to a
Synthesis, theory, overview
— this was utterly natural to him. And because he had come from such an
alien and otherworldly place, because he was so astonished by the modern world
of
Michael was more than
content. As the insurance money ran out, he went to work part-time with a
carpenter who specialized in restoring the beautiful old Victorians of San
Francisco. He began to study books on houses again, as he had in the old days.
By the time he received his
bachelor’s degree, his old friends from
He was at age twenty-one
equally at home hammering away on a wood-frame house or typing rapidly with two
fingers a term paper on ‘The Witchcraft Persecutions in
Two months after he started
his graduate work in history, he began to study, right along with his college
work, for the state contractor’s examination. He was working as a painter
then, and learning also the plastering trade and how to lay ceramic tile -
anything in the building trades for which anyone would hire him.
He went on with school
because a deep insecurity would not allow him to do otherwise, but he knew by
this time that no amount of academic pleasure could ever satisfy his need to
work with his hands, to get out in the air, to climb ladders, swing a hammer,
and feel at the end of the day that great sublime physical exhaustion. Nothing
could ever take the place of his beautiful houses.
He loved to see the results
of his work — roofs mended, staircases restored, floors brought back from
hopeless grime to a high luster. He loved to strip and lacquer the finely
crafted old newel posts, balustrades, and door frames. And always the learner,
he studied under every craftsman with whom he worked. He quizzed the architects
when he could; he made copies of blueprints for further examination. He pored
over books, magazines, and catalogs devoted to restoration and Victoriana.
It seemed to him sometimes
that he loved houses more than he loved human beings; he loved them the way
that seamen love ships; and he would walk alone after work through the rooms to
which he’d given new life, lovingly touching the windowsills, the brass
knobs, the silk smooth plaster. He could hear a great house speaking to him.
He finished the master’s
in history within two years, just as the campuses of
The world of the flower
children, of political revolution and personal transformation through drugs,
was something he never fully understood, and something which never really
touched him. He danced at the Avalon Ballroom to the music of the Rolling
Stones; he smoked grass; he burned incense now and then; he played the records
of Bismilla Kahn and Ravi Shankar. He even went with a young girlfriend to the
great ‘Be In’ in
The historian in him could
not succumb to the shallow, often silly revolutionary rhetoric he heard all
around; he could only laugh quietly at the dining table Marxism of his friends
who seemed to know nothing personally of the working man. And he watched in
horror when those he loved destroyed their peace of mind utterly, if not their
very brains, with powerful hallucinogens.
But he learned from all
this; he learned as he sought to understand. And the great psychedelic love of
color and pattern, of Eastern music and design had its inevitable influence on
his esthetics. Years later, he would maintain that the great sixties revolution
in consciousness had benefited every person in the nation — that the
renovation of old houses, the creation of gorgeous public buildings with
flower-filled plazas and parks, the erection even of the modern shopping malls
with marble floors, fountains, and flower beds - all this directly stemmed from
those crucial years when the hippies of the Haight Ashbury had hung ferns in the
windows of their flats and draped their junk furniture with brilliantly colored
Indian bedspreads, when the girls had fixed the proverbial flowers in their
free-flowing tresses, and the men had discarded their drab clothes for shirts
of bright colors and had let their hair grow full and long.
There was never any doubt in
his mind that this period of turmoil and mass drug taking and wild music had
borne directly on his career. All over the nation young couples turned their
backs on the square little houses of the modern suburbs and, with a new love of
texture and detail and varied forms, turned their attention to the gracious old
homes of the inner city.
Michael had perpetually a
waiting list of eager customers. Great Expectations could renovate, restore,
build from scratch. Soon he had projects going all over town. He loved nothing
better than to walk into a broken down, moldy Victorian on
He was thirty-two when he
acquired a vintage town house on Liberty Street, restored it inside and out,
providing apartments for his mother and his aunt, and there he lived on the top
floor, with a view of the downtown lights, in exactly the style he’d
always wanted. The books, the lace curtains, the piano, the fine antiques
— he possessed all these things. He built a great hillside deck where he
could sit and drink up the fickle northern
By the age of thirty-five he
was a self-made man and an educated one. He had netted and socked away his
first million in a portfolio of municipal bonds. He loved
Though Michael had invented
himself as many a person has done in California, creating a style perfectly in
tune with the style of so many other self-invented people, he was always partly
that tough kid from the Irish Channel who had grown up using a piece of bread
to push his peas onto his fork.
He never entirely erased his
harsh accent, and sometimes when he was dealing with workmen on the job, he
would slip back into it entirely. He never lost some of his crude habits or
ideas either, and he understood that about himself.
His way of dealing with all
this was perfect for
And he got along with his
liberal friends principally because he did not bother to argue with them, and
while they were shouting at each other over pitchers of beer about foreign
countries where they had never been and would never go, he was drawing pictures
of houses on napkins.
When he did share his ideas,
it was in a highly abstract way, from a remove, for he felt like an outsider in
But whatever the politics
involved, he always connected most truly with those who were passionate as he
was — craftsmen, artists, musicians, people who went about in the grip of
obsession. And an amazing number of his friends and lovers were
Russian-American Jews. They really seemed to understand his overall desire to
live a meaningful life, to intervene in the world - even if in a very small way
- with his visions. He had dreams of building his own great houses; of
transforming whole city blocks, of developing whole enclaves of cafes,
bookstores, bed-and-breakfast inns within old
Now and then, especially
after his mother died, he’d think about the past in
Back home, he had left a
city of bigots perhaps, but it was also a city of characters. He could hear the
old Irish Channel storytellers in his head, his grandfather telling about how he’d
snuck into the Germans’ church once when he was a boy just to hear what
German Latin sounded like. And how in the days of Grandma Gelfand Curry - the
one German ancestor in the entire tribe - they’d baptized the
babies in St Mary’s to make her happy and then snuck them over to St
Alphonsus to be baptized again and right and proper in the Irish church, the
same priest presiding patiently at both ceremonies.
What characters his uncles
had been, those old men who died one by one as he was growing up. He could
still hear the talking about swimming the
Everything had been a tale,
it seemed. Talk could fill the summer night of Cousin Jamie Joe Curry in
Algiers who became such a religious fanatic they had to chain him to a post all
day long, and of Uncle Timothy who went nuts from the Linotype ink so that he
stuffed all the cracks around the doors and windows with newspapers and spent
his time cutting out thousands and thousands of paper dolls.
And what about beautiful
Aunt Lelia, who had loved the Italian boy when she was young and never knew
till she was old and dried up that her brothers had beaten him up one night and
driven him out of the Irish Channel. No dagos for them. All her long life
mourning for that boy. She had turned the supper table over in a rage when they
told her.
Even some of the nuns had
had fabulous stories to tell - old ones like Sister Bridget Marie who had
substituted for two weeks when Michael was in the eighth grade, a really sweet
little sister who still had an Irish brogue. She didn’t teach them a
thing. She just told them tales about the Irish Ghost of Petticoat Loose, and
witches - witches, can you believe it! - in the Garden District.
And some of the best talk in
those times had been merely talk of life itself - of how it was to bottle your
own beer, to live with only two oil lamps in a house, and how they’d had
to fill the portable bathtub on Friday night so everybody could take a bath
before the living room fireplace. Just life. Laundry boiling over a wood fire
in the backyard, water from cisterns covered with green moss. Mosquito netting
tucked in tight before you went to sleep. Things now probably utterly
forgotten.
It would come back to him in
the oddest flashes. He’d remember the smell of the linen napkins when his
grandmother ironed them before putting them in the deep drawers of the walnut
sideboard. He’d remember the taste of crab gumbo with crackers and beer;
the scary sound of the drums at the Mardi Gras parades. He’d see the ice
man rushing up the back steps, the giant block of ice on his padded shoulder.
And over and over those marvelous voices, which had seemed so coarse then, but
seemed now to be possessed of a rich vocabulary, a flair for the dramatic
phrase, a sheer love of language.
Tales of great fires, and
the famous streetcar labor riots, and the cotton loaders who had screwed the
bales into the holds of the ships with giant iron screws, singing as they
worked, in the days before the cotton compressors.
It seemed a great world in
retrospect. Everything was so antiseptic in
He wished he’d paid
more attention to those guys in those days. He’d been too afraid. He
wished he could talk to his dad now, sit with him and all those other crazy
firemen outside the firehouse on
Had the oak trees really
been that big? Had they really arched completely over the street so that you
gazed down a tunnel of green all the way to the river?
He’d remember the
color of twilight as he walked home late after football practice, along
And the Garden District, ah,
the Garden District. His memories of it were so ethereal as to be suspect.
Sometimes he dreamed of it -
a warm glowing paradise where he found himself walking among splendid palaces,
surrounded by ever-blooming flowers, and shimmering green leaves. Then he’d
wake and think, Yes, I was back there, walking down
Particular houses would come
back to him - the great rambling house on Coliseum and Third, painted pure
white even to its cast-iron railings. And the double-galleried side hall houses
he had always loved the most, with their four front columns up and down, their
long flanks, and high twin chimneys.
He’d remember even
people whom he had often glimpsed on his regular walks, old men in seersucker
suits and straw hats, ladies with canes, black nurses in crisp blue cotton
uniforms pushing white babies in carriages. And that man, the strange,
immaculately dressed man whom he so often saw on
He wanted to go back to
check memory against reality. He wanted to see the little house on
Sometimes as he drifted off
to sleep, he would imagine himself in that church again on Christmas Eve when
it had been packed for Midnight Mass. Candles blazed on the altars. He would
hear the euphoric hymn ‘Adeste Fideles.’ Christmas Eve, with the
rain gusting in the doors, and at home after, the little tree glowing in the
corner and the gas heater blazing on the grate. How beautiful those tiny blue
flames had been. How beautiful that little tree, with its lights which meant
the Light of the World, and its ornaments which meant the gifts of the Wise
Men, and its green-smelling branches which meant the promise of the summer to
come even in the depth of the winter’s cold.
There came to him a memory
of a Midnight Mass procession in which the little girls of the first grade had
been dressed as angels as they came through the sanctuary and down the main
aisle of the church. He could smell the Christmas greens, mingling with the sweetness
of the flowers and the burning wax. The little girls had been singing of the
Christ Child. He had seen Rita Mae Dwyer and Marie Louise Guidry and his
cousin, Patricia Anne Becker, and all the other pesty little girls he knew, but
how beautiful they had looked in their little white gowns with stiff cloth
wings. Not just little monsters anymore but real angels. That was the magic of
Christmas. And when he got home after, all his presents were under the lighted
tree.
Processions. There were so
many. But the ones to the Virgin Mary he never really loved. She was too
confused in his mind with the mean nuns who hurt the boys so much, and he could
not feel a great devotion to her, which had saddened him until he was old
enough not to care.
But Christmas he never
forgot. It was the one remnant of his religion which never left him, for he
sensed behind it a great, shimmering history that went back and back through
the millennia to dark forests where fires blazed and pagans danced. He loved to
remember the crib with the smiling infant, and the solemn moment at
In fact, ever after in
Somehow or other, Michael
never did go home.
He just never got around to
it. He was always struggling to complete a job already over deadline. And what
little vacation time he had he spent in
But often Michael reflected
that he had acquired everything he had ever longed for on those old Garden
District walks, and he ought to go back there to take stock, to see whether or
not he was deceiving himself. Were there not moments when he felt empty? When
he felt as if he were waiting for something, something of extreme importance,
and he did not know what that was?
The one thing he had not
found was a great and enduring love, but he knew this would come in time, and
maybe then he would take his bride with him to visit his home, and he wouldn’t
be alone as he walked the cemetery paths or the old sidewalks. Who knows? Maybe
he could even stay for a while, wandering the old streets.
Michael did have several
affairs over the years, and at least two of these were like marriages. Both
women were Jewish, of Russian descent, passionate, spiritual, brilliant and
independent. And Michael was always painfully proud of these polished and
clever ladies. These affairs were born in talk as much as in sensuality. Talk
the night long after making love, talk over pizza and beer, talk as the sun came
up, that’s what Michael had always done with his lovers.
He learned much from these
relationships. His egoless openness was highly seductive to these women, and he
soaked up whatever they had to teach, rather effortlessly. They loved traveling
with him to
He laughed at all this, but
he learned it. Both women teased him about his freckles and his heavyweight
build, and the way his hair hung in his big blue eyes, and how visiting parents
loved him, and about his bad little boy charm, and how splendid he looked in
black tie.
Michael’s
receptiveness, and his passion, tended to seduce everybody.
But his meanness charmed his
girlfriends too, almost always. He could when angry, or even slightly
threatened, revert to the grim-faced Irish Channel kid in a moment, and when he
did this, he did it with great conviction and confidence and a certain
unconscious sexuality. Women were impressed by his mechanical skills as well,
his talent with the hammer and nails, and by his fearlessness.
Fear of humiliation, yes,
that he secretly understood, and there were a few irrational childhood fears
which still haunted him. But fear of anything real? As an adult, he did not
know the meaning of it. When there was a cry in the night, Michael was the
first one down the steps to investigate.
This was not so common among
highly educated men. Neither was Michael’s characteristically direct and
lusting and enthusiastic approach to physical sex. He liked it plain and
simple, or fancier if that’s what they wanted; and he liked it in the
morning when he first woke up as well as at night. This stole hearts for him.
The first breakup - with
He flew to
By the time
Judith and Michael lived
together for almost seven years and no one ever thought they would break up.
Then Judith accidentally conceived a child by Michael and, against his wishes,
decided not to give birth to it.
It was the worst
disappointment Michael had ever experienced, and it destroyed all love between
the couple.
Michael didn’t contest
Judith’s right to abort the child. He could not imagine a world in which
women did not have such a right. And the historian in him knew that laws
against abortion had never been enforceable, because no relationship existed
quite like the relationship between a mother and her unborn child.
No, he never quarreled with her
right, and would in fact have defended it. But he had never foreseen that a
woman living with him in luxury and security, a woman whom he would marry in an
instant if she permitted it, would want to abort their child.
Michael begged her not to do
it. It was theirs, was it not, and its father wanted it desperately and could
not bear the thought that it would miss its chance at life. It didn’t
have to grow up with them if Judith didn’t want it. Michael would arrange
everything for its care elsewhere. He had plenty of money. He would visit the
child on his own so that Judith never had to know. He had visions of
governesses, fine schools, all the things he’d never had. But more
significant, it was a living thing, this unborn baby, and it had his blood in
its little veins and he couldn’t see any good reason for it to die.
These remarks were
horrifying to Judith. They cut her to the quick. She did not want to be a
mother at this time; she didn’t feel that she could do it. She was almost
finished with her Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley, but she had her dissertation still to
write. And her body was not something to be used merely to deliver a child to
another person. The great shock of giving birth to that child, of giving it up,
was more than she could possibly bear. She would live with that guilt forever.
That Michael did not understand her point of view was exquisitely painful to
her. She had always counted upon her right to abort an unwanted child. It was
her safety net, so to speak. Now her freedom, her dignity, and her sanity were
threatened.
Some day they would have a
child, she said, when the time was right for both of them, for parenthood was a
matter of choice, and no child should be brought into the world who was not
loved and wanted by both parents.
None of this made sense to
Michael. Death was better than abandonment? How could Judith feel guilt for
giving it away, and no guilt at all for merely destroying it? Yes, both parents
should want a child. But why should one parent have the right to say that it
couldn’t come into the world? They weren’t poor, they weren’t
diseased; this wasn’t a child of rape. Why, they were practically married
and could certainly get married if Judith wanted! They had so much to give this
baby. Even if it lived with others, think what they could do for it. Why the
hell did the little thing have to perish, and stop saying it wasn’t a
person, it was on track to be a person, or Judith wouldn’t want to be
killing it. Was a newborn baby any more a person, for the love of God?
And so they went back and
forth, their arguments sharpening, becoming ever more complex, vacillating
between the personal and the philosophical with no hope of resolution.
Finally Michael made his
last ditch stand. If Judith would only give birth to the child, he would take
it away with him. Judith would never see either of them again. And he would do
whatever Judith wanted in return. He would give her whatever he had that she
might value. He cried as he pleaded with her.
Judith was crushed. Michael
had chosen this child over her. He was trying to buy her body, her suffering,
the thing growing inside her. She couldn’t bear to be in the same house
with him. She cursed him for the things he’d said. She cursed his
background, his ignorance, and above all his stunning un-kindness to her. Did
he think it was easy what she meant to do? But every instinct in her told her
she must terminate this brutal physical process, she must extinguish this bit
of life which was never meant, and which clung to her now, growing against her
will, destroying Michael’s love for her and their life together.
Michael couldn’t look
at her. If she wanted to go, she should go. He wanted her to go. He didn’t
want to know the exact day or hour that their child would be destroyed.
A dread came over him. Everything
around him was gray. Nothing tasted good or looked good. It was as if a
metallic gloom had gripped his world, and all colors and sensations had paled
in it. He knew Judith was in pain, but he couldn’t help her. In fact, he
couldn’t stop himself from hating her.
He thought about those nuns
at school, smacking the boys with the flat of their hands; he remembered
thoughtless power, petty brutality. Of course that had nothing to do with this,
he told himself. Judith cared; Judith was a good person. She was doing what she
thought she had to do. But Michael felt as helpless now as he’d felt back
then, when the nuns patrolled the halls, monsters in their black veils, their
mannish shoes thudding on the polished wood.
Judith moved out while
Michael was at work. The bill for the abortion -
And after that, for a long
time Michael was a loner. Erotic contact had never been something he enjoyed
with strangers. But now he had a fear of it, and chose his partners only very
occasionally and with great discretion. He was careful to an extreme degree. He
wanted no other lost children.
Also, he found himself
unable to forget the dead baby, or the dead fetus more properly speaking. It
wasn’t that he meant to brood on this child - he had nicknamed it Little
Chris, but nobody needed to know this - it was that he began to see images of
fetuses in the movies he went to see, in the ads for movies which he saw in the
papers.
As always movies loomed
large in Michael’s life. As always they were a major, ongoing part of his
education. He fell into a trance in a darkened theater. He felt some visceral
connection between what was happening on the screen and his own dreams and
subconscious, and with his ongoing efforts to figure out the world in which he
lived.
And now he saw this curious
thing which no one else around him mentioned: did not the cinematic monsters of
this time bear a remarkable resemblance to the children being aborted every day
in the nation’s clinics?
Take Ridley Scott’s Alien
for instance, where the little monster is born right out of the chest of a man,
a squealing fetus who then retains its curious shape, even as it grows large,
gorging itself upon human victims.
And what about Eraserhead,
where the ghastly fetal offspring born to the doomed couple cries continuously.
Why, at one point it seemed
to him there were too many horror films with fetuses in them to make a count.
There was The Kindred and Ghoulies and Leviathan and
those writhing clones being born like fetuses out of the pods in Invasion
of the Body Snatchers. He could hardly bear to watch that scene when he
saw it again at the Castro. He got up and walked out of the theater.
God only knew how many more
fetus horror movies there were. Take the remake of The Fly. Didn’t
the hero wind up looking like a fetus? And what about Fly II, with its
images of birth and rebirth? The never-ending theme, he figured. And then came Pumpkinhead,
where the great vengeful Appalachian demon grows out of a fetal corpse right
before your eyes, and keeps its overblown fetal head throughout its hideous
rampages.
What must this mean, Michael
tried to figure out. Not that we suffer guilt for what we do, for we believe it
is morally right to control the birth of our young, but that we have uneasy
dreams of all those little beings washed, unborn, into eternity? Or was it mere
fear of the beings themselves who want to claim us - eternally free adolescents
- and make us parents. Fetuses from Hell! He laughed bitterly at the whole idea
in spite of himself.
Look at John Carpenter’s
The Thing, with its screaming fetal heads! And what about the old
classic Rosemary’s Baby, for God’s sake, and that silly
movie It’s Alive, about the monster baby who murdered the milk
man when it got hungry. The image was inescapable. Babies — fetuses. He
saw it everywhere he turned.
He pondered it just as he
used to ponder the magnificent houses and elegant persons in old
black-and-white horror films of his youth.
No use trying to talk about
all this with his friends. They had believed Judith was in the right; and they
would never understand the distinctions he was trying to make. Horror movies
are our troubled dreams, he thought. And we are obsessed now with birth, and
birth gone wrong, and birth turned against us. And back to the Happy Hour
Theater he went in his memory. He was watching The Bride of Frankenstein
again. So science had scared them back then, and even further back when Mary
Shelley had written down her inspiring visions.
Oh, well, he couldn’t
figure out these things. He wasn’t really a historian or social
scientist. Maybe he wasn’t clever enough. He was a contractor by trade.
Best to stick to refinishing oak floors and stripping brass faucets.
And besides, he didn’t
hate women. He didn’t. He didn’t fear them either. Women were just
people, and sometimes they were better people than men, gentler, kinder. He
liked their company better than the company of men most of the time. And it had
never surprised him that, except for this one issue, they usually understood
what he had to say more sympathetically than men did.
When
As time passed, Michael lost
a little faith that he would ever have the love he wanted.
But his was a world in which
many adults did not have that love. They had friends, freedom, style, riches,
career, but not that love, and this was the condition of modern life and so it
was for him, too. And he grew to take this for granted.
He had plenty of comrades on
the job, old college buddies, no shortage of female companionship when he
wanted it. And as he reached his forty-eighth birthday, he figured there was
still time for everything. He felt and looked young, as did the other people
his age around him. Why, he still had those damned freckles. And women still
gave him the eye, that was certain. In fact, he found it easier to attract them
now than when he had been an overeager young man.
Who could say? Maybe his
little casual affair with Therese, the young woman he’d recently met at
the Symphony, would start to mean something. She was too young, he knew that,
he was angry with himself on that score, but then she could call and say: ‘Michael,
I expected to hear from you by this time! You’re really manipulating me!’
Whatever that meant. And off they would go to supper and her place after that.
But was it only a deep love
that he missed? Was there something else? One morning, he woke up and realized
in a flash that the summer he had been waiting for all these years was never
going to come. And the miserable damp of the place had worked itself into the
marrow of his bones. There would never be warm nights full of the smell of
jasmine. There would never be warm breezes from the river or the Gulf. But this
he had to accept, he told himself. After all, this was his city now. How could
he ever go home?
Yet at times it seemed to
him that
Even the beautiful houses he
restored seemed sometimes no more than stage sets, devoid of real tradition,
fancy traps to capture a past that had never existed, to create a feeling of solidity
for people who lived moment to moment in a fear of death bordering on hysteria.
Oh, but he was a lucky man,
and he knew it. And surely there were good times and good things to come.
So that was Michael’s
life, a life that for all practical purposes was now over, because he had
drowned on May 1 and come back, haunted, obsessed, rambling on and on about the
living and the dead, unable to remove the black gloves from his hands, fearful
of what he might see — the great inundations of meaningless images - and
picking up strong emotional impressions even from those whom he did not touch.
A full three and a half
months had passed since that awful day. Therese was gone. His friends were
gone. And now he was a prisoner of the house on
He had changed the number on
the phone. He was not answering the mountains of mail he received. Aunt Viv
went out by the back door to obtain those few supplies for the house which
could not be delivered.
In a sweet, polite voice she
fielded the few calls. ‘No, Michael isn’t here anymore.’
He laughed every time he
heard it. Because it was true. The papers said he had ‘disappeared.’
That made him laugh too. About every ten days or so, he called Stacy and Jim,
just to say he was alive, then hung up. He couldn’t blame them if they
didn’t care.
Now in the dark, he lay on
his bed, watching again on the mute television screen the familiar old images
of Great Expectations. A ghostly Miss Havisham in her tattered wedding
garb talked to the young Pip, played by John Mills, who was just setting off
for
Why was Michael wasting
time? He ought to be setting off for
‘If I could get in
touch with that woman,’ he had told Dr Morris, ‘you know, the
skipper who rescued me. If I could just take off my gloves and hold her hands
when I talk to her, well, maybe I could remember something through her. Do you
know what I’m talking about?’
‘You’re drunk,
Michael. I can hear it.’
‘Never mind that just
now. That’s a given. I’m drunk and I’m going to stay drunk,
but listen to what I’m saying. If I could get on that boat again…’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, if I could get
down on the deck of the boat, and touch the boards with my bare hands…
you know, the boards I was lying on…’
‘Michael, that’s
insane.’
‘Dr Morris, call her.
You can get in touch with her. If you won’t call her, give me her name.’
‘What do you mean,
call her and tell her you want to crawl around on the deck of her boat, feeling
for mental vibrations? Michael, she has a right to be protected from something
like that; she may not believe in this psychic power thing.’
‘But you believe in
it! You know it works!’
‘I want you to come
back to the hospital.’
Michael had hung up in a
rage. No more needles, no more tests, thank you. Over and over again Dr Morris
had called back, but the telephone messages were all the same: ‘Michael,
come in. We’re worried about you. We want to see you.’
Then finally, the promise: ‘Michael,
if you sober up, I’ll give it a try. I know where the lady can be found.’
Sober up; he thought about
it now as he lay in the dark. He groped for the nearby cold can of beer, then
cracked it open. A beer drunk was the best kind of drunk. And in a way it was
being sober because he hadn’t poured a slug of vodka or Scotch in the
can, had he? Now that was really drinking, that main-line poison, and he ought
to know.
Call Dr Morris. Tell him you’re
sober, sober as you ever intend to get.
Seems like he’d done
that. But maybe he’d dreamed it, maybe he was just drifting off again.
Sweet to lie here, sweet to be so drunk you couldn’t feel the agitation,
the urgency, the pain of not remembering…
Aunt Viv said, ‘Eat
some supper.’
But he was in
Cold wind. Yes. It was not
summer after all, but winter, the sharp, freezing
Such a lovely name, he
thought as he dreamed, but way back then he had also thought it wondrous. And
far ahead, on
‘Hurry, Michael,’
his mother said. She almost pulled him off his feet. How dark the street was,
how terrible this cold like the cold of the ocean.
‘But look, Mom.’
He pointed through the iron fence. He tugged on her hand. ‘There’s
the man in the garden.’
The old game. She would say
there was no man there, and they would laugh about it together. But the man was
there, all right, just as he’d always been - way back at the edge of the
great lawn, standing beneath the bare white limbs of the crepe myrtles. Did he
see Michael on that night? Yes, it seemed he did. Surely they had looked at
each other.
‘Michael, we don’t
have time for that man.’
‘But Mom, he’s
there, he really is…"
The Mystic Krewe of Comus.
The brass bands played their dark savage music as they marched by, the torches
blazing. The crowds surged into the street. From atop the quivering
papier-mache floats, men in glittering satin costumes and masks threw glass
necklaces, wooden beads. People fought to catch them. Michael clung to his
mother’s skirt, hating the sound of the drums. Trinkets landed in the
gutter at his feet.
On the long way home, with
Mardi Gras dead and done, and the streets littered with trash, and the air so
cold that their breath made steam, he had seen the man again, standing as he
was before, but this time he had not bothered to say so.
‘Got to go home,’
he whispered now in his sleep. ‘Got to go back there.’
He saw the long iron lace
railings of that
‘Yes, go,’ he
whispered. But wouldn’t they give him a sign, the others who had come to
him when he was dead? Surely they understood that he couldn’t remember
now. They’d help him. The barrier is falling away between the living and
dead. Come through. But the woman with the black hair said, ‘Remember,
you have a choice.’
‘But no, I didn’t
change my mind. I just can’t remember.’
He sat up. The room was
dark. Woman with the black hair. What was that around her neck? He had to pack
now. Go to the airport. The doorway. The thirteenth one. I understand.
Aunt Viv sat beyond the
living room door, in the glow of a single lamp, sewing.
He drank another swallow of
the beer. Then he emptied the can slowly.
‘Please help me,’
he whispered to no one at all. ‘Please help me.’
He was sleeping again. The
wind was blowing. The drums of the Mystic Krewe of Comus filled him with fear.
Was it a warning? Why don’t you jump, said the mean housekeeper to the
poor frightened woman at the window in the movie Rebecca. Had he changed the
tape? He could not remember that. But we are at Manderley now, aren’t we?
He could have sworn it was Miss Havisham. And then he heard her whisper in
Estella’s ear, ‘You can break his heart.’ Pip heard it too,
but still he fell in love with her.
I’ll fix up this
house, he whispered. Let in the light. Estella, we shall be happy forever. This
is not the school yard, not that long hollow hallway that leads to the
cafeteria, with Sister Clement coming towards him. ‘You get back in that
line, boy!’ If she slaps me the way she slapped Tony Vedros, I’ll
kill her.
Aunt Viv stood beside him in
the dark.
‘I’m drunk,’
he said.
She put the cold beer in his
hand, what a darling.
‘God, that tastes so
good.’
‘There’s someone
here to see you.’
‘Who? Is it a woman?’
‘A nice gentleman from
‘No, Aunt Viv-’
‘But he’s not a
reporter. At least he says he’s not. He’s a nice gentleman. Mr
Lightner is his name. He says he’s come all the way from
‘Not now. You have to
tell him to go away. Aunt Viv, I have to go back. I have to go to
He climbed out of the bed,
his head spinning, and stood still for a moment until the dizziness passed. But
it was no good. His limbs were leaden. He sank back into the bed, back into the
dreams. Walking through Miss Havisham’s house. The man in the garden
nodded again.
Someone had switched off the
television. ‘Sleep now,’ Aunt Viv said.
He heard her steps moving
away. Was the phone ringing?
‘Someone help me,’
he whispered.
THREE
JUST GO BY. Take a little
walk across
What the hell do you think
is going to happen?
Father Mattingly was angry
with himself. It was a duty, really, to call on that family before he went back
up north. He had been their parish priest once. He had known them all. And it
had been well over a year since he’d been south, since he’d seen
Miss Carl, since the funeral of Miss Nancy.
A few months ago, one of the
young priests had written to say that Deirdre Mayfair had been failing badly.
Her arms were drawn up now, close to the chest, with the atrophy that always
sets in, in such cases.
And Miss Carl’s checks
to the parish were coming in as regular as always - one every month
now, it seemed - made out for a thousand dollars to the Redemptorist Parish,
with no strings attached. Over the years, she had donated a fortune.
Father Mattingly ought to
go, really, just to pay his respects and say a personal thank you the way he
used to do years ago.
The priests in the rectory
these days didn’t know the May-fairs. They didn’t know the old
stories. They’d never been invited to that house. They had come only in
recent years to this sad old parish, with its dwindling congregation, its
beautiful churches locked now on account of vandals, the older buildings in
ruins.
Father Mattingly could
remember when the earliest Masses each day were crowded, when there were
weddings and funerals all week long in both St Mary’s and St Alphonsus.
He remembered the May processions and the crowded novenas, Midnight Mass with
the church jammed. But the old Irish and German families were gone now. The
high school had been closed years ago. The glass was falling right out of the
windows.
He was glad that his was
only a brief visit, for each return was sadder than the one before it. Like a
missionary outpost this was, when you thought about it. He hoped in fact that
he would not be coming south again.
But he could not leave
without seeing that family.
Yes, go there. You ought to.
You ought to look in on Deirdre Mayfair. Was she not a parishioner after all?
And there was nothing wrong
with wanting to find out if the gossip was true - that they’d tried to
put Deirdre in the sanitarium, and she had gone wild, smashing the glass out of
the windows before lapsing back into her catatonia. On August 13 it was
supposed to have happened, only two days ago.
Who knows, maybe Miss Carl
would welcome a call.
But these were games Father
Mattingly played with his mind. Miss Carl didn’t want him around any more
now than she ever had. It had been years since he was invited in. And Deirdre
Mayfair was now and forever ’a nice bunch of carrots,’ as her nurse
once put it.
No, he’d be going out
of curiosity.
But then how the hell could ’a
nice bunch of carrots’ rise up and break out all the glass in
Yet Deirdre’s nurse
had stopped them at the door, screaming for them to get back, saying that
Deirdre was staying home and she and Miss Carl would take care of it.
Jerry Lonigan, the
undertaker, had told Father the whole story. The ambulance driver for the
sanitarium often drove limousines for Lonigan and Sons. Saw it all. Glass crashing
out onto the front porch. Sounded like everything in that big front room was
being broken. And Deirdre making a terrible noise, a howling. Horrible thing to
imagine - like seeing someone rise from the dead.
Well, it wasn’t Father
Mattingly’s business. Or was it?
Dear God, Miss Carl was in
her eighties, never mind that she still went to work every day. And she was all
alone in that house now with Deirdre and the paid help.
The more he thought about
it, Father Mattingly knew he should go, even if he did loathe that house, and
loathe Carl and loathe everything he’d ever known of those people. Yes,
he should go.
Of course he hadn’t
always felt that way. Forty-two years ago, when he’d first come from St
Louis to this riverfront parish, he had thought the Mayfair women genteel, even
the buxom and grumbling Nancy, and surely sweet Miss Belle and pretty Miss
Millie. The house had enchanted him with its bronze clocks and velvet
portieres. He had loved the great cloudy mirrors, even, and the portraits of
He had loved also the
obvious intelligence and purpose of Carlotta Mayfair, who served him cafe au
lait in a garden room where they sat in white wicker chairs at a white wicker
table, among potted orchids and ferns. They had spent more than one pleasant
afternoon talking politics, the weather, and the history of the parish Father
Mattingly was trying so hard to understand. Yes, he had liked them.
And he had liked little
Deirdre, too, that pretty-faced six-year-old child he had known for so brief a
time, who had come to such a tragic pass only twelve years later. Was it in the
textbooks now that electric shock could wipe clean the entire memory of a grown
woman so that she became the silent shell of herself, staring at the falling
rain while a nurse fed her with a silver spoon?
Why had they done it? He had
not dared to" ask. But he had been told over and over. To cure her of her
‘delusions,’ of screaming in an empty room ‘You did it’
to someone who wasn’t there, someone she cursed endlessly for the death
of the man who had fathered her illegitimate child.
Deirdre. Cry for Deirdre.
That Father Mattingly had done, and no one but God would ever know how much or
why, though Father Mattingly himself would never forget it. All his days, he’d
remember the story that a little child had poured out to him in the hot wooden
cell of the confessional, a little girl who was to spend her life rotting away
in that vine-shrouded house while the world outside galloped on to its own
damnation.
Just go over there. Make the
call. Maybe it is some silent memorial to that little girl. Don’t try to
put it all together. Talk of devils from a small child still echoing in your
ears after all this time! Once you’ve
seen the man, you’re done for.
Father Mattingly made up his
mind. He put on his black coat, adjusted his Roman collar and black shirt
front, and went out of the air-conditioned rectory onto the hot narrow pavement
of
He saw the past if he saw
anything as he made his way fast down
Shuttered windows, shady
porches. The soft hissing sound of lawn sprinklers beyond ornamental fences.
Deep smell of the loam heaped on the roots of carefully tended rose trees.
All right, and what will you
say when you get there?
The heat wasn’t really
so bad today, given that it was August, yet it was just like the young priest
from
What did they think of all
that ruin, the young ones? No use telling them how it had once been. Ah, but
the city itself, and this old neighborhood - they were as beautiful as ever.
He walked on until he saw
the stained and peeling side of the
He slowed his pace. He
slowed because he really didn’t want to get there. He didn’t want
to see up close the garden gone to seed, chinaberry and oleander struggling
with grass as high as wheat, and the porches stripped of paint, turning that
dull gray that old untended wood turns in the damp climate of
He didn’t even want to
be in this still, deserted neighborhood. Nothing stirred here but the insects,
the birds, the plants themselves slowly swallowing up the light and the blue of
the sky. Swamp this must have been once. A breeding place of evil.
But he was out of hand with
these thoughts. What had evil to do with God’s earth, and the things that
grew in it — even the jungle of the Mayfairs’ neglected garden.
Yet he could not help but
think of all the stories he had ever heard of the
He mopped his forehead with
his handkerchief. Little Deirdre had told him that she saw the devil! He heard
her voice just as clearly now as he had heard it in the confessional decades
ago. And he heard her footsteps, too, as she ran from the church, ran from him,
ran from his failure to help her.
But it had started before
that. It had started on a dreary slow Friday afternoon when a call came from
Sister Bridget Marie for a priest to please come quick to the school yard. It
was Deirdre Mayfair again.
Father Mattingly had never
heard of Deirdre Mayfair. Father Mattingly had only just come south from the
seminary in
He found Sister Bridget
Marie quickly enough, in an asphalt yard behind the old convent building. How
European it had seemed to him then, quaint and sad with its broken walls, and the
gnarled tree with the wooden benches built in a square around it.
The shade had felt good to
him as he approached. Then he saw that the little girls seated along the bench
were crying. Sister Bridget Marie held one pale shivering child by the thin
part of her upper arm. The child was white with fear. Yet very pretty she was,
her blue eyes too big for her thin face, her black hair in long careful
corkscrew curls that shivered against her cheeks, her limbs well proportioned
yet delicate.
There were flowers strewn
all over the ground — big gladiolus and white lilies and long
fronds of green fern and even big beautifully formed red roses. Florist
flowers, surely, yet there were so many…
‘Do you see that,
Father?’ Sister Bridget Marie exclaimed. ‘And they have the nerve
to tell me it was her invisible friend, the devil himself, that put those
flowers here, brought them right into her arms while they watched, the little
thieves! They stole those flowers from the very altar of St Alphonsus -!’
The little girls began to
scream. One of them stamped her feet. A chorus of ‘We did see, we did see!’
broke out with alarming fury. They egged each other on with their choking sobs
into a regular chorus.
Sister Bridget Marie shouted
for silence. She shook the little girl she had been holding by the arm, though
the child had said nothing. The child’s mouth dropped open in shock, her
eyes rolling to Father Mattingly in a silent entreaty.
‘Now, Sister, please,’
Father Mattingly said. He had gently freed the child. She was dazed, utterly
pliant. He wanted to pick her up, wipe her face where the tears had smudged it
with dirt. But he didn’t.
‘Her invisible friend,’
the sister said, ‘the one that finds everything that’s lost,
Father. The one that puts the pennies for candy into her pockets! And they all
eat it, too, stuffing their mouths with it, stolen pennies, you can be sure of
it.’
The little girls were
wailing even louder. And Father Mattingly realized he was stepping all over the
flowers and the silent white-faced child was staring at his shoes, at the white
petals crushed beneath them.
‘Let the children go
in,’ Father Mattingly had said. It was essential to take command. Only
then could he make sense of what Sister Bridget Marie was telling him.
But the story was no less
fantastic when he and the sister were alone. The children claimed they saw the
flowers flying through the air. They claimed they saw the flowers land in
Deirdre’s arms. They had been laughing and laughing. Deirdre’s
magic friend always made them laugh, they said. Deirdre’s friend could
find your notebook or your pencil if you lost it. You asked Deirdre and he brought
it to her. And there it was. And they even claimed to have seen him themselves
— a nice man, a man with dark brown hair and eyes, and he would stand for
one second right next to Deirdre.
‘She’s got to be
sent home, Father,’ Sister Bridget Marie had said. ‘It happens all
the time. I call her Great-aunt Carl or her Aunt Nancy, and then it stops for a
while. Then it starts up again.’
‘But you don’t
believe -’
‘Father, I tell you, it’s
six of one, half a dozen of another. Either the devil’s in that child, or
she’s a devil of a liar, and makes them believe her wild tales as if she’s
got them bewitched. She cannot stay at St Alphonsus.’
Father Mattingly had taken
Deirdre home himself, walking slowly, steadily with her through these same
streets. Not a word was spoken. Miss Carl had been phoned at her downtown
office. She and Miss Millie were waiting on the front steps of the grand house
to meet them.
And how lovely it was then,
painted a deep violet color with green shutters and the trim all in white and
the porch railings painted a shiny black so you could see the cast-iron roses
so clearly. The vines had been a graceful etching of leaf and color, not the
menacing tangle they had since become.
‘Overactive
imagination, Father,’ Miss Carl said without a trace of concern. ‘Millie,
what Deirdre needs is a warm bath.’ And off the child had gone without a
word spoken, and Miss Carl had taken Father Mattingly out for the first time
into the glass garden room for cafe au lait at the wicker table. Miss Nancy,
sullen and plain, had set out the cups and silver.
Wedgwood china trimmed in
gold. And cloth napkins with the letter M embroidered on them. And what a
quick-witted woman, this Carl. She had looked prim in her tailored silk suit
and ruffled white blouse, her salt and pepper gray hair in a neat twist on the
back of her head, her mouth neatly colored with pale pink lipstick. She put him
at ease at once with her knowing smile.
‘You might say it’s
the curse of our family, Father, this excess of imagination.’ She poured
the hot milk and the hot coffee from two small silver pitchers. ‘We dream
dreams; we see visions; we should have been poets or painters it seems. Not
lawyers, such as I am.’ She had laughed softly, easily. ‘Deirdre
will be just fine, when she learns to tell fantasy from reality.’
Afterwards, she had shown
him through the lower rooms. And Miss Millie had joined them. She was such a
feminine thing, Miss Millie, her red hair in old-fashioned finger curls around
her face, and jeweled rings on her fingers. She’d taken him to the window
to wave to old Miss Belle, who had been cutting back the roses with large
wooden-handled shears.
Carl explained that Deirdre
would be going to the Sacred Heart sisters just as soon as there was a place.
She was so sorry for this silly disturbance at St Alphonsus and of course they’d
keep Deirdre home if that was what Sister Bridget Marie wanted.
Father had started to
object, but it was all decided. Simple matter to get Deirdre a governess,
someone who knew children, why not?
They walked along the deep
shaded porches.
‘We are an old family,
Father,’ Carl said, as they went back into the double parlor. ‘We
don’t even know how old. There is no one now who can identify some of the
portraits you see around you.’ Her voice was half amused, half weary. ‘We
came from the islands, that’s what we know for certain - a plantation on
Saint-Domingue - and before that from some dim European past that is now
completely lost. The house is full of unexplained relics. Sometimes I see it as
a great hard snail shell that I must carry on my back.’
Her hands passed lightly
over the grand piano, over the gilded harp. She had little taste for such
things, she said. What an irony that she had become the custodian. Miss Millie
had only smiled, nodded.
And now if Father would
excuse them, Miss Carl did have to go back downtown. Clients waiting. They
walked out to the gate together.
‘Thank you so much,
Father!’
And so it had all been waved
away, and the little white-faced girl with the black curls had left St Alphonsus.
But in the days that
followed it had bothered Father Mat-tingly, the question of those flowers.
Impossible to imagine a gang
of little girls climbing over the communion rail and robbing the altars of an
enormous and impressive church like St Alphonsus. Even the guttersnipes Father
Mattingly had known as a boy would not have dared such a thing.
What did Sister Bridget
Marie really think had happened? Had the children really stolen the flowers?
The small, heavyset round-faced nun studied him a moment before she answered.
Then she said no.
‘Father, as God is my
witness, they’re a cursed family, the Mayfairs are. And the grandmother
of that very child, Stella she was called, told the very same tales in this
very same school yard many a year ago. It was a frightening power Stella
Mayfair had over those around her. There were nuns under this very roof who
were scared to death to cross her, a witch is what they called her then and now.’
‘Oh, come now, Sister,’
he had objected immediately. ‘We’re not on the foggy roads of
‘Ah, so you’ve
heard that one, Father.’ She had laughed.
‘From my own Irish
mother on the
‘Well, then, Father,
let me tell you this much, that Stella Mayfair once took my hand, and held it
like this, she did, and told me secrets of my own that I had never told a
living soul this side of the Atlantic. I swear it, Father. It happened to me.
There was a keepsake I’d
lost at home, a chain with a crucifix on it, and I’d cried and cried as a
girl when I’d lost it, and that very same little keepsake Stella Mayfair
described to me. "You want it back, Sister?" she said. And all the
time smiling in her sweet way, just like her granddaughter Deirdre can smile at
you now, more innocent than cunning. "I’ll get it for you,
Sister," she said. "Through the power of the devil, you mean, Stella
Mayfair," I answered her. "I’ll have none of it." But
there was many another teaching sister at St Alphonsus school that took another
tack, and that’s how she kept her power over those around her, getting
her way in one thing and another right up to the day she died.’
‘Superstition, Sister!’
he’d said with great authority. ‘What about little Deirdre’s
mother? You’re going to tell me she was a witch too?’
Sister Bridget Marie shook
her head. ‘That was Antha, a lost one, shy, sweet, afraid of her own
shadow - not at all like her mother, Stella, until Stella was killed, that is.
You should have seen Miss Carlotta’s face when they buried Stella. And
the same expression on her face twelve years after when they buried Antha. Now,
Carl, she was as smart a girl as ever went to Sacred Heart. The backbone of the
family she is. But her mother never cared a fig for her. All Mary Beth Mayfair
ever cared about was Stella. And old Mr Julien, that was Mary Beth’s
uncle, he was the same. Stella, Stella, Stella. But Antha, stark raving mad at
the end, they said, and nothing but a girl of twenty when she ran up the stairs
in the old house and jumped from the attic window and dashed her head on the
stones below.’
‘So young,’ he’d
whispered. He remembered the pale, frightened face of Deirdre Mayfair. How old
had she been when the young mother did such a thing?
‘They buried Antha in
consecrated ground, God have mercy on her soul. For who’s to judge the
state of mind of such a person? Head split open like a watermelon when she hit
the terrace. And baby Deirdre screaming out her lungs in the cradle. But then
even Antha was something to fear.’
Father Mattingly was quietly
reeling. It was the kind of talk he’d heard all his life at home,
however, the endless Irish dramatizing of the morbid, the lusty tribute to the
tragic. Truth was it wore him out. He wanted to ask —
But the bell had rung.
Children were lining up in proper ranks for the march inside. Sister had to go.
Yet suddenly, she turned back.
‘Let me tell one story
about Antha,’ she said, her voice low on account of the hush in the
school yard, ’which is the best one that I know. In those days when the
sisters sat down to supper at
‘Sister, you think I’m
the new boy on the block’ - Father Mattingly had laughed -’to
believe something like that.’
And she had smiled, it was
true, but he knew from past experience that an Irishwoman like that could smile
at what she was saying and believe every word of it at the same time.
The Mayfairs fascinated him,
as something complex and elegant can fascinate. The tales of Stella and Antha
were remote enough to be romantic and nothing more.
The following Sunday he
called again on the Mayfairs. He was offered coffee once more and pleasant
conversation — it was all so removed from Sister Bridget Marie’s
tales. The radio played Rudy Vallee in the background. Old Miss Belle watered
the drowsing potted orchids. The smell of roast chicken came from the kitchen.
An altogether pleasant house.
They even asked him to stay
to Sunday dinner — the table was beautifully set with thick linen napkins
in silver rings — but he politely declined. Miss Carl wrote out a check
for the parish and put it in his hand.
As he was leaving he had
glimpsed Deirdre in the garden, a white face peering at him from behind a
gnarled old tree. He had waved to her without breaking his stride, yet
something bothered him later about the image of her. Was it her curls all tangled?
Or the distracted look in her eyes?
Madness, that’s what
Sister Bridget had described to him, and it disturbed him to think it
threatened that wan little girl. There was nothing romantic to Father Mattingly
about actual madness. He had long held the belief that the mad lived in a hell
of irrelevance. They missed the point of life around them.
But Miss Carlotta was a
sensible, modern woman. The child wasn’t doomed to follow in the
footsteps of a dead mother. She would, on the contrary, have every chance.
A month passed before his
view of the Mayfairs changed forever, on the unforgettable Saturday afternoon
that Deirdre Mayfair came to confession in St Alphonsus Church.
It was during the regular
hours when all the good Irish and German Catholics could be counted upon to
clear their consciences before Mass and Communion on Sunday.
And so he was seated in the
ornate wooden house of the confessional in his narrow chair behind a green
serge curtain, listening in alternation to the penitents who came to kneel in
the small cells to the left and the right of him. These voices and sins he
could have heard in
‘Three Hail Marys,’
he would prescribe, or ‘Three Our Fathers’ but seldom more than
that to these laboring men and good housewives who came to confess routine
peccadillos.
Then a child’s voice
had caught him off guard, coming rapid and crisp through the dark dusty grille
— eloquent of intelligence and precocity. He had not recognized it. After
all, Deirdre Mayfair had not spoken one word before in his presence.
‘Bless me, Father, for
I have sinned. My last confession was weeks and weeks ago. Father, help me
please. I cannot fight the devil. I try and I always fail. And I’m going
to go to hell for it.’
What was this, more of
Sister Bridget Marie’s influence? But before he could speak, the child
went on and he knew that it was Deirdre.
‘I didn’t tell
the devil to go away when he brought the flowers. I wanted to and I know that I
should have done it, and Aunt Carl is really, really angry with me. But Father,
he only wanted to make us happy. I swear to you, Father, he’s never mean
to me. And he cries if I don’t look at him or listen to him. I didn’t
know he’d bring the flowers from the altar! Sometimes he does very
foolish things like that, Father, things like a little child would do, with
even less sense than that. But he doesn’t mean to hurt anyone.’
‘Now, wait a minute,
darling, what makes you think the devil himself would trouble a little girl? Don’t
you want to tell me what really happened?’
‘Father, he’s
not like the Bible says. I swear it. He’s not ugly. He’s tall and
beautiful. Just like a real man. And he doesn’t tell lies. He does nice
things, always. When I’m afraid he comes and sits by me on the bed and
kisses me. He really does. And he frightens away people who try to hurt me!’
‘Then why do you say he’s
the devil, child? Wouldn’t it be better to say he’s a made-up
friend, someone to be with so you’ll never be lonely?’
‘No, Father, he’s
the devil.’ So definite she sounded. ‘He’s not real, and he’s
not made up either.’ The little voice had become sad, tired. A little
woman in a child’s guise struggling with an immense burden, almost in
despair. ‘I know he’s there when no one else does, and then I look
and look and then everyone can see him!’ The voice broke. ‘Father,
I try not to look. I say Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and I try not to look. I know
it’s a mortal sin. But he’s so sad and he cries without making a
sound and I can hear him.’
‘Now, child, have you talked to
your Aunt Carl about this?’ His voice was calm, but in fact the child’s
detailed account had begun to alarm him. This was beyond ’excess of
imagination’ or any such excess he’d ever known.
‘Father, she knows all
about him. All my aunts do. They call him the man, but Aunt Carl says
he’s really the devil. She’s the one who says it’s a sin,
like touching yourself between the legs, like having dirty thoughts. Like when
he kisses me and makes me feel chills and things. She says it’s filth to
look at the man and let him come under the covers. She says he can kill me. My
mother saw him too all her life and that’s why she died and went to
heaven to get away from him.’
Father Mattingly was aghast.
So you can never shock a priest in the confessional, was that the old saying?
‘And my mother’s
mother saw him too,’ the child went on, the voice rushing, straining. ‘And
she was really, really bad, he made her bad, and she died on account
of him. But she went to hell probably, instead of heaven, and I might too.’
‘Now, wait a minute,
child. Who told you this!’
‘My Aunt Carl, Father,’
the child insisted. ‘She doesn’t want me to go to hell like Stella.
She told me to pray and drive him away, that I could do it if I only tried, if
I said the rosary and didn’t look at him. But Father, she gets so angry
with me for letting him come -’ The child stopped. She was crying, though
obviously trying to muffle her cries. ‘And Aunt Millie is so afraid. And
Aunt Nancy won’t look at me. Aunt Nancy says that in our family, once you’ve
seen the man, you’re as good as done for.’
Father Mattingly was too
shocked to speak. Quickly he cleared his throat. ‘You mean your aunts say this thing
is real-’
‘They’ve always
known about him, Father. And anyone can see him when I let him get strong
enough. It’s true, Father. Anyone. But you see, I have to make him come.
It’s not a mortal sin for other people to see him because it’s my
fault. My fault. He couldn’t be seen if I didn’t let it
happen. And Father, I just, I just don’t understand how the devil could
be so kind to me, and could cry so hard when he’s sad and wants so badly
just to be near me —’ The voice broke off into low sobs.
‘Don’t cry,
Deirdre!’ he’d said, firmly. But this was in-conceivable! That
sensible, ’modern’ woman in her tailored suit telling a child this
superstition? And what about the others, for the love of God? Why, they made
the likes of Sister Bridget Marie look like Sigmund Freud himself. He tried to
see Deirdre through the dim grille. Was she wiping her eyes with her hands?
The crisp little voice went
on suddenly in an anguished rush.
‘Aunt Carl says it’s
a mortal sin even to think of him or think of his name. It makes him come
immediately, if you say his name! But Father, he stands right beside me when she’s
talking and he says she’s lying, and Father, I know it’s terrible
to say it, but she is lying sometimes. I know it, even when he’s being
quiet. But the worst part is when he comes through and scares her. And she
threatens him! She says if he doesn’t leave me alone she’ll hurt me!’
Her voice broke again, the cries barely audible. So small she seemed, so
helpless! ‘But all the time, Father, even when I’m all alone, or
even at Mass with everybody there, I know he’s right beside me. I can
feel him. I can hear him crying and it makes me cry, too.’
‘Child, now think
carefully before you answer. Did your Aunt Carl actually say she saw
this thing?’
‘Oh, yes, Father.’
So weary! Didn’t he believe her? That’s what she was begging him to
do.
‘I’m trying to
understand, darling. I want so to understand, but you must help me. Are you
certain that your Aunt Carl said she saw him with her own eyes?’
‘Father, she saw him
when I was a baby and didn’t even know I could make him come. She saw him
the day my mother died. He was rocking my cradle. And when my grand-mother
Stella was a little girl, he’d come behind her to the supper table.
Father, I’ll tell you a terrible secret thing. There’s a picture in
our house of my mother, and he’s in the picture, standing beside her. I know
about the picture because he got it and gave it to me, though they had it
hidden away. He opened the dresser drawer without even touching it, and then he
put the picture in my hand. He does things like that when he’s really
strong, when I’ve been with him a long time and been thinking about him
all day. That’s when everybody knows he’s in the house, and Aunt
Nancy meets Aunt Carl at the door and whispers, "The man is here. I just
saw him." And then Aunt Carl gets so mad. It’s all my fault, Father!
And I’m scared I can’t stop him. And they’re all so upset!’
Her sobs had gotten louder,
echoing against the wooden walls of the little cell. Surely they could hear her
outside in the church itself.
And what was he to say to
her? His temper was boiling. What craziness went on with these women? Was there
no one with a particle of sense in the whole family who could get a
psychiatrist to help this girl?
‘Darling, listen to
me. I want your permission to speak of these things outside the confessional to
your Aunt Carl. Will you give me that permission?’
‘Oh, no Father,
please, you mustn’t!’
‘Child, I won’t,
not without your permission. But I tell you, I need to speak to your Aunt Carl
about these things. Deirdre, she and I can drive away this thing together.’
‘Father, she’ll
never forgive me for telling. Never. It’s a mortal sin to ever tell. Aunt
Nancy would never forgive me. Even Aunt Millie would be angry. Father, you can’t
tell her I told you about him!’ She was becoming hysterical.
‘I can wipe that
mortal sin away, child,’ he’d explained, ‘I can give you
absolution. From that moment on, your soul is as white as snow, Deirdre. Trust
in me, Deirdre. Give me permission to talk to her.’
For a tense moment the
crying was his only answer. Then, even before he heard her turn the knob of the
little wooden door, he knew he’d lost her. Within seconds, he heard her
steps running fast down the aisle away from him.
He had said the wrong thing,
made the wrong judgment! And now there was nothing he could do, bound as he was
by the seal of the confessional. And this secret had come to him from a
troubled child who was not even old enough to commit a mortal sin, or benefit
from the sacrament she’d been seeking.
He never forgot that moment,
sitting helpless, hearing those steps echoing in the vestibule of the church,
the closeness and the heat of the confessional suffocating him. Dear God,
what was he going to do?
But the torture had only
begun for Father Mattingly.
For weeks after, he’d
been truly obsessed — those women, that house…
But he could not act upon
what he had heard any more than he could repeat it. The confessional bound him
to secrecy in deed and word.
He did not dare even
question Sister Bridget Marie, though she volunteered enough information when
he happened to see her on the playground. He felt guilty for listening, but he
could not bring himself to move away.
‘Sure, they’ve
put Deirdre in the Sacred Heart, they have. But do you think she’ll stay
there? They expelled her mother, Antha, when she was but eight years old. And
from the Ursulines too she was expelled. They found a private school for her
finally, one of those crazy places where they let the children stand on their
heads. And what an unhappy thing she was as a young girl, always writing poetry
and stories and talking to herself and asking questions about how her mother
had died. And you know it was murder, don’t you, Father, that Stella
Mayfair was shot dead by her brother Lionel? And at a fancy dress ball in that
house, he did it. Caused a regular stampede. Mirrors, clocks, windows,
everything broken by the time the panic was over, and Stella lying dead on the
floor.’
Father Manningly only shook
his head at the pity of it.
‘No wonder Antha went
wild after, and not ten years later took up with a painter, no less, who never
bothered to marry her, leaving her in a four-story walk-up in Greenwich Village
in the middle of winter with no money and little Deirdre to take care of, so
that she had to come home in shame. And then to jump from that attic window,
poor thing, but what a hellish life it was with her aunts picking on her and
watching her every move and locking her up at night, and her running down to
the French Quarter and drinking, mind you, at her age, with the poets and the
writers and trying to get them to pay attention to her work. I’ll tell
you a strange secret, Father. For months after she died, letters came for her,
and manuscripts of hers came back from the
Father Mattingly said his
silent prayer for Deirdre. Let the shadow of evil not touch her.
‘There was one of Antha’s
stories in a magazine, they told me, published in Paris, they said, but it was
all in English, and that come too to Miss Carlotta and she took one look at it
and locked it away. ‘Twas one of the Mayfair cousins told me that part of
it, and how they offered to take the baby off her hands - little Deirdre - but
she said no, she’d keep it, she owed that to Stella, and to Antha, and to
her mother, and to the child itself.’
Father Mattingly stopped in
the church on his way back to the rectory. He stood for a long time in the
silent chamber of the sacristy looking through the door at the main altar.
For a sordid history he
could forgive the Mayfairs easily enough. They were born ignorant into this
world like the rest of us. But for warping a little girl with lies of the devil
who drove a mother to suicide? But there was nothing, absolutely nothing,
Father Mattingly could do but pray for Deirdre as he was praying now.
Deirdre was expelled from St
Margaret’s
Some time after that he’d
heard she was home again, sickly, studying with a governess, and once after
that he did glimpse her at a crowded
More and more of the
‘Now I know that
family. Mary Beth, she was the grande dame, she could tell you all about how it
had been on the old plantation, born there right after the Civil War, didn’t
come to
‘Now, she was a real
beauty, Mary Beth, dark and wild-looking, not delicate like Stella — or
plain like Miss Carlotta — and they said Antha was a beauty though I
never did get to see her, or that poor baby Deirdre. But Stella was a real true
voodoo queen. Yes, I mean Stella, Father. Stella knew the powers, the potions,
the ceremonies. She could read your fortune in the cards. She did it to my
grandson, Sean, frightened him half out of his wits with the things she told
him. That was at one of those wild parties up there on
‘She liked my Billy,
she did.’ Sudden gesture to the faded photograph on the bureau top. The
one who died in the War. I told him, "Billy, you listen to me. Don’t
you go near the
Rain and wind like a
hurricane around that place. Stella made the heavens weep for her.’
Speechless, Father Mattingly
sat, trying to like the tepid tea full of milk and sugar, but he was
remembering every word.
He didn’t call on the
Mayfairs anymore. He didn’t dare. He could not have that child think - if
she was there at all - that he meant to tell what he was bound forever to keep
secret. He watched for the women at
Miss Carlotta’s checks
were coming in, however. That he knew. Father Lafferty, who did the accounts
for the parish, showed him the check near Christmastime - it was for two
thousand dollars — quietly remarking on how Carlotta Mayfair used her
money to keep the world around her nice and quiet.
‘They’ve sent
the little niece home from the school in
Father Mattingly said that
he hadn’t. He stood in the door of Father Lafferty’s office,
waiting…
‘Well, I thought you
got on famous with those ladies,’ Father Lafferty said. Father Lafferty
was a plainspoken man, older than his sixty years, not a gossip.
‘Only visited once or
twice,’ said Father Mattingly.
‘Now they’re
saying little Deirdre’s sickly,’ Father Lafferty said. He laid the
check down on the green blotter on his desk, looked at it. ‘Can’t
go to regular school, has to stay home with a private tutor.’
‘Sad thing.’
‘So it seems. But
nobody’s going to question it. Nobody’s going to go over and see if
that child’s really getting a decent education.’
‘They have money
enough…"
‘Indeed, enough to
keep everything quiet, and they always have. They could get away with murder.’
‘You think so?’
Father Lafferty seemed to be
having a little debate with himself. He kept looking at Carlotta Mayfair’s
check.
‘You heard about the
shooting, I suppose,’ he said, ’when Lionel Mayfair shot his sister
Stella? Never spent a day in prison for it. Miss Carlotta fixed all that. So
did Mr Cortland, Julien’s son. Between them those two could have fixed
anything. No questions asked here by anyone.’
‘But how on earth did
they…’
‘The insane asylum of
course, and there Lionel took his own life, though how no one knows since he
was in a strait-jacket.’
‘You don’t mean
it.’
Father Lafferty nodded. ‘Of
course I do. And again no questions asked. Requiem Mass same as always. And
then little Antha, she came here, Stella’s daughter, you know —
crying, screaming, saying it was Miss Carlotta who made Lionel murder her
mother. Told the pastor downstairs in the left parlor. I was there, Father
Morgan was there, so was Father Graham, too. We all heard her.’
Father Mattingly listened in
silence.
‘Little Antha said she
was afraid to go home. Afraid of Miss Carlotta. She said Miss Carlotta said to
Lionel, "You’re no man if you don’t put a stop to what’s
going on," even gave him the thirty-eight-caliber pistol to shoot Stella.
You’d think somebody would have asked a few questions about that, but the
pastor didn’t. Just picked up the phone and called Miss Carlotta. Few
minutes later a big black limousine comes and gets little Antha.’
Father Mattingly stared at
the small thin man at the desk. No questions
asked by me either.
‘The pastor said later
the child was insane, she’d told the children she could hear people
talking through the walls, and she could read their minds. He said she’d
calm down, she was just wild over the death of Stella.’
‘But she got worse
after that?’
‘Jumped out of the
attic window when she was twenty, that’s what she did. No questions
asked. She wasn’t in her right mind, and besides, she was just a child.
Requiem Mass as usual.’
Father Lafferty turned the
check over, hit the back of it with the rubber stamp that carried the parish
endorsement.
‘Are you saying, Father, that I
should call on the Mayfairs?’ ‘No, Father, I’m not. I don’t
know what I’m saying if you want the truth. But I wish now that Miss
Carlotta had given that child up, gotten her out of that house. There are too
many bad memories under that roof. It’s no place for a child now.’
When Father Mattingly heard
that Deirdre Mayfair had been sent off to school again — this time in
It came as no surprise that
Carlotta invited him into the long double parlor and the coffee things were
brought in on the silver tray, all quite cordial. He loved that big room. He
loved the mirrors facing each other. Miss Millie joined them, then Miss Nancy,
though she apologized for her dirty apron, and even old Miss Belle came down by
means of an elevator he had not even known was there, hidden as it was behind a
great twelve-foot-high door that looked like all the others. Old Miss Belle was
deaf, he caught on to that immediately.
Through the veil of small
talk, he studied these women, trying to fathom what lay behind their restrained
smiles.
Leaving the house, he
glanced at the flagstone patio overgrown with weeds. Head split open like a watermelon. Going down the street
he looked back at the attic windows. All covered with the vines, they were now,
shutters askew.
That was his last visit, he
told himself. Let Father Lafferty take care of it. Let no one take care of it.
But his sense of failure
deepened as the years passed.
When she was ten years old
Deirdre Mayfair ran away from home and was found two days later walking along
the Bayou St John in the rain, her clothes soaking wet. Then it was another
boarding school somewhere —
Then came word that Deirdre
was in
Father Mattingly knew now
that he would never get the sound of that child’s crying out of his head.
Why in God’s name had he not tried another tack with her? He prayed she
told some wise teacher or doctor the things she’d told him, that somebody
somewhere would help her as Father Mattingly had failed to do.
He could never recall
hearing when Deirdre came back from
Miss Kellerman told Father
Lafferty everything on the church steps one afternoon. She’d heard it
from her maid who knew the ’colored girl’ that sometimes helped at
the house. Deirdre had found her mother’s short stories in a trunk in the
attic, ’all that nonsense about
It had ended with her
commitment to
Then one afternoon in the
summer of 1959, over a kitchen table, Father Mattingly heard of the ‘scandal.’
Deirdre Mayfair was pregnant at eighteen. She had dropped out of classes at a
college in
It seemed the whole parish
was talking about it. Miss Carlotta had washed her hands of the whole thing,
they said, but Miss Nancy had taken Deirdre to Guy Mayer to buy her a nice
pretty dress for the city hall wedding. Deirdre was a beautiful girl now,
beautiful as Antha and Stella had been. Beautiful they said as Miss Mary Beth.
Father Mattingly remembered
only that frightened, white-faced child. Flowers crushed under foot.
The marriage was never to
take place.
When Deirdre was in her
fifth month, the father was killed on his way to New Orleans. Car crash on the
river road. The tie rod had broken on his old ’52 Ford, the car had gone
out of control and hit an oak, exploding instantly.
Then wandering through the
crowds of the church bazaar on a hot July evening, Father Mattingly was to hear
the strangest story of the Mayfairs yet, one that would haunt him in years to
come as did the confession.
Lights were strung across
the asphalt yard. Parishioners in shirt sleeves and cotton dresses strolled
from one wooden booth to another, playing the games of chance. Win a chocolate
cake on a nickel bet when the wheel spins. Win a teddy bear. The asphalt was
soft in the heat. The beer flowed at the makeshift bar of boards set upon
barrels. And it seemed that everywhere Father Mattingly turned he caught some
whisper of the goings-on at the
Gray-headed Red Lonigan, the
senior member of the undertaker family, was listening to Dave Collins tell him
that they had Deirdre locked up in her room. Father Lafferty sat there staring
sullenly over his beer at Dave. Dave said he’d known the Mayfairs longer
than anybody, even longer than Red.
Father Mattingly got a cold
bottle of Jax from the bar and took his place on the bench at the end.
Dave Collins was now in his
glory with two priests in the audience.
‘I was born in 1901,
Father!’ he declared, though Father Mattingly did not even look up. ‘Same
year as Stella Mayfair, and I remember when they kicked Stella out of the
‘Too much gossip about
that family,’ Red said gloomily.
‘Stella was a voodoo
queen, all right,’ Dave said. ‘Everybody knew it. But you can
forget about the penny-ante charms and spells. They wasn’t for Stella.
Stella-had a purse of gold coins that was never empty.’
Red laughed sadly under his
breath. ‘All she ever had in the end was bad luck.’
‘Well, she crammed in
a lot of living before Lionel shot her,’ Dave said, narrowing his eyes
and leaning forward on his right arm, his left hand locked to the beer bottle. ‘And
no sooner was she dead and gone than that purse turned up right beside Antha’s
bed and no matter where they hid it, it always came back again.’
‘In a pig’s eye,’
said Red.
‘There was coins from
all over the world in that purse -Italian coins and French coins and Spanish
coins.’
‘And how would you
know?’ Red asked.
‘Father Lafferty’s
seen it, ain’t you, Father? You’ve seen them coins. Miss Mary Beth
used to throw them in the collection basket every Sunday, you know she done it.
And you knew what she always said, "Spend them fast, Father, get them out
of your hands before sundown, because they always come back."’
‘What are you talking
about!’ Red scoffed.
Father Lafferty said
nothing. His small black eyes moved from Dave to Red. Then he glanced at Father
Mattingly, who sat opposite him.
‘What do you mean,
they came back?’ Father Mattingly asked.
‘Back to her purse is
what she meant!’ Dave said arching his eyebrows. He took a long pull off
his bottle. Nothing but foam left. ‘She could give them away forever, and
they always came back.’ He laughed hoarsely. There was the sound of
phlegm in his voice. ‘She said the same thing to my mother fifty years
ago when she paid her for doing the washing, that’s right, the washing -
my mother did the washing in a lot of them big houses, and she was never ashamed
of it neither, and Miss Mary Beth always paid her in them coins.’
‘In a pig’s eye,’
Red said.
‘And I’ll tell
you something else too,’ Dave said, leaning forward on his elbow, his
eyes narrow as he peered at Red Lonigan. ‘The house, the jewels, the purse,
it’s all connected. Same with the name
Red shook his head. He
pushed his full beer bottle towards Dave and watched as Dave wrapped his
fingers around it.
‘It’s the God’s
truth, I’m telling you. It come down to them through the generations, the
power of witchcraft, and back in them days there was plenty of talk of it. Miss
Mary Beth, she was more powerful than Stella.’ He took a big swallow of
Red’s beer. ‘And smart enough to keep her mouth shut which Stella
was not.’
‘Then how did you hear
about it?’ Red asked.
Dave took out his little
white sack of Bull Durham tobacco and pressed it flat between fingers and
thumb.
‘You wouldn’t
have a ready-made, would you, Father?’ he asked Father Mattingly.
Red sneered. Father
Mattingly gave Dave his pack of Pall Malls.
‘Thank you, Father.
And now to your question, Red, which I wasn’t avoiding. I know because my
mother told me the things that Miss Mary Beth told her, back in 1921 when Miss
Carlotta had graduated from Loyola and everybody was singing her praises, such
a smart woman, being a lawyer and all that. "She’s not the chosen
one," Miss Mary Beth said to my mother. "It’s Stella. Stella’s
got the gift and she’ll get everything when I die."
"And what’s the
gift, Miss Mary Beth?" my mother asked her. "Why, Stella’s seen
the man," Miss Mary Beth said to my mother. "And the one who
can see the man when she’s all alone inherits all."’
Father Mattingly felt a
chill run down his back. It had now been eleven years since he had heard that
child’s unfinished confession, but he had never forgotten a word of it. They
call him the man…
But Father Lafferty was
glowering at Dave.
‘Seen the man?’
Father Lafferty asked coldly. ‘Now what in heaven’s name could such
gibberish mean?’
‘Well now, Father, I
should think a good Irishman like yourself would know the answer to that one.
Ain’t it a fact that witches call the devil the man? Ain’t it fact
they call him that when he comes in the middle of the night to tempt them to
unspeakable evil!’ He gave another of his deep cracking unhealthy laughs,
and pulled a filthy snotrag from his pocket to wipe his nose. ‘Witches,
and you know it, Father. That’s what they were and that’s what they
are. It’s a legacy of witchcraft. And old Mr Julien Mayfair, you remember
him? I remember him. He knew all about it, that’s what my mother told me.
You know it’s the truth, Father.’
‘It’s a legacy
all right,’ Father Lafferty said angrily. He rose to his feet. ‘It’s
a legacy of ignorance and jealousy and mental sickness! Ever hear of those
things, Dave Collins? Ever heard of hatred between sisters, and envy, and
ruthless ambition!’ He turned and walked off through the milling crowd
without waiting for the answer.
Father Mattingly felt
stunned by Father Lafferty’s anger. He wished that Father Lafferty had
merely laughed, as Dave Collins was doing.
Dave Collins swallowed the
last of Red’s beer. ‘Couldn’t spare two bits, now, could you,
Red?’ he asked, his eyes darting from him to Father Mattingly.
Red sat listless staring at
the empty beer bottle. Like a man in a dream he fished a crumpled dollar out of
his pants pocket.
On the edge of sleep that
night Father Mattingly remembered the books he’d read in the seminary.
The tall man, the dark man, the comely man, the incubus who comes by
night… the giant man who leads the Sabbat! He remembered dim pictures in
a book, finely drawn, gruesome. Witches, he said the word as he passed into
sleep. She says he’s the devil, Father. That it’s a sin even to
look at him.
He awoke some time before
dawn, hearing Father Lafferty’s angry voice. Envy, mental sickness.
Was that the truth to read between the lines? It seemed a crucial piece had
been fitted into the puzzle. He could almost see the full picture. A house
ruled by an iron hand, a house in which beautiful and high-spirited women had
met tragedy. And yet something bothered him still… They all see him,
Father. Flowers scattered under foot, big long white gladiolus and
delicate fronds of fern. He saw his shoe crushing them.
Deirdre Mayfair gave up her
child. It was born at the new
But it was Deirdre who laid
down the law that the child was to have the name
Father Mattingly didn’t
remember when he’d first heard the word ’incurable.’ She’d
gone mad even before she left the hospital. They said she kept talking out loud
to nobody at all, saying, ‘You did it, you killed him.’ The nurses
were afraid to go into her room. She wandered into the chapel in her hospital
gown, laughing and talking out loud in the middle of Mass, accusing the empty
air of killing her lover, separating her from her child, leaving her alone
among ’enemies.’ When the nuns tried to restrain her, she’d
gone wild. The orderlies had come and taken her away as she kicked and
screamed.
By the time Father Lafferty
died in the spring, they had locked her up far away. Nobody even knew where.
Rita Lonigan asked her father-in-law, Red, because she wanted so badly to
write. But Miss Carl said it would not be good. No letters for Deirdre.
Only prayers for Deirdre.
And the years slipped by.
Father Mattingly left the
parish. He worked in the foreign missions. He worked in
Then one afternoon in 1976,
when Father Mattingly had come down for a brief stay at the old rectory, he had
passed the house and seen a thin, pale young woman sitting in a rocker on the
side porch, behind a veil of rusted screen. She seemed no more than a wraith in
a white nightgown, but he’d known at once it was Deirdre. He’d
recognized those black curls hanging around her shoulders. And as he opened the
rusted gate and came up the flagstone walk, he saw that even the expression on
the face was the same — yes, it was Deirdre whom he’d brought home
to this house almost thirty years ago.
Expressionless she was,
behind the screen, which sagged on its light wooden framing. No answer when he
whispered: ‘Deirdre.’
Around her neck on a chain
was an emerald - a beautiful stone, and on her finger a ruby ring. Were these
the jewels he’d heard tell of? How incongruous they looked on this silent
woman in her limp white nightgown. She gave no sign that she either heard or
saw him.
His visit with Miss Millie
and Miss Nancy had been brief, uncomfortable. Carl was downtown at work, of
course. And yes, that was Deirdre on the side porch and she was home to stay,
but there was no need to whisper.
‘The mind’s gone,’
‘Don’t!’
Millie had whispered, with a little shake of the head and twist of her mouth as
though it wasn’t in good taste to discuss this. She was old now, Miss
Millie, old and beautifully gray, dainty as Miss Belle had been, Miss Belle who
was now long gone. ‘Have some more coffee, Father?’
But it was a pretty woman
sitting in the chair on the porch. The shock treatments had not grayed her
hair. And her eyes were still a deep blue, though they were utterly empty. Like
a statue in church she was. Father, help me. The emerald ring caught
the light, exploded like a tiny star.
Father Mattingly did not
come south very often after that, and in the following years when he rang the
bell, he was not welcome. Miss Nancy’s excuses became more abrupt.
Sometimes nobody even answered. If Carl was there, the visit was rushed,
artificial. No more coffee in the garden room, just a few quick words in that
vast dusty parlor. Didn’t they ever turn on the lights anymore? The
chandeliers were filthy.
Of course the women were
getting quite old. Millie died in 1979. The funeral had been enormous, with
cousins coming from all over the country.
Then last year
Miss Carl, in her late
eighties, was bone thin, hawk-nosed, with white hair and thick glasses that
magnified her eyes unpleasantly. Her ankles were swollen over the tops of her
black string shoes. She had to sit down on a gravestone during the final words
at the cemetery.
The house itself was going
down pitifully. Father Mattingly had seen that for himself when he drove past.
Deirdre too had changed,
inevitably. He could see that her fragile hothouse beauty had at last been
lost. And in spite of the nurses who walked her back and forth, she had grown
stooped, and her hands bent down and out at the wrists, like those of an
arthritic patient. They said that her head had now fallen permanently to one
side, and her mouth was always open.
It was a sad sight to behold
even from a distance. And the jewels only made it more sinister. Diamond
earrings on a senseless invalid. An emerald big as a thumbnail! And Father
Mattingly, who believed above all in the sanctity of human life, thought Deirdre’s
death would have been a blessing.
The afternoon following Nancy’s
funeral, as he had paid a silent visit to the old place, he had met an
Englishman stopped at the far end of the fence - a very personable man, who
introduced himself to the priest as Aaron Lightner.
‘Do you know anything
about that poor woman?’ Lightner had asked quite frankly. ‘For over
ten years I’ve seen her on that porch. You know, I worry about her.’
‘I worry myself,’
Father Mattingly had confessed. ‘But they say there’s nothing
anyone can do for her.’
‘Such a strange family,’
said the Englishman sympathetically. ‘It’s so very hot. I wonder
does she feel the heat? You’d think they’d fix the overhead fan. Do
you see? It seems to be broken.’
Father Mattingly had taken
an immediate liking to the Englishman. Such a forceful, yet polite man. And he
was dressed so well in a fine three-piece linen suit. Even carried a walking
stick. Made Father Mattingly think of the gentlemen who used to stroll in the
evening on
Father Mattingly found
himself chatting easily with the Englishman in a hushed voice under the
low-hanging oaks, about all the ’known’ things with which the man
seemed quite familiar - the shock treatments, the sanitariums, the baby
daughter long ago adopted out in California. But Father Mattingly would not
have dreamed of mentioning old Dave Collins’s gossip of Stella or ‘the
man.’ To repeat such nonsense would be flat-out wrong. And besides, it
came too near to those painful secrets Deirdre had confided in him.
He and Lightner had somehow
ended up at Commander’s Palace for a late lunch at the Englishman’s
invitation. What a treat for the priest. How long had it been since he dined in
a fine
The man admitted candidly
that he was interested in the history of families like the Mayfairs.
‘You know they had a
plantation in
‘So you know of them
that far back,’ said the priest, amazed.
‘Oh, indeed, I do,’
said Lightner. ‘It’s in the history books, you see. Powerful woman
ran that place, Marie Claudette Mayfair Landry, following in the footsteps of
her mother, Angelique Mayfair. But they had been there for four generations. It
was Charlotte who had come from
‘You don’t say. I’ve
never heard tell of them that far back.’
‘I believe it’s
a simple matter of record.’ The Englishman gave a little shrug. ‘Even
the black rebels didn’t dare torch the plantation. Marie Claudette
managed to emigrate with a king’s ransom in possessions as well as her
entire family. Then it was La Victoire at Riverbend below
‘Miss Mary Beth was
born there.’
‘Yes! That’s
correct. In, let me see, I think it was 1871. It took the river to finally
swallow that old house. Such a beauty it was, with columns all around. There
were photographs of it in the very old guidebooks to
‘I’d like to see
those,’ the priest said.
‘They’d built
the house on
‘Seems I heard a long
time ago that Monahan designed the house,’ said the priest. But he really
didn’t want to interrupt. ‘I used to hear about Miss Mary
Beth…’
‘Yes, it was Mary Beth
Mayfair who married Judge McIntyre, though he was only a young lawyer then of
course, and their daughter Carlotta Mayfair is the head of the house now, it
seems…"
Father Mattingly was
enthralled. It wasn’t merely his old and painful curiosity about the
Mayfairs, it was the engaging manner of Lightner himself, and the pleasing
sound of his British accent. Just history, all this, not gossip, quite
innocent. It had been a long time since Father Mattingly had spoken to such a
cultivated man. No, this was not gossip when the Englishman told it.
And against his better
judgment, the priest found himself telling in a tentative voice the story of
the little girl in the school yard and the mysterious flowers. Now, that was
not what he’d heard in the confessional, he reminded himself. Yet it was
frightening that it should spill out this way, after a half-dozen sips of wine.
Father Mattingly was ashamed of himself. Suddenly he couldn’t get the
confession out of his mind. He lost the thread. He was thinking of Dave Collins
and all those strange things he’d said and the way Father Lafferty had
gotten so angry that July night at the bazaar, Father Lafferty who’d
presided over the adoption of Deirdre’s baby.
Had Father Lafferty taken
action on account of all Dave Collins’s crazy talk? He himself had never
been able to do any-thing.
The Englishman was quite
patient with the priest’s silent reverie. In fact, the strangest thing
happened. It seemed to Father Mattingly that the man was listening to his
thoughts! But that was quite impossible, and if a man could overhear the memory
of a confession in that way, just what was a priest supposed to do about it?
How long that afternoon
seemed. How pleasant, easeful. Father Mattingly had finally repeated Dave
Collins’s old tales, and he had even talked of the pictures in the books
of ‘the dark man’ and of witches dancing.
And the Englishman had
seemed so interested, only moving now and then to pour the wine, or to offer
the priest a cigarette, never interrupting.
‘Now, what do you make
of all that,’ the priest whispered at last. Had the man said anything
back? ‘You know, old Dave Collins is dead, but Sister Bridget Marie is
going to live forever. She’s nearing a hundred.’
The Englishman smiled. ‘You
mean the sister in the school yard that long-ago day.’
Father Mattingly was now
drunk on the wine he’d had, that was the plain truth of it. And he kept
seeing the yard and the children and the flowers strewn all over the pavement.
‘She’s out at
The priest had drifted off
again, thinking of Deirdre and the confessional. And the Englishman had touched
the back of his hand and whispered: ‘You mustn’t worry about it.’
The priest had been
startled. Then he’d almost laughed at the idea that someone could read
his mind. And that’s what Sister Bridget Marie had said about Antha, wasn’t
it? That she could hear people talking through the walls and read their minds?
Had he told the Englishman that part?
‘Yes, you did. I want
to thank you…’
He and the Englishman had
said good-bye at
‘You know, they’re
all buried in there, the Mayfairs,’ Father Mattingly had said, glancing
at the iron gates. ‘Big above-ground tomb down the centre walk to the
right, has a little wrought-iron fence around it. Miss Carl keeps it in good
repair. You can read all those names you just told me.’
The priest would have shown
the Englishman himself but it was time to get back to the rectory, time to go
back to Baton Rouge and then up to St Louis.
Lightner gave him an address
in
‘If you ever hear
anything more about that family – anything you feel comfortable passing
on — well, would you contact me?’
Of course Father Mattingly
had never done that. He’d misplaced the name and address months ago. But
he remembered that Englishman kindly, though sometimes he wondered who the man
really was, and what he had actually wanted. If all the priests of the world
had such a soothing manner as that, what a splendid thing it would be. It was
as if that man understood everything.
As he drew nearer the old
corner now, Father Mattingly thought again of what the young priest had
written: that Deirdre Mayfair was shriveling up, that she could hardly walk
anymore.
Then how could she have gone
wild on August I3th, he’d like to know, for the love of heaven? How could
she have broken the windows out and scared off men from an asylum?
And Jerry Lonigan said his
driver saw things thrown out -books, a clock, all manner of things, just
hurling through the air. And the noise she’d made, like an animal
howling.
The priest found it hard to
believe.
But there it was, the
evidence.
As he slowly approached the
gate on this warm August afternoon, he saw the white-uniformed window man on
the front porch, atop his wooden ladder. Knife in hand, he applied the putty
along the new panes. And each one of those tall windows had shining new glass,
complete with the tiny brand-name stickers.
Yards away, on the south
side of the house, behind her veil of rusted copper screen sat Deirdre, hands
twisted out at the wrists, head bent and to the side against the back of the
rocker. The emerald pendant on its chain was a tiny spark of green light for an
instant.
Ah, what had it been like for her to
break those windows? To feel the strength coursing through her limbs, to feel
herself in possession of such uncommon power? Even to make a sound, why, it
must have been magnificent.
But that was a strange
thought for him, wasn’t it? Yet he felt himself swept up in some vague
sadness, some grand melancholy. Ah, Deirdre, poor little Deirdre.
The truth was, he felt sad
and bitter as he always did when he saw her. And he knew he would not go up the
flagstone path to the front steps. He would not ring the bell only to be told
again that Miss Carl wasn’t home, or that she could not receive him just
now.
This trip had only been
Father Mattingly’s personal penance. Over forty years ago, he had done
the wrong thing on a fateful Saturday afternoon, and a girl’s sanity had
hung in the balance. And no visit now would ever make the slightest difference.
He stood at the fence for a
long moment, listening to the scrape of the window man’s knife, curiously
clear in the soft tropical quiet around him. He felt the heat penetrate his shoes,
his clothes. He let the soft mellow colors of this moist and shady world work
on him.
It was a rare place, this.
Better for her surely than some sterile hospital room, or vista of
close-cropped lawn with no more variation than a synthetic carpet. And what
made him think that he could have ever done for her what so many doctors had
failed to do? Maybe she had never had a chance. Only God knows.
Suddenly he glimpsed a
visitor behind the rusted screens, sitting beside the poor mad woman. Nice
young man it seemed - tall, dark-haired, well dressed in spite of the wilting
temperature. Maybe one of those cousins from away, from
The young fella must have
just come out on the porch from the parlor, because a moment ago he had not been
there.
So solicitous, he seemed. It
was positively loving the way he inclined towards Deirdre. Just as if he was
kissing her cheek. Yes, that was what he was doing. Even in the dense shade,
the priest could see it, and it touched him deeply. It made the sadness well in
him painfully.
But the window man was
finishing now. He was gathering up his ladder. He came down the front steps and
went around the flagstone walk and past the screen porch, using his ladder as
he went, to drive back the banana trees and the swollen oleander.
The priest was finished too.
He had done his penance. He could go home now, back to the hot barren pavements
of
He glanced back only once.
The screen porch was empty now save for Deirdre. But surely that nice young man
would come back out soon. It had gone right to the priest’s heart to see
that tender kiss, to know that someone even now still loved that lost soul that
he himself had failed to save so long ago.
FOUR
THERE WAS SOMETHING she had
to do tonight, someone she was supposed to call. And it was important, too. But
after fifteen hours on duty - and twelve of them spent in the Operating Room -
she could not now remember.
She wasn’t Rowan
Mayfair yet, with all Rowan’s personal griefs and concerns. She was just
Dr Mayfair, empty as a clear pane of glass, sitting here silent in the doctors’
coffee room, hands shoved in the pockets of her dirty white coat, her feet on
the chair opposite, a Parliament cigarette on her lip, listening to them talk
as neurosurgeons always talk, regurgitating in language every exciting moment
of the day.
Soft bursts of laughter,
voices overlapping on voices, smell of alcohol, rustle of starched clothes, sweet
aroma of the cigarettes. Never mind the personal disgrace that almost all of
them smoked. It was nice to remain here, comfortable in the glare of the lights
on the dirty Formica table, and the dirty linoleum tile, and the dirty beige
walls. Nice to be putting off the thinking time, the time when memory would
come back to fill her up again and render her heavy and opaque.
In truth, it had been a damn
near perfect day, which was why her feet hurt so much. She had been through
three emergency surgeries, one following another, from the gunshot wound at
She was aware of that just
now, in a relaxed sort of way. After ten years of medical school and internship
and residency she was what she had always wanted to be — a doctor, a
neurosurgeon, and most specifically the new board-certified Staff Attending in
Neurosurgery in a giant university hospital where the
She had to admit she was
glorying in it, glorying in her first week as something other than an
overworked and critically exhausted chief resident who still had to operate
fifty percent of the time under someone else’s eye.
Even the inevitable talk
today had not been so terrible — the endless running diatribe in the
Operating Room, the dictating of the notes after, and finally the lengthy informal
coffee room review. She liked these doctors around her, the shiny-faced interns
opposite, Dr Peters and Dr Blake, who had just begun their rotation and were
looking at her as if she were a witch instead of a doctor. And Dr Simmons, the
chief resident, who told her now and then in a heated whisper that she was the
finest doctor he’d ever seen in surgery and that the nurses said the same
thing, and Dr Larkin, the beloved chief of neuro-surgery, known to his proteges
as Lark, who had forced her over and over again today to elaborate - ‘Explain,
Rowan, explain in detail. You have to tell these boys what you’re doing.
Gentlemen, behold, this is the only neurosurgeon in western civilization who
does not like to talk about her work.’
Understatement. She hated talking.
She was innately suspicious of language because she could ’hear’
with remarkable accuracy what lay behind it, and also she just didn’t
know how to talk very well.
Now they were talking about
Dr Larkin’s virtuoso performance this afternoon with the meningioma,
thank heaven, and she could drift in this delicious exhaustion, savoring the
taste of the cigarette, and the awful coffee, and the lovely glare of the light
on the beautifully blank walls.
Trouble was, she’d
told herself this morning to remember about this personal thing, this call that
had to be made, this something that really mattered to her. So what did that
mean? It would come back as soon as she stepped out of the building.
And she could do that any
time she liked. After all, she was the Attending, and she didn’t have to
be here longer than fifteen hours, and she never had to sleep in the on-call
room again, and nobody expected her to go down to Emergency just to see what
was going on, though left to her own devices, perhaps, that is what she would
have liked to do.
Two years ago, less than
that perhaps, she would have been long gone by this time, headed over the
Golden Gate at the speed limit, eager to be Rowan Mayfair again, in the
wheel-house of the Sweet Christine singlehanding her out of Richardson
Bay and into the open sea. Only when she had set the autopilot for a great
circular course, well out of the way of the channels, would the exhaustion have
conquered her. She would have gone down below deck into the cabin where the
wood shone as brilliantly as the polished brass, and falling into the double
bunk, she would have lost herself in a thin sleep through which all the little
sounds of the boat penetrated sweetly.
But that was before the
process of working miracles on the operating table had become positively
addictive. Research had still now and then beckoned. And Ellie and Graham, her
adoptive parents, were still living, and the glass-walled house on the Tiburon
shore was not a mausoleum filled with dead people’s books, dead people’s
clothes.
She had to walk through that
mausoleum to get to the Sweet Christine. She had to see the inevitable
mail which still came for Ellie and Graham. And maybe even hear a phone machine
message or two from an out-of-town friend who didn’t know that Ellie had
died of cancer last year, and that Graham had died of ’a stroke,’
to put it simply, two months before Ellie’s death. She watered the ferns
still in memory of Ellie, who had played music for them. She drove Graham’s
Jaguar sedan because to sell it would be a nuisance. She had never cleaned out
his desk.
Stroke. A dark ugly feeling
passed over her. Think not of Graham dying on the kitchen floor but of the day’s
victories. You saved three lives during the past fifteen hours, when other
doctors might have let them die. To other lives in other hands you gave your
skillful assistance. And now, safe in the womb of the Intensive Care Unit,
three of those patients are sleeping, and they have eyes that can see, and
mouths that can shape words, and when you hold their hands, they grip as you
tell them to grip.
Yes, she couldn’t have
asked for more. Would that she could always leave the tissue transplants and
the tumors to others. She thrived on crisis. She needed it. She’d go home
in a little while only because it was healthy to do so, healthy to rest her
eyes and her feet and her brain, of course, and to be some place besides here
for the weekend; to be on the Sweet Christine, at sea.
For now, rest in this great
ship called the hospital, for that is exactly what it felt like — a
submarine, traveling without sound through time. The lights never went out. The
temperature never varied. The engines never shut down. And we, the crew, are
bonded together, in spite of anger, or resentment, or competition. We are bonded
and there is a form of love whether we acknowledge it or not.
‘You’re looking
for a miracle!’ the supervisor in Emergency had said to her at six this
evening, contemptuously, glaze-eyed with exhaustion. ‘Wheel this woman
over against the wall, and save your juices for somebody you can do something
for!’
‘I want nothing but
miracles,’ Rowan had answered. ‘We’re going to get the glass
and dirt out of her brain, and then we’ll take it from there.’
No way to tell him that when
she had placed her hands on the woman’s shoulders, she had ’listened’
with her diagnostic sense to a thousand little signals; and they had told her,
infallibly, that the woman could live. She knew what she’d see when the
bone fragments had been carefully lifted out of the fracture and frozen for
later replacement, when the torn dura mater had been further slit and the
bruised tissue beneath it magnified by the powerful surgical scope. Plenty of
living brain, unharmed, functioning, once she’d sucked the blood away
from it, and cauterized the tiny ruptured vessels so that the bleeding would
stop.
It was the same infallible
sense she’d had that day out on the ocean when she’d hoisted the
drowned man, Michael Curry, onto the deck with the winch, and touched his cold
gray flesh. Yes, there is life in there. Bring him back.
The drowned man. Michael
Curry. That was it, of course, that was what she had made a note to remember.
Call Curry’s doctor. Curry’s doctor had left a message for her both
at the hospital and on her machine at home.
It had been over three
months since that bitter cold evening in May, with the fog blanketing the
distant city so that not a single light was visible, and the drowned man on the
deck of the Sweet Christine had looked as dead as any corpse she’d
ever seen.
She stubbed out the
cigarette. ‘Good night, Doctors,’ she said rising. ‘Monday,
Dr Larkin caught her sleeve
between two fingers. When she tried to pull loose, he held tight.
‘Don’t take that
boat out alone, Rowan.’
‘Come on, Chief.’
She tried to free herself. Didn’t work. ‘I’ve been taking
that boat out alone since I was sixteen.’
‘Bad news, Rowan, bad
news,’ he said. ‘Suppose you hit your head out there, fall
overboard.’
She gave a soft polite
laugh, though she was in fact irritated by this talk, and then she was out the
door, heading past the elevators — too slow — and towards the
concrete stairs.
Maybe she could take one
last look at the three patients in Intensive Care before she made her exit; and
suddenly the thought of leaving at all oppressed her. The thought of not coming
back until Monday was even worse.
Shoving her hands in her
pockets, she hurried up the two flights of stairs to the fourth floor.
The gleaming upper corridors
were so quiet, so removed from the mayhem inevitably going on in Emergency. A
lone woman slept on the couch in the darkly carpeted waiting room. The old
nurse at the ward station only waved as Rowan passed by. There had been times
in her harried intern days when, on call, she had strolled these corridors in
the middle of the night rather than try to sleep. Back and forth she’d
walked, covering the length of one floor after another, in the belly of the
giant submarine, lulled by the faint whisper of countless machines.
Too bad the chief knew about
the Sweet Christine, she
thought now, too bad that desperate and frightened, she’d brought him
home with her the afternoon of her adoptive mother’s funeral, and taken
him out to sit on the deck, drinking wine beneath a blue Tiburon sky. Too bad
that in those hollow and metallic moments, she had confessed to Lark that she
didn’t want to be in the house anymore, that she lived on the boat, and
sometimes lived for it, taking it out alone after every shift, no matter how
long she’d been on, no matter how tired she was.
Telling people - did it ever
make things better? Lark had piled cliche upon cliche as he tried to comfort
her. And from then on everybody at the hospital knew about the Sweet Christine. And she wasn’t just
Rowan the silent one, but Rowan the adopted one, the one whose family had died
out in less than half a year, who went to sea in the big boat all alone. She
had also become Rowan who would not accept Lark’s invitations to dinner,
when any other single female doctor on the staff might have done so in an
instant.
If only they knew the rest
of it, she thought, how very mysterious she really was, even unto herself. And
what would they have said about the men she liked, the stalwart officers of the
law, and the heroes of the fire brigade hook and ladder trucks whom she hunted
in noisy wholesome neighborhood bars, picking her partners as much for their
roughened hands and their roughened voices as for their heavy chests and
powerful arms. Yes, what about that, what about all those couplings in the
lower cabin of the Sweet Christine with the police-issue .38 revolver
in its black leather holster slung over the hook on the wall.
And the conversations after
- no, call them monologues -in which these men with the desperate need so
similar to that of the neurosurgeon’s relived their moments of danger and
achievement, of moxie and dexterity. Scent of courage on their pressed uniform
shirts. Sing a song of life and death.
Why that kind of man? Graham
had once demanded. ‘You look for them to be dumb, uneducated,
thick-necked? What if one of them puts his meaty fist into your face?’
‘But that’s just
it,’ she’d said coldly, not even bothering to look at him. ‘They
don’t do that. They save lives, and that’s why I like them. I like
heroes.’
‘That sounds like a
fool of a fourteen-year-old girl talking,’ Graham had replied acidly.
‘You’ve got it
wrong,’ Rowan had answered. ‘When I was fourteen I thought lawyers
like you were the heroes.’
Bitter flash of his eyes as
he’d turned away from her. Bitter flash of Graham now, over a year after
Graham’s death. Taste of Graham, smell of Graham, Graham in her bed
finally, because Graham would have left before Elite’s death if she hadn’t
done it.
‘Don’t tell me
you haven’t always wanted it,’ he’d said to her in the deep
feather mattress in the bunk of the Sweet Christine. ‘Damn your
fire fighters; damn your cops.’
Stop arguing with him. Stop
thinking about him. Ellie never knew you went to bed with him, or why you
thought you had to. So much that Ellie never knew. And you are not in Ellie’s
house. You’re not even on the boat Graham gave you. You’re still
safe here in the antiseptic quiet of your world, and Graham is dead and buried
in the little graveyard in northern
Yet she still talked to him,
still carried on the endless case for the defense. His death had prevented
forever any real resolution. And so a ghost of him had been created by her
hatred and her rage. It was fading, yet it still stalked her, even here in the
safe hallways of her own domain.
I’ll take the other
ones any day, she had wanted to say to him, I’ll take them with their ego
and their rambunctiousness, and their ignorance and their rollicking sense of
humor; I’ll take their roughness, their heated and simple love of women
and fear of women, I’ll even take their talk, yes, their endless talk,
and thank God that, unlike the neurosurgeons, they don’t want me to say
anything back to them, they don’t even want to know who I am or what I
am, might as well say rocket scientist, master spy, magician, as say
neurosurgeon. ‘You don’t mean you operate on people’s brains!’
What did it matter, all
this?
The fact is, Rowan understood
‘the man question’ a little better now than in those days when
Graham argued with her. She understood the connection between herself and her
uniformed heroes - that going into the Operating Room, and slipping on those
sterile gloves, and lifting the microcoagulator and the microscalpel, was like
going into a burning building, was like going into a family fight with a gun to
save the wife and the child.
How many times had she heard
neurosurgeons compared to fire fighters? And then the slick criticism, but it’s
different because your
life is not at stake. The hell it isn’t. Because if you failed in there,
if you failed horribly enough and often enough, you’d be destroyed as
surely as if the burning roof had come down on you. You survived by being
brilliant and courageous and perfect, because there was simply no other way to
survive, and every moment in the Operating Room was a mortal test.
Yes, the same courage, the
same love of stress and love of danger for a good reason that she saw in the
crude men she loved to kiss and stroke and suckle; the men she liked to have on
top of her; the men who didn’t need for her to talk.
But what was the use of
understanding, when it had been months — almost half a year — since
she’d invited anyone into her bed. What did the Sweet Christine
think about it? she sometimes wondered. Was it whispering to her in the dark: ‘Rowan,
where are our men?’
Chase, the yellow-haired
olive-skinned palomino cop from Marin, still left messages for her on the
answering machine. But she had no time to call him. And he was such a sweet
guy, and he did read books, too, and they had talked once, a real conversation,
in fact, when she’d made some offhand remark about the Emergency Room,
and the woman who’d been shot by her husband. He’d latched onto
that at once with his string of shootings and stabbings and pretty soon they
were going at them all from two sides. Maybe that was why she hadn’t
called him back? A possibility.
But on the face of it, the
neurosurgeon had for the moment subsumed the woman quite completely, so much so
that she wasn’t sure why she was even thinking about those men tonight.
Unless it was because she wasn’t all that tired, or because the last
beautiful male she’d lusted after had been Michael Curry, the gorgeous
drowned man, gorgeous even when he lay there, wet and pale, black hair
plastered to his head, on the deck of her boat.
Yes. He was, in the old
school-girl parlance, to die for, a hunk — just an out-and-out adorable
guy and her kind of adorable guy completely. His had not been one of those
California gymnasium bodies with overdeveloped muscles and phony tans, topped
off with dyed hair, but a powerful proletarian specimen, rendered all the more
irresistible by the blue eyes and the freckles across his cheeks which made
her, in retrospect, want to kiss them.
What an irony to fish from
the sea, in a state of tragic helplessness, such a perfect example of the only
kind of man she had ever desired.
She stopped. She had reached
the doors of the Intensive Care Unit. Entering quietly, she stood still for a
moment, surveying this strange, icy-still world of fish tank rooms with
emaciated sleepers on display beneath oxygen tent plastic, their fragile limbs
and torsos hooked to beeping monitors, amid endless cables and dials.
A switch was suddenly thrown
in Rowan’s head. Nothing existed outside this ward any more than anything
existed outside of an Operating Room.
She approached the desk, her
hand out to very lightly touch the shoulder of the nurse who sat hunched over a
mass of papers beneath the low fluorescent light.
‘Good evening,
The woman was startled. Then
recognizing Rowan, she brightened. ‘Dr Mayfair, you’re still here.’
‘Just another look
around.’
Rowan’s manner with
nurses was far gentler than ever it was with doctors. She had from the very
beginning of her internship courted nurses, going out of her way to alleviate
their proverbial resentment of women doctors, and to elicit from them as much
enthusiasm as she could. It was a science with her, calculated and refined to
the point of ruthlessness, yet as profoundly sincere as any incision made into
the tissues of a patient’s brain.
As she entered the first
room now, pausing beside the high gleaming metal bed — a monstrous rack
on wheels, it seemed -she heard the nurse coming behind her, waiting on her, so
to speak. The nurse moved to lift the chart from its place at the foot of the
bed. Rowan shook her head, no.
Blanched, seemingly
lifeless, lay the day’s last car crash victim, head enormous in a turban
of white bandages, a thin colorless tube running into her nose. The machines
evinced the only vitality with their tiny monotonous beeps and jagged neon
lines. The glucose flowed through the tiny needle fixed into the pinioned
wrist.
Like a corpse coming back to
life on an embalming table, the woman beneath the layers of bleached bed linen
slowly opened her eyes. ‘Dr Mayfair,’ she whispered.
A lovely ripple of relief
passed through Rowan. Again she and the nurse exchanged glances. Rowan smiled. ‘I’m
here, Mrs Trent,’ she said softly. ‘You’re doing well.’
Gently, she folded her fingers around the woman’s right hand. Yes, very well.
The woman’s eyes
closed so slowly they were like flowers closing. No change in the faint song of
the machines that surrounded them. Rowan retreated as soundlessly as she had
come.
Through the windows of the
second room, she gazed at another seemingly unconscious figure, that of an
olive-skinned boy, a weed of a kid, actually, who had gone blind suddenly,
staggering off the platform into the path of a commuter train.
For four hours she had
worked on this one, suturing with the tiny needle the hemorrhaging vessel that
had caused his blindness, then repairing the damaged skull. In Recovery he had
joked with the circle of doctors around him.
Now, her eyes narrow, her
body still, Rowan studied his subtle movements in sleep, the way that his right
knee shifted under the covers, the way his hand curled, palm up, as he moved
his head to the side. His tongue darted over his dry lips, and he whispered to
himself like a man talking to someone in his dreams.
‘Doing just fine,
Doctor,’ the nurse whispered beside her.
Rowan nodded. But she knew
that within weeks, he would suffer seizures. They would use Dilantin to control
it, but he would be an epileptic for the rest of his life. Better than death
and blindness surely. She would wait and watch before predicting or explaining.
After all, there was always the chance she was wrong.
‘And Mrs Kelly?’
she asked. She turned to look into the nurse’s eyes, forcing herself to
see the woman clearly and completely. This was an efficient and compassionate
nurse, a woman she rather liked.
‘Mrs Kelly thinks it’s
funny that she still has two bullets in her head. "I feel like a loaded
gun," she told me. She won’t let her daughter leave. She wants to
know what happened to that "street punk" that shot her. She wants
another pillow. She wants a television and a phone.’
Rowan gave the obligatory
soft appreciative laugh. Barely a sound in the humming silence. ‘Well,
tomorrow, perhaps,’ she said.
From where she stood, she
could see the spirited Mrs Kelly through the last pair of windows at the end of
the ward.
Unable to lift her head from
the pillow, Mrs Kelly gestured easily with her right hand as she talked to her
grown daughter, a thin and obviously exhausted woman with drooping eyelids who
nevertheless nodded repeatedly as she hung upon her mother’s every word.
‘She’s good for
her mother,’ Rowan whispered. ‘Let her stay as long as she likes.’
The nurse nodded.
‘I’m off till
Monday,
The nurse gave a soft laugh.
‘You deserve the rest, Dr May-fair.’
‘Do I?’ Rowan
murmured. ‘Dr Simmons will call me if there’s a problem. You can
always ask him to call me, Laurel. You understand?’
Rowan went out the double
doors, letting them swish shut softly behind her. Yes, a good day it had been.
And there really was no
excuse for staying here any longer, except to make a few notes in the private
diary she kept in her office and to check her personal machine for calls. Maybe
she would rest for a while on the leather couch. It was so much more luxurious,
the office of the official Attending, than the cramped and shabby on-call rooms
in which she’d dozed for years.
But she ought to go home,
she knew it. Ought to let the shades of Graham and Ellie come and go as they
pleased.
And what about Michael
Curry? Why, she had forgotten again about Michael Curry, and now it was almost
Now don’t let your
heart skip beats over Curry, she thought, as she took her time padding softly
down the linoleumed hallway, choosing the cement stairway again rather than the
elevator, and plotting a jagged route through the giant slumbering hospital
that would take her only eventually to her office door.
But she was eager to hear
what Morris had to say, eager for news of the only man in her life at this
moment, a man she didn’t know and had not seen since that violent
interlude of desperate effort and crazed, accidental accomplishment on the
turbulent sea almost four months before…
She’d been in a near
daze that night from exhaustion. A routine shift during the last month of her
residency had yielded thirty-six hours of duty on call, during which she’d
slept perhaps an hour. But that was fine until she’d spotted a drowned
man in the water.
The Sweet Christine
had been crawling through the rough ocean under the heavy, leaden sky, the wind
roaring against the windows of the wheelhouse. No small-craft warnings mattered
to this forty-foot twin-engined Dutch-built steel cruiser, her heavy
full-displacement hull moving smoothly though slowly without the slightest rise
through the choppy waves. She was, strictly speaking, too much for a
single-hander. But Rowan had been operating her alone since she was sixteen.
Getting such a boat in and
out of the dock is really the tricky part, where another crew member is
required. And Rowan had her own channel, dug deep and wide, beside her home in
Tiburon, and her own pier and her own slow and methodic system. Once the Sweet
Christine had been backed out and turned towards
The Sweet Christine
was built not for speed but for endurance. She was equipped that day as she
always was, for a voyage around the world.
The overcast sky had been
killing the daylight that May afternoon even when Rowan passed under the
Darkness was falling with a
pure metallic monotony to it; the ocean was merging with the sky. And so cold
it was that Rowan wore her woolen gloves and watch cap even in the wheelhouse,
drinking cup after cup of steaming coffee, which never fazed her immense
exhaustion. Her eyes were focused as always on the shifting sea.
Then came Michael Curry,
that speck out there — could that possibly be a man?
On his face in the waves,
his arms out loosely, hands floating near his head, and the black hair a mass
against the shining gray water, the rest just clothes ballooning ever so
slightly over the limp and shapeless form. A belted raincoat, brown heels. Dead
looking.
All that she could tell in
those first few moments was that this was no decomposed corpse. Pale as the
hands were, they were not waterlogged. He could have fallen overboard from some
large vessel only moments before, or hours. The crucial thing was to signal ‘Pan
Pan’ immediately and to give her coordinates, and then to try and get him
aboard.
As luck would have it the
Coast Guard boats were miles from her location; the helicopter rescue teams
were completely engaged. There were virtually no small craft in the area on
account of the warnings. And the fog was rolling in. Assistance would come as
soon as possible and no one could say when that was.
‘I’m going to
try to get him up out of the water,’ she said. ‘I’m alone out
here. Just get here as fast as you can.’
There was no need to tell
them she was a doctor, or to remind them of what they already knew — in
these cold waters, drowning victims could survive for incredibly long periods,
because the drop in temperature slows the metabolism; the brain slumbers,
demanding only a fraction of the usual oxygen and blood. The important thing
was to bring him in and start resuscitation.
And that was the tough part
because she had never done such a thing alone. She had the equipment for it,
however, the harnesses connected to powerful nylon line running through the
gasoline-driven winch on the top of the wheelhouse — in other words,
sufficient means to get him on board if she could get to him, and that was
where she might fail.
At once, she pulled on her
rubber gloves and her life jacket, then fastened her own harness, and gathered
up the second one for him. She checked the rigging, including the line
connected to the dinghy, and found it secure; then she dropped the dinghy over
the side of the Sweet Christine and headed down the swim ladder
towards it, ignoring the tossing sea and the swaying of the ladder and the
spray of the cold water in her face.
He was floating towards her
as she paddled towards him; but the water was almost swamping the dinghy. For
one second, she thought clearly: this is impossible. But she refused to give
up. At last, nearly falling out of the small craft, she reached for his hand
and caught it, and brought his body head first towards her. Now, how to get the
damned harness properly around his chest.
Again the water nearly
swamped the dinghy; she nearly flipped it herself. Then a wave lifted her and
carried her over the man’s body. She lost his hand. She lost him. But he
came bobbing up like a cork. She caught his left arm this time and forced the
harness over his head and left shoulder, bringing the left arm through it. But
it was crucial to get the right arm through as well. The harness had to be well
on him if she was to pull him up, heavy as he was, with wet clothing.
And all the while, the
diagnostic sense was working as she kept her eyes on the half-submerged face,
as she felt the cold flesh of his outstretched hand. Yes, he’s in there, he can come back. Get him on deck.
One violent wave after
another prevented her from doing anything, except holding onto him. Then
finally she was able to grasp the right sleeve and tug the arm forward and
through the harness, and at once she pulled the harness tight.
The dinghy capsized,
pitching her into the sea with him. She swallowed water, then shot to the
surface, the breath gone out of her as the freezing cold penetrated her
clothes. How many minutes did she have at this temperature before she lost
consciousness? But she had him harnessed to the boat now as surely as she was
harnessed. If she could make it back to the swim ladder without passing out,
she could reel him in. Letting his line go, she pulled herself in hand over
hand, refusing to believe she could fail, the broad starboard side of the Sweet
Christine a white blur disappearing and reappearing as the waves washed
over her.
At last she slammed against
the side of the boat. The shock jolted her into full alertness. Her gloved
fingers refused to flex as she reached for the bottom rung of the swim ladder.
But she gave them the order, Close, damn you, close on the rope, and she
watched what she could no longer feel as her right hand obeyed. Her left hand
went out for the side of the ladder; again she was giving her numbed body
orders, and half disbelieving, she found herself climbing up, rung by rung.
For one moment, lying on the
deck, she couldn’t move. The warm air from the open door of the
wheelhouse was steaming like hot breath. Then she began to massage her fingers
until feeling returned to them. But there was no time to get warm; no time to
do anything but climb to her feet and get to the winch.
Her hands were hurting now.
But they were doing what she wanted automatically as she started the motor. The
winch groaned and sang as it reeled in the nylon line. Suddenly, she saw the man’s
body rising above the rail of the deck, the head bowed, the arms spread wide
and falling limp over the nylon loop of the harness, water streaming from the
heavy colorless clothes. The man fell forward, head first onto the deck.
The winch screamed as it
dragged him closer to the wheel-house, and then jerked him upright again, three
feet from the door. She killed the motor. He dropped down, sodden, lifeless,
too far from the warm air to do him good.
And she knew she couldn’t
drag him inside, and there was no time to fool any more with the lines or the
winch.
With a great heave, she
rolled him over and pumped a good quart of seawater out of his lungs. Then she
lifted him, pushing herself under him and flopping him again on his back. She
pulled off her gloves because they were hampering her. And then she slid her
left hand under his neck, clamped her right fingers on his nose, and breathed
into his mouth. Her mind worked with him, envisioning the warm air pumped into
him. But it seemed forever that she breathed, and nothing was changing in the
inert mass beneath her.
She switched to his chest,
pressing down as hard as she could on the breastbone, then releasing the
pressure, over and over for fifteen beats. ‘Come on, breathe!’ she
said, as if it were a curse. ‘Damn it, breathe!’ Then she went back
to mouth-to-mouth.
Impossible to know how much
time had passed; she was as oblivious to time as she ever was in the Operating
Room. She simply went on, alternating between the chest massage and the lung
inflation, stopping only now and then to feel the lifeless carotid artery, and
to realize that the diagnostic message was the same — Alive —
before she continued.
His body tossed on the deck
under her efforts, the skin gleaming and waxen in its wetness, the heels of his
brown leather shoes rolling on the boards.
Once again she tried to drag
him into the wheelhouse, but it was useless. And dimly aware that no lights
were shining through the fog and no helicopter was roaring overhead, she went
on, only pausing suddenly to slap his face and call to him, to tell him that
she knew he was in there and she expected him to come back.
‘You know you can hear
me!’ she shouted as she pressed down again on the breastbone. She
pictured the heart and the lungs in all their glorious anatomical detail. Then
as she made to lift his neck again, his eyes snapped open, and his face
suddenly fired with life. His chest gave a heave against her; she felt the
breath pour out of him, hot against her face.
‘That’s it,
breathe!’ she’d shouted over the wind. And why was she so amazed
that he was alive, that he was staring at her, when she had not thought of
giving up?
His right hand shot up and
took hold of hers. And he said something to her, something murmured,
incoherent, something that sounded nevertheless like a proper name.
Again, she slapped his
cheek, but only gently. And his breaths came ragged yet rapid, his face knotted
with pain. How blue his eyes were, how clearly and certainly alive. It was as
if she’d never seen eyes before in a human being, never seen these
fierce, brilliant gelatinous orbs staring up at her from a human face.
‘Keep it up, breathe,
you hear me, I’m going for blankets below deck.’
He grabbed her hand again;
he began to shiver violently. And as she tried to free herself, she saw him
look past her and straight upwards. He lifted his left hand. He was pointing. A
light was finally sweeping the deck. And God, the fog was rolling over them,
thick as smoke. The helicopter had come just in time; the wind stung her eyes.
She could barely see the blades turning up there.
She slumped back, nearly
losing consciousness herself, aware of his hand gripping hers. He was trying to
speak to her. She patted his hand, and she said, ‘It’s OK, it’s
fine now, they’ll take you in.’
Then she was barking orders
at the Coast Guard men as they came down the ladder; don’t warm him up
fast, and for God’s sake, don’t give him anything hot to drink.
This is severe hypothermia. Radio for an ambulance at the dock.
She feared for him as they
took him up. But in truth she knew what the doctors would say: no neurological
deficit.
By
She wondered about him,
about the look in his eyes. Michael Curry was his name, or so the Coast Guard
had told her when she called in. He’d been in the water for at least an
hour before she’d spotted him. But it had turned out just as she’d
thought. ‘No neurological problems at all.’ The press was calling
it a miracle.
Unfortunately, he’d
gotten disoriented and violent in the ambulance — maybe it was all those
reporters at the dock — and they had sedated him (stupid!) and that had
fuzzed things a bit for a while (of course!) but he was ’just fine’
now.
‘Don’t release
my name to anyone,’ she’d said. ‘I want my privacy protected.’
Understood. The reporters
were being a real pain. And to tell the truth, well, her call for help had come
at the worst of times, it wasn’t properly logged. They didn’t have
her name or the name of her boat. Would she please give them that info now if
she —
‘Over and out, and
thank you,’ she said as she cut them off.
The Sweet Christine
drifted. She pictured Michael Curry lying on the deck, the way his forehead
creased when he woke up, the way his eyes had caught the light from the
wheelhouse. What was that word he’d said, a name it sounded like. But she
couldn’t remember, if she had ever distinctly heard it at all.
It seemed almost certain
that he would have died if she hadn’t spotted him. It didn’t
comfort her to think of it, of his floating out there in the dark and the fog,
of life leaking moment by moment out of his body. Too close.
And such a beauty he was.
Even drowned, he’d been something to behold. Mysterious always, the mix
of features that renders a man beautiful. His was an Irish face undoubtedly
-square, with a short and rather rounded nose, and that can make for a plain
individual in many circumstances. But no one would have found him plain. Not
with those eyes and that mouth. Not a chance.
But it was not appropriate
to think of him in those terms, was it? She wasn’t the doctor when she
went hunting; she was Rowan wanting the anonymous partner and then sleep
afterwards when the door had shut. It was the doctor, Rowan, who worried about
him.
And who knew better than she
did all the things that might have gone wrong in the chemistry of the brain
during that crucial hour?
She called San Francisco
General early the next morning when she brought the boat in. Dr Morris, the
chief resident there, was still on duty. ‘You have my complete sympathy,’
she’d said, briefly explaining her own position at University. She
described the resuscitation, the instructions she’d given the paramedics
about the hypothermia. Curry hadn’t said anything, just mumbled
something, she hadn’t caught any distinct syllables. But she’d felt
strongly that he was going to be all right.
‘He is, he’s fine, he’s
damned lucky,’ Dr Morris told her. And yes, this call was doctor to doctor,
completely confidential. All those jackals in the hall needed was to know that
a lone female brain surgeon had reeled him in. Of course he was a bit out of it
psychologically, talking on and on about visions he had out there, and there’s
something else happening with his hands, kind of extraordinary–
‘His hands?’
‘No paralysis or
anything like that. Look, my beeper is going off.’
‘I can hear it.
Listen, I’m in my last thirty days at University. Call me if you need me.
I’ll come.’
She hung up. What the hell
did he mean about hands? She remembered Michael Curry’s grip, the way he
had hung on, not wanting to let her go, his eyes fixed on hers. ‘I didn’t
screw up,’ she whispered. ‘There’s nothing wrong with that guy’s
hands.’
She understood about the hands
the following afternoon when she opened the Examiner.
He had had a ’mystical
experience,’ he explained. From some place high above he’d seen his
own body down there floating in the Pacific. A lot more had happened to him,
but he couldn’t recall it now and it was driving him out of his mind,
this failure to remember.
As for the rumors flying
around about his hands, well, yes, that was true, he was wearing black gloves
now all the time because he saw images every time he touched things. He couldn’t
lift a spoon or touch a bar of soap, but that he didn’t see some image
connected to the last human being who’d handled it.
For the reporter he had
touched the crucifix of her rosary, and told her it had been bought at
This was absolutely
accurate, the newspaper claimed, but there were now countless people on the
staff of San Francisco General who could attest to Curry’s new power.
He’d like to get out
of the hospital, he really would. And he’d like this thing with his hands
to go away, for his memory to come back of what had happened to him out there.
She studied the picture
— a large clear black-and-white shot of him sitting up in bed. The
proletarian charm was unmistakable. And his smile was simply wonderful. He even
wore a little gold chain and cross around his neck, the kind that emphasized
the muscularity of his shoulders. Lots of cops and fire fighters wore those
kinds of chains. She adored them. Even when the little gold cross or medal, or
whatever the hell it was, hung down in her face in bed, brushing her like a
kiss on the eyelids.
But the black-gloved hands
looked sinister in the picture, resting as they did on the white cover. Was it
possible, what the article said? She did not for a moment doubt it. She had
seen things stranger than that, oh, yes, much stranger.
Don’t go see this
guy. He doesn’t need you, and you don’t need to ask about the hands.
She tore out the story,
folded it, and shoved it in her pocket. It was still there the following
morning when she staggered into the coffee room after a full night of the
Curry was on page three, a
good head shot, looking a little grimmer than before, perhaps a little less
trusting. Dozens of people had now witnessed his strange psychometric power. He
wished that people would understand it was nothing but a ’parlor trick.’
He couldn’t help them.
All that concerned him now
was the forgotten adventure, that is, the realms he’d visited when he was
dead. ‘There was a reason I came back,’ he said, ‘I know
there was. I had a choice, and I made the decision to return. There was
something very important that I had to do. I knew this, I knew the purpose. And
it had something to do with a doorway, and a number. But I can’t remember
the number or what the number meant. Truth is, I can’t recall any of it.
It’s as if the most important experience of my entire life has been wiped
out. And I don’t know any way to recover it.’
They’re making him
sound crazy, she thought. And it was probably a routine ’near death’
experience. We know now that people have these all the time. "What’s
wrong with the people around him?
As for his hands, she was a
little too fascinated by that part, wasn’t she? She perused the various
witness accounts. She wished she had five minutes to look at the tests they’d
run on him.
She thought again of him
lying on the deck, of the firmness of his grip, of the expression on his face.
Had he felt something at
that moment through his hand? And what would he feel now, were she to go there,
tell him what she remembered about the accident, sit on the bed beside him, and
ask him to do his parlor trick — in other words, barter her meager
information for what everybody else wanted from him? No.
Repellent that she should
make such a demand. Repellent that she, a doctor, should think not of what he
might need, but of what she wanted. It was worse than wondering what it would
be like to take him to bed, to drink coffee with him at the table in the little
cabin at three in the morning.
She’d call Dr Morris
when she had time. See how he was, though when that would be, she couldn’t
say. She was the walking dead herself right now from lack of sleep, and she was
needed right now in Recovery. Maybe she ought to leave Curry entirely alone.
Maybe that was the best thing she could do for both of them.
At the end of the week the San Francisco Chronicle ran a
long feature story on the front page.
WHAT
HAPPENED TO MICHAEL CURRY?
He was forty-eight, a
contractor by profession, a specialist in renovating old Victorian houses,
owner of a company called Great Expectations. Seems he was a legend in
But he wasn’t doing
anything now. Great Expectations was temporarily closed. Its owner was too busy
trying to remember what had been revealed to him during that crucial hour when
he’d been ‘dead in the water.’
‘It was no dream,’
he said. ‘I know that I talked to people. They explained what they meant
for me to do, and I accepted, I asked to come back.’
As for the new psychic
ability, that had nothing to do with it, he maintained. It seemed to be no more
than some accidental side effect. ‘Look, all I get is a flash — a
face, a name. It’s totally unreliable.’
That night in the hospital
coffee room, she caught him on the TV news - the vivid
three-dimensional man. There were those unforgettable blue eyes again, and the
wholesome smile. Something innocent about him, actually, his simple
straightforward gestures indicative of one who has long ago given up on
dishonesty, or of trying to fox the complications of the world in any way.
‘I’ve got to go
home,’ he said. Was it a
But nothing had come back to
him as yet about the near death visions. The hospital hadn’t wanted to
release him, but they had to admit that he was physically fit.
‘Tell us about the
power, Michael.’
‘I don’t want to
talk about it.’ Shrug. He looked at his black-gloved hands. ‘I want
to talk to the people who rescued me - the Coast Guard who brought me, that
skipper who picked me up at sea. I wish those people would get in touch. You
know that’s why I’m doing this interview.’
The camera cut away to a
pair of studio reporters. Banter about ‘the power.’ Both had seen
it for themselves.
For a moment Rowan did not
move or even think.
As soon as she reached home
that night, she went to Graham’s old desk, pulled out some stationery,
and wrote Curry a letter.
She told him in detail all
that she had observed regarding the accident from the moment she spotted him at
sea until they took him up on the stretcher. Then, after a moment’s
hesitation, she added her home phone and address and a little postscript.
‘Mr Curry, I too am
from
‘If you need to talk
to me,’ she finished, ’call me at
This was mild enough,
neutral enough surely. She had only indicated that she believed in his power,
and that she was there if he needed her. No more than that, no demand. And she
would see to it that she remained responsible, no matter what transpired.
Yet she couldn’t get
it out of her head - the idea of being able to place her hand in his, of just
asking: ‘I’m going to think about something, something specific
that happened once, no, three times in my life; and all I want is that you tell
me what you see. Would you do that? I cannot say you owe me this for saving
your life…"
That’s right,
you can’t. So don’t do it!
She sent the letter directly
to Dr Morris, via Federal Express.
Dr Morris called her the
next day. Curry had walked out of the hospital the preceding afternoon, right
after a television press conference.
‘He’s crazy as a
loon, Dr Mayfair, but we had no legal grounds to hold him. I told him what you
told me, by the way, that he hadn’t said anything. But he’s too
obsessed to give up on this whole thing. He’s determined he’s going
to remember what he saw out there, you know, the big reason for it all, the
secret of the universe, the purpose, the doorway, the number, the jewel. You never
heard such stuff. I’ll send the letter on to his house, but chances are,
it won’t get through. The mail’s coming in by the sackful.’
‘This thing with the
hands, is it real?’
Silence. ‘You want to
know the truth? It’s one hundred percent accurate, as far as I ever saw.
If you ever see it for yourself, it will scare the hell out of you.’
The story made the
supermarket tabloids the following week. Two weeks later variations of it
appeared in People and Time. Rowan clipped the stories and
the pictures. Photographers were obviously following Curry wherever he went.
They caught him outside his business on
A fierce protective feeling
for him was growing in Rowan. They really ought to leave this man alone.
And you have to leave him alone, too, Rowan.
He himself wasn’t
granting any interviews anymore, that became clear by the first week in June.
The tabloids fed off exclusives from the witnesses to his power - ‘He
touched the purse and he told me all about my sister, what she’d said
when she gave the purse to me. I was tingling all over, and then he said,
"Your sister is dead."’
Finally the local CBS
channel said Curry was holed up in his house on
Great Expectations was
closed indefinitely. Doctors at San Francisco General had not seen their
patient. They were worried as well.
Then in July, the Examiner
declared that Curry was ’missing.’ He had ‘disappeared.’
A reporter from television ‘News
at Eleven’ stood on the steps of a huge Victorian house pointing to a
pile of unopened mail flowing from the garbage can by the side gate.
‘Is Curry holed up
inside the grand Victorian on
In disgust Rowan snapped off
the program. It had made her feel like a voyeur. Simply awful to drag that
camera crew to the man’s very door.
But what stayed in her mind
was that garbage can full of unopened letters. Had her communication gone,
inevitably, into that pile? The thought of him locked in that house, afraid of
the world, in need of counsel was a little more than she could handle.
Surgeons are men and women
of action — people who believe they can do something. That’s why
they have the moxie to cut into people’s bodies. She wanted to do
something - go there, pound on the door. But how many other people had done
that?
No, he didn’t need
another visitor, especially not one with a secret agenda of her own.
In the evenings, when she
came home from the hospital and took her boat out alone, she invariably thought
of him. It was almost warm in the sheltered waters off Tiburon. She took her
time before she moved into the colder winds of
So indifferent the great
dull rolling Pacific. Impossible to believe in anything but oneself when you
looked at the endlessly tessellated surface, heaving and shifting under a
colorless sunset where sea met sky in a dazzling haze.
And he believed that he had
been sent back for a purpose, did he, this man who restored beautiful dwellings,
who drew pictures that were published in books, a man who ought to be too
sophisticated to believe in something like that.
But then he had really died,
had he not? He had had that experience of which so many had written, of rising
upwards, weightless, and gazing down with a sublime detachment at the world
below.
No such thing had ever
happened to her. But there were other things, things just as strange. And while
the whole world knew about Curry’s adventure, no one knew the strange
secret things that Rowan knew.
But to think there was
meaning, a scheme to things, well, that was quite beyond her philosophical
reach. She feared as she always had, that all that was ever meant was
loneliness, hard work, striving to make a difference when no difference could
possibly be made. It was like dipping a stick into the ocean and trying to
write something - all the little people of the world spinning out little
patterns that lasted no more than a few years, and meant nothing at all.
Surgery had seduced her because she got them up and back on their feet and they
were alive and they said ‘Thank you!’ and you had served life and
driven back death, and that was the only incontrovertible value to which she
could give her all. Doctor, we never thought she’d walk again.
But a great purpose for
living, for being reborn? What could such a thing possibly be? What was the
purpose for the woman who died of a stroke on the delivery table while her
newborn cried in the doctor’s arms? What was the purpose for the man
struck by the drunk driver on his way home from church?
There had been a purpose all
right for the fetus she had once seen, a living breathing thing, its eyes still
scaled shut, its little mouth like that of a fish, wires running in all
directions from its horrid oversized head and tiny arms, as it slumbered in the
special incubator, waiting for its tissue to be harvested -while it continued
to live and breathe, of course - for the transplant recipient who waited two
floors upstairs.
But if that was purpose, the
discovery that you could, in spite of all laws to the contrary, keep those
little aborted things alive in a secret laboratory in the middle of a giant
private hospital, slicing them up at will, for the benefit of a Parkinson’s
disease patient who had already clocked in sixty good years before he started
to die of the illness which the fetal tissue transplant could cure, well, she’d
take the knife to the gunshot wound fresh up from Emergency any day.
Never would she forget that
cold, dark Christmas Eve and Dr Lemle leading her up through the deserted
floors of the Keplinger Institute. ‘We need you here, Rowan. I could
finesse your leaving University. I know what to say to Larkin. I want you here.
And now I’m going to show you something you’ll appreciate which Larkin
would never appreciate, something you will never see at University, something
that you will understand.’
Ah, but she didn’t. Or
rather she understood too perfectly the horror of it.
‘It isn’t viable
in the strict sense of the word,’ he’d explained, this doctor, Karl
Lemle, whose brilliance had so enticed her, brilliance and ambition, and
vision, yes, that too. ‘And technically of course it is not even alive. It’s
dead, quite dead, because its mother aborted it, you see, in the clinic
downstairs, and so technically it is a nonperson, a non-human being. So who is
to say, Rowan, that we have to shove it in a plastic trash bag when we know
that through keeping this tiny body alive, and keeping others like it alive -
these little gold mines of unique tissue, so flexible, adaptable, so unlike any
other human tissue, swarming with countless tiny extraneous cells which would
eventually have been discarded in the normal fetal process — we can make
discoveries in the field of neurological transplants that make Shelley’s Frankenstein
read like a bedtime story.’
Yes, right on that score,
exactly. And there was little doubt that he spoke the truth when he predicted a
future of entire brain transplants, when the organ of thought would be lifted
safely and completely out of one worn-out body into a young and fresh one, a
world in which altogether new brains might be created as tissue was added here
and there to supplement nature’s work.
‘You see, the
important thing about fetal tissue is, the recipient doesn’t reject it. Now
you know that, but have you thought about it, what it really means? One tiny
implant of fetal cells into the eye of an adult human, and the eye accepts
those cells; the cells continue to develop, adapting themselves to the new
tissue. My God, don’t you realize this allows us to participate in the
evolutionary process? Why, we are only on the verge…’
‘Not us, Karl. You.’
‘Rowan, you are the
most brilliant surgeon I have ever worked with. If you…"
‘I will not do this! I
will not kill.’ And if I don’t
get out of here, I’ll start screaming.
I have to. Because I have killed.
Yes, that was purpose all
right, purpose taken, as they say, to the max.
She had not blown the
whistle on Lemle, of course. Doctors don’t do things like that to other
doctors, especially not when they are residents and their enemies are powerful
and famous researchers. She had simply backed off.
‘And besides,’
he had said over coffee later before the fire in Tiburon, the Christmas lights
reflected in the glass walls around them, ‘this is going on everywhere,
this research with live fetuses. There wouldn’t be a law against it if it
were not.’
No surprise actually. It was
too tempting. In fact the strength of the temptation was exactly equal to the
strength of her revulsion. What scientist — and a neurologist was most
definitely a scientist — had not dreamed such dreams?
Watching Frankenstein
on the late show she had longed to be the mad scientist. How she would have
loved her own mountain laboratory, and yes, she wanted to see what would happen
if you only had the nerve to take the living human brain as a laboratory
specimen, divorced of all moral - but no, she would not.
What a horrid Christmas
present that revelation, and yet her dedication to trauma surgery had
redoubled. Seeing that tiny monster gasping for breath in the artificial light,
she’d been reborn herself, her life narrowing and gaining inestimable
power as she became the miracle worker of University, the one they called when
the brains were oozing out on the stretcher, or when the patient blundered in
off the street with an ax still lodged in his head.
Maybe the wounded brain was
to her the microcosm for all tragedy: life mutilated continuously and
haphazardly by life. When Rowan had killed - and killed she had - the act had
been just as traumatic: the brain assaulted, its tissue mangled, the way she so
often found it now in victims of whom she knew nothing. There had been nothing
anyone could do for those she killed.
But it wasn’t to argue
about purpose that she wanted to see Michael Curry. And it wasn’t to drag
him into her bed. She wanted the same thing from him everybody else wanted, and
that was why she hadn’t gone to San Francisco General to see him, to
check on his recovery on her own.
She wanted to know about
those killings, and not what the autopsies could tell her. She wanted to know
what he saw and he felt — if and when she held his hand — while she
thought about those deaths. He’d sensed something the first time he
touched her. But maybe that too had been stricken from his memory, along with
the things he saw when he was dead.
She understood all this. She
had understood, at least in the back of her mind, all along. And it wasn’t
any less repellent to her as the months passed, that she wanted to use Michael
Curry for her own ends.
Curry was inside that house
on
But what would it matter to
Curry if she said, I’m a doctor, and I believe in your visions, as well
as the power in your hands, because I know myself that there are things such as
that, psychic things which no one can explain. I myself have just such an
illicit and confusing and sometimes utterly uncontrollable power - the power to
kill at will.
Why should he care? He was
surrounded by people who believed in what he could do, wasn’t he? But
that wasn’t helping him. He’d died and come back, and he was going
crazy. But still, if she told him her story… and the idea was now most
definitely a full-blown obsession, he might be the one person in the entire
world who would believe what she said.
Perhaps it was madness to
dream of telling the whole story to anybody. And there were times she tried to
convince herself that she was wrong. Sooner or later she was going to talk to
someone, she knew it. Sooner or later the silence of her thirty years would be
shattered, if she didn’t start talking, by a never-ending cry that would
blot out all words.
After all, no matter how
many heads she patched up she could not forget those three murders. Graham’s
face as the life bled out of him; the little girl convulsing on the tarmac; the
man pitching forward over the wheel of his Jeep.
As soon as she had started
her internship, she had managed through official channels to obtain those three
autopsy reports. Cerebrovascular accident, subarachnoid hemorrhage, congenital
aneurysm. She had read over all the details.
And what it spelled out in
the layman’s language was a secret weakness in the wall of an artery,
which for no discernible reason finally ruptured, causing totally unforeseen
and sudden death. No way to predict, in other words, that a six-year-old child
would suddenly go into seizures on the playground, a six-year-old who’d
be healthy enough to be kicking six-year-old Rowan and pulling her hair only
moments before. Nothing anybody could do for the child either, as the blood
poured out of her nose and her ears, and her eyes rolled up into her head. On
the contrary, they’d protected the other children, shielding their eyes
from the spectacle as they took them into the schoolroom.
‘Poor Rowan,’
said the teacher, later. ‘Darling, I want you to understand it was
something in her head that killed her. It was medical. It had nothing to do
with the fight.’
And that’s when Rowan
had known, absolutely, what the teacher would never know. She did it. She
caused that kid to die.
Now, that you could dismiss
easily enough — a child’s natural guilt for an accident she didn’t
understand. But Rowan had felt something when it happened. She had felt
something inside herself — a great pervasive sensation which was not unlike
sex when she thought about it; it had washed through her and seemingly out of
her at the moment the child fell over backwards. And then there had been the
diagnostic sense, operative even then, which had told her that the child would
die.
Nevertheless, she forgot the
incident. Graham and Ellie, in the manner of good
Eight years passed before
the man got out of his Jeep on that lonely road in the hills of Tiburon and
clapped his hand over her mouth and said in that awful intimate and insolent
voice: ‘Now, don’t you scream.’
Her adoptive parents never
made a connection between the little girl and the rapist who had died as Rowan
struggled, as the same blazing anger galvanized her, passing into that
exquisite sensation which rendered her body suddenly rigid as the man let go of
her and fell forward over the wheel.
But she had made the
connection. Quietly and certainly she’d made it. Not then, when she had
forced open the door of the Jeep and run down the road screaming. No, she had
not even known she was safe. But later, as she lay alone in the dark after the
Highway Patrol and the homicide detectives had left them, she knew.
Almost a decade and a half
had elapsed before it happened with Graham. And Ellie was too sick with cancer
by then to think of much of anything. And surely Rowan wasn’t going to
pull up a chair to her bedside and say, ‘Mama, I think I killed him. He
was cheating on you constantly. He was trying to divorce you. He couldn’t
wait the bloody goddamned two months it’s going to take for you to die.’
It was all a pattern, as
surely as a spiderweb is a pattern, but a pattern does not imply a purpose.
Patterns exist everywhere, and purpose is at its safest when it is spontaneous
and shortlived.
You will not do this. You will not take life. It was
remembering heresy to remember slapping that little girl, even fighting the man
in the Jeep. And it was too perfectly awful to remember the argument with
Graham.
‘What do you mean you’re
having her served with the papers! She’s dying! You’re going to
stick it out with me.’
He’d grabbed her by
the arms, tried to kiss her. ‘Rowan, I love you, but she isn’t the
woman I married…"
‘No? Not the woman you’ve
cheated on for thirty years?’
‘She’s just a
thing in there, I want to remember her the way she used to be…"
‘You talk that crap to
me!’
That had been the instant
that his eyes fixed and the expression washed out of his face. People always
die with such peaceful countenances. On the brink of rape, the man in the Jeep
had just gone blank.
Before the ambulance had
come, she had knelt beside Graham, put her stethoscope to his head. There was
that sound, so faint that some doctors could not hear it. But she heard it
— the sound of a great deal of blood rushing to one spot.
No one ever accused her of
anything. How could they? Why, she was a doctor, and she’d been with him
when the ’awful thing’ happened, and God knows, she did everything
she could.
Of course everybody knew
Graham was a thoroughly second-rate human being — his law partners, his
secretaries, even his last mistress, that stupid little Karen Garfield person
who had come over wanting some keepsake, everybody knew. Except, that is, Graham’s
wife. But there wasn’t the slightest suspicion. How could there be? It
was just death by natural causes when he was about to make away with the
fortune made through his wife’s inheritance and a twenty-eight-year-old
idiot who had already sold her furniture and bought their airline tickets for
But it wasn’t death by
natural causes.
By this time she knew and
understood the diagnostic sense; she’d practiced it and strengthened it.
And when she had laid her hand on his shoulder, the diagnostic sense had said:
no natural death.
That in itself ought to have
been enough. Yet maybe she was mistaken. Maybe it was the great deceptiveness
of pattern which we call coincidence. And nothing more than that.
But suppose she met with
Michael Curry. Suppose he held her hand as she closed her eyes and thought
about those deaths? Would he see only what she had seen, or would some
objective truth be known to him? You killed them. It was worth a try.
What she realized tonight,
as she wandered slowly and almost aimlessly through the hospital, as she took
detours through vast carpeted waiting rooms and down long wards where she was
not known, and would never be known, was that she had felt an overwhelming
desire just to talk to Michael Curry for a long time. She felt connected to
Michael Curry. As much by the accident at sea as by these psychic secrets. She
wanted, perhaps for reasons she didn’t fully understand, to tell him and
him alone what she’d done.
It wasn’t easy for her
to face this weakness. Absolution for murder came only when she operated. She
was at the altar of God when the nurses held out the sterile gown for her, when
they held up the sterile gloves.
And all her life she’d
been a solitary person, a good listener, but invariably colder than those
around her. That special sense, the one that aided her so as a physician, had
always made her too keenly aware of what others truly felt.
She’d been ten or
twelve years old before she realized other people didn’t have it, sometimes
not even a particle of it. That her beloved Ellie, for instance, didn’t
have the slightest idea that Graham did not love her so much as he needed her,
and needed to denigrate her and lie to her and to depend on her always being
there, and being inferior to him.
Rowan had sometimes wished
for that kind of ignorance not to know when people envied you, or disliked you.
Not to know that many people lied all the time. She liked the cops and the fire
fighters because they were to some extent perfectly predictable. Or maybe it
was simply that their particular brand of dishonesty didn’t bother her so
much; it seemed harmless compared to the complex, insidious, and endlessly
malicious insecurity of more educated men.
Of course diagnostic
usefulness had redeemed this special psyche sense completely.
But what could ever redeem
the ability to kill at will? To atone was another matter. To what proper use
could a telekinetic ability like that ever be put?
And such a power was not
beyond scientific possibility, that was the truly terrifying part. Like the
psychometric power of Michael Curry, such things might have to do with
measurable energy, complex physical talents which might someday be as definable
as electricity or microwaves, or high-frequency sounds. Curry was capturing an
impression from the objects he handled, and that impression was very likely the
product of energy. Very likely every object in existence — every surface,
every definable bit of matter - contained such stored ’impressions.’
They existed in a measurable field.
But parapsychology wasn’t
Rowan’s love. She was mesmerized by what could be seen in test tubes,
slides, and graphs. She didn’t care to test or analyze her own killing
power. She wanted only to believe that she had never used it, that maybe there
was some other explanation for what had happened, that maybe somehow she was
innocent.
And the tragic thing was,
maybe nobody could ever tell her what had really occurred with Graham, and the
man in the Jeep and the kid on the playground. And all she could hope for was
to tell someone, to unburden and exorcise, as everybody else did, through talk.
Talk, talk, talk.
That’s exactly what
Rowan wanted. She knew.
Only once before had this
desire to confide nearly overcome her. And that had been quite an unusual
event. In fact, she had almost told a perfect stranger the entire story, and
there were times since when she wished that she had done just that.
It was late last year, a
full six months after Ellie’s death. Rowan was feeling the keenest
loneliness she’d ever known. It seemed to her the great pattern called ’our
family’ had been washed away overnight. Their life had been so good
before Ellie’s illness. Even Graham’s affairs couldn’t spoil
it, because Ellie pretended the affairs weren’t happening. And though
Graham was not a man whom any human being would have called a good person, he
possessed a relentless and infectious personal energy that maintained the
family life in high gear.
And how Rowan had depended
upon them both.
Her dedication to medicine had
pretty much taken her away from her old college cronies. None of them had gone
into the sciences. But the family was all that the three of them ever needed.
From the time of Rowan’s earliest memories, they were an unshakable trio,
whether cruising the
Now the dream house on the
Tiburon shore stood empty as a beached shell.
And Rowan had the odd
feeling that the Sweet Christine did not belong so much to her and her
various well-chosen love partners, but rather to the family who had left the
more dominant impression over a decade of happy years.
One night after Ellie’s
death, Rowan had stood alone in the wide living room beneath the high-beamed
ceiling, talking aloud to herself, laughing even, thinking there is no one, no
one to know, no one to hear. The glass walls were dark and indistinct with
reflected carpet, furniture. She couldn’t see the tide that lapped
ceaselessly at the pilings. The fire was dying out. The eternal chill of the
coastal night was moving slowly through the rooms. She had learnt a painful
lesson, she thought — that as they die, the ones we love, we lose our
witnesses, our watchers, those who know and understand the tiny little
meaningless patterns, those words drawn in water with a stick. And there is
nothing left but the endless flow.
It was shortly after that
that the bizarre moment had come, when she had almost taken hold of this
stranger and poured out her tale.
He was an elderly gentleman,
white-haired — British, quite obviously from the first words he spoke.
And they had met, in of all places, the cemetery where her adoptive parents had
been laid to rest.
It was a quaint old
graveyard, sprinkled with weathered monuments on the edge of the small northern
It had occurred to her
several times on the drive north that this new gravestone would stand as long
as she was living, and after that, it would tumble and crack and lie there in
the weeds. The relatives of Graham Franklin had not even been notified about
his funeral. Ellie’s people - far away in the dim South - had not been
notified of her death. Even in ten years, no one would know or care then about
Graham and Ellie Mayfair Franklin. And by the end of Rowan’s life,
everyone who had ever known them or even heard of them would be dead.
Spiderwebs broken and torn
in a wind that is indifferent to their beauty. Why bother with this at all? But
Ellie had wanted her to bother. Ellie had wanted a headstone, flowers. That was
the way they did it in
‘And Stella’s
face was so beautiful in the coffin. She had such beautiful black hair, all in
little waves, you know, and she was as pretty as her picture on the living room
wall. I loved Stella! Stella let me hold the necklace. I sat on a chair by the coffin.
I was kicking my feet and my Aunt Carlotta said to stop.’
Every word of that strange
diatribe was engraved on Rowan’s memory. Stella, her brother, Aunt
Carlotta. Even the name Lonigan. Because for a precious few seconds there had
been a flash of color in the abyss.
These people were related to
Rowan. Rowan was in fact Ellie’s third cousin. And of these people Rowan
knew nothing, and must continue to know nothing, were her promises to Ellie to
be kept.
Ellie had remembered
herself, even in those painful hours. ‘Don’t you ever go back there,
Rowan. Rowan, remember what you’ve promised. I burned all the pictures,
the letters. Don’t go back there, Rowan, this is your home.’
‘I know, Ellie. I’ll
remember.’
And there was no more talk
of Stella. Of her brother. Of Aunt Carlotta. Of the picture on the living room
wall. Only the shock of the document presented to Rowan after Ellie’s
death by her executor — a carefully worded pledge, with absolutely no
legal validity whatever, that Rowan would never return to the city of New
Orleans, never seek to know who her people were.
Yet in those last days,
Ellie had spoken of them. Of Stella on the wall.
And because Ellie had talked
too of headstones and flowers, of being remembered by her adopted daughter,
Rowan had gone north that afternoon to keep that promise, and in the little
hillside graveyard, she had met the Englishman with the white hair.
He’d been down on one
knee before Ellie’s grave as if genuflecting, copying the very names
which had only just been cut into the stone.
He seemed a little flustered
when she interrupted him, though she had not spoken a word. In fact, for one
second he looked at her as if she were a ghost. It had almost made her laugh.
After all she was a slightly built woman, in spite of her height, wearing her
usual boat clothes — a navy blue peacoat and jeans. And he himself seemed
such an anachronism in his elegant three-piece suit of gray tweed.
But that special sense of
hers told her he was a man of only good intentions, and when he explained that
he had known Ellie’s people in New Orleans, she believed him. She felt a
great confusion, however. Because she wanted to know these people too.
After all, there was no one
left in the world for her but those people! And what an ungrateful and disloyal
thought that was.
She said nothing to him as
he chatted on in a lovely lyrical British fashion about the heat of the sun and
the beauty of this little cemetery. Silence was her inveterate response to
things, even when it confused others and made them uncomfortable. And so, out
of habit, she gave back nothing, no matter what her inner thoughts. Knew my
people? People of my blood?
‘My name is Aaron
Lightner,’ the man said as he placed a small white card in her hand. ‘If
ever you want to know about the
Numbing these words, so
unintentionally hurtful in her loneliness, so unexpected on this strange
deserted little hill. Had she looked helpless, standing there, unable to
answer, unable to give the smallest nod in response? She hoped so. She didn’t
want to think that she seemed cold or rude.
But it was quite out of the
question to explain to him that she’d been adopted, taken away from New
Orleans the day she was born. Impossible to explain she’d made a promise
never to return there, never to seek the slightest knowledge about the woman who’d
given her up. Why, she did not even know her mother’s first name. And she’d
found herself wondering suddenly, did he know it? Know perhaps the
identity of the
Best, certainly, not to say
anything, lest he carry back with him some gossip. After all, perhaps her real
mother had gone on to marry and have seven children. And talk now could only do
the woman harm. Over the miles and the years, Rowan felt no malice for this
faceless, nameless creature, only a dreary hopeless longing. No, she had not
said a word.
He had studied her for a
long moment, quite unruffled by her impassive face, her inevitable quiet. When
she gave him back the card, he took it graciously, but he held it out
tentatively as if he hoped she would take it again.
‘I should so like to
talk to you,’ he continued. ‘I should like to discover how life has
been for the transplanted one, so very far from the home soil.’ He had
hesitated, then: ‘I knew your mother years ago -’
He stopped, as if he sensed
the effect of his words. Maybe their sheer impropriety disturbed him. Rowan didn’t
know. The moment could not have been more excruciating if he had struck her.
Yet she hadn’t turned away. She had merely remained there motionless,
hands shoved in her coat pockets. Knew my mother?
How ghastly it had been. And
this man with cheerful blue eyes regarding her so patiently, and the silence as
it always was, a shroud binding her in. For the truth was, she could not make
herself speak.
‘I do wish you’d
join me for a lunch, or only for a drink if there isn’t time for that. I’m
really not a dreadful person, you see. There is a long history…"
And the special sense told
her he was telling the truth!
She had almost accepted his
invitation — to everything, to talk about herself, and to ask him all
about them. After all, she had not sought him out. He had come to her with his
offer of information. And then, at that moment, had come the compulsion to
reveal all, even the story of her strange power, as if he were inviting her to do
it silently, exerting some force upon her mind so that she would open its
innermost chambers. For he really did want to know about her! And that
interest, so keenly personal, from one devoid of the slightest malicious taint,
had warmed her as surely as a winter fire.
Patterns, witnesses, all her
far-flung thoughts of these things flashed suddenly to the fore.
I have killed three people in my life. I can kill with anger. I know
that I can. That is what has happened with the
transplanted one as you called me. Is there any place in the family history
for such a thing?
Had he flinched slightly as
he looked at her? Or was it merely the slanting sun in his eyes?
But this could not happen.
They were standing over the grave of the woman to whom she’d made the promise.
‘No, I will never go back to
‘You are my mother,
Ellie, my only mother. How could 1 ask for more?’
In those last agonizing
weeks, she had feared her awful destructive power most keenly, for what if in
her rage and grief she turned it on Ellie’s weakened body, and thereby
ended this stupid, useless suffering once and for all? I could kill you, Ellie, I could deliver you. I know I could. I can feel it inside me,
just waiting to be put to that test.
What am I? A witch, for the
love of God! I am a healer, not a destroyer. I have a choice as all human
beings have a choice!
And there the Englishman had
stood, studying her as if fascinated, as if she had been speaking when she hadn’t
been at all. It was almost as if he said I understand. But of course that was
only an illusion. He had said nothing.
Tormented, confused, she’d
turned on her heel and left him there. He must have thought her hostile, or mad
even. But what did it matter? Aaron Lightner. She’d never even glanced at
the card before she’d given it back to him. She did not know why she
remembered the name, except that she remembered him and the strange things he’d
said.
Months had passed since that
awful day when she had driven home, opened the wall safe, and taken out the
paper which Ellie’s executor had had her sign.
‘I, Rowan Mayfair, do
solemnly swear before God, and in the presence of the undersigned witness, that
I shall never return to the city of New Orleans where I was born, that I shall
never seek to know the identity of my biological parents, and that I shall
eschew all contact with the family called Mayfair should any member approach me
for any reason whatsoever, or on any pretext…"
On and on it went in that
near hysterical language, attempting to cover every foreseeable contingency, so
many words to have so little meaning. No wonder Rowan distrusted language. It
was Ellie’s wish that carried all the weight.
But Rowan had signed it. The
lawyer, Milton Kramer, had witnessed it. Into his files the executed copy had
gone.
Had Michael Curry’s
life passed before his eyes like this, Rowan sometimes wondered, the way that
my life is passing before my eyes now? Often she had stared at his smiling
face, torn from a magazine and pasted to her mirror.
And she knew that if she saw
him this dam might surely break. She dreamed of it, talking to Michael Curry,
as if it might happen, as if she might bring him home with her to the house in
Tiburon, as if they might drink coffee together, as if she might touch his gloved
hand.
Ah, such a romantic notion.
A tough guy who loved beautiful houses, drew beautiful pictures. Maybe he
listened to Vivaldi, this tough guy, maybe he really read Dickens. And what
would it be like to have such a man in her bed, naked except for his soft black
leather gloves?
Ah, fantasy. Rather like
imagining that the fire fighters she brought home would turn out to be poets,
that the policemen she had seduced would reveal themselves to be great
novelists, that the forest ranger she’d met in the bar in Bolinas was
truly a great painter, and that the husky Viet Nam veteran who’d taken
her to his cabin in the woods was a great motion picture director hiding from a
demanding and worshipful world.
She did imagine those
things, and they were entirely possible, of course. But it was the body that
commanded preeminence - the bulge in the jeans had to be big enough, the neck
powerful, the voice deep, and the coarsely shaven chin rough enough to cut her.
But what if?
But what if Curry had gone
on to the South where he came from. That was probably exactly what had
happened.
The phone was ringing when
she unlocked her office door.
‘Dr Mayfair?’
‘Dr Morris?’
‘Yes, I’ve been
trying to reach you. It’s about Michael Curry.’
‘Yes, I know, Doctor.
I got your message. I was just about to call.’
‘He wants to talk to
you.’
‘Then he’s still
in
‘He’s hiding out
in his own home on
‘I’ve seen it on
the news.’
‘But he wants to meet
with you. I mean, well, to put it bluntly, he wants to see you in person. He
has this idea…’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, you’re
going to think this madness is communicable, but I’m just relaying the
message. Is there any chance you would meet this guy on your boat — I
mean it was your boat you were on the night you rescued him, wasn’t it?’
‘I’d be glad to
take him back on the boat.’
‘What did you say?’
‘I would be glad to
see him. And I’ll take him out on the boat if he wants to go.’
‘That is absolutely great
of you, Doctor. But I have to explain a few things. I know this sounds
absolutely bonkers, but he wants to take his gloves off and touch the boards of
the deck where he was lying when you brought him around.’
‘Of course he can do
that. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that myself.’
‘You’re serious?
God, you don’t know how relieved I am. And Dr Mayfair, let me tell you
right now, this guy is just one very nice guy.’
‘I know.’
‘He is really
suffering, this guy. He hit me with this idea last week. I hadn’t heard
from him in a month! He was drunk when he called. I thought he’d forget
about it.’
‘It’s a very good idea, Dr
Morris. You said the power in his hands was real.’
‘That’s right, I
did. And it is. And you are a very special doctor, Dr Mayfair. But do you know
what you’re getting into? I begged him, I mean really begged him to come
back in. Then he calls back last night, demanding I find you right this minute.
He has to lay his hands on the boards of the deck, he’s going nuts. I
told him, Sober up, Michael, and I’ll give it a shot. Then he calls
twenty minutes ago, right before I called you. "I won’t lie to
you," he says, "I’ve drunk a case of beer today, but I haven’t
touched the vodka or the Scotch. I am as straight as I can possibly get."’
She laughed softly. ‘I
should weep for his brain cells,’ she said.
‘I hear you. But what I’m
getting to is the man is desperate. He isn’t getting any better. And I
would never ask this of you if he wasn’t just one of the nicest -’
‘I’ll go get
him. Can you call him and tell him that I’m on my way?’
‘God, that’s
terrific. Dr Mayfair, I can’t thank you enough.’
‘No thanks is
necessary. I want to see him.’
‘Look, strike a
bargain with him, Doctor. You’ll let him play psychic on the boat if he’ll
come in here and dry out.’
‘Call him now, Dr
Morris. Within the hour, I’ll be at his front door.’
She put down the phone and
stood quite still staring at it for a moment. Then she removed her name tag,
and stripped off her soiled white jacket, and slowly pulled the pins out of her
hair.
FIVE
So they had tried to put
Deirdre Mayfair away again after all these years. With Miss Nancy gone and Miss
Carl getting more feeble by the day, it was best. That was the talk, anyway. On
August 13, they’d tried. But Deirdre had gone wild, and they had left her
alone, and now she was going down badly, just real badly.
When Jerry Lonigan told his
wife Rita, she cried.
It had been thirteen years
since Deirdre came home from the sanitarium a mindless idiot who couldn’t
tell you her own name, but that didn’t matter to Rita. Rita would never
forget the real Deirdre.
Rita and Deirdre were
sixteen when they went to boarding school at St Rose de Lima’s. It was an
ugly old brick building, on the very edge of the French Quarter. And Rita was
sent there because she was ’bad,’ had been out drinking on the
river boat The President with boys. Her dad had said St Ro’s
would straighten her out. All the girls slept in an attic dormitory. And they
went to bed at
Deirdre Mayfair had been at
St Ro’s for a long time. She didn’t mind that it was old and gloomy
and strict. But she held Rita’s hand when Rita cried. She listened when
Rita said it was like a prison.
The girls watched ‘Father
Knows Best’ on an old television set with a round six-inch screen, swear
to God! And the creaky old wooden radio that stood on the floor under the
window was no better. You couldn’t get to the phonograph. The South
American girls always had it, playing that awful ‘La Cucaracha,’ and
doing those Spanish dances.
‘Don’t mind them,’
Deirdre said. She took Rita with her down to the play yard in the late
afternoon. They swung on the swings under the pecan trees. You wouldn’t
think that was much fun for a sixteen-year-old girl, but Rita loved it when she
was with Deirdre.
Deirdre sang when they were
on the swings - old Irish and Scotch ballads, she called them. She had a real
true soprano voice, delicate and high, and the songs were so sad. It gave Rita
chills to hear them. Deirdre loved to stay out until the sun was gone and the
sky was a ’pure purple’ and the cicadas were really going in the
trees. Deirdre called it twilight.
Rita had seen that word
written out, all right, but she’d never heard anyone really say it.
Twilight.
Deirdre took Rita’s
hand and they walked along the brick wall, right under the pecan trees, so that
they had to duck under the low leafy branches. There were places you could
stand where you were completely hidden by the trees. It was crazy to describe
it, but it had been such a strange and lovely time for Rita - standing there in
the half dark with Deirdre, and the trees swaying in the breeze and the tiny
leaves showering down on them.
In those days, Deirdre had
looked like a real old-fashioned girl from a picture book, with a violet ribbon
in her hair and her black curls tumbling down her back. She could have been
real sharp if she’d wanted to be. She had the build for it, and new
clothes in her locker she never bothered to try on. But it was easy to forget
about things like that when you were with Deirdre. Her hair had been so soft.
Rita had touched it once. So soft.
They walked in the dusty
cloister beside the chapel. They peeped through the wooden gate into the nuns’
garden. Secret place, Deirdre said, full of the loveliest flowers.
‘I don’t ever
want to go home,’ Deirdre explained. ‘It’s so peaceful here.’
Peaceful! Alone at night,
Rita cried and cried. She could hear the jukebox of the Negro bar across the
street, the music rising over the brick walls and all the way up to the
fourth-story attic. Sometimes when she thought everybody was asleep, she got up
and went out on the iron balcony and looked towards the lights of
Deirdre was different from
anybody Rita had ever known. She had such beautifully made things - long white
flannel gowns trimmed in lace.
They were the same kind she
wore now thirty-four years later on the side screen porch of that house where
she sat ’like a mindless idiot in a coma.’
And she had showed Rita that
emerald necklace she always wore now, too, right over the white nightgown. The
famous
It looked just awful now on
Deirdre in her nightgown. All wrong, a thing like that on an invalid who just
stared and stared through the screens of the porch. But who knows? Maybe
somehow Deirdre knew it was there, and Deirdre sure loved it.
She let Rita touch it when
they sat on the side of the bed at St Ro’s. No nuns around to tell them
not to rumple the bedspread.
Rita had turned the emerald
pendant over in her hands. So heavy, the gold setting. It looked like something
was engraved on the back. Rita made out a big capital L. It looked like a name
to her.
‘Oh, no, don’t
read it,’ Deirdre said. ‘It’s a secret!’ And she’d
looked frightened for a moment, her cheeks suddenly red and her eyes moist, and
then she took Rita’s hand and squeezed it. You couldn’t be mad at
Deirdre.
‘Is it real?’
Rita asked. Must have cost a fortune.
‘Oh, yes,’
Deirdre said. ‘It came from
They both laughed at all the
greats.
It was innocent the way
Deirdre said it. She never bragged. It wasn’t like that at all. She never
hurt anybody’s feelings. Everybody loved her.
‘My mother left it to
me,’ Deirdre explained. ‘And someday I’ll pass it on, that
is… if I ever have a daughter.’ Trouble in her face. Rita put her
arm around Deirdre. You just wanted to protect Deirdre. Deirdre brought out
that feeling in everybody.
Deirdre said she’d
never known her mother. ‘She died when I was a baby. They say she fell
from the upstairs window. And they said her mother died when she was young,
too, but they never talk about her. I don’t think we’re like other
people.’
Rita was stunned. Nobody she
knew said such things.
‘But how do you mean,
Dee Dee?’ she asked.
‘Oh, I don’t
know,’ Deirdre said. ‘We feel things, sense things. We know when
people don’t like us and mean to hurt us.’
‘Who could ever want
to hurt you, Dee Dee?’ Rita asked. ‘You’ll live to be a
hundred and you’ll have ten children.’
‘I love you, Rita Mae,’
Deirdre said. ‘You’re pure of heart, that’s what you are.’
‘Oh, Dee Dee, no.’
Rita Mae shook her head. She thought of her boyfriend from Holy Cross, the
things they had done.
And just as if Deirdre had
read her mind, she said:
‘No, Rita Mae, that
doesn’t matter. You’re good. You never want to hurt anybody, even
when you’re really unhappy.’
‘I love you, too,’
Rita said, though she did not understand all that Deirdre was telling her. And
Rita never ever in her whole life told any other woman that she loved her.
Rita almost died when
Deirdre was expelled from St Ro’s. But Rita knew it was going to happen.
She herself saw a young man
with Deirdre in the convent garden. She had seen Deirdre slip out after supper
when no one was looking. They were supposed to be taking their baths, setting
their hair. That was one thing Rita really thought was funny about St Ro’s.
They made you set your hair and wear a little lipstick because Sister Daniel
said that was ’etiquette.’ And Deirdre didn’t have to set her
hair. It hung in perfect curls. All she needed was a ribbon.
Deirdre was always
disappearing at that time. She took her bath first and then snuck downstairs,
and didn’t come back till almost lights out. Always late, always hurrying
in for night prayers, her face flushed. But then she’d give Sister Daniel
that beautiful innocent smile. And when Deirdre prayed she seemed to mean it.
Rita thought she was the
only one who noticed that Deirdre slipped out. She hated it when Deirdre wasn’t
around. Deirdre was the only one that made her feel all right there.
And one night she’d
gone down to look for Deirdre. Maybe Deirdre was swinging on the swings. Winter
was over and twilight was coming now after supper. And Rita knew about Deirdre
and twilight.
But Rita didn’t find
Deirdre in the play yard. She went to the open gate of the nuns’ garden.
It was very dark in there. You could see the Easter lilies in the dark, shining
white. The nuns would cut them on Easter Sunday. But Deirdre would never break
the rules and go in there.
Yet Rita heard Deirdre’s
voice. And gradually she made out the figure of Deirdre on the stone bench in
the shadows. The pecan trees were as big and low there as they were in the play
yard. All Rita could see was the white blouse at first, and then she saw Deirdre’s
face and even the violet ribbon in her hair, and she saw the tall man seated
beside her.
Things were so still. The
jukebox of the Negro bar wasn’t playing just then. No sound came from the
convent. And even the lights in the nuns’ refectory looked far away
because there were so many trees growing along the cloister.
The man said to Deirdre: ‘My
beloved.’ It was just a whisper, but Rita heard it. And she heard Deirdre
say: ‘Yes, you’re speaking, I can hear you.’
‘My beloved!’
came the whisper again.
Then Deirdre was crying. And
she said something else, maybe a name, Rita would never know. It sounded as if
she said: ‘My Lasher.’
They kissed, Deirdre’s
head back, the white of the man’s fingers very clear against her dark
hair. And the man spoke again:
‘Only want to make you
happy, my beloved.’
‘Dear God,’
Deirdre whispered. And suddenly she got up off the bench and Rita saw her
running along the path through the beds of lilies. The man was nowhere in
sight. And the wind had come up, sweeping through the pecan trees so that their
high branches crashed against the porches of the convent. All the garden was
moving suddenly. And Rita was alone there.
Rita turned away ashamed.
She shouldn’t have been listening. And she, too, ran away, all the way up
the four flights of wooden stairs from the basement to the attic.
It was an hour before
Deirdre came. Rita was miserable to have spied on her like that.
But late that night when she
lay in bed, Rita repeated those words: My beloved. Only want to make you
happy, my beloved. Oh, to think that a man would say such things to
Deirdre.
All Rita had ever known were
the boys who wanted to ’feel you up,’ if they got a chance. Clumsy,
stupid guys like her boyfriend Terry from Holy Cross, who said, ‘You
know, I think I like you a lot, Rita.’ Sure, sure. ‘Cause I let you
’feel me up.’ You ox.
‘You tramp!’ Rita’s
father had said. ‘You’re going to boarding school, that’s
where you’re going. I don’t care what it costs.’
My beloved. It made her think of
beautiful music, of elegant gentlemen in old movies she saw on the late night
television. Of voices from another time, soft and distinct, the very words like
kisses.
And he was so handsome too.
She hadn’t really seen his face, but she saw he was dark-haired with
large eyes, and tall, and he wore fine clothes, beautiful clothes. She’d
seen the white cuffs of his shirt and his collar.
Rita would have met him in
the garden too, a man like that. Rita would have done anything with him.
Oh, Rita couldn’t
really figure it out, the feelings it gave her. She cried but it was a sweet,
silent kind of crying. She knew she’d remember the moment all her life
— the garden under the dark purple twilight sky with the evening stars
out already and the man’s voice saying those words.
When they accused Deirdre,
it was a nightmare. They were in the recreation room and the other girls were
made to stay in the dormitory, but everybody could hear it. Deirdre burst into
tears, but she wouldn’t confess anything.
‘I saw the man myself!’
Sister Daniel said. ‘Are you calling me a liar!’ Then they took
Deirdre down to the convent to talk to old Mother Bernard but even she couldn’t
do anything with Deirdre.
Rita was broken-hearted when
the nuns came to pack up Deirdre’s clothes. She saw Sister Daniel take
the emerald necklace out of its box and stare at it. Sister Daniel thought it
was glass, you could tell by the way she held it. It hurt Rita to see her touch
it, to see her snatch up Deirdre’s nightgowns and things and stuff them
into the suitcase.
And later that week, when
the terrible accident happened with Sister Daniel, Rita wasn’t sorry. She
never meant for the mean old nun to die the way she did, smothered in a
closed-up room with a gas heater left on, but so be it.
Rita had other things on her
mind than weeping for somebody who’d been mean to Deirdre.
That Saturday she got
together all the nickels she could and called and called from the pay phone in
the basement. Somebody must know the Mayfairs’ phone number. They lived
on
Then Rita got into a
terrible fight with
‘Shut your filthy
mouth!’ Rita screamed. She tried to slap
‘Rita Mae, she let him
into the building. She brought him right upstairs to our floor, I saw him.’
Liz was whispering, looking over her shoulder as if somebody was going to
overhear them.
‘I don’t believe
you,’ Rita said.
‘I wasn’t
following her around,’ Liz said. ‘I didn’t want her to get in
trouble. I had just gotten up to go to the bathroom. And I saw them by the
window of the recreation room - her and him together, Rita Mae — not ten
feet from where we were all sleeping.’
‘What did he look like?’ Rita
demanded, sure it was a lie. Rita would know because she’d seen him.
But Liz described him all
right — tall, brown hair, very ‘distinguished,’ Liz said, and
he’d been kissing Deirdre and whispering to her.
‘Rita Mae, imagine her
opening all the locks, bringing him up the stairs. She was just crazy.’
‘All I know is this,’
Rita said later to Jerry Lonigan when they were courting. ‘She was the
sweetest girl I ever knew in my life. She was a saint compared with those nuns,
I tell you. And when I thought I’d go crazy in that place, she held my
hand and told me she knew how I was feeling. I would have done anything for her.’
But when the time came to do
something for Deirdre May-fair, Rita hadn’t been able to do it.
Over a year had passed. Rita’s
teenaged life was gone and she never for a second missed it. She had married
Jerry Lonigan, who was twelve years older than her and nicer than any boy she’d
ever met - a decent and kind man who made a good living from Lonigan and Sons’
Funeral Home, one of the oldest in the parish, which he ran with his daddy.
Jerry was the one who gave
Rita news about Deirdre. He told her Deirdre was pregnant by a man who’d
been killed already in a highway accident, and those aunts of hers, those crazy
Rita was going by that house
to see Deirdre. She had to. Jerry didn’t want her to go.
‘What the hell you
think you can do about it! Don’t you know that aunt of hers, Miss
Carlotta, she’s a lawyer? She could get Deirdre committed if she didn’t
give up that baby.’
Red Lonigan, Jerry’s
dad, shook his head. ‘That’s been done plenty a time, Rita,’
he said. ‘Deirdre will sign the papers or wind up in the nuthouse.
Besides, Father Lafferty’s got a hand in this thing. And if there’s
any priest at St Alphonsus I trust, it’s Tim Lafferty.’
But Rita went.
It was the hardest thing she’d
ever done, walking up to that enormous house and ringing the bell, but she did
it. And naturally it was Miss Carl who came to the door, the one everybody was
afraid of. Jerry told her later that if it had been Miss Millie or Miss Nancy
it might have been different.
Still Rita walked right in,
just sort of pushed past Miss Carl. Well, she had opened the screen door a
crack, hadn’t she? And Miss Carl really didn’t look mean. She just
looked businesslike.
‘Just want to see her,
you know, she was my best friend at St Ro’s
Every time Miss Carl said no
in her polite way, Rita said yes in some other way, talking about how close she’d
been to Deirdre.
Then she’d heard
Deirdre’s voice at the top of the steps.
‘Rita Mae!’
Deirdre’s face was wet
from crying and her hair was all in straggles over her shoulders. She ran down
the steps barefoot towards Rita, and Miss Nancy, the heavy set one, came right
behind her.
Miss Carl took Rita firmly
by the arm and tried to move her towards the front door.
‘Wait just a minute!’
Rita said.
‘Rita Mae, they’re
going to take my baby!’
Miss Nancy caught Deirdre
around the waist and lifted her off her feet on the stairway.
‘Rita Mae!’
Deirdre screamed. She had something in her hand, a little white card it looked
like.
‘Rita Mae, call this
man. Tell him to help me.’
Miss Carl stepped in front
of Rita:
‘Go home, Rita Mae
Lonigan,’ she said.
But Rita darted right around
her. Deirdre was struggling to get free of Miss Nancy, and Miss Nancy was
leaning against the banister, off balance. Deirdre tried to throw the little
white card to Rita, but it just fluttered down on the stairs. Miss Carl went to
get it.
And then it was just like
fighting for Mardi Gras trinkets thrown from the parade floats. Rita pushed
Miss Carl to the side and snatched the card up, just the way you snatched a
junk necklace off the pavement before anybody else could get it.
‘Rita Mae, call that
man!’ Deirdre screamed. Tell him I need him.’
‘I will, Dee Dee!’
Miss Nancy was carrying her
back up the steps, Deirdre’s bare feet swinging out, her hands clawing at
Miss Nancy’s arm. It was awful, just awful.
And then Miss Carl grabbed
Rita’s wrist.
‘Give me that, Rita
Mae Lonigan,’ said Miss Carl.
Rita pulled loose and ran
out of the front door, the little white card clutched in her hand. She heard
Miss Carl running across the porch right after her.
Her heart was pounding as
she ran down the path. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, this was a madhouse! And Jerry
was going to be so upset. And what would Red say?
Then Rita felt a sharp, ugly
pain as her hair was jerked from the back. The woman pulled her almost off her
feet.
‘Don’t you do
that to me, you old witch!" Rita said, her teeth clenched. Rita couldn’t
stand to have her hair pulled.
Miss Carl tried to tear the
little white card out of her fingers. This was almost the worst thing that had
ever happened to Rita. Miss Carl was twisting and tearing off the corner of the
card as Rita held on to it, and with the other hand Miss Carl was still yanking
Rita’s hair as hard as she could. She was going to pull it out by the
roots.
‘Stop it!’ Rita
screamed. ‘I’m warning you now, I’m warning you!’ She
got the card away from Miss Carl and she crumpled it in her fist. You just
couldn’t hit an old lady like this.
But when Miss Carl jerked
her hair again, Rita did hit her. She hit Miss Carl across the chest with her
right arm, and Miss Carl fell into the chinaberry trees. If there hadn’t
been so many chinaberry trees, she would have fallen on the ground.
Rita ran out the gate.
A storm was blowing up. The
trees were all moving. She could see the big black branches of the oaks swaying
in the wind, hear that loud roar that big trees always made. The branches were
lashing the house, scratching at the top of the upstairs porch. She heard the
sound of breaking glass suddenly.
She stopped and looked back,
and she saw a shower of little green leaves falling all over the property. Tiny
branches and twigs were falling. It was like a hurricane. Miss Carl was standing
on the path staring up at the trees. At least her arm or leg wasn’t
broken.
Good Lord, the rain would
come any minute. Rita was going to be soaked before she even got to
But there was no rain. She
made it back to Lonigan and Sons without getting wet. And when she sat down in
Jerry’s office, she broke down completely.
‘You shouldn’t
have gone there, you should never have gone!’ he said. He had a funeral
going on out front. He should have been helping Red out there. ‘Honey,
they could turn everybody against us, old family like that!’
Rita couldn’t do
anything but cry. Then she looked at the little white card. ‘But will you
look at this, Jerry! Will you look at it!’
It was all mashed and damp
from the sweat of her palm. She broke down again.
‘I can’t read
the numbers on it!’
‘Now, just a minute,
Rita,’ Jerry said. He was patient as always, just a really good-hearted
man the way he’d always been. He stood over her, unfolding the little
card on the desk blotter. He got his magnifying glass.
The middle part was clear
enough:
THE TALAMASCA
But you couldn’t read
anything else. The words below that were just tiny little specks of black ink
on the pulpy white cardboard. And whatever had been written along the bottom
edge was completely ruined. There was just nothing left of it.
‘Oh, Dee Dee!’
Rita cried.
Jerry pressed it out under
two heavy books, but that hadn’t helped. His dad came in and took a look.
But he couldn’t make anything out of it. Name Talamasca didn’t mean
anything to Red. And Red knew just about everybody and everything. If it had
been an old Mardi Gras society, for instance, he would have known it.
‘Now look, you can see
something here written on the back in ink,’ Red said. ‘Look at that.’
Aaron Lightner. But there
was no phone number. The phone numbers must have been printed on the front.
Even pressing the card with a hot iron didn’t help matters.
Rita did what she could.
She checked the phone book
for Aaron Lightner and the Talamasca, whatever that was. She called
information. She begged the operator to tell her if there was an unlisted
number. She even ran personals in the Times-Picayune and in the
States-Item.
‘The card was old and
dirty before you ever got it,’ Jerry reminded her. Fifty dollars spent on
personal ads was enough. Jerry’s daddy said he thought she might just as
well give up. But one thing she could say for him, he hadn’t criticized
her for it.
‘Darlin’, don’t
go back to that house,’ Red said. ‘I’m not scared of Miss
Carlotta or anything like that. I just don’t want you around those people.’
Rita saw Jerry look at his
father, and his father look at him. They knew something they weren’t
saying. Rita knew Lonigan and Sons had buried Deirdre’s mother when she
fell from that window years ago, she’d heard that much, and she knew Red
remembered the grandmother who had ‘died young’ too the way Deirdre
told Rita.
But those two were
closemouthed the way morticians had to be. And Rita was too miserable now for
hearing about the history of that horrible old house and those women.
She cried herself to sleep
the way she had at boarding school. Maybe Deirdre had seen the ads in the
papers, and knew that Rita had tried to do what she wanted.
Another year passed before
Rita saw Deirdre again. The baby was long gone. Some cousins out in
Sister Bridget Marie at St
Alphonsus told Jerry the nuns at
Gave Rita the shivers. Like
people kissing the corpse right before they closed up the coffin. ‘Kiss
your baby,’ then taking it like that.
No wonder Deirdre had had a
complete breakdown. They took her right from Mercy to the sanitarium.
‘Not the first time
for that family,’ Red Lonigan said as he shook his head. ‘That’s
how Lionel Mayfair died, in a strait-jacket.’
Rita asked what he meant,
but he didn’t answer.
‘Oh, but they didn’t
have to do it like that,’ Rita said. ‘She’s such a sweet
thing. She couldn’t hurt anybody.’
Finally Rita heard Deirdre
was home again. And that Sunday Rita decided to go to Mass at the Mother of
Perpetual Help Chapel in the Garden District. That’s where the rich
people went mostly. They didn’t come to the big old parish churches - St
Mary’s and St Alphonsus - across
Rita went up there to the
Deirdre looked dreadful to
Rita, like Banquo’s Ghost as Rita’s mother would have said. She had
dark circles under her eyes and her dress was some old shiny gabardine thing
that didn’t fit her. Padded shoulders. One of those old women in that
house must have given her that.
After Mass, as they were
going down the marble steps, Rita swallowed, took a deep breath, and ran after
Deirdre.
Deirdre at once gave her that
beautiful smile. But when she tried to talk, almost nothing came out. Then in a
whisper she said: ‘Rita Mae!’
Rita Mae leaned over to kiss
her. She whispered:
‘Dee Dee, I tried to
do what you asked me. I could never find that man. The card was too ruined.’
Deirdre’s eyes were
wide, vacant. She didn’t even remember, did she? At least Miss Millie and
Miss Belle didn’t notice. They were saying their hellos to everybody
passing. And poor old Miss Belle never noticed anything anyway.
Then Deirdre did seem to
recall something. ‘It’s OK, Rita Mae,’ she said. She had the
beautiful smile again. She squeezed Rita Mae’s hand and leaned forward
and kissed her this time, on the cheek. Then her Aunt Millie said, ‘We
should go now, sweetheart.’
Now, that was Deirdre Mayfair
to Rita. It’s OK, Rita Mae. The sweetest girl she ever knew.
Deirdre was back at the
sanitarium before long. She’d been walking barefoot on
When old Miss Belle died,
the Mayfairs called Jerry’s dad as they’d always done. Maybe Miss
Carl didn’t even remember the fight with Rita Mae. Mayfairs came from all
over for that funeral, but no Deirdre.
Mr Lonigan hated opening the
tomb in Lafayette No. 1. That cemetery had so many ruined graves with rotting
coffins plainly visible, even the bones showing. It sickened him to take a
funeral there.
‘But those Mayfairs
have been buried there since 1861,’ he said. ‘And they do keep up
that tomb, I’ll give them that. They have the wrought-iron fence painted
every year. And when the tourists come through there? Well, that’s one of
the graves they always look at - what with all the Mayfairs in there, and those
little babies’ names, going back to the Civil War. It’s just the
rest of the place is so sorry. You know they’re going to tear that place
down someday.’
They never did tear down
Lafayette No.1. The tourists liked it too much. And so did the families of the
Garden District. Instead they cleaned it up, repaired the whitewashed walls,
planted new magnolia trees. But there were still enough broken-down tombs for
people to get their peek at the bones. It was a ’historical monument.’
Mr Lonigan took Rita through
there one afternoon, showing her the famous yellow fever graves where you could
read a long list of those who had died within days of each other during the
epidemics. He showed her the
‘Why, they keep it up
real nice, don’t they?’ she said. Such beautiful lilies and
gladiolus and baby’s breath.
Mr Lonigan stared at the
flowers. He didn’t answer. Then after he’d cleared his throat, he
pointed out the names of those he knew.
‘This one here - Antha
Marie, died 1941, now that was Deirdre’s mother.’
‘The one who fell from
the window,’ Rita said. Again he didn’t answer her.
‘And this one here
— Stella Louise, died 1929 — now that was Antha’s mother. And
it was this one over here, Lionel, her brother - "died 1929" - who
ended up in the straitjacket after he shot and killed Stella.’
‘Oh, you don’t
mean he murdered his own sister.’
‘Oh, yes I do,’
Mr Lonigan said. Then he pointed out the other names going way back. ‘Miss
Mary Beth, now that was the mother of Stella, and of Miss Carl, and now, Miss
Millie is actually Remy
Rita didn’t care about
them. She was remembering Deirdre on that long-ago day at St Ro’s when
they sat on the side of the bed together. The emerald necklace had come to her
through Stella and Antha.
She told Red about it now,
and it didn’t surprise him at all. He just nodded, and said, yes, and
before that the emerald necklace had belonged to Miss Mary Beth and before that
to Miss Katherine who had built the house on First Street, but Miss Katherine
was really before his time. Monsieur Julien was as far back as he could
recall…
‘But you know, it’s
the strangest thing,’ Rita said. ‘Them all carrying the
‘Can’t,’
Mr Lonigan said. ‘If they do, then they don’t get the
He was staring at the
flowers again.
‘What is it, Red?’
Rita asked.
‘Oh, just an old story
they tell around here,’ he said. ‘That those vases are never empty.’
‘Well, it’s Miss
Carl who orders the flowers, isn’t it?’ Rita asked.
‘Not that I know of,’
Mr Lonigan said, ’but somebody always puts them there.’ But then he
went quiet again the way he always did. He would never really tell you what he
knew.
When he died a year after
that, Rita felt as bad as if she’d lost her own father. But she kept
wondering what secrets he’d taken with him. He’d always been so
good to Rita. Jerry was never the same. He was nervous afterwards whenever he
dealt with the old families.
Deirdre came home to the
house on
Father Mattingly from the
parish went by to see her. No brain left at all. Just like a baby, he told
Jerry, or a senile old lady.
Rita went to call. It had
been years since she and Miss Carlotta had that awful fight. Rita had three
children now. She wasn’t scared of that old lady. She brought a pretty
white silk negligee for Deirdre from D. H. Holmes.
Miss Nancy took her out on
the porch. She said to Deirdre:
‘Look what Rita Mae
Lonigan brought, Deirdre.’
Just a mindless idiot. And
how awful to see that beautiful emerald necklace around her neck. It was like
they were making fun of her, to put it on her like that, over her flannel
nightgown.
Her feet looked swollen and
tender as they rested on the bare boards of the porch. Her head fell to one
side as she stared through the screens. But otherwise she was still Deirdre -
still pretty, still sweet. Rita had to get out of there.
She never called again. But
not a week went by that she didn’t walk back First just to stop at the
fence and wave to Deirdre. Deirdre didn’t even notice her. But Rita did
it nevertheless. It seemed to her Deirdre got stooped and thin, that her arms
weren’t down in her lap anymore, but drawn up, close to her chest. But
Rita was never close enough to make certain. That was the virtue of just
standing at the fence and waving.
When Miss Nancy died last
year, Rita said she was going to the funeral. ‘It’s for Deirdre’s
sake.’
‘But honey,’
Jerry had said, ‘Deirdre won’t know you’re doing this.’
Deirdre hadn’t spoken a single syllable in all these years.
But Rita didn’t care.
Rita was going.
As for Jerry, he didn’t
want to have anything to do with the Mayfairs. He missed his daddy more than
ever.
‘Why the hell can’t
they call some other funeral home?’ he had said under his breath. Other
people did it now that his daddy was dead and gone. Why didn’t the
Mayfairs follow suit? He hated the old families.
‘Least this is a
natural death, or so they tell me,’ he said.
Now that really startled
Rita. ‘Well, weren’t Miss Belle and Miss Millie "natural
deaths"?’ she asked.
After he’d finished
work that afternoon on Miss Nancy, he told Rita it had been terrible going into
that house to get her.
Right out of the old days,
the upstairs bedroom with the draperies drawn and two blessed candles burning
before a picture of the Mother of Sorrows. The room stank of piss. And Miss
Nancy dead for hours in that heat before he got there.
And poor Deirdre on the
screen porch like a human pretzel, and the colored nurse holding Deirdre’s
hand and saying the rosary out loud, as if Deirdre even knew she was there, let
alone heard the Hail Marys.
Miss Carlotta didn’t
want to go into Nancy’s room. She stood in the hallway with her arms
folded.
‘Bruises on her, Miss
Carl. On her arms and legs. Did she have a bad tumble?’
‘She had the first
attack on the stairs, Mr Lonigan.’
But boy, had he wished his
dad was still around. His dad had known how to handle the old families.
‘Now, you tell me,
Rita Mae. Why the hell wasn’t she in a hospital? This isn’t 1842!
This is now. Now I’m asking you.’
‘Some people want to
be at home, Jerry,’ Rita said. Didn’t he have a signed death
certificate?
Yes, he did. Of course he
did. But he hated these old families.
‘You never know what
they’re going to do,’ he swore. ‘Not just the Mayfairs, I
mean any of the old ones.’
Sometimes the relatives
trooped into the viewing room and started right in working on the corpse with
their own powder and lipstick. Now, nobody with any sense did that kind of
thing anymore.
And what about those old
Irish guys who’d laugh and joke while they were acting as pallbearers.
One would let his end of the coffin go just so his brother would get the full
weight of it — prancing around on the graveyard path like it was Mardi
Gras.
And the stories the old ones
told at the wake could make you sick. Old Sister Bridget Marie the other night
downstairs telling about coming over on the boat from Ireland: The mama said to
the baby in the bassinet, ‘If you don’t stop crying, I’ll
throw you overboard.’ Then she tells her little boy to watch the baby.
Little while she comes back. The baby’s gone out of the bassinet. The
little boy says, ‘He started crying again. So I threw him overboard.’
Now, what kind of a story is
that to tell when you’re sitting right beside the coffin?
Rita smiled in spite of
herself. She had always liked old Sister Bridget Marie.
‘The Mayfairs aren’t
Irish,’ she said. ‘They’re rich and rich people don’t
carry on like that.’
‘Oh, yes they are
Irish, Rita Mae. Or Irish enough anyway to be crazy. It was the famous Irish architect Darcy Monahan who built that
house, and he was the father of Miss Mary Beth. And Miss Carl is the daughter
of Judge McIntyre and he was Irish as they come. Just a real old-timer. Sure
they’re Irish. As Irish as anybody else around here in this day and age.’
She was amazed that her
husband was talking this much. The Mayfairs bothered him, that was clear
enough, just as they had bothered his daddy, and nobody had ever told Rita the
whole story.
Rita went to the Requiem
Mass at the chapel for Miss Nancy. She followed the procession in her own car.
It went down First Street to pass the old house, out of respect for Deirdre.
But there was no sign Deirdre even saw all those black limousines gliding by.
There were so many Mayfairs.
Why, where in the world did they come from? Rita recognized New York voices and
California voices and even southern voices from Atlanta and Alabama. And then
all the ones from New Orleans! She couldn’t believe it when she went over
the register. Why, there were Mayfairs from uptown and downtown, and Metairie,
and across the river.
There was even an Englishman
there, a white-haired gentleman in a linen suit who actually carried a walking
stick. He hung back with Rita. ‘My, what a dreadfully warm day this is,’
he said in his elegant English voice. When Rita had tripped on the path, he’d
steadied her arm. Very nice of him.
What did all these people
think of that awful old house, she wondered, and of the Lafayette Cemetery with
all the moldering vaults. They were crowded all through the narrow aisles,
standing on tiptoe trying to see over the high tombs. Mosquitoes in the high
grass. And there was one of the tour buses stopped at the gates right now.
Those tourists sure loved it, all right. Well, get an eyeful!
But the big shock was the
cousin who’d taken Deirdre’s baby. For there she was, Ellie Mayfair
from California. Jerry pointed her out while the priest was saying the final
words. She had signed the register at every funeral for the last thirty years.
Tall, dark-haired woman in a sleeveless blue linen dress, with beautiful
suntanned skin. She wore a big white hat, like a sunbonnet, and a pair of dark
glasses. Looked like a movie star. How they gathered around her. People
clasping her hand. Kissing her on the powdered cheek. When they bent real
close, were they asking her about Deirdre’s daughter?
Rita wiped her eyes. Rita Mae, they’re going to
take my baby. Whatever had she done with that little fragment of white
card with the word Talamasca on it? Was probably right here in her prayer book
somewhere. She never threw anything away. Maybe she should speak to that woman,
just ask her how to get in touch with Deirdre’s daughter. Maybe some day
that girl ought to know what Rita had to tell. But then what right had she to
meddle like that? Yet if Deirdre died before Rita did, and Rita saw that woman
again, well then she’d go and ask. Nothing would stop her.
She had almost broken down
right then and there, and imagine, people would have thought she was crying for
old Miss Nancy. That was a laugh. She had turned around, trying to hide her
face and then she’d seen that Englishman, that gentleman, staring at her.
He had a real strange expression on his face, like he was worried about her
crying, and then she did cry and she made a little wave to him to say, It’s
all right. But he came over to her anyway.
He gave her his arm, the way
he had before, and helped her to walk just a little ways away and there was one
of those benches so she sat down on it. When she looked up, she could have
sworn Miss Carl was staring at her and at the Englishman, but Miss Carl was
real far away, and the sun was shining on her glasses. Probably couldn’t
see them at all.
Then the Englishman had
given her a little white card and said he would like to talk to her. Whatever
about, she had thought, but she took the card and put it in her pocket.
It was late that night when
she found it again. She had been looking for the prayer card from the funeral.
And there it was, that little card from the man and there were the same names
after all these years — Talamasca and Aaron Lightner.
For a minute Rita Mae
thought she was going to faint dead away. Maybe she’d made a big mistake.
She hunted through her prayer book for the old card or what was left of it.
Sure enough, they were the same, and on this new one, the Englishman had
written in ink the name of the Monteleone Hotel downtown and his room number.
Rita found Jerry sitting up
late, drinking, at the kitchen table.
‘Rita Mae, you can’t
go talking to that man. You can’t tell him anything about that family.’
‘But Jerry, I have to
tell him what happened before, I have to tell him that Deirdre tried to get in
touch with him.’
‘That was years and
years ago, Rita Mae. That baby is grown up. She’s a doctor, did you know
that? She’s going to be a surgeon, that’s what I heard.’
‘I don’t care,
Jerry.’ Then Rita Mae had broken down, but even through her tears, she
was doing a strange thing. She was staring at that card and memorizing
everything on it. She memorized the room number of the hotel. She memorized the
phone number in London.
And just as she figured,
Jerry suddenly took the card and slipped it in his shirt pocket. She didn’t
say a word. She just kept crying. Jerry was the sweetest man in the world, but
he never would understand.
He said, ‘You did a
nice thing, going to the funeral, honey.’
Rita said no more about the
man. She wasn’t going to go against Jerry. Well, at least at this moment
her mind was not made up yet.
‘But what does that
girl out there in California know about her mother?’ Rita said. ‘I
mean, does she know Deirdre never wanted to give her up?’
‘You have to leave it
alone, honey.’
There had never been a
moment in Rita’s life quite like that one years ago in the nuns’
garden — hearing Deirdre with that man, hearing two people talk of love
like that. Twilight. Rita had told Jerry about it all right, but nobody
understood. You had to be there, smelling the lilies and seeing the sky like
blue stained glass through the tree branches.
And to think of that girl
out there, maybe never knowing what her real mother was like…
Jerry shook his head. He
filled his glass with bourbon and drank about half of it.
‘Honey, if you knew
what I knew about those people.’
Jerry was drinking too much
bourbon all right. Rita saw that. Jerry was no gossip. A good mortician couldn’t
be a gossip. But he started to talk now and Rita let him.
‘Honey,’ he
said, ‘Deirdre never had a chance in that family. You might say she was
cursed when she was born. That’s what Daddy said.’
Jerry had been just a
grade-school kid when Deirdre’s mother, Antha, died, in a fall from the
porch roof outside the attic window of that house. Her skull had broken open on
the patio. Deirdre was a baby then and so was Rita Mae, of course. But Jerry
was already working with his daddy.
‘I tell you we scraped
her brains up off the flagstones. It was terrible. She was only twenty years
old, and pretty! She was prettier even than Deirdre got to be. And you should
have seen the trees in that yard. Honey, it was like a hurricane was happening
just over that house, the way those trees were blowing. Even those stiff
magnolia trees were bending and twisting.’
‘Yeah, I’ve seen
them like that,’ Rita said, but she was quiet so he would go on talking.
‘The worst part was
when we got back here and Daddy had a good look at Antha. He said right away,
"See these scratches around her eyes. Now that never happened in the fall.
There were no trees under that window." And then Daddy found out one of
the eyes was torn right out of the socket. Now Daddy knew what to do in those
situations.
‘He got right on the
phone to Dr Fitzroy. He said he thought there ought to be an autopsy. And he
stood his ground when Dr Fitzroy argued with him. Finally Dr Fitzroy came clean
that Antha Mayfair had gone out of her mind and tried to scratch her own eyes
out. Miss Carl tried to stop her and that’s when Antha had run up to the
attic. She fell, all right, but she was clean out of her head when it happened.
And Miss Carl had seen the whole thing. And there was no reason in the world
for people to be talking about it, for it to get into the newspapers. Hadn’t
that family had enough pain, what with Stella? Dr Fitzroy said for Daddy to
call over to the priest house at St Alphonsus and talk to the pastor if he
still wasn’t sure about it.
‘"Sure doesn’t
look self-inflicted to me," Daddy said, "but if you’re willing
to sign the death certificate on this one, well, I guess I’ve done what I
can." And there never was any autopsy. But Daddy knew what he was talking
about.
"Course he made me
swear I’d never tell a living soul about it. I was real close to Daddy
then, already a big help to him. He knew he could trust me. And I’m
trusting you now, Rita Mae.’
‘Oh, what an awful
thing,’ Rita whispered, ‘to scratch her own eyes out.’ She
prayed Deirdre had never known.
‘Well, you haven’t
heard all of it,’ Jerry said, taking another drink of his bourbon. ‘When
we went to clean her up, we found the emerald necklace on her - the same one
Deirdre wears now - the famous Mayfair emerald. The chain was twisted around
her neck, and the thing was caught in her hair in back. It was covered with
blood and God knows what else was on it. Well, even Daddy was shocked, with all
he’d seen in this world, picking the hair and splinters of bone out of
that thing. He said, "And this is not the first time I’ve had to
clean the blood off this necklace." The time before that, he’d found
it around the neck of Stella Mayfair, Antha’s mother.’
Rita remembered the long-ago
day at St Ro’s, the necklace in Deirdre’s hand. And many years
later, Mr Lonigan showing her Stella’s name on the gravestone.
‘And Stella was the
one shot by her own brother.’
‘Yes, and that was a
terrible thing, to hear Daddy tell it. Stella was the wild one of that
generation. Even before her mother died, she filled that old house with lights,
with parties going on night after night, with the bootleg booze flowing and the
musicians playing. Lord only knows what Miss Carl and Miss Millie and Miss
Belle thought of all that. But when she started bringing her men home, that’s
when Lionel took matters into his own hands and shot her. Jealous of her is
what he was. Right in front of everybody in the parlor, he said, "I’ll
kill you before I let him have you.‘"
‘Now what are you
telling me,’ Rita said. ‘It was brother and sister going to bed
together?’
‘Could have been, honey,’
Jerry said. ‘Could have been. Nobody ever knew the name of Antha’s
father. Could have been Lionel for all anybody knew. They even said… But
Stella didn’t care what anybody thought. They said when she was carrying
Antha, she invited all her lady friends to come up there for a big party. Never
bothered Stella that she had that baby out of wedlock.’
‘Well, that’s
the damnedest thing I ever heard,’ Rita Mae whispered. ‘Especially
in those days, Jerry.’
‘That’s the way
it was, honey. And it wasn’t just from Daddy I heard about some of those
things either. Lionel shot Stella in the head, and everybody in the house went
just plain wild, breaking out the windows to the porches to get out of there.
Regular panic. And don’t you know that little Antha was upstairs, and she
came down during all that commotion, and seen her mother lying there dead on
the living room floor.’
Rita shook her head. What
had Deirdre said on that long-ago afternoon? And they said her mother died
when she was young, too, but they never talk about her.
‘Lionel ended up in a
straitjacket after he shot Stella. Daddy always said the guilt drove him out of
his mind. He kept screaming the devil wouldn’t leave him alone, that his
sister had been a witch and she’d sent the devil after him. Finally died
in a fit, swallowed his own tongue, and no one there to help him. They opened
up the padded cell and there he was, dead, and turning black already. But at
least that time the corpse came all neatly sewn up from the coroner. It was the
scratches on Antha’s face twelve years later that always haunted Daddy.’
‘Poor Dee Dee. She
must have known some of it.’
‘Yeah,’ Jerry
said, ’even a little baby knows things. You know they do! And when Daddy
and I went to get Antha’s body out of that yard, we could hear little
Deirdre just wailing away in there as if she could feel it that her mother was
dead. And nobody picking up that child, nobody comforting her. I tell you, that
little girl was born under a curse. Never had a chance with all the goings on
in that family. That’s why they sent her baby daughter out west, to get
her away from all that, and if I were you, honey, I wouldn’t meddle in it.’
Rita thought of Ellie
Mayfair, so pretty. Probably on a plane right this minute for San Francisco.
‘They say those California
people are rich,’ Jerry said. ‘Deirdre’s nurse told me that.
That girl’s got her own private yacht out there on San Francisco Bay,
tied right up to the front porch of her house on the water. Father’s a
big lawyer out there, a real mean son-of-a-bitch, but he makes plenty. If there’s
a curse on the Mayfairs, that girl got away from it.’
‘Jerry, you don’t
believe in curses,’ Rita said, ’and you know it.’
‘Honey, think about
the emerald necklace just for a minute. Two times Daddy cleaned the blood off
it. And it always sounded to me like Miss Carlotta herself thought there was a curse
on it. First time Daddy cleaned it up - when Stella got shot, you know what
Miss Carlotta wanted Daddy to do? Put the necklace in the coffin with Stella.
Daddy told me that. I know that for a fact. And Daddy refused to do it.’
‘Well, maybe it’s
not real, Jerry.’
‘Hell, Rita Mae, you
could buy a block of downtown Canal Street with that emerald. Daddy had
Hershman from Magazine Street appraise it. I mean here he was with Miss Carlotta
telling him things like "It is my express wish that you put it in the
coffin with my sister." So he calls Hershman, I mean he and Hershman were
always good friends, and Hershman said it was real, all right, the finest
emerald he’d ever laid eyes on. Wouldn’t even know how to put a
price on it. He’d have to take a jewel like that to New York for a real
evaluation. He said it was the same with all the Mayfair jewels. He’d
cleaned them once for Miss Mary Beth before she even passed them on to Stella.
He said jewels like that ended up on display in a museum.’
‘Well, what did Red
say to Miss Carlotta?’
‘Told Miss Carlotta
no, he wasn’t putting any million-dollar emerald in a casket. He cleaned
it all off with rubbing alcohol and got a velvet case for it from Hershman and
then he took it over to her. Same as we did together years later when Antha
fell from the window. Miss Carl didn’t ask us to bury it that time. And
she didn’t demand to have the funeral in the parlor neither.’
‘In the parlor!’
‘Well, that’s
where Stella was laid out, Rita Mae, right there in that house. They always did
that in the old days. Old Julien Mayfair was buried from the parlor and so was
Miss Mary Beth and that was 1925. And that’s the way that Stella had said
it was to be done. She’d left that word in her will, and so they did it.
But with Antha nothing like that happened. We brought that necklace back, Daddy
and me together. I came in with Daddy and there Miss Carl was in that double
parlor with no lights on and it being so dark in there with the porches and the
trees and all, and there she was just sitting there, rocking little Deirdre in
the cradle beside her. I went in with Daddy and he put the necklace in her
hand. And you know what she did? She said, "Thank you, Red Lonigan."
And she turned and put that jewel case in the cradle with the baby.’
‘But why did she do
that?’
"Cause it was Deirdre’s,
that’s why. Miss Carl never had no right to any of those jewels. Miss
Mary Beth left them to Stella, and Stella named Antha to get them, and Antha’s
only daughter was Deirdre. It’s always been that way, they all pass to
one daughter.’
‘Well, what if the
necklace is cursed,’ Rita said. Lord, to think of it around Deirdre’s
neck and Deirdre the way she was now. Oh, Rita could hardly stand to think of
it.
‘Well, if it’s
cursed, maybe the house is too,’ Jerry said, ’because the jewels go
with the house, and lots of other money.’
‘You mean to tell me,
Jerry Lonigan, that house belongs to Deirdre?’
‘Rita, everybody knows
that. How come you don’t know that?’
‘You’re telling
me that house is hers, and those women lived in it all those years when she was
locked up and then they brought her home like that, and she sits there and -’
‘Now, don’t get
hysterical, Rita Mae. But that’s what I’m telling you. It’s
Deirdre’s, same as it was Antha’s and Stella’s. And it will
pass to that California daughter when Deirdre dies, unless somebody managed to
change all those old papers and I don’t think you can change a thing like
that. It goes way back, the will — back to times when they had the
plantation, and times before that, when they were in the islands, you know, in
Haiti, before they ever came here. A legacy is what they call it. And I
remember Hershman used to say that Miss Carl started law school when she was a
girl just to learn how to crack the legacy. But she never could. Even before
Miss Mary Beth died, everybody knew Stella was the heiress.’
‘But what if that
California girl doesn’t know about it?’
‘It’s the law,
honey. And Miss Carlotta, no matter whatever else she is, is a good lawyer.
Besides, it’s tied with the name, Mayfair. You have to go by the name or
you can’t inherit anything from the legacy. And that girl goes by the
name of Mayfair. I heard that when she was born. So does her adopted mother, Ellie
Mayfair, the one that came today and signed the register. They know. People
always know when they’re coming into money. And besides, the other
Mayfairs would tell her. Ryan Mayfair would tell her. He’s Cortland’s
grandson and Cortland loved Deirdre; he really did. He was real old by the time
Deirdre had to give up the baby, and the way I heard it, he was against it all
the way, lot of good it did. I heard he really took on Miss Carlotta about that
baby, said it would drive Deirdre crazy to give it up, and Miss Carlotta said
Deirdre was already crazy. A lot of good it did.’
Jerry finished his bourbon.
He poured another glass.
‘But Jerry, what if
there are other things that Deirdre’s daughter doesn’t know?’
Rita asked. ‘Why didn’t she come down here today? Why didn’t
she want to see her mother?’
Rita Mae, they’re going to take my baby!
Jerry didn’t answer.
His eyes were bloodshot. He was over the hill with the bourbon.
‘Daddy knew a lot more
about those people,’ he said, his words slurred now. ‘More than he
ever told me. One thing Daddy did say, though, that they were right to take
Deirdre’s baby away from her and give it to Ellie Mayfair, for the baby’s
sake. And Daddy told me something else too. Daddy told me Ellie Mayfair couldn’t
have babies of her own, and her husband was real disappointed over that, and about to leave
Tier when Miss Carl rang Kerr up long distance and asked if they wanted to have
Deirdre’s baby. "Don’t tell Rita Mae all that," Daddy
said, "but for everybody it was a blessing. And old Mr Cortland, God rest
his soul, he was wrong."’
Rita Mae knew what she was
going to do. She had never lied to Jerry Lonigan in her life. She just didn’t
tell him. The next afternoon, she called the Monteleone Hotel. The Englishman
had just checked out! But they thought he might still be in the lobby.
Rita Mae’s heart was
pounding as she waited.
‘This is Aaron Lightner. Yes, Mrs
Lonigan. Please take a taxi down and I shall pay the fare. I’ll be
waiting.’
It made her so nervous she
was stumbling over her words, forgetting things as she rushed out of the house
and having to go back for them. But she was glad she was doing this! Even if
Jerry had caught her then, she would have gone on with it.
The Englishman took her
round the corner to the Desire Oyster Bar, a pretty place with ceiling fans and
big mirrors and doors open along Bourbon Street. It seemed exotic to Rita the
way the Quarter always had. She almost never got to go down there.
They sat at a marble top
table, and she had a glass of white wine because that’s what the
Englishman had and it sounded very nice to her. What a good-looking man he was.
With a man like that it didn’t matter about his age, he was handsomer
than younger men. It made her slightly nervous to sit so close to him. And the
way his eyes fixed her, it made her melt as if she was a kid again in high
school.
‘Talk to me, Mrs
Lonigan,’ he said. ‘I’ll listen.’
She tried to take it slow,
but once she started it just came pouring out of her. Soon she was crying, and
he probably couldn’t understand a word she was saying. She gave him that
old, twisted little bit of card. She told about the ads she’d run, and
how she’d told Deirdre that she could never find him.
Then came the difficult
part. ‘There are things that girl in California doesn’t know! That property’? This,
and maybe the lawyers
will tell her that, but what about the curse, Mr Ligktner? I’m putting my
trust in you, I’m telling you things my husband doesn’t want me to
tell a living soul. But if Deirdre put her trust in you back then, well, that’s
enough for me. I’m telling you, the jewels and the house are cursed.’
Finally, she told him
everything. She told him all that Jerry had told her. She told him all that Red
had ever said. She told him anything and everything she could remember.
And the funny thing was that
he was never surprised or shocked. And over and over again, he assured her that
he would do his best to get this information to the girl in California.
When it was all said, and
she sat there wiping her nose, her white wine untouched, the man asked her if
she would keep his card, if she would call him when there was any ’change’
with Deirdre. If she could not reach him she was to leave a message. The people
who answered the phone would understand. She need only say it was in connection
with Deirdre May-fair.
She took her prayer book out
of her purse. ‘Give me those numbers again,’ she said, and she
wrote down the words, ‘In connection with Deirdre Mayfair.’
Only after she had written
it all out, did she think to ask, ‘But tell me, Mr Lightner, how did you
come to know Deirdre?’
‘It’s a long
story, Mrs Lonigan,’ he said. ‘You might say I’ve been
watching that family for years. I have two paintings done by Deirdre’s
father, Sean Lacy. One of them is of Antha. He was the one who was killed on
the highway in New York before Deirdre was born.’
‘He was killed on the
highway? I never knew.’
‘It’s doubtful
anyone down here ever did,’ he said. ‘Quite a painter he was. He
did a beautiful portrait of Antha with the famous emerald necklace. I came by
it through a New York dealer some years after both of them were dead. Deirdre
was probably ten years old by that time. I didn’t meet her until she went
off to college.’
‘That’s a funny
thing, about Deirdre’s father going off the road,’ she said. ‘It’s
just what happened to Deirdre’s boyfriend too, the man she was going to
marry. Did you know that? That he went off the river road when he was driving
down to New Orleans?’
She thought she saw a little
change in the Englishman’s face then, but she couldn’t be sure.
Seemed his eyes got smaller for just a second.
‘Yes, I did know,’
he said. He seemed to be thinking about things he didn’t want to tell
her. Then he started talking again. ‘Mrs Lonigan, will you promise me
something?’
‘What is it, Mr
Lightner?’
‘If something should
happen, something wholly unexpected, and the daughter from California should
come home, please don’t try to talk to her. Call me instead. Call me any
time day or night, and I promise I shall be here as soon as I can get a plane
out of London.’
‘You mean I shouldn’t
tell her these things myself, that’s what you’re saying?’
‘Yes,’ he
answered, very serious-like, touching her hand for the first time but in a very
gentlemanly way that was completely proper. ‘Don’t go to that house
again, especially not if the daughter is there. I promise you that if I cannot
come myself, someone else will come, someone else who will accomplish what we
want done, someone quite familiar with the whole story.’
‘Oh, that would be a
big load off my mind,’ Rita said. She sure didn’t want to talk to
that girl, a total stranger, and try to tell her all these things. But suddenly
the whole thing began to puzzle her. For the first time she started wondering -
who was this nice man? Was she wrong to trust him?
‘You can trust me, Mrs
Lonigan,’ he said, just as if he knew what she was thinking. ‘Please
be certain of it. And I’ve met Deirdre’s daughter, and I know that
she is a rather quiet and -well, shall we say - forbidding individual. Not an
easy person to talk to, if you understand. But I think I can explain things to
her.’
Well, now, that made perfect
sense.
‘Sure, Mr Lightner.’
He was looking at her. Maybe
he knew how confused she was, how strange the whole afternoon seemed, all this
talk of curses and things, and dead people and that weird old necklace.
‘Yes, they are very
strange,’ he said.
Rita laughed. ‘It was
like you read my mind,’ she said.
‘Don’t worry
anymore,’ he said. ‘I’ll see that Rowan Mayfair knows her
mother didn’t want to give her up; I’ll see she knows all that you
want her to know. I owe that much to Deirdre, don’t you think? I wish I’d
been there when she needed me.’
Well, that was plenty enough
for Rita.
Every Sunday after that,
when Rita was at Mass, she flipped to the back of her prayer book and looked at
the phone number for the man in London. She read those words ‘In
connection with Deirdre Mayfair.’ Then she said a prayer for Deirdre, and
it didn’t seem wrong that it was the prayer for the dead, it seemed to be
the right one for the occasion.
‘May perpetual light
shine upon her, O Lord, and may she rest in peace, Amen.’
And now it was over twelve
years since Deirdre had taken her place on the porch, over a year since the
Englishman had come and gone - and they were talking of putting Deirdre away
again. It was her house that was tumbling down all around her in that sad
overgrown garden and they were going to lock her away again.
Maybe Rita should call that
man. Maybe she should tell him. She just didn’t know.
‘It’s the wise
thing, them putting her away,’ Jerry said, ’before Miss Carl is too
far gone to make the decision. And the fact is, well, I hate to say it, honey.
But Deirdre’s going down fast. They say she’s dying.’
Dying.
She waited till Jerry had
gone to work. Then she made the call. She knew it would show on the bill, and
she probably would have to say something eventually to Jerry. But it didn’t
matter. What mattered now was getting the operator to understand that she had
to call a number all the way across the ocean.
It was a nice woman who
answered over there, and they did reverse the charges just as the Englishman
had promised. At first Rita couldn’t understand everything the woman said
— she spoke so fast — but then it came out that Mr Lightner was in
the United States. He was out in San Francisco. The woman would call him right
away. Would Rita care to leave her number?
‘Oh, no. I don’t
want him to call here,’ she said. ‘You just tell him this for me. It’s
real important. That Rita Mae Lonigan called "in connection with Deirdre
Mayfair." Can you write that down? Tell him that Deirdre Mayfair is very
sick; that Deirdre Mayfair is going down fast. That maybe Deirdre Mayfair is
dying.’
It took the breath out of
Rita to say that last word. She couldn’t say any more after that. She
tried to answer clearly when the woman repeated the message. The woman would call
Mr Lightner right away at the St Francis Hotel in San Francisco. Rita was in
tears when she put down the phone.
That night she dreamed of
Deirdre, but she could remember nothing when she woke up, except that Deirdre
was there, and it was twilight, and the wind was blowing in the trees behind St
Rose de Lima’s. When she opened her eyes, she thought of wind blowing
through trees. She heard Jerry tell of how it had been when they went to get
the body of Antha. She remembered the storm in the trees that horrible day when
she and Miss Carl had fought for the little card that said Talamasca. Wind in
the trees in the garden behind St Rose de Lima’s.
Rita got up and went to
early Mass. She went to the shrine of the Blessed Virgin and lighted a candle.
Please let Mr Lightner come, she prayed. Please let him talk to Deirdre’s
daughter.
And she realized as she
prayed that it was not the inheritance that worried her, or the curse upon that
beautiful emerald necklace. For Rita did not believe Miss Carl had it in her to
break the law, no matter how mean Miss Carl was; and Rita did not believe that
curses really existed.
What she believed in was the
love she felt in her heart of hearts for Deirdre Mayfair.
And she believed a child had
a right to know that her mother had once been the sweetest and kindest of
creatures, a girl that everybody loved - a beautiful girl in the spring of 1957
when a handsome, elegant man in a twilight garden had called her My beloved.
SIX
HE STOOD IN THE SHOWER ten
full minutes. But he was still drunk as hell. Then he cut himself twice with
the razor. Nothing major, just a clear indication that he had to play it very
careful with this lady who was coming here, this doctor, this mysterious
someone who’d pulled him out of the sea.
Aunt Viv helped him with the
shirt. He took another quick swallow of the coffee. Tasted awful to him, though
it was good coffee, he’d brewed it himself. A beer was what he wanted.
Not to have a beer right now was like not breathing. But it was just too great
a risk.
‘But what are you
going to do in New Orleans?’ Aunt Viv asked plaintively. Her small blue
eyes looked watery, sore. She straightened the lapels of his khaki jacket with
her thin, gnarled hands. ‘Are you sure you don’t need a heavier
coat?’
‘Aunt Viv, it’s
New Orleans in August.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘Don’t worry
about me,’ he said. ‘I’m doing great.’
‘Michael, I don’t
understand why…’
‘Aunt Viv, I am going
to call you when I get there, I swear. And you’ve got the number of the
Pontchartrain if you want to call and leave a message before that.’
He had asked for that very
suite she had had years ago, when he’d been an eleven-year-old boy and he
and his mother had gone to see her - that big suite over St Charles Avenue with
the baby grand piano in it. Yes, they knew the suite he wanted. And yes, he
could have it. And yes, the baby grand piano was still there.
Then the airline had
confirmed him in first class, with an aisle seat, at six a.m. No problem. Just
one thing after another falling into place.
And all of it thanks to Dr
Morris, and this mysterious Dr Mayfair, who was on her way now.
He’d been furious when
he first heard she was a doctor. ‘So that’s why the secrecy,’
he’d said to Morris. ‘We don’t disturb other doctors, do we?
We don’t give out their home numbers. You know this ought to be a matter
of public record, I ought to-’
But Morris had silenced him
quickly enough.
‘Michael, the lady is
driving over to pick you up. She knows you’re drunk and she knows you’re
crazy. Yet she is taking you home with her to Tiburon, and she’s going to
let you crawl around on her boat.’
‘All right,’ he’d
said. ‘I’m grateful, you know I am.’
‘Then get out of bed,
take a shower and shave.’
Done! And now nothing was
going to stop him from making this journey, that’s why he was leaving the
lady’s house in Tiburon and going straight to the airport where he’d
doze in a plastic chair, if he had to, till the plane for New Orleans left.
‘But Michael, what is
the reason for all this?’ Aunt Viv persisted. ‘That is what I
simply cannot understand.’ She seemed to float against the light from the
hallway, a tiny woman in sagging blue silk, her gray hair nothing but wisps now
in spite of the neat curls and the pins in it, insubstantial as that spun glass
they would put on the Christmas trees in the old days, what they had called
angel hair.
‘I won’t stay
long, I promise,’ he said tenderly. But a sense of foreboding caught him
suddenly. He had the distinct awareness - that free-floating telepathy - that
he was never going to live in this house again. No, couldn’t be accurate.
Just the alcohol simmering inside him, making him crazy, and months of pure
isolation - why, that was enough to drive anyone insane. He kissed her on her
soft cheek.
‘I have to check my
suitcase,’ he said. He took another swallow of coffee. He was getting
better. He polished his hornrimmed glasses carefully, put them back on, and
checked for the extra pair in his jacket pocket.
‘I packed everything,’
Aunt Viv said, with a little shake of her head. She stood beside him over the
open suitcase, one gnarled finger pointing to the neatly folded garments. ‘Your
lightweight suits, both of them, your shaving kit. It’s all there. Oh,
and your raincoat. Don’t forget your raincoat, Michael. It’s always
raining in New Orleans.’
‘Got it, Aunt Viv, don’t
worry.’ He closed the suitcase and snapped the locks. Didn’t bother
to tell her the raincoat had been ruined because he drowned in it. The famous
Burberry had been made for the wartime trenches, perhaps, but not for drowning.
Wool lining a total loss.
He ran his comb through his
hair, hating the feel of his gloves. He didn’t look drunk, unless of
course he was too drunk to see it. He looked at the coffee. Drink the rest of
it, you idiot. This woman is making a house call just to humor a crackpot. The
least you can do is not fall down your own front steps.
‘Was that the doorbell?’
He picked up the suitcase. Yes, ready, quite ready to leave here.
And then that foreboding again.
What was it, a premonition? He looked at the room - the striped wallpaper, the
gleaming woodwork that he had so patiently stripped and then painted, the small
fireplace in which he had laid the Spanish tiles himself. He was never going to
enjoy any of it again. He would never again lie in that brass bed. Or look out
through the pongee curtains on the distant phantom lights of downtown.
He felt a leaden sadness, as
if he were in mourning. In fact, it was the very same sadness he had felt after
the deaths of those he loved.
Aunt Viv hurried down the
hallway, ankles painfully swollen, hand wandering, then catching the button of
the intercom and holding it fast.
‘May I help you,
please.’
‘This is Dr Rowan
Mayfair. I’m here to see Michael Curry?’
God, it was happening. He
was rising from the dead again. ‘I’ll be right there,’ he
said.
‘Don’t come all
the way down with me, Aunt Viv.’ Once again he kissed her. If only he
could shake this foreboding. What would become of her if something happened to
him? ‘I’ll be back soon, I promise you.’ Impulsively he held
her tight to him for a long moment before letting her go.
Then he was rushing down the
two flights, whistling a little, so good it felt to be moving, to be on his
way. He almost opened the door without checking for reporters; then he stopped
and peered through a small round faceted crystal set in the middle of the
rectangle of stained glass.
A tall gazelle of a woman
stood at the foot of the stairway, her profile to him, as she looked off down
the street. She had long blue-jean legs and wavy blond pageboy hair blowing
softly against the hollow of her cheek.
Young and fresh she looked,
and effortlessly seductive in a tightly fitted and tapering navy blue peacoat,
the collar of her cable-knit sweater rolled at the neck.
Nobody had to tell him she
was Dr Mayfair. And a sudden warmth rose in his loins and coursed through him,
causing his face to burn. He would have found her alluring and interesting to
look at, no matter where or when he saw her. But to know she was the one
overpowered him. He was thankful she wasn’t looking up at the door and
would not see his shadow perhaps against the glass.
This is the woman who
brought me back, he thought, quite literally, vaguely thrilled by the warmth
building, by the raw feeling of submissiveness mingling in him with an almost
brutal desire to touch, to know, perhaps to possess. The mechanics of the
rescue had been described to him numerous times — mouth-to-mouth,
alternating with heart massage. He thought of her hands on him now, of her
mouth on his mouth. It seemed brutal suddenly that after such intimacy they had
been separated for so long. He felt resentment again. But that didn’t
matter now.
Even in her profile he could
see dimly the face he remembered, a face of taut skin and subtle prettiness,
with deep-set, faintly luminous gray eyes. And how beguiling her posture
seemed, so frankly casual and downright masculine — the way she leaned on
the banister, with one foot on the bottom step.
The feeling of helplessness
in him grew oddly and surprisingly sharper, and just as strong came the
inevitable drive to conquer. No time to analyze it, and frankly he didn’t
want to. He knew that he was happy suddenly, happy for the first time since the
accident.
The searing wind of the sea
came back to him, the lights flashing in his face. Coast Guard men coming down
the ladder like angels from fog heaven. No,
don’t let them take me!
And her voice next to him. ‘You’re going to be all right.’
Yes, go out. Talk to her.
This is the closest you’ll ever get to that moment; this is your chance.
And how delicious to be so physically drawn to her, so laid bare by her
presence. It was as if an invisible hand were unzipping his pants.
Quickly he glanced up and
down the street. No one about but a lone man in a doorway - the man in fact at
whom Dr Mayfair was staring rather fixedly - and surely that could not possibly
be a reporter, not that white-haired old fellow in the three-piece tweed,
gripping his umbrella as if it were a walking stick.
Yet it was odd the way Dr
Mayfair continued to stare at the man, and the way that the man was staring
back at her. Both figures were motionless, as if this were perfectly normal
when of course it was not.
Something Aunt Viv had said
hours ago came back to Michael, something about an Englishman come all the way
from London to see him. And that man certainly looked like an Englishman, a
very unfortunate one who had made a long journey in vain.
Michael turned the knob. The
Englishman made no move to pounce, though he stared at Michael now as intently
as ever he’d stared at Dr Mayfair. Michael stepped out and shut the door.
Then he forgot all about the
Englishman. Because Dr May-fair turned and a lovely smile illuminated her face.
In a flash he recognized the beautifully drawn ash-blond eyebrows and the thick
dark lashes that made her eyes seem all the more brilliantly gray.
‘Mr Curry,’ she
said, in a deep, husky, and perfectly gorgeous voice. ‘So we meet again.’
She stretched out her long right hand to greet him as he came down the steps
towards her. And it seemed perfectly natural the way that she scanned him from
head to toe.
‘Dr Mayfair, thank you
for coming,’ he said, squeezing her hand, then letting it go instantly,
ashamed of his gloves. ‘You’ve resuscitated me again. I was dying
up there in that room.’
‘I know,’ she
said. ‘And you brought this suitcase because we’re going to fall in
love and you’re going to live with me from now on?’
He laughed. The huskiness of
her voice was a trait he adored in women, all too rare, and always magical. And
he did not remember that little aspect of it from the deck of the boat.
‘Oh, no, I’m
sorry, Dr Mayfair,’ he said. ‘I mean I… but I have to get to
the airport afterwards. I have to make a six a.m. plane to New Orleans. I have
to do that. I figured I’d take a cab from there, I mean wherever we’re
going and, because if I come back here -’
And there it was again; never
live in this house again. He looked up at the high bay windows, at the
gingerbread mill-work, so carefully restored. It didn’t seem to be his
house now, this narrow, forlorn structure, its windows full of the dull gleam
of the colorless night.
He felt vague for a moment
as though he were losing the thread of things. ‘I’m sorry,’
he whispered. He had lost the thread. He could have sworn he was in
New Orleans just now. He was dizzy. He had been in the midst of something, and
there had been a great lovely intensity. And now there was only the dampness
here, the thick overhanging sky, and the strong knowledge that all the years of
waiting were finished, that something for which he’d been prepared was
about to begin.
He realized he was looking
at Dr Mayfair. She was almost as tall as he was, and she was gazing at him
steadily, in a wholly unself-conscious way. She was looking at him as if she
enjoyed it, found him handsome or interesting, or maybe even both. He smiled,
because he liked looking at her too, suddenly, and he was so glad, more glad
than he dared tell her, that she had come.
She took his arm.
‘Come on, Mr Curry,’
she said. She turned long enough to throw a slow and slightly hard glance at
the distant Englishman, and then she tugged Michael after her uphill to the
door of a dark green Jaguar sedan. She unlocked the door, and taking the
suitcase from Michael before he could think to stop her, she heaved it in the
backseat.
‘Get in,’ she
said. Then she shut the door.
Caramel leather. Beautiful
old-fashioned wooden dashboard. He glanced over his shoulder. The Englishman
was still watching.
‘That’s strange,’
he said.
She had the key in the
ignition before her door was closed.
‘What’s strange?
You know him?’
‘No, but I think he
came here to see me… I think he’s an Englishman… and he never
even moved when I came out.’
This startled her. She
looked puzzled, but it didn’t stop her from lurching out of the parking
place and into a near impossible U-turn, before she drove past the Englishman
with another pointed glance.
Again, Michael felt the
passion stirring. There was a tremendous habitual forcefulness in the way she
drove. He liked the sight of her long hands on the gear shift and the little
leather-clad wheel. The double-breasted coat hugged her tightly and a deep bang
of yellow hair had fallen over her right eye.
‘I could swear I’ve
seen that man before,’ she said half under her breath.
He laughed, not at what she’d
just said but at the way she was driving as she made a lightning-speed right
turn and plummeted down Castro Street through the blowing fog.
It felt like a
roller-coaster ride to him. He buckled up his seat belt because he was going to
go through the windshield if he didn’t and then realized as she roared
through the first stop sign that he was getting sick.
‘Are you sure you want
to go to New Orleans, Mr Curry?’ she asked. ‘You don’t look
like you feel up to it. What time is your plane?’
‘I have to go to New
Orleans,’ he said. ‘I have to go home. I’m sorry, I know I don’t
make sense. You know it’s just these feelings, they come at random. They
take possession. I thought it was all the hands, but it isn’t. You heard
about my hands, Dr Mayfair? I’m wrecked, I tell you, absolutely wrecked.
Look, I want you to do something for me. There’s a liquor store up here,
on the left, just past Eighteenth Street, would you please stop?’
‘Mr Curry
‘Dr Mayfair, I’m
going to get sick all over your gorgeous car.’
She pulled in across from
the liquor store. Castro Street was swarming with the usual Friday night
crowds, rather cheerful with so many lighted barroom doorways open to the mist.
‘You are sick, aren’t
you?’ she asked. She laid her hand on his shoulder, heavily and quietly.
Did she feel the raw ripple of sensation passing through him? ‘If you’re
drunk they won’t let you on the plane.’
‘Tall cans,’ he
said, ‘Miller’s. One six-pack. I’ll space it out. Please?’
‘And I’m
supposed to go in there and get this poison for you?’ She laughed, but it
was gentle, not mean. Her deep voice had a nappy velvet feel to it. And her
eyes were large and perfectly gray now in the neon light, just like the water
out there.
But he was about to die.
‘No, of course you’re
not going to go in there,’ he said, ‘I am. I don’t know what I’m
thinking.’ He looked at his leather gloves. ‘I’ve been hiding
from people, my Aunt Viv’s been doing things for me. I’m sorry.’
‘Miller’s, six
tall cans,’ she said, opening her door.
‘Well, twelve.’
‘Twelve?’
‘Dr Mayfair, it’s
only eleven thirty, the plane doesn’t leave till six.’ He fished in
his pocket for his money clip.
She waved that away and
strode across the street, dodging a taxi gracefully and then disappearing into
the store.
God, the nerve of me to ask
her to do this, he thought, defeated. We’re off to a dreadful beginning,
but that wasn’t entirely true. She was being too nice to him, he hadn’t
destroyed it all yet. And he could taste the beer already. And his stomach wasn’t
going to quiet down for anything else.
The thudding music from the
nearby barrooms sounded too loud suddenly, and the colors of the street too
vivid. The young passersby seemed to come much too close to the car. And this
is what you get for three and half months of isolation, he was thinking. You’re
like a guy out of a jail cell.
Why, he didn’t even
know what today was, except it was Friday because his plane was Saturday, six
a.m. He wondered if he could smoke in this car.
As soon as she put the sack
in his lap, he opened it.
‘That’s a
fifty-dollar ticket, Mr Curry,’ she said, pulling out. ‘Having an
open can of beer in a car.’
‘Yeah, well, if you
get one, I’ll pay it.’ He must have drunk half the can on the first
swallow. And now for a moment, he was all right.
She crossed the broad
six-way intersection at Market, made an illegal left turn on Seventeenth
Street, and zoomed uphill.
‘And the beer blunts
things, is that it?’ she asked.
‘No, nothing blunts it,’
he said. ‘It’s coming at me from everywhere.’
‘Is it coming at you
from me?’
‘Well, no. But I want
to be with you, you see.’ He took another drink, hand out to brace
himself against the dash as she made the downhill turn towards the Haight. ‘I’m
not a complainer by nature, Dr Mayfair,’ he said. ‘It’s just
that since the accident I’ve been living my life without any protective
skin on me. I can’t concentrate. I can’t even read or sleep.’
‘I understand, Mr
Curry. When I get you home, you can go on the boat, do what you want. But I’d
really like it if you’d let me fix you some food.’
‘It won’t do any
good, Dr Mayfair. Let me ask you something, how dead was I when you picked me
up?’
‘Completely clinically
dead, Mr Curry. No detectable vital signs. Without intervention, irreversible
biological death would have soon set in. You didn’t get my letter, did
you?’
‘You wrote me a letter?’
‘I should have come to
the hospital,’ she said.
She drove the car like a
race driver, he thought, playing out each gear until the engine was screaming
before she shifted to the next.
‘But I didn’t
say anything to you, you told that to Dr Morris…"
‘You said a name, a
word, something, you just murmured it. I couldn’t hear syllables. I heard
an L sound -’
- An L sound… A great
hush drowned out the rest of her words. He was falling. He knew on the one hand
that he was in the car, that she was speaking to him, and that they had crossed
Lincoln Avenue and were burrowing through Golden Gate Park towards Park
Presidio Drive, but he wasn’t really there. He was on the edge of a dream
space where the word beginning with L meant something crucial, and something
extremely complex and familiar. A throng of beings surrounded him, pressing
close to him and ready to speak. The doorway…
He shook his head. Focus.
But it was already disintegrating. He felt panic.
When she braked for the stop
light at Geary Street, he was flung back against the leather seat.
‘You don’t
operate on people’s brains the way you drive this car, do you?’ he
asked. His face was hot all over.
‘Yes, as a matter of
fact, I do,’ she said. She started out from the light a little more
slowly.
‘I’m sorry,’
he said again. ‘I seem full of apologies, I’ve been apologizing to
people since it happened. There’s nothing wrong with your driving. It’s
me. I used to be… ordinary before that accident. I mean, just one of
those happy people, you know…’
Was she nodding?
She appeared distracted when
he looked at her, drawn into her own thoughts. She slowed as they approached
the toll gate. The fog hung so heavily over the bridge that the traffic seemed
to disappear into it.
‘You want to talk to
me?’ she asked, eyes on the traffic vanishing ahead of them. She pulled a
dollar bill out of her coat and gave it to the tollgate keeper. ‘You want
to tell me what’s been going on?’
He sighed. That seemed an
impossible task. But the worst aspect of it was, if he started he wouldn’t
stop. ‘The hands, you know, I see things when I touch things, but the
visions…"
‘Tell me about the
visions.’
‘I know what you
think. You’re a neurologist. You’re thinking it’s temporal
lobe difficulty, some crap like that.’
‘No, that’s not
what I think,’ she said.
She was driving faster. The
great ugly shape of a truck appeared ahead, its taillights like beacons. She
fell into place safely behind it, pushing to fifty-five, to keep up.
He downed the rest of the
beer in three quick swallows, shoved the can in the sack, and then took off his
glove. They were off the bridge, and magically the fog had disappeared, as so
often happened. The clear bright sky astonished him. The dark hills rose like
shoulders nudging them as they climbed the Waldo Grade.
He looked down at his hand.
It seemed unappealingly moist and wrinkled. When he rubbed his fingers
together, a sensation passed through him which was vaguely pleasant.
They were cruising now at sixty
miles an hour. He reached for Dr Mayfair’s hand, which rested on the
gear-shift knob, long pale fingers relaxed.
She didn’t move to
resist him. She glanced at him, then back at the traffic ahead as they entered
the tunnel. He lifted her hand off the knob and pressed his thumb into her
naked palm.
A soft whispering sound
enveloped him, and his vision blurred. It was as if her body had disintegrated
and then surrounded him, a whirling cloud of particles. Rowan. He was afraid
for a minute that they were going off the road. But she wasn’t the one
feeling this, he was, he was feeling her moist warm hand, and this throbbing
heartbeat coming through it and this sense of the being at the core of this
great airy presence that had enveloped him and was caressing him all over, like
falling snow. The erotic arousal was so intense that he could do nothing to
curb it.
Then in an obliterating
flash he was in a kitchen, a dazzling modern affair with shining gadgets and
appliances, and a man lay dying on the floor. Argument, screaming; but that was
something that had happened moments before. These intervals of time were
sliding over one another, crashing into each other. There was no up or down; no
right nor left. Michael was in the very middle of it. Rowan, with her stethoscope,
knelt beside the dying man. Hate you. She closed her eyes, pulled the
stethoscope out of her ears. Couldn’t believe her luck that he was dying.
Then everything stopped. The
traffic was slowing. She’d pulled her hand loose from Michael, and
shifted with a hard, efficient motion.
It felt like skating on ice
to him, the way they traveled along, turning right and right again, but it didn’t
matter. It was an illusion that they were in danger, and now the facts came,
the things he always knew about these visions, the things that were simply
there in his mind now, as if they’d always been, like his address, and
his phone number, and the date of his birth.
It had been her adoptive
father, and she had despised him, because she feared she was like him - decisive,
fundamentally unkind and uncaring. And her life had been founded upon not being
like him, but being like her adoptive mother, an easygoing, sentimental
creature with a great sense of style, a woman loved by all and respected by no
one.
‘So what did you see?’
she asked. Her face was wondrously smooth in the wash of the passing lights.
‘Don’t you know?’
he said. ‘God, I wish this power would go away. I wish I had never felt
it. I don’t want to know these things about people.’
‘Tell me what did you
see?’
‘He died on the floor.
You were glad. He didn’t divorce her. She never knew he was planning to
do it. He was six feet two inches tall, born in San Rafael, California, and
this was his car.’ Now where did all that come from? And he could have
gone on; he had known from the very first night that he could go on, if he was
only willing to do it. ‘That’s what I saw. Does it matter to you?
Do you want me to talk about it? Why did you want me to see it, that’s
what I should be asking you. What good is it that I know it was your kitchen,
and that when you got back from the hospital where they took him and coded him
which was plain stupid because he was dead on arrival, that you sat down and
ate the food he’d cooked before he’d died.’
Silence, then:
‘I was hungry,’
she whispered.
He shook himself all over.
He cracked open a fresh beer. The delicious malty aroma filled the car.
‘And now you don’t
like me very much, do you?’ he asked.
She didn’t respond.
She was just staring at the traffic.
He was dazed by the
headlights looming at him. Thank God they were turning off the main highway
onto the narrow road that led into Tiburon.
‘I like you a lot,’
she answered finally. Voice low, purring, husky.
‘I’m glad,’
he said. T was really afraid… I’m just glad. I don’t know why
I said all those things…’
‘I asked you what you
saw,’ she said simply.
He laughed, taking a deep
drink of the beer.
‘We’re almost
home,’ she said. ‘Would you slow down on the beer? It’s a
doctor asking.’
He took another deep drink.
Again the kitchen, the smell of roast in the oven, the open red wine, the two
glasses.
… it seems brutal but there is absolutely no reason for me to subject
myself to her dying, and if you choose to stay around and watch a woman die of
cancer, well, then you have to ask why you want to subject yourself to that
kind of thing, why you love that sort of suffering, what’s wrong
with you that…
Don’t hand me
that crap, not me!
Something more to it, much
more. And all you have to do to see it is to keep thinking about it. Gave you everything you ever wanted,
Rowan. You know you were always the thing holding us together. 1 would have
left a long time ago if it wasn’t for you. Did Ellie ever tell
you that? She lied to me. She said she could have children. She knew it was a
lie. I would have packed it in if it hadn’t been for you.
They made a right turn,
west, he figured, into a dark wooded street that climbed a hill and then
descended. Flash of the great clear dark sky again, full of distant
uninteresting stars, and across the black midnight bay, the great lovely
spectacle of Sausalito tumbling down the hills to its crowded little harbor.
She didn’t have to tell him they were almost there.
‘Let me ask you
something, Dr Mayfair.’
‘Yes?’
‘Are you… are
you afraid of hurting me?’
‘Why do you ask that?’
‘I just got the
strangest idea, that you were trying… just now when I held your
hand… you were trying to throw me a warning.’
She didn’t answer. He
knew he’d shaken her with the statement.
They drove down and onto the
shoreline street. Small lawns, pitched roofs barely visible above high fences,
Monterey cypress trees cruelly twisted by the relentless western winds. An
enclave of millionaire dwellings. He almost never saw such wonderful modern
houses.
He could smell the water
even more keenly than he had on the Golden Gate.
She pulled into a paved
drive, and killed the motor. The lights flooded a great double redwood gate.
Then went out. Of the house beyond, he could see nothing but darkness against a
paler sky.
‘I want something from
you,’ she said. She sat there quietly staring forward. Her hair swung
down to veil her profile as she bowed her head.
‘Well, I owe you one,’
he answered without hesitation. He took another deep foamy drink of the beer. ‘What
do you want?’ he asked. ‘That I go in there and I lay my hands on
the kitchen floor and tell you what happened when he died, what actually killed
him?’
Another jolt. Silence in the
dark cockpit of the car. He found himself sharply aware of her nearness, of the
sweet clean fragrance of her skin. She turned to face him. The street lamp
threw its light in yellow patches through the branches of the tree. First he
thought her eyes were lowered, almost closed. Then he realized they were open
and looking at him.
‘Yes, that’s
what I want,’ she said. ‘That is the sort of thing I want.’
‘That’s fine,’
he answered. ‘Bad luck for it to happen during an argument like that. You
must have blamed yourself.’
Her knee grazed his. Chills
again.
‘What makes you think
so?’
‘You can’t bear
the thought of hurting anyone,’ he said.
‘That’s naive.’
‘I may be crazy, Doctor’
- he laughed - ’but naive I ain’t. The Currys never raised any
naive children.’ He drank the rest of the can of beer in a long swallow.
He found himself staring at the pale line of the light on her chin, her soft
curling hair. Her lower lip looked full and soft and delicious to kiss…
Then it’s something
else,’ she said. ‘Call it innocence if you like.’
He scoffed at that without
answering. If only she knew what was in his mind just now as he looked at her
mouth, her sweet full mouth.
‘And the answer to
that question is yes,’ she said. She got out of the car.
He opened the door and stood
up. ‘What the hell question is that?’ he asked. He blushed.
She pulled his suitcase out
of the back. ‘Oh, you know,’ she said.
‘I do not!’
She shrugged as she started
towards the gate. ‘You wanted to know if I would go to bed with you. The
answer’s yes, as I just told you.’
He caught up with her as she
went through the gate. A broad cement path led to the black teakwood double
doors.
‘Well, I wonder why
the hell we even bother to talk,’ he said. He took the suitcase from her
as she fumbled for the key.
She looked a little confused
again. She gestured for him to go inside. As she took the sack of beer from
him, he scarcely noticed.
The house was infinitely
more beautiful than he had imagined. Countless old houses he’d known and
explored. But this sort of house, this carefully crafted modern masterpiece,
was something unfamiliar to him.
What he saw now was a great
expanse of broad plank floor, flowing from dining room to living room to game
room without division. Glass walls opened on a broad apron of wooden decking to
the south and to the west and to the north, a deep roofless porch softly
illuminated from above by an occasional dim floodlamp. Beyond, the bay was
simply black and invisible. And the small twinkling lights of Sausalito to the
west were delicate and intimate compared to the distant splendid southern view
of the crowded and violently colored skyline of San Francisco.
The fog was only a thin
slash of mist now against the brilliance of the night, thinning and vanishing
even as he gazed at it.
He might have looked at the
view forever, but the house struck him as similarly miraculous. Letting out a
long sigh, he ran his hand along the tongue and groove wall, admiring the same
fine inlay of lofty ceiling beyond its heavy beams which rose steeply to a
central point. All wood, beautifully grained wood, pegged and fitted and
polished and preserved exquisitely. Wood framed the massive glass doors. Wood
furnishings stood here and there, with dim flashes of glass or leather, chair
and table legs reflected in the sheen of the floor.
In the eastern corner of the
house stood the kitchen he had seen in the early flashing vision — a
large alcove of dark wooden cabinets and countertops, and shining copper pots
strung from overhead hooks. A kitchen to be looked at as well as worked in.
Only a deep stone fireplace, with a high broad hearth - the kind of hearth you
could sit on - separated this kitchen from the other rooms.
‘I didn’t think
you’d like it,’ she said.
‘Oh, but it’s
wonderful.’ He sighed. ‘It’s made like a ship. I’ve
never seen a new house so finely made.’
‘Can you feel it
moving? It’s made to move, with the water.’
He walked slowly across the
thick carpet of the living room. And only then saw a curving iron stairs behind
the fireplace. A soft amber light fell from an open doorway above. He thought
of bedrooms at once, of rooms as open as these, of lying in the dark with her
and the glimmer of city lights. His face grew hot again.
He glanced at her. Had she
caught this thought, the way she claimed to have caught his earlier question?
Hell, any woman could have picked up on that.
She stood in the kitchen
before an open refrigerator door, and for the first time in the clear white
light he really saw her face. Her skin had almost an Asian smoothness, only it
was too purely blond to be Asian. The skin was so tight that it made two
dimples in her cheeks now when she smiled at him.
He moved towards her, keenly
aware of her physical presence again, of the way the light was glancing off her
hands, and the glamorous way her hair moved. When women wear their hair that
way, so full and short, just sweeping the collar as it sways, it becomes a
vital part of every gesture, he figured. You think of them and you think of
their pretty hair.
But as she shut the
refrigerator door, as the clear white light went out, he realized that through
the northern glass wall of the house, far to his left and very near the front
door, he could see a mammoth white cabin cruiser at anchor. A weak flood’
lamp illuminated its immense prow, its numerous portholes, and the dark windows
of its wheelhouse.
It seemed monstrously large,
an altogether impossible thing — like a whale beached on the site —
grotesquely close to the soft furnishings and scattered rugs that surrounded
him. A near panic rose in him. A curious dread, as though he had known a terror
on the night of his rescue that was part of what he’d forgotten.
Nothing to do but go to it.
Nothing to do but lay his hands on the deck. He found himself moving towards
the glass doors; then he stopped, confused, and watched as she pulled back the
latch and slid the heavy glass door open.
A gust of cold salty wind
struck him. He heard the creaking of the huge boat; and the weak lunar light of
the flood seemed grim and distinctly unpleasant to him. Seaworthy, they had
said. He could believe it when he looked at this craft. Explorers had crossed
the oceans of the world in boats much smaller than that. Again, it appeared
grotesque to him, frighteningly out of scale.
He stepped out on the pier,
his collar blowing against his cheek, and moved towards the edge. The water was
perfectly black down below, and he could smell it, smell the dank odor of
inevitable dead things of the sea.
Far across the bay he could
just glimpse the Sausalito lights, but the penetrating cold came between him
and anything picturesque just now, and he realized that all he so hated in this
western clime was coalesced in this moment. Never the rugged winter, nor the
burning summer; only this eternal chill, this eternal inhospitable harshness.
He was so glad that he would
soon be home, so glad that the August heat would be there waiting for him, like
a warm blanket. Garden District streets, trees swaying in a warm and
inoffensive wind
But this was the boat, and
this was the moment. Now to get on this thing with its portholes and its
slippery-looking decks, rocking gently now against the black rubber tires
nailed to the long side of the pier. He didn’t like it very much, that
was for certain. And he was damned glad he had on his gloves.
His life on boats had been
limited exclusively to large ones -old river ferries in his boyhood, and the
big powerful tourist cruisers that carried hundreds back and forth across San
Francisco Bay. When he looked at a boat like this all he thought about was the
possibility of falling off.
He moved down the side of
the thing until he had reached the back, behind the big hulking wheelhouse, and
then he grabbed hold of the railing, leapt up on the side - startled for an
instant by the fact that the boat dipped under his weight -and swung himself
over as fast as possible onto the back deck.
She came right behind him.
He hated this, the ground
moving under him! Christ, how could people stand boats! But the craft seemed
stable enough now. The rails around him were high enough to give a feeling of
safety. There was even a little shelter from the wind.
He peered for a moment
through the glass door of the wheelhouse. Glimmer of dials, gadgets. Might as
well have been the cockpit of a jet plane. Maybe stairs in there to the cabins
below deck.
Well, that was of no concern
to him. It was the deck itself that mattered for he had been out here when he
was rescued.
The wind off the water was a
roar in his ears. He turned and looked at her. Her face was perfectly dark
against the distant lights. She took her hand out of the pocket of her coat and
pointed to the boards right before her.
‘Right here,’
she said.
‘When I opened my
eyes? When I breathed for the first time?’
She nodded.
He knelt down. The movement
of the boat felt slow now and subtle, the only sound a faint creaking that
seemed to come from no specific place. He took off his gloves, stuffed them
into his pockets, and flexed his hands.
Then he laid them on the
boards. Cold; wet. The flash came as always out of nowhere, severing him from
the now. But it wasn’t his rescue he saw, only bits and snatches of other
people in the very midst of conversation and movement, Dr Mayfair, then the
hated dead man again, and with them a pretty older woman, much loved, a woman
named Ellie — but this layer gave way to another, and another, and the
voices were noise.
He fell forward on his
knees. He was getting dizzy, but he refused to stop touching the boards. He was
groping like a blind man. ‘For Michael,’ he said. Tor Michael!’
And suddenly his anger over
all the misery of the long wasted summer rose in him. ‘For Michael!’
he said, while inwardly he pushed the power, he demanded that it sharpen and
focus and reach for the images he wanted.
‘God, give me the
moment when I first breathed,’ he whispered. But it was like shuffling
through volumes to find one simple line. Graham, Ellie, voices rising and
crashing against each other. He refused to find words in his head for what he
saw; he rejected it. ‘Give me the moment.’ He lay out flat with the
roughened deck under his cheek.
Quite suddenly the moment
seemed to burst around him, as if the wood beneath him had caught flame. Colder
than this, a more violent wind. The boat was tossing. She was bending over him;
and he saw himself lying there, a dead man with a white wet face; she was
pounding on his chest. ‘Wake up, damn you, wake up!’
His eyes opened. Yes,
what 1 saw, her, Rowan, yes. I’m alive, I’m here! Rowan, many things… The pain in his
chest had been unbearable. He could not even feel life in his hands and legs.
Was that his hand, going up, grabbing her hand?
Must explain, the whole
thing before… Before what? He tried to cling to it, go deeper into
it. Before what? But there was nothing there but her pale oval face the way he’d
seen it that night, hair squashed beneath the watch cap.
Suddenly, in the now, he was
pounding his fist on the deck.
‘Give me your hand,’
he shouted.
She knelt down beside him. ‘Think,
think of what happened at that moment when I first breathed.’
But he knew already that was
no good. He only saw what she saw. Himself, a dead man coming to life. A dead
wet thing tossing on the deck under the blows she repeatedly applied to his
chest, and then the silver slit between his lids as he opened his eyes.
For a long time he lay
still, his breath coming unevenly. He knew he was miserably cold again, though
nothing as cold as that terrible night, and that she was standing there,
patiently waiting. He could have cried, but he was just too tired for that, too
defeated. It was as if the images slammed him around when they came. He wanted
just stillness. His hands were rolled into fists. He wasn’t moving.
But there was something
there, something he’d discovered, some little thing he hadn’t
known. It was about her, that in those first few seconds he’d known who
she was, he’d known about her. He’d known her name was Rowan.
But how could such a
conclusion be trusted? God, his soul ached from the effort. He lay defeated,
angry, feeling foolish and yet belligerent. He would have cried maybe if she
hadn’t been there.
‘Try it again,’
she said now.
‘It’s no good, it’s
another language. I don’t know how to use it.’
‘Try,’ she said.
And he did. But he got
nothing this time but the others. Flashes of sunny days, rushes of Ellie and
then Graham, and others, lots of others, rays of light that would have taken
him in this direction or that, the wheelhouse door banging in the wind, a tall
man coming up from below, no shirt on, and Rowan. Yes, Rowan, Rowan, Rowan,
Rowan there with every figure he had seen, always Rowan and sometimes a happy
Rowan. Nobody had ever been on this boat that Rowan wasn’t there, too.
He rose to his knees, more
confused by the second effort than the first. The knowledge of having known her
on that night was only an illusion, a thin layer of her profound impression on
this boat, merely mingling with the other layers through which he’d
reached. Knew her maybe because he held her hand, knew her maybe because before
he’d been brought back he’d known how it would be done. He would
never know for sure.
But the point was he didn’t
know her now, and he still couldn’t remember! And she was just a very
patient and understanding woman, and he ought to thank her and go.
He sat up. ‘Damn it
all,’ he whispered. He pulled on his gloves. He took out his handkerchief
and blew his nose and then he pulled his collar up against the wind, but what
good did that do with a khaki jacket?
‘Come on inside,’
she said. She took his hand as if he were a little child. It was surprising to
him how much he appreciated it. Once they were over the side of the damned
wobbly slippery boat and he stood on the pier, he felt better.
‘Thanks, Doctor,’
he said. ‘It was worth a try, and you let me try, and for that, I can’t
say thanks enough.’
She slipped her arm around
him. Her face was very close to his face. ‘Maybe it will work another
time.’ Sense of knowing her, that below deck was a little cabin in which
she often slept with his picture pasted to the mirror. Was he blushing again?
‘Come inside,’
she said again, tugging him along.
The shelter of the house
felt good. But he was too sad and tired now to think much about it. He wanted
to rest. But he didn’t dare. Have to get to the airport, he thought, have
to gather up the suitcase and get out there, then sleep in a plastic chair.
This had been one road to discovery and now it was cut, and so he was going to
take the other road as fast as he could.
Glancing back at the boat,
he thought that he wanted to tell them again that he hadn’t
discarded the purpose, it was just that he couldn’t remember. He didn’t
even know if the doorway was a literal doorway. And the number, there had been
a number, hadn’t there? A very significant number. He leaned against the
glass door, pressed his head to the glass.
‘I don’t want
you to go,’ she whispered.
‘No, I don’t
want to go either,’ he said, ’but I have to. You see, they really
do expect something of me. And they told me what it was, and I have to do what
I can, and I know that going back is part of it.’
Silence.
‘It was good of you to
bring me here.’
Silence.
‘Maybe
‘Maybe what?’ He
turned around.
She stood with her back to
the lights again. She’d taken off her coat, and she looked angular and
graceful in the huge cable-knit sweater, and all long legs, magnificent
cheekbones, and fine narrow wrists.
‘Could it be that you
were supposed to forget?’ she asked.
That had never occurred to
him. For a moment, he didn’t answer.
‘Do you believe me
about the visions?’ he asked. ‘I mean, did you read what they said
in the papers? It was true, that part. I mean the papers made me sound stupid,
crazy. But the point is there was so much to it, so much, and
He wished he could see her
face just a little better.
‘I believe you,’
she said simply. She paused, then went on. ‘It’s always
frightening, a close call, a seeming chance thing that makes a large impact. We
like to believe it was meant…"
‘It was meant!’
‘I was going to say
that in this case the call was very close, because it was almost dark when I
saw you out there. Five minutes later I might not have seen you at all, couldn’t
possibly have seen you.’
‘You’re casting
around for explanations, and that’s very gracious of you, I really
appreciate it, I do. But you see, what I do remember, the impression I mean, it’s
so strong that nothing like that is necessary to explain it. They were there,
Dr Mayfair. And…’
‘What is it?’
He shook his head. ‘Just
one of those frissons, those crazy moments when it’s as if I do remember,
but then it’s gone. I got it out there on the deck, too. The knowledge
that, yes, when I opened my eyes I did know what had happened… and then
it was gone
The word you spoke, the
murmur…"
‘I didn’t catch
it. I didn’t see myself speak a word. But I’ll tell you something.
I think I knew your name out there. I knew who you were.’
Silence.
‘But I’m not
sure.’ He turned around, bewildered. What was he doing? Where was his
suitcase, and he really did have to go, only he was so tired, and he didn’t
want to.
‘I don’t want
you to go,’ she said again.
‘You mean it? I could
stay for a while?’ He looked at her, at the dark shadow of her long lean
figure against the distant faintly illuminated glass. ‘Oh, I wish I’d
met you before this,’ he said. ‘I wish I… I like… I
mean, it’s so stupid, but you’re very…"
He moved forward, the better
to see her. Her eyes became visible, seeming very large and long for deep-set
eyes, and her mouth so generous and soft. But a strange illusion occurred as he
drew closer. Her face in the soft glow from beyond the walls appeared perfectly
menacing and malicious. Surely it was a mistake. He wasn’t making out any
true expression. The figure facing him seemed to have lowered her head, to be
peering up at him from beneath the fringe of her straight blond hair, in an
attitude of consummate hatred.
He stopped. It had to be a
mistake. Yet she stood there, quite still, either unaware of the dread he felt
now, or uncaring.
Then she started towards
him, moving into the dim light from the northern doorway.
How pretty and sad she
looked! How could he have ever made such an error? She was about to cry. In
fact, it was simply awful to see the sadness in her face, to see the sudden
silent hunger and spill of emotion.
‘What it? he whispered.
He opened his arms. And at once, she pressed herself gently against him. Her
breasts were large and soft against his chest. He hugged her close, enfolding
her, and ran his gloved fingers up through her hair. ‘What is it?’
he whispered again, but it wasn’t really a question. It was more a little
reassuring caress of words. He could feel her heart beating, her breath
catching. He himself was shaking. The protective feeling aroused in him was
hot, alchemizing quickly into passion.
‘I don’t know,’
she whispered. ‘I don’t know.’ And now she was silently
crying. She looked up, and then opening her mouth, she moved very gently into
kissing him. It was as if she didn’t want to do it against his will; she
gave him all the time in the world to draw back. And of course he hadn’t
the slightest intention of doing so.
He was engulfed at once as he’d
been in the car when he touched her hand, but this time it was her soft,
voluptuous, and all too solid flesh that embraced him. He kissed her over and
over, feeding on her neck, her cheeks, her eyes. With his gloved fingers he
stroked her cheek, felt her smooth skin beneath the heavy woollen sweater. God,
if only he could take off the gloves, but if he took off the gloves, he’d
be lost, and all passion would evaporate in that confusion. He was desperate to
cling to this, desperate; and she already mistakenly believed, she was already
foolishly afraid…
‘Yes, yes, I do,’
he said, ’how could you think I didn’t want to, that I wouldn’t…
how could you believe that? Hold me, Rowan, hold me tighter. I’m here
now. I’m with you, yes.’
Crying, she collapsed in his
arms. Her hand ripped at his belt, at the zipper of his pants, but these were
clumsy, unsuccessful gestures. A soft cry came out of her. Pure pain. He couldn’t
endure it.
He kissed her again, kissed
her neck as her head fell back. Then he picked her up and gently carried her
across the room and up the iron stairs, walking slowly round curve after curve,
and then into a large and dark southern bedroom. They tumbled down into the low
bed. He kissed her again, smoothing her hair back, loving the feel of her even
through the gloves, looking down at her closed eyes, her helpless half-open
lips. As he pulled at the sweater, she struggled to help, and finally ripped it
over her head, her hair beautifully tousled by it.
When he saw her breasts
through the thin covering of nylon, he kissed them through the cloth,
deliberately teasing himself, his tongue touching the dark circle of the nipple
before he forced the cloth away. What did it feel like, the black leather
touching her skin, caressing her nipples? He lifted her breasts, kissing the
hot curve of them underneath -he loved this particular juicy crevice —
then he sucked the nipples hard, one after the other, rubbing and gathering the
flesh feverishly with the palm of his hand.
She was twisting under him,
her body moving helplessly it seemed, her lips grazing his unevenly shaven
chin, then all soft and sweet over his mouth, her hands slipping into his shirt
and feeling his chest as if she loved the flatness of it.
She pinched his nipples as
he suckled hers. He was so hard he was going to spill. He stopped, rose on his
hands, and tried to catch his breath, then sank down next to her. He knew she
was pulling off her jeans. He brought her close, feeling the smooth flesh of
her back, then moving down to the curve of her soft clutchable and kneadable
little bottom.
No waiting now, he couldn’t.
In a rage of impatience he took off his glasses and shoved them on the bedside
table. Now she would be a lush soft blur to him, but all the physical
details he’d seen were ever present in his mind. He was on top of her.
Her hand moved against his crotch, unzipped his pants, and brought out his sex,
roughly, slapping it as if to test its hardness - a little gesture that almost
brought him over the edge. He felt the prickly curling thatch of pubic hair,
the heated inner lips, and finally the tight pulsing sheath itself as he
entered.
Maybe he cried out. He didn’t
know. She rose on the pillow, her mouth on his mouth, her arms pulling him
closer to her, her pelvis clamped against him.
‘Ride me hard,’
she whispered. It was like the slap — a sharp goad that sent his pent-up
fury to the boiling point. Her fragile form, her tender bruisable flesh - it
only incited him. No imagined rape he had ever committed in his secret
unaccountable dream soul had ever been more brutal.
Her hips slammed against
his; and dimly he saw the red flush in her face and naked breasts as she
moaned. Driving into her again and again, he saw her arms flung out, limp, just
before he closed his eyes and exploded inside her.
Finally, exhausted, they
tumbled apart into the soft flannel sheets. Her hot limbs were tangled under
his outstretched arm, his face buried in her fragrant hair. She snuggled close.
She drew the loose neglected sheet over them both; she turned towards him and
nuzzled into his neck.
Let the plane wait, let his
purpose wait. Let the pain go and the agitation. In any other time and place,
he would have found her irresistible. But now she was more than that, more than
succulent, and hot and full of mystery and seemingly perfect fire. She was
something divine, and he needed it so it saddened him.
Her tender silky arm slid up
around his neck as he gathered her to himself. He could hear her heart beating
against him.
Long moments later, swinging
perilously close to deep sleep, he sat up with a start, and groggily stripped
off his hot clothes. Then he lay naked with her, except for the gloves, his
limbs against her limbs, breathing her warmth and hearing her soft drowsy sigh
like a kiss, as he fell to dreaming beside her.
‘Rowan,’ he
whispered. Yes, knew all about her, knew her.
They were downstairs. They
said, Wake, Michael, come down. They had lighted a great fire in the fireplace.
Or was it simply a fire around them, like a forest blazing? He thought he heard
the sound of drums. Michael. Faint dream or memory of the Comus parade
that long-ago winter night, of the bands beating the fierce, dreadful cadence
while the flambeaux flickered on the branches of oak trees. They were there,
downstairs, all he had to do was wake up and go down. But for the first time in
all these weeks since they’d left him, he didn’t want to see them,
he didn’t want to remember.
He sat up, staring at the pale
milky morning sky. He was sweating, and his heart was pounding.
Stillness; too early for the
sun. He picked up his glasses and put them on.
There was no one in this
house, no drums, no smell of fire. No one at all, except the two of them, but
she was no longer in the bed at his side. He could hear the rafters and the
pilings singing, but it was only the water making them sing. Then came a deep
vibrant sound, more a tremor than a noise at all, and he knew it was the big
cruiser rocking in its mooring. That ghastly leviathan saying I am here.
He sat for a moment, staring
dully at the Spartan furnishings. All well made of the same beautiful fine
grain wood he had seen downstairs. Someone lived here who loved fine wood, who
loved things put together perfectly. Everything quite low in this room - the
bed, the desk, the scattered chairs. Nothing to interrupt the view from the
windows that rose all the way to the ceiling.
But he was smelling a fire.
Yes, and when he listened carefully he could hear it. And a robe had been set
out for him, a nice thick white terry-cloth robe, just the kind he loved.
He put on the robe and went
down the stairs in search for her.
The fire was blazing, on
that account he’d been right. But no horde of dream beings hovered around
it. She sat alone, legs crossed, on the deep stone hearth, in a robe of her
own, her thin limbs almost lost in its folds, and again she was shaking and
crying.
‘I’m sorry,
Michael. I’m so sorry,’ she whispered in that deep velvety voice.
Her face was streaked and weary.
‘Now, honey, why would
you say a thing like that?’ he asked. He sat beside her, enfolding her in
his arms. ‘Rowan, what in the world are you sorry for?’
In a rush her words came,
spilling so fast he could scarcely follow - that she had placed this immense
demand upon him, that she had wanted so to be with him, that the last few
months had been the worst of her life, and that her loneliness had been almost
unbearable.
Again and again he kissed
her cheek.
‘I like being with you,’
he said. ‘I want to be here. I don’t want to be any place in the
world…’
He stopped, he thought of
the New Orleans plane. Well, that could wait. And awkwardly he tried to explain
that he’d been trapped in the house on Liberty Street.
‘I didn’t come
because I knew this would happen,’ she said, ’and you were right, I
wanted to know, I wanted you to touch my hand with your hands, to touch the
kitchen floor, there, where he died, I wanted… you see, I’m not
what I appear to be…’
‘I know what you are,’
he said. ‘A very strong person for whom any admission of need is a
terrible thing.’
Silence. She nodded. ‘If
only that were all of it,’ she said. Tears overflowing.
‘Talk to me, tell me
the story,’ he said.
She slipped out of his arms
and stood up. She walked barefoot back and forth across the floor, oblivious
apparently to its coldness. Again, it came so fast, so many long delicate
phrases pouring out with such speed, he strained to listen. To separate the
meaning from the beguiling beauty of her voice.
She’d been adopted
when she was a day old, she’d been taken away from her home, and did he
know that was New Orleans? She’d told him that in the letter he’d
never received. And yes, he ought to know that because when he’d wakened,
he grabbed her hand and held onto it, as if he didn’t want to let her go.
And maybe then some mingled crazy idea had come through, some sudden intensity
connected to that place. But the thing was, she’d never really been
there! Never seen it. Didn’t even know her mother’s full name.
Did he know there was a paper
in the safe, over there, behind the picture there, by the door, a letter she’d
signed saying she’d never go back to New Orleans, never seek to find out
anything about her family, her real parents? Cut off, ripped out of it, the
past cut away like the umbilical cord and no way that she could recapture what
had been thrown away. But she’d been thinking about that of late, that
awful black gulf and the fact that they were gone, Ellie and Graham, and the
paper in the safe, and Ellie had died making her repeat her promise, over and
over.
They’d taken her out
of New Orleans to Los Angeles on a six o’clock plane the very day she was
born. Why, for years she’d been told she was born in Los Angeles. That’s
what her birth certificate said, one of those phony jobs they concoct for
adopted children. Ellie and Graham had told her a thousand times about the
little apartment in West Hollywood, and how happy they had been when they
brought her home.
But that wasn’t the
point, the point was they were gone, dead, and with them their whole story,
wiped out with a speed and totality that utterly terrified her. And Ellie in
such pain. Nobody should have to suffer like that. And theirs had been the
great modern life, just great, though it was a selfish, materialistic world,
she had to admit. No tie to anyone -family or friend - ever interrupted their
self-centered pursuit of pleasure. And at the bedside, no one but Rowan as
Ellie lay screaming for the morphine.
He was nodding, how well he
understood. Hadn’t his own life become the same thing? A sudden flash of
New Orleans struck him, screen door closing, cousins around the kitchen table,
red beans and rice, and talk, talk, talk…
‘I tell you I almost
killed her,’ Rowan said, ‘I almost ended it. I couldn’t…
I couldn’t… Nobody could lie to me about it. I know when people are
lying. It’s not that I can read minds, it’s more subtle. It’s
as if people are talking out loud in black-and-white words on a page, and I’m
seeing what they say in colored pictures. I get their thoughts some times,
little bits of information. And anyway, I’m a doctor, they didn’t
try, and I had full access to the information. It was Ellie that was always
lying, trying to pretend it wasn’t happening. And I knew her feelings,
always. I had since I was a little girl. And there was this other thing, this
talent for knowing, I call it the diagnostic sense but it’s more than
that, I laid my hands on her and even when she was in remission, I knew. It’s
in there, it’s coming back. She’s got six months at most. And then
to come home after it was all over - to this house, this house with every
conceivable gadget and convenience and luxury that one could
possibly…"
‘I know,’ he
said softly. ‘All the toys we have, all the money.’
‘Yes, and what is this
without them now, a shell? I don’t belong here! And if I don’t
belong, nobody does, and I look around me… and I’m scared, I tell
you. I’m scared. No, wait, don’t comfort me. You don’t know.
I couldn’t prevent Ellie’s death, that I can accept, but I caused
Graham’s death. I killed him.’
‘No, but you didn’t
do that,’ he said. ‘You’re a doctor and you know…"
‘Michael, you are like
an angel sent to me. But listen to what I’m telling you. You have a power
in your hands, you know it’s real. I know it’s real. On the drive
over you demonstrated that power. Well, I have a power in me that’s
equally strong. I killed him. I killed two people before that - a stranger, and
a little girl years ago, a little girl on a playground. I’ve read the
autopsy reports. I can kill, I tell you! I’m a doctor today because I am
trying to deny that power, I have built my life upon compensation for that evil!’
She took a deep breath. She
ran her fingers back through her hair. She looked waifish and lost in the big
loose robe, cinched tight at the waist, a Ganymede with the soft tumbled
pageboy hair. He started to go to her. She gestured for him to stay where he
was.
‘There’s so
much. You know I made this fantasy of telling you, you of all people…’
‘I’m here, I’m
listening,’ he said. ‘I want you to tell me…" How could
he put into words that she fascinated him and utterly absorbed him, and how
remarkable that was after all these weeks of frenzy and craziness.
She talked in a low voice
now of how it had gone with her, of how she had always been in love with
science, science was poetry to her. She never thought she’d be a surgeon.
It was research that fascinated her, the incredible, almost fantastical advances
in neurological science. She wanted to spend her life in the laboratory where
she thought the real opportunity for heroism existed; and she had a natural
genius for it, take that on faith. She did.
But then had come that awful
experience, that terrible Christmas Eve. She had been about to go to the
Keplinger Institute to work full-time on methods of intervention in the brain
that did not involve surgery — the use of lasers, the gamma knife,
miracles she could scarcely describe to the layman. After all, she had never
had any easy time with human beings. Didn’t she belong in a laboratory?
And take it from her the
latest developments were full of the miraculous, but then her mentor, never
mind his name -and he was dead now anyway, he’d died of a series of
little strokes shortly after that, ironically enough, and all the surgeons in
the world hadn’t been able to clip and suture those deadly
ruptures… but she hadn’t even found out about that until later. To
get back to the story, he had taken her up into the Institute in San Francisco
on Christmas Eve because that was the one night of all nights when no one would
be there, and he was breaking the rules to show her what they were working on,
and it was live fetal research.
‘I saw it in the
incubator, this little fetus. Do you know what he called it? He called it the
abortus. Oh, I hate to tell you this because I know how you feel about Little
Chris, I know…’
She didn’t notice his
shock. He had never told her about Little Chris, never told anyone about that
pet name, but she seemed quite completely unaware of this, and he sat there
silent, just listening to her talk, thinking vaguely of all those films he’d
seen with these recurrent and awful fetal images, but he wasn’t about to
interrupt her. He wanted her to go on.
‘And this thing had
been sustained, alive,’ she said, ’from a four-month abortion, and
you know he was developing means of live support for even younger fetuses. He
was talking of breeding embryos in test tubes and never returning them to the
womb at all, but all of this to harvest organs. You should have heard his
arguments, that the fetus was playing a vital role in the human life chain,
could you believe it, and I’ll tell you the horrible part, the really
horrible part, it was that it was utterly fascinating, and I loved it. I saw
the potential uses he was describing. I knew it would be possible some day to
create new and undamaged brains for coma victims. Oh, God, you know all the
things that could be done, the things that I, given my talent, could have done!’
He nodded. ‘I can see
it,’ he said softly. ‘I can see the horror of it and I can see the
lure.’
‘Yes, precisely,’
she responded. ‘And do you believe me when I tell you I could have had a
great career in research, I could have been one of those names in the books. I
was born for it, you might say. When I discovered neurology, when I reached it,
you might say, after all the preparation, it was like I’d reached the
summit of a mountain, and it was home, it was where I belonged.’
The sun was rising. It fell
on the floorboards where she stood but she appeared not to see it. She was
crying again, softly, the tears just flowing as she wiped at her mouth with the
back of her hand.
She explained how she had
run from that laboratory, she had run from research altogether, and all that
might have been achieved there, she had run from her ruthless lust for power
over the little fetal cells with their amazing plasticity. Did he understand
how they could be used for transplants wholly unlike other transplants, that
they continued to develop, that they did not trigger the usual immune responses
of the host, that they were a field of such dazzling promise. ‘That’s
what it was, you could see no end to what could be done. And imagine the extent
of the raw material, a little nation of nonpersons by the millions. Of course
there are laws against it. Do you know what he said? "There are laws
against it because everybody knows it’s going on."’
‘Not surprising,’
he whispered. ‘Not surprising at all.’
‘I had killed only two
people at that point in my life. But I knew, inside, that I had done it.
Because you see it’s connected to my very character, my capacity to
choose to do something, and my refusal to accept defeat. Call it temper in its
crudest form. Call it fury at its most dramatic. And in research can you
imagine how I could have used that capacity to choose and do and to resist
authority, to follow my lights on some totally amoral and even disastrous
course? It’s not mere will; it’s too hot to be called will.’
‘Determination,’
he said.
She nodded. ‘Now a
surgeon is an interventionist; he or she is very determined. You go in with the
knife and you say, I’m going to chop out half your brain and you’re
going to be better, and who would have the nerve to do something like that but
someone very determined, someone extremely inner-directed, someone very strong.’
‘Thank God for it,’
he said.
‘Perhaps.’ She
smiled bitterly. ‘But a surgeon’s confidence is nothing compared to
what could have been brought out of me in the laboratory. And I want to tell
you something else, too, something I think you can understand on account of
your hands and the visions, something I would never tell another doctor,
because it would be no use.
‘When I operate I
envision what I’m doing. I mean I hold in my mind a thorough
multidimensional image of the effects of my actions. My mind thinks in terms of
such detailed pictures. When you were dead on the deck of the boat and I
breathed into your mouth, I envisioned your lungs, your heart, the air moving
into your lungs. And when I killed the man in the Jeep, when I killed the
little girl, I first imagined them punished, I imagined them spitting blood. I
didn’t have the knowledge then to imagine it any more perfectly than
that, but it was the same process, the same thing.’
‘But they could have
been natural deaths, Rowan.’
She shook her head. ‘I
did it, Michael. And with the same power guiding me I operate. And with the
same power guiding me I saved you.’
He said nothing, he was only
waiting for her to go on. The last thing he wanted to do was argue with her.
God, she was the only person in the world it seemed who really listened to him.
And she didn’t need anyone to argue with her right now. Yet he wasn’t
at all sure that she was right.
‘No one knows these
things,’ she said. ‘I’ve stood in the empty house and cried
and talked aloud to no one. Ellie was my closest friend in all the world, but I
couldn’t have told her. And what have I done? I’ve tried through
surgery to find salvation. I have chosen the most brutal and direct means of
intervention. But all the successful operations of the world cannot hide from
me what I am capable of. I killed Graham.
‘You know, I think
that at that moment,, when Graham and I were there together, I think… I
think I actually remembered Mary Jane on the playground, and I think I actually
remembered the man in the Jeep, and I believe, I believe I actually intended to
use the power, but all I can remember is that I saw the artery. I saw it burst.
But you know, I think I deliberately killed him. I wanted him to die so he
couldn’t hurt Ellie. I made him die.’
She paused as if she wasn’t
sure of what she’d just said, or as if she’d just realized that it
was true. She looked off over the water. It was blue now, in the sunlight, and
filled with dazzling light. Countless sails had appeared on the surface. And
the whole house was pervaded by the vistas surrounding it, the dark olive hills
sprinkled with white buildings, and to Michael, it made her seem all the more
alone, lost.
‘When I read about the
power in your hands,’ she said, ‘I knew it was real. I understood.
I knew what you were going through. There are these, secret things that set us
apart. Don’t expect other people to believe, though in your case they’ve
seen. In my case no one must ever see, because it must never happen
again…’
‘Is that what you’re
afraid of, it will happen again?’
‘I don’t know.’
She looked at him. ‘I think of those deaths and the guilt is so terrible,
I don’t have a purpose or an idea or a plan. It stands between me and
life. And yet I live, I live better than anybody I know.’ She laughed
softly, bitterly. ‘Every day I go into surgery. My life is exciting. But
it isn’t what it could have been… ’ Her tears were flowing
again; she was looking at him, but seemingly through him. The sunlight was
falling full on her, on her yellow hair.
He wanted so to hold her.
Her suffering was excruciating to him. He could scarcely stand to see her gray
eyes so red and full of tears, and the very tautness of her face made it
terrible when the lines of anguish suddenly sharpened and flashed and the tears
flowed, and then the face went smooth, as if with shock, again.
‘I wanted to tell you
these things,’ she said. She was confused, uncertain. Her voice broke. ‘I
wanted… to be with you and tell you. I guess I felt that because I had
saved your life, maybe somehow…"
This time nothing could have
stopped him from going to her. He got up slowly, and took her in his arms. He
held her, kissing her silky neck and her tear-stained cheeks, kissing her
tears. ‘You felt right,’ he said. He drew back, and he pulled off
his gloves, impatiently, and tossed them aside. He looked at his hands for a
moment, and then he looked at her.
There was a look of vague
wonder in her eyes, the tears shimmering in the light from the fire. Then he
placed his hands on her head, feeling of her hair, and of her cheeks, and he
whispered: ‘Rowan.’ He willed all the random crazy images to stop;
he willed himself just to see her now, through his hands, and there
rose again that lovely engulfing sense of her that had come and gone so swiftly
in the car, of her surrounding him, and in a sudden violent hum, like the throb
of electricity through his veins, he knew her, he knew the honesty of her life,
and the intensity of it, and he knew her goodness, her undeniable goodness. The
tumbling, shifting images didn’t matter. They were true to the whole that
he perceived, and it was the whole, and the courage of the whole, that
mattered.
He slid his hands into her
robe, touching her small, thin body, so hot, so delicious to his naked fingers.
He lowered his head and kissed the tops of her breasts. Orphan, alone one,
afraid but so strong, so very relentlessly strong. ‘Rowan,’ he
whispered again. ‘Let this matter now.’
He felt her sigh, and give
in, like a broken stem against his chest, and in the mounting heat, all the
pain left her.
He lay on the rug, his left
arm bent to cradle his head, his right hand idly holding a cigarette over the
ashtray, a steaming cup of coffee at his side. It must have been nine o’clock
by now. He’d called the airline. They could put him on the noon plane.
But when he thought of leaving
her he was filled with anxiety. He liked her. He liked her more than most
people he’d ever known in his life, and more to the point perhaps, he was
enchanted by her, by her obvious intelligence and her near morbid
vulnerability, which continued to bring out in him an exquisite sense of
protectiveness, which he enjoyed almost to the point of shame.
They had talked for hours
after the second lovemaking.
They talked quietly, without
urgency or peaks of emotion, about their lives. She’d told him about growing
up in Tiburon, taking out the boat almost every day of her life, what it had
been like attending the good schools. She’d talked more about her life in
medicine, her early love of research, and dreams of Frankenstein-like
discoveries, in a more controlled and detailed way. Then had come the discovery
of her talent in the Operating Room. No doubt she was an incredibly good
surgeon. She felt no need to brag about it; she simply described it, the
excitement of it, the immediate gratification, the near desperation since the
death of her parents to be always operating, always walking the wards, always
at work. On some days she had actually operated until she could not stand
upright any longer. It was as if her mind and her hands and her eyes weren’t
part of the rest of her.
He had told her briefly, and
a little self-deprecatingly, about his own world, answering her questions,
warmed by her seeming interest. ‘Working class,’ he had said. How
curious she had been. What was it like back there in the South? He’d talked
about the big families, the big funerals, the narrow little shotgun house with
its linoleum floors, the four o’clocks in the postage stamp of a garden.
Had it seemed quaint to her? Maybe it did to him too now, though it hurt to
think of it, because he wanted to go home so badly. ‘It isn’t just
them, and the visions and all. I want to go back there, I want to walk on
Annunciation Street too…’
‘Is that the name of
the street where you grew up? That’s so beautiful.’
He didn’t tell her
about the weeds in the gutters, the men sitting on the steps with their cans of
beer, the smell of boiled cabbage that never went away, the riverfront trains
rattling the windows.
Talking about his life here
had been a little easier - explaining about Elizabeth and Judith, and the
abortion that had destroyed his life with Judith; explaining about the last few
years, and their curious emptiness, and the feeling of waiting for something,
though he did not know what it was. He told about houses and how he loved them;
about the kinds that existed in San Francisco, the big Queen Annes and the
Italianates, the bed-and-breakfast hotel he had wanted so badly to do on Union
Street, and then he had slipped into talking about the houses he really loved,
the houses back there in New Orleans. He understood about ghosts in houses,
because houses were more than habitats, and it was no wonder they could steal
your soul.
It was an easy exchange,
deepening their knowledge of each other, and amplifying the intimacy they’d
already felt. He had liked what she said about going out to sea; about being
alone on the bridge with the coffee in her hand, the wind howling past the
wheelhouse. He didn’t like it, but he liked to hear her tell about it. He
liked the look in her gray eyes; he liked the simplicity of her easy, languid
gestures.
He had even gone into his
crazy talk about the movies, and the recurrent images of vengeful babies and
children, and the way he felt when he perceived such themes - as though
everything around him was talking to him. Maybe one step from the madhouse, but
he wondered if some of the people in the madhouse were there because they took
the patterns they perceived too literally? What did she think? And death, well,
he had a lot of thoughts about death, but first and foremost, this thought had
recently struck him, even before the accident, that the death of another person
is perhaps the only genuine supernatural event we ever experience.
‘I’m not talking
about doctors now. I’m talking about ordinary people in the modern world.
What I’m saying is, when you look down at that body, and you realize all
the life has gone out of it, and you can scream at it, and slap it around, and
try to sit it up, and do every trick in the book to it, but it’s dead,
absolutely unequivocally dead…"
‘I know what you’re
saying.’
‘And you have to
remember, for most of us we see that maybe once or twice in twenty years. Maybe
never. Why, California in this day and age is a whole civilization of people
who never witness a death. They never even see a dead body! Why, they think
when they hear somebody’s dead that he forgot to eat his health foods, or
hadn’t been jogging the way he should have been…"
She had laughed softly under
her breath. ‘Every goddamned death’s a murder. Why do you think
they come after us doctors with their lawyers?’
‘Exactly, but it’s
deeper even than that. They don’t believe they’re going to die! And
when somebody else dies, it’s behind closed doors, and the coffin’s
closed, if the poor slob had the bad taste to even want a coffin and a funeral,
which of course he shouldn’t have wanted. Better a memorial service in
some toney place with sushi and white wine and people refusing to even say out
loud why they are there! Why, I have been to California memorial services where
nobody even mentioned the dead guy! But if you really see it… and you’re
not a doctor, or a nurse, or an undertaker… well, it’s a
first-class supernatural event, and just probably the only supernatural event
you ever get to see.’
‘Well, let me tell you
about one other supernatural event,’ she’d said, smiling. ‘It’s
when you’ve got one of those dead bodies lying on the deck of your boat,
and you’re slapping it around and talking to it, and suddenly the eyes do
open, and the guy’s alive.’
She had smiled so
beautifully at him then. He had started kissing her, and that was how that
particular segment of the conversation had come to an end. But the point was,
he hadn’t lost her with his crazy rambling. She had never once tuned out
on him.
Why did this other thing
have to be happening? Why did this feel like stolen time?
Now he lay on the rug,
thinking how much he liked her and how much her sadness and her aloneness
disturbed him, and how much he didn’t want to leave her, and that
nevertheless, he had to go.
His head was remarkably
clear. He had not been this long without a drink all summer. And he rather
liked the feeling of thinking clearly. She had just refilled the coffee for
him, and it tasted good. But he’d put back on the gloves, because he was
getting all those random stupid images off everything - Graham, Ellie, and men,
lots of different men, handsome men, and all Rowan’s men, that was
abundantly clear. He wished it wasn’t.
The sun was burning through
the eastern windows and skylights. He could hear her working in the kitchen. He
figured he ought to get up and help her no matter what she’d said, but she’d
been pretty convincing on the subject: ‘I like to cook, it’s like
surgery. Stay exactly where you are.’
He was thinking that she was
the first thing in all these weeks that really mattered to him, that took his
mind off the accident and off himself. And it was such a relief to be thinking
of someone other than himself. In fact, when he considered it with this new
clarity, he realized he’d been able to concentrate well since he’d
been here, concentrate on their conversation and their lovemaking and their
knowing of each other; and that was something altogether new, because in all
these weeks, his lack of concentration - his inability to read more than a page
of a book, or follow more than a few moments of a film - had left him
continuously agitated. It had been as bad as the lack of sleep.
He realized that he had
never had his knowledge of a human being commence at such a pitch, and plunge
so deep so fast. It was like what was supposed to happen with sex, but seldom
if ever did. He had entirely lost sight of the fact that she was the woman who’d
rescued him; that is, a strong sense of her character had obliterated that
vague impersonal excitement he’d felt on first meeting her, and now he
was making mad fantasies about her in his head.
How could he continue to
know her and maybe even get to love her, and have her, and do this other thing
he had to do? And he still had to do this other thing. He still had to go home
and he had to determine the purpose.
As for her having been born
down south, it had nothing to do with it. His head was full of too many images
from his past, and the sense of destiny that united these images was too strong
for it to have come from some random reminder of his home through her. Besides,
on the deck of the boat last night, he’d caught nothing of that. Knowing
her, yes, that was there, but even that was suspect, he still believed, because
there was no profound recognition, no ‘Ah yes,’ when she told him
her story. Only positive fascination. Nothing scientific about this power of
his; might be physical, yes, and measurable finally, and even controllable
through some numbing drug, but it wasn’t scientific. It was more like art
or music.
But the point was, he had to
leave, and he didn’t want to. And it made him sad suddenly, sad and
almost desperate, as if they were somehow doomed, he and she.
All these weeks, if only he
could have seen her, been with her. And the oddest thought occurred to him. If
only that awful accident hadn’t happened, and he had found her in some
simple ordinary place, and they had begun to talk. But she was part and parcel
of what had happened, her strangeness and her strength were part of it. All
alone out there in that big awful cruiser right at the moment when darkness
fell. "Who the hell else would have been there? Who the hell else could
have gotten him out of the water? Why, he could easily believe what she said
about determination, about her powers.
When she’d been
describing the rescue to him in more detail, she had said a strange thing. She
had said that a person loses consciousness almost immediately in very cold
water. Yet she had been pitched right into it, and she hadn’t lost
consciousness. She had said only, ‘I don’t know how I reached the
ladder, I honestly don’t.’
‘Do you think it was
that power?’ he asked.
She had reflected for a
moment. Then she had said, ‘Yes, and no. I mean maybe it was just luck.’
‘Well, it was luck for
me, all right,’ he’d responded, and he had felt an extraordinary
sense of well-being when he said it, and he wasn’t so sure why.
Maybe she knew because she
said, ‘We’re frightened of what makes us different.’ And he
had agreed.
‘But lots of people
have these powers,’ she said. ‘We don’t know what they are, or
how to measure them; but surely they are part of what goes on between human
beings. I see it in the hospital. There are doctors who know things, and they
can’t tell you how. There are nurses who are the same way. I imagine
there are lawyers who know infallibly when someone is guilty, or that the jury
is going to vote for or against; and they can’t tell you how they know.
‘The fact is, for all
we learn about ourselves, for all we codify and classify and define, the
mysteries remain immense. Take the research into genetics. So much is inherited
by a human being — shyness is inherited, the liking for a particular
brand of soap may be inherited, the liking for particular given names. But what
else is inherited? What invisible powers come down to you? That’s why it’s
so frustrating to me that I don’t really know my family. I don’t
know the first thing about them. Ellie was a third cousin once removed or
something like that. Why, hell, that’s hardly a cousin…"
Yes, he had agreed with all
that. He talked a little about his father and his grandfather, and how he was
more like them than he cared to admit. ‘But you have to believe you can
change your heredity,’ he said. ‘You have to believe that you can
work magic on the ingredients. If you can’t there’s no hope.’
‘Of course you can,’
she’d replied. ‘You’ve done it, haven’t you? I want to
believe I’ve done it. This may sound insane, but I believe that we ought
to…"
Tell me…’
‘We ought to aim to be
perfect,’ she said quietly. ‘I mean, why not?’
He had laughed but not in
ridicule. He had thought of something one of his friends once said to him. The
friend had been listening to Michael rattle on one night about history, and how
nobody understood it or where we were headed because we didn’t know
history, and the friend had said, ‘You are a peculiar talker, Michael,’
explaining that the phrase was from Orpheus Descending, a Tennessee
Williams play. He had treasured the compliment. He hoped she would too.
‘You’re a
peculiar talker, Rowan,’ he had said, and he had explained it as his
friend explained it to him.
That had made her laugh,
really break up. ‘Maybe that’s why I’m so quiet,’ she
said. T don’t even want to get started. I think you’ve said it. I’m
a peculiar talker and that’s why I don’t talk at all.’
He took a drag off the
cigarette now, thinking it all over. It would be lovely to stay with her. If
only the feeling would leave him, that he had to go home.
‘Put another log on
the fire,’ she said, interrupting his reverie. ‘Breakfast is ready.’
She laid it out on the dining
table near the windows. Scram-bled eggs, yogurt, fresh sliced oranges sparkling
in the sun, bacon and sausage, and hot muffins just out of the oven.
She poured the coffee and
the orange juice for them both. And for five minutes solid, without a word, he
just ate. He had never been so hungry. For a long moment he stared at the
coffee. No, he didn’t want a beer, and he wasn’t going to drink
one. He drank the coffee, and she refilled the cup.
‘That was simply
wonderful,’ he said.
‘Stick around,’
she said, ’and I’ll cook you dinner, and breakfast tomorrow morning
too.’
He couldn’t answer. He
studied her for a moment, trying not to see just loveliness and the object of
his considerable desire, but what she looked like. A true blonde, he thought,
smooth all over, with almost no down on her face or her arms. And lovely dark
ashen eyebrows, and dark eyelashes which made her eyes seem all the more gray.
A face like a nun, she had, actually. Not a touch of makeup on it, and her long
full mouth had a virginal look to it somehow, like the mouths of little girls
before they’ve worn lipstick. He wished he could just sit here with her
forever…
‘But you are going to
leave anyway,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Have to,’
he said.
She was thoughtful. ‘What
about the visions?’ she asked. ‘Do you want to talk about them?’
He hesitated. ‘Every
time I try to describe them, it ends in frustration,’ he explained, ’and
also, well, it turns people off.’
‘It won’t turn
me off,’ she said. She seemed quite composed now, her arms folded, her hair
prettily mussed, the coffee steaming in front of her. She was more like the
resolute and forceful woman he’d first met last night.
He believed what she said.
Nevertheless, he had seen the look of incredulity and then indifference in so
many faces. He sat back in the chair, staring out for a moment. Every sailing
ship in the world was on the bay. And he could see the gulls flying over the
harbor of Sausalito like tiny bits of paper.
‘I know the whole
experience took a long time,’ he said,' that time itself was impossible
to factor into it.’ He glanced at her. ‘You know what I mean,’
he said. ‘Like in the old days when people would be lured by the Little
People. You know, they’d go off and spend one day with the Little People,
but when they came back to their villages they discovered they’d been
gone for fifty years.’
She laughed under her
breath. ‘Is that an Irish story?’
‘Yeah, from an old
Irish nun, I heard that one,’ he said. ‘She used to tell us the
damnedest things. She used to tell us there were witches in the Garden District
in New Orleans, and that they’d get us if we went walking in those
streets… ’ And think how dark those streets were, how darkly
beautiful, like the lines from ‘Ode to a Nightingale,’ ‘Darkling
I listen… ’ ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ’my mind
wandered.’
She waited.
‘There were many
people in the visions,’ he said, ’but what I remember most
distinctly is a dark-haired woman. I can’t see this woman now, but I know
that she was as familiar to me as someone I’d known all my life. I knew
her name, everything about her. And I know now that I knew about you. I knew
your name. But I don’t know if that was in the middle of it, or just at
the end, you know, before I was rescued, when maybe I knew somehow that the
boat was coming and you were there.’ Yes, that was a real puzzle, he
thought.
‘Go on.’
‘I think I could have
come back and lived even if I had refused to do what they wanted me to do. But
I wanted the mission, so to speak, I wanted to fulfill the purpose. And it
seemed… it seemed that everything they wanted of me, everything they
revealed, well, it was all connected with my past life, who I’d been. It
was all-encompassing. Do you follow me?’
‘There was a reason
they chose you.’
‘Yes, that’s it
exactly. I was the one for this, because of who I was. Now, make no mistake. I
know this is nuthouse talk again; I’m so damned good at it. This is the
talk of schizophrenics who hear voices telling them to save the world, I’m
aware of that. There’s an old saying about me among my friends.’
‘What is it?’
He adjusted his glasses and
flashed his best smile at her. ‘Michael isn’t as stupid as he looks.’
She laughed in the loveliest
way. ‘You don’t look stupid,’ she said. ‘You just look
too good to be true.’ She tapped the ash off her cigarette. ‘You
know how good-looking you are. I don’t have to tell you. What else can
you recall?’
He hesitated, positively
electrified by that last compliment. Wasn’t it time to go to bed again?
No, it wasn’t. It was almost time to catch a plane.
‘Something about a
doorway,’ he said, ‘I could swear it. But again, I can’t see
these things now. It’s getting thinner all the time. But I know there was
a number involved in it. And there was a jewel. A beautiful jewel. I can’t
even call this recollection now. It’s more like faith. But I believe all
those things were mixed up with it. And then it’s all mixed up with going
home, with this sense of having to do something tremendously important, and New
Orleans is part of it, and this street where I used to walk when I was a kid.’
‘A street?’
‘First Street. It’s
a beautiful stretch, from Magazine Street, near where I grew up, to St Charles
Avenue, about five blocks or so, and it’s an old part of town they call
the Garden District.’
‘Where the witches
live,’ she said.
‘Oh, yes, right, the
witches of the Garden District,’ he said, smiling. ‘At least
according to Sister Bridget Marie.’
‘Is it a gloomy witchy
place, this neighborhood?’ she asked.
‘No, not really,’
he said. ‘But is like a dark bit of forest in the middle of the city. Big
trees, trees you wouldn’t believe. There’s nothing comparable to it
here. Maybe nowhere in America. And the houses are town houses, you know, close
to the sidewalks, but they’re so large, and they’re not attached,
they have gardens around them. And there’s this one house, this house I
used to pass all the time, a really high narrow house. I used to stop and look
at it, at the iron railings. There’s a rose pattern in the railings.
Well, I keep seeing it now — since the accident — and I keep
thinking I have to go back, you know, it’s so urgent. Like even now I’m
sitting here, but I feel guilty that I’m not on the plane.’
A shadow passed over her
face. ‘I want you to stay here for a while,’ she said. Lovely deep
grosgrain voice. ‘But it isn’t just that I want it. You’re
not in good shape. You need to rest, really rest without the booze.’
‘You’re right,
but I can’t do it, Rowan. I can’t explain this tension I feel. I’ll
feel it till I get home.’
‘That’s another
thing, Michael. Why is that home? You don’t know anyone back there.’
‘Oh, it’s home,
honey, it is. I know.’ He laughed. ‘I’ve been in exile for
too long. I knew it even before the accident. The morning before, it was the
funniest thing, I woke up and I was thinking about home. I was thinking about
this time we all drove to the Gulf Coast, and it was warm at sundown,
positively warm…’
‘Can you stay off the
booze when you leave here?’
He sighed. He deliberately
flashed her one of his best smiles -the kind that had always worked in the past
- and he winked at her. ‘Want to hear Irish bullshit, lady, or the truth?’
‘Michael… ’
It wasn’t just disapproval in her voice, it was disappointment.
‘I know, I know,’
he said. ‘Everything you’re saying is right. Look, you don’t
know what you’ve done for me, just getting me out of the front door, just
listening to me. I want to do what you’re telling me to do…"
‘Tell me more about
this house,’ she said.
He was thoughtful again,
before beginning. ‘It was the Greek Revival style - do you know what that
is? - but it was different. It had porches on the front and on the sides, real
New Orleans porches. It’s hard to describe a house like that to some’
one who’s never been in New Orleans. Have you ever seen pictures —?’
She shook her head. ‘It
was a subject Ellie couldn’t talk about,’ she said.
‘That sounds unfair,
Rowan.’
She shrugged.
‘No, but really.’
‘Ellie wanted to
believe I was her own daughter. If I asked about my biological parents, she
thought I was unhappy, that she hadn’t loved me enough. Useless to try to
get those ideas out of her head.’ She drank a little of the coffee. ‘Before
her last trip to the hospital she burned everything in her desk. I saw her
doing it. She burned it all in that fireplace. Photographs, letters, all sorts
of things. I didn’t realize it was everything. Or maybe I just didn’t
think about it, one way or the other. She knew she wasn’t coming back.’
She stopped for a minute, then poured a little more coffee in her cup and in
Michael’s cup.
‘Then after she died,
I couldn’t even find an address for her people down there. Her lawyer didn’t
have a scrap of information. She’d told him she didn’t want anyone
down there to be contacted. All her money went to me. Yet she used to visit
people in New Orleans. She used to call them on the phone. I could never quite
figure it all out.’
‘That’s too sad,
Rowan.’
‘But we’ve
talked enough about me. About this house again. What is it that makes you
remember it now?’
‘Oh, houses there aren’t
like the houses here,’ he said. ‘Each house has a personality, a
character. And this one, well, it’s somber and massive, and sort of
splendidly dark. It’s built right on the corner, part of it touching the
sidewalk of the side street. God knows I loved that house. There was a man who
lived there, a man right out of a Dickens novel, I swear it, tall and sort of
consummately gentlemanly, if you know what I mean. I used to see him in the
garden… ’ He hesitated; something coming so close to him, something
so crucial —
‘What’s the
matter?’
‘Just that feeling
again, that it’s all got to do with him and that house.’ He
shuddered as if he were cold, but he wasn’t. ‘I can’t figure
it out,’ he said. ‘But I know the man has something to do with it.
I don’t think they did mean for me to forget, the people I saw in the
visions. I think they meant for me to act fast, because something’s going
to happen.’
‘What could that
something be?’ she asked gently.
‘Something in that
house,’ he said.
‘Why would they want
you to go back to that house?’ she asked. Again, the question was gentle,
not challenging.
‘Because I have a
power to do something there; I have a power to affect something.’ He
looked down at his hands, so sinister in the black gloves. ‘Again, it was
like everything fitted together. Imagine the whole world made up of tiny
fragments - and suddenly a great many of those tiny fragments are lights and
you see a… a…’
‘Pattern?’
‘Yeah, exactly, a
pattern. Well, my life has been part of a greater pattern.’ He drank
another swallow of the coffee. ‘What do you think? Am I insane?’
She shook her head. ‘It
sounds too special for that.’
‘Special?’
‘I mean specific.’
He gave a little startled
laugh. No one in all these weeks had said anything like that to him.
She crushed out the
cigarette.
‘Have you thought
about that house often, in the past few years?’
‘Almost never,’
he said. ‘I never forgot it, but I never thought about it much either.
Oh, now and then, I suppose whenever I thought about the Garden District, I’d
think about it. You could say it was a haunting place.’
‘But the obsession didn’t
begin until the visions.’
‘Definitely,’ he
said. ‘There are other memories of home, but the memory of the house is
the most intense.’
‘Yet when you think of
the visions, you don’t remember speaking of the house…’
‘Nothing so clear as
that. Although…" There it was again, the feeling. But he feared the
power of suggestion suddenly. It seemed all the misery of the last few months
was coming back. Yet it felt good to be believed by her, to be listening to
her. And he liked her easy air of command, the first characteristic of her he had
noticed the night before.
She was looking at him,
looking just as if she was listening still though he had ceased to speak. He
thought about these strange vagrant powers, how utterly they confused things,
rather than clarifying them.
‘So what’s wrong
with me?’ he asked. ‘I mean as a doctor, as a brain doctor, what do
you think? What should I do? Why do I keep seeing that house and that man? Why
do I feel I ought to be there now?’
She sank into thought,
silent, motionless, her gray eyes large and fixed on some point beyond the
glass, her long, slender arms again folded. Then she said:
‘Well, you should go
back there, there’s no doubt of that. You aren’t going to rest easy
till you do. Go look for the house. Who knows? Maybe it’s not there. Or
you won’t have any special feeling when you see it. In any case, you
should look. There may be some psychological explanation for this idee fixe, as
they call it, but I don’t think so. I suspect you saw something all
right, you went somewhere. We know many people do that, at least they claim
they did when they come back. But you might be putting the wrong interpretation
on it.’
‘I don’t have
much to go on,’ he admitted. ‘That’s true.’
‘Do you think they
caused the accident?’
‘God, I never really
thought of that.’
‘You didn’t?’
‘I mean I thought,
well, the accident happened, and they were there, and suddenly the opportunity
was there. That would be awful, to think they caused it to happen. That would
change things, wouldn’t it?’
‘I don’t know.
What bothers me is this. If they are powerful, whatever they are, if they could
tell you something important with regard to a purpose, if they could keep you
alive out there when you should have died, if they could work a rescue into it,
well, then why couldn’t they have caused the accident, and why couldn’t
they be causing your memory loss now?’
He was speechless.
‘You really never
thought of that?’
‘It’s an awful
thought,’ he whispered. She started to speak again, but he asked her with
a little polite gesture to wait. He was trying to find the words for what he
wanted to say. ‘My concept of them is different,’ he said. ‘I’ve
trusted that they exist in another realm; and that means spiritually as well as
physically. That they are…’
‘Higher beings?’
‘Yes. And that they
could only come to me, know of me, care about me, when I was close to them,
between life and death. It was mystical, that’s what I’m trying to
say. But I wish I could find another word for it. It was a communication that
happened only because I was physically dead.’
She waited.
‘What I mean is, they’re
another species of being. They couldn’t make a man fall off a rock and
drown in the sea. Because if they could do such things in the material world,
well, why on earth would they need me?’
‘I see your point,’
she said. ‘Nevertheless…’
‘What?’
‘You’re assuming
they’re higher beings. You speak of them as if they’re good. You’re
assuming that you ought to do what they want of you.’
Again, he was speechless.
‘Look, maybe I don’t
know what I’m talking about,’ she said.
‘No, I think you do,’
he answered. ‘And you’re right. I have assumed all that. But Rowan,
you see, it’s a matter of impression. I awoke with the impression that
they were good, that I’d come back with the confirmation of their
goodness, and that the purpose was something I’d agreed to do. And I haven’t
questioned those assumptions. And what you’re saying is, maybe I should.’
‘I could be wrong. And
maybe I shouldn’t say anything. But you know what I’ve been telling
you about surgeons. We go in there swinging, and not with a fist, but with a
knife.’
He laughed. ‘You don’t
know how much it means to me just to talk about it, just to think about it out
loud.’ But then he stopped smiling. Because it was very disturbing to be
talking about it like this, and she knew that.
‘And there’s
another thing,’ she said.
‘Which is?’
‘Every time you talk
about the power in your hands, you say it’s not important. You say the
visions are what’s important. But why aren’t they connected? Why don’t
you believe that the people in the visions gave you the power in your hands?’
‘I don’t know,’
he said. ‘I’ve thought of that. My friends have even suggested
that. But it doesn’t feel right. It reels like the power is a
distraction. I mean people around me here want me to use the power, and if I
were to start doing that, I wouldn’t go back.’
‘I see. And when you
see this house, you’ll touch it with your hands?’
He thought for a long
moment. He had to admit he had not imagined such a thing. He had imagined a
more immediate and wonderful clarification of things. ‘Yeah, I guess I
will. I’ll touch the gate if I can. I’ll go up the steps and I’ll
touch the door.’
Why did that frighten him?
Seeing the house meant something wonderful, but touching things… He shook
his head, and folded his arms as he sat back in the chair. Touch the gate. Touch
the door. Of course they might have given him the power, but why did he think
that they hadn’t? Especially if it was all of a piece…
She was quiet, obviously
puzzled, maybe even worried. He watched her for a long moment, thinking how
much he hated to leave.
‘Don’t go so
soon, Michael,’ she said suddenly.
‘Rowan, let me ask you
something,’ he said. ‘This paper you signed, this pledge never to
go to New Orleans. Do you believe in that sort of thing, I mean, the validity
of this promise to Ellie, to a person who’s dead?’
‘Of course I do,’
she answered dully, almost sadly. ‘You believe in that sort of thing, too.’
‘I do?’
‘I mean you’re
an honorable person. You’re what we call with great significance, a nice
guy.’
‘OK. I hope I am. And
I put my question wrong. I mean, what about your desire to see the place where
you were born? But I’m lying to you now, you know, because what I want to
say is, is there any chance you’ll come back there with me? And I guess a
nice guy doesn’t tell lies.’
Silence.
‘I know that sounds
presumptuous,’ he said. ‘I know there’ve been quite a few men
in this house, I mean I’m not the light of you life, I…’
‘Stop it. I could fall
in love with you and you know it.’
‘Well, then listen to
what I’m saying, because it is about two living people. And maybe I’ve
already… well, I… what I mean is, if you want to go back there, if
you need to go back just to see for yourself where you were born and who your
parents were… Well, why the hell don’t you come with me?’ He
sighed and sat back, shoving his hands in his pants pockets. ‘I suppose
that would be an awfully big step, wouldn’t it? And all this is selfish
of me. I just want you to come. Some nice guy-’
She was staring off again,
frozen, then her mouth stiffened. And he realized she was again about to cry. ‘I’d
like to go,’ she said. The tears were rising.
‘God, Rowan, I’m
sorry,’ he said. ‘I had no right to ask.’
The tears won out. She
continued to look out towards the water, as if that were the only way to hold
the line for the moment. But she was crying, and he could see the subtle
movement of her throat as she swallowed, and the tightening in her shoulders.
The thought flashed through him that this was the most alone person he’d
ever known. California was full of them, but she was really isolated, and in a
purely unselfish way, he was afraid for her, afraid to leave her in this house.
‘Look, Rowan, I really
am sorry. I can’t do this to you,’ he said. ‘It’s
between you and Ellie. When you get ready to go, you’ll go. And for now,
I have to do it for totally different reasons. I’ve got to get out of
here, and I hate like hell to go.’
The tears had begun to spill
down her cheeks again.
‘Rowan
‘Michael,’ she
whispered. ‘I’m the one who’s sorry. I’m the one who’s
fallen in your arms. Now, stop worrying about me.’
‘No, don’t say
it.’ He started to get up, because he wanted to hug her again, but she
wouldn’t allow it. She reached for his hand across the table and held it.
Gently he spoke to her: ‘If
you don’t think I loved it, holding you, wiping your tears, well then you’re
not using your powers, Rowan. Or you just don’t understand a man like me.’
She shivered, arms tight
across her chest, her bangs falling down in her eyes. She looked so forlorn he
wanted to gather her to himself and kiss her again.
‘What are you afraid
of, really?’ he asked.
When she answered, she spoke
in a whisper, so low that he could scarcely hear. ‘That I’m bad,
Michael, a bad person, a person who could really do harm. A person with a
terrible potential for evil. That is what all my powers, such as they are, tell
me about me.’
‘Rowan, it wasn’t
a sin to be a better person than Ellie or Graham. And it isn’t a sin to
hate them for your loneliness, for rearing you in a state of isolation from
every blood tie you might have.’
‘I know all that,
Michael.’ She smiled, a warm sweet smile full of gratitude and quiet
acceptance, but she did not trust the things he’d said. She felt that he
had failed to see something crucial about her, and he knew it. She felt that he
had failed, just as he failed on the deck of the boat. She looked out at the
deep blue water and then back at him.
‘Rowan, no matter what
happens in New Orleans, you and 1 are going to see each other again, and soon.
I could swear to you now on a stack of Bibles that I’ll be back here, but
in truth, I don’t think I ever will. I knew when I left Liberty Street I
wasn’t ever going to live there again. But we’re going to meet
somewhere, Rowan. If you can’t set foot in New Orleans, then you pick the
place, and you say the word, and I’ll come.’
Take that, you bastards out
there, he thought looking at the water, and up at the dirty blue California
sky, you creatures whoever you are that did this to me, and won’t come
back to guide me. I’ll go to New Orleans, I’ll follow where you
lead. But there is something here between me and this woman, and that belongs
to me.
She wanted to drive him to
the airport, but he insisted on taking a cab. It was just too long a drive for
her, and she was tired, he knew it. She needed her sleep.
He showered and shaved. He
hadn’t had a drink now in almost twelve hours. Truly amazing.
When he came down he found
her sitting with her legs folded, on the hearth again, looking very pretty in
white wool pants and another one of those great swallowing cable-knit sweaters
that made her look all the more long-wristed and long-legged and delicate as a
deer. She smelled faintly of some perfume he used to know the name of, and
which he still loved.
He kissed her cheek, and
then held her for a long moment. Eighteen years, maybe more than that,
separated him in age from her and he felt it painfully, felt it when he let his
lips again graze her firm, plump cheek.
He gave her a slip of paper
on which he’d written down the name of the Pontchartrain Hotel and the
number. ‘How can I reach you at the hospital, or is that not the right
thing to do?’
‘No, I want you to do
that. I pick up my messages all day, at intervals.’ She went to the
kitchen counter and wrote out the numbers on the telephone pad, tore off the
page, and put it in his hand. ‘Just raise hell if they give you any
trouble. Tell them I’m expecting your call. And I’ll tell them.’
‘Gotcha.’
She stood back a pace from
him, slipping her hands in her pockets, and she lowered her head slightly as she
looked at him. ‘Don’t get drunk again, Michael,’ she said.
‘Yes, Doctor.’
He laughed. ‘And I could stand right here and tell you I was going to
take the pledge, honey, but somehow or other the minute that
stewardess…"
‘Michael, don’t
drink on the plane and don’t drink when you get there. You’re going
to be bombarded with memories. You’re going miles away from anybody you
know.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re
right, Doc,’ he said. ‘I’ll be careful. I’ll be all
right.’
He went to his suitcase,
took out his Sony Walkman from the zipper pocket, and checked that he had
remembered to bring a book for the plane.
‘Vivaldi,’ he
said, slipping the Walkman with its tiny earphones into his jacket pocket. ‘And
my Dickens. I go nuts when I fly without them. It’s better than Valium
and vodka, I swear.’
She smiled at him, the most
exquisite smile, and then she laughed. ‘Vivaldi and Dickens,’ she
whispered. ‘Imagine that.’
He shrugged. ‘We all
have our weaknesses,’ he said. ‘God, why am I leaving like this?’
he asked. ‘Am I crazy?’
‘If you don’t
call me this evening…"
‘I’ll call you,
sooner and more often than you could possibly expect.’
‘The taxi’s
there,’ she said.
He had heard the horn, too.
He took her in his arms,
kissing her, crushing her to him. And for one moment, he almost couldn’t
pull away. He thought of what she’d said again, about them causing the accident, causing the
amnesia, and a dark chill went through him, something like real fear. What if
he forgot about them, forever, what if he just stayed here with her? It seemed
a possibility, a last chance of sorts, it really did.
‘I think I love you,
Rowan Mayfair,’ he whispered.
‘Yes, Michael Curry,’
she said, ‘I think something like that might be happening on both sides
right now.’
She gave him another of her
soft, radiant smiles, and he saw in her eyes all the strength he’d found
so seductive in these last few hours, and all the tenderness and sadness, too.
All the way to the airport,
he listened to Vivaldi with his eyes closed. But it didn’t help. He
thought of New Orleans, and then he thought of her; and back and forth the
pendulum swung. It was a simple thing she’d said, but how it jarred him.
It seemed all these weeks he’d clung to the idea of a magnificent pattern
and a purpose that served some higher value, but when she’d asked a few
simple and logical questions, his faith had fallen apart.
Well, he didn’t
believe the accident had been caused by anyone. The wave had simply knocked him
off the rock. And then he’d gone somewhere, a stratum others have
visited, and there he’d found these beings, and they had found him. But
they couldn’t do things to people to hurt them, to manipulate them as if
they were puppets on strings!
Then what about the rescue,
buddy? What about her coming, alone in that boat, just before dark to that very
spot on the sea?
God, he was going crazy
again already. All he could think about was being with her again, or getting a
good slug of bourbon with ice.
Only when he was waiting for
the plane to board did something occur to him, something he had not given the
slightest thought to before.
He’d lain with her
three times in the last few hours, and he had not taken the usual precautions
against conception. He had not even thought about the prophylactics he always
carried in his wallet. He had not asked her about the matter, either. And to
think, in all these years, this was the first time he had let such a thing slip
by.
Well, she was a doctor, for
the love of heaven. Surely she had the matter covered. But maybe he should call
her about it now. It wouldn’t hurt to hear her voice. He closed the copy
of David Copperfield and started looking for a phone.
Then he saw that man again,
that Englishman with the white hair and the tweed suit. Only a few rows away he
sat, with his briefcase and his umbrella, a folded newspaper in his hand.
Oh, no, Michael thought
dismally, as he took his seat again. All I need now is to run into him.
The call came for boarding.
Michael watched anxiously as the Englishman rose, collected his things, and
moved to the gate.
But moments later, the old
gentleman didn’t even glance up when Michael passed him and took a seat
by the window in the rear of first class. The old fellow had had his briefcase
open already, and he’d been writing, very rapidly it seemed, in a large
leather-bound book.
Michael ordered his bourbon
with an ice-cold beer chaser before the plane took off. By the time they
reached Dallas for a forty-minute stopover, he was on his sixth beer and his
seventh chapter of David Copperfield, and he didn’t even
remember anymore that the Englishman was there.
SEVEN
HE‘D MADE the cab
driver stop on the way in for a six-pack, already jubilant to be in the warm
summer air, and now as they made the turn off the freeway and came down into
the familiar and unforgettable squalor of lower St Charles Avenue, Michael felt
like weeping at the sight of the black-barked oak trees with their dark
foliage, and the long narrow St Charles streetcar, exactly as he had remembered
it, roaring and clattering along its track.
Even on this stretch, in the
midst of the ugly hamburger joints and the seedy wooden barrooms and the new
apartment buildings towering over boarded-up shopfronts and deserted gas
stations, it was his old, verdant, and softly beautiful town. He loved even the
weeds exploding in the cracks. The grass grew rich and green on the neutral
ground. The crepe myrtle trees were covered with frothy blooms. He saw pink
crepe myrtle and purple crepe myrtle, and a red as rich as the red of
watermelon meat.
‘Look at that, will
you!’ he said to the driver, who had been talking on and on about the
crime, and the bad times here. ‘The sky’s violet, it’s violet
just like I remembered it, and goddamnit all these years out there I thought I
imagined all this, I thought I colored it in with a crayon in my memory, you
know.’
He felt like crying. All the
time he’d held Rowan while she’d cried, he’d never shed a
tear. But now he felt like bawling, and oh, how he wished Rowan were here.
The driver was laughing at
him. ‘Yeah, well, that’s a purple sky all right, I guess you could
call it that.’
‘Damn right it is,’
said Michael. ‘You were born between Magazine and the river, weren’t
you?’ Michael said. ‘I’d have known that voice anywhere.’
‘What you talking
about, boy, what about your own voice,’ the driver teased him back. ‘I
was born on Washington and St Thomas for your information, youngest of nine
children. They don’t make families like that anymore.’ The cab was
just crawling down the avenue, the soft moist August breeze washing through the
open windows. The street lamps had just gone on.
Michael closed his eyes.
Even the cab driver’s endless diatribe was music. But for this, this
fragrant and embraceable warmth, he had longed with his whole soul. Was there
anyplace else in the world where the air was such a living presence, where the
breeze kissed you and stroked you, where the sky was pulsing and alive? And oh
God, what it meant to be no longer cold!
‘Oh, I am telling you,
nobody’s got a right to be as happy as I am now,’ Michael said. ‘Nobody.
Look at the trees,’ he said opening his eyes, staring up at the black
curling branches.
‘Where the hell you
been, son?’ asked the driver. He was a short man in a bill cap, with his
elbow half out the window.
‘Oh, I’ve been
in hell, buddy, and let me tell you something about hell. It’s not hot. It’s
cold. Hey, look, there’s the Ponchartrain Hotel and it’s still the
same, damn, it’s still the same.’ In fact, it looked if anything
more elegant and aloof than it had in the old days. It had trim blue awnings,
and the old complement of doormen and bellmen standing at the glass doors.
Michael could hardly sit
still. He wanted to get out, to walk, to cover the old pavements. But he’d
told the driver to take him up to First Street, that they’d double back
to the hotel later, and for First Street he could wait.
He finished the second beer
just as they came to the light at Jackson Avenue, and at that point everything
changed. Michael hadn’t remembered the transition as so dramatic; but the
oaks grew taller and infinitely denser; the apartment buildings gave way to the
white houses with the Corinthian columns; and the whole drowsy twilight world
seemed suddenly veiled in soft, glowing green.
‘Rowan, if only you
were here,’ he whispered. There was the James Gallier house on the corner
of St Charles and Philip, splendidly restored. And across the street the Henry
Howard house, spiffed up with a new coat of paint. Iron fences guarded lawns
and gardens. ‘Christ, I’m home!’ he whispered.
When he first landed he had
regretted getting so drunk - it was just too damned hard to handle his suitcase
and find a taxi - but now he was past that. As the cab turned left on First
Street and entered the dark leafy core of Garden District, he was in ecstasy.
‘You realize it’s
just the way it used to be!’ he told the driver. An immense gratitude
flooded him. He passed the fresh beer to him, but the driver only laughed and
waved it away. ^
‘Later, son,’ he
said. ‘Now where are we going?’ In the slow motion of dream time,
it seemed, they glided past the massive mansions. Michael saw brick sidewalks,
the tall stiff magnolia grandiflora with their shiny dark leaves.
‘Just drive, real
slow, let this guy here pass us, yeah, very slow, until I tell you to stop.’
He had chosen the most
beautiful hour of the evening for his return, he thought. He wasn’t
thinking now of the visions or the dark mandate. He was so brimful of happiness
all he could think about was what lay before him, and about Rowan. That was the
test of love, he thought dreamily, when you can’t bear to be this happy
without the other person with you. He was really afraid that the tears were
going to come pouring down his face.
The cab driver started
talking again. He had never really stopped talking. Now he was talking about
the Redemptorist Parish and how it had been in the old days, and how it was all
run-down now. Yeah, Michael wanted to see the old church. ‘I was an altar
boy at St Alphonsus,’ Michael said.
But that didn’t
matter, that could wait forever. Because, looking up, Michael saw the house.
He saw its long dark flank
stretching back from the corner; he saw the unmistakable iron railings with
their rose pattern; he saw the sentinel oaks stretching out their mammoth
branches like mighty and protective arms.
‘That’s it,’
he said, his voice dropping senselessly and breathlessly to a whisper. ‘Pull
over to the right. Stop here.’ Taking the beer with him, he stepped out
of the cab and walked to the corner, so that he could stand diagonally opposite
the house.
It was as if a hush had
fallen over the world. For the first time he heard the cicadas singing, the
deep churning song rising all around him, which made the shadows themselves
seem alive. And there came another sound he had forgotten completely, the
shrill cry of birds.
Sounds like the woodland, he
thought, as he gazed at the darkened and forlorn galleries, shrouded now in
early dark ness, not a single light flickering from behind the high narrow and
numerous wooden blinds.
The sky was glazed and
shining over the rooftop, soft and shot with violet and gold. It revealed
starkly and beautifully the farthest end column of the high second gallery and,
beneath the bracketed cornice, the bougainvillea vine tumbling down luxuriantly
from the roof. Even in the gloom he could see the purple blossoms. And he could
trace the old rose pattern in the iron railing. He could make out the capitals
of the columns, the curious Italianate mixture of Doric for the side columns,
Ionic for the lower ones set in ante, and Corinthian for those above.
He drew in his breath in a
long mournful sigh. Again, he felt inexpressible happiness but it was mixed
with sorrow, and he was not sure why. All the long years, he thought wearily,
even in the midst of this joy. Memory had deceived in only one aspect, he
reflected. The house was larger, far larger than he had remembered. All of
these old places were larger; the very scale of everything here seemed for the
moment almost unimaginable.
Yet there was a breathing,
pulsing closeness to everything — the soft overgrown foliage behind the
rusted iron fence blending in the darkness, and the singing of the cicadas, and
the dense shadows beneath the oaks.
‘Paradise,’ he
whispered. He gazed up at the tiny green ferns that covered the oak branches,
and the tears came to his eyes. The memory of the visions was perilously close
to him. It brushed him like dark wings. Yes,
the house, Michael.
He stood riveted, the beer
cold against the palm of his gloved hand. Was she talking to him, the woman
with the dark hair?
He only knew for certain
that the twilight was singing; the heat was singing; he let his gaze drift to
the other mansions around him, noting nothing perhaps but the flowing harmony
of fence and column and brickwork and even tiny faltering crepe myrtles
struggling for life on strips of velvet green. A warm peace flooded him, and
for a second the memory of the visions and their awful mandate lost its hold.
Back, back into childhood he reached, not for a memory, but for a continuity.
The moment expanded, moving beyond all thought, all helpless and inadequate
words.
The sky darkened. It was
still the brave color of amethyst, as if fighting the night with a low and
relentless fire. But the light was nevertheless going. And turning his head
ever so slightly to look down the long street in the direction of the river,
Michael saw that there the sky was pure gold.
Deep, deep in him were
memories, naturally, memories of a boy walking out this street from the crowded
little houses near the river, of a boy standing in this very place when evening
fell. But the present continued to eclipse everything, and there was no
straining to recollect, to impress or to improve the soft inundation of his
senses by everything around him, this moment of pure quiet in his soul.
Only now as he looked
lovingly and slowly again at the house itself, at its deep doorway, shaped like
a giant keyhole, did the impression of the visions grow strong again. Doorway.
Yes, they had told him about the doorway! But it was not a literal doorway. Yet
the sight of the giant keyhole and the shadowy vestibule behind it… No,
couldn’t have been a literal doorway. He opened his eyes and closed them.
He found himself gazing trancelike up at the windows of a northern room on the
second story, and to his sudden worry, he saw the lurid glare of fire.
No, that could not happen.
But within the same instant, he realized it was only the light of candles. The
flicker remained constant, and he merely wondered at it, wondered that those
within would choose this form of light.
The garden was thickening and
closing up in the darkness. He would have to rouse himself if he wanted to walk
down along the fence and look back into the side yard. He wanted to do it, but
the high northern window held him. He saw now the shadow of a woman moving
against the lace curtain. And through the lace, he was able to make out a dingy
flower pattern on the high corner of the wall.
Suddenly he looked down at
his feet. The beer had fallen from his hand. It was foaming into the gutter.
Drunk, he thought, too drunk, you idiot, Michael. But it didn’t matter.
On the contrary, he felt rather powerful, and suddenly he blundered across the
intersection, aware of his heavy and uneven steps, and came to the front gate
of the house.
He pushed his fingers
through the iron webbing, staring at the dust and debris tossed about on the
peeling boards of the front porch. The camellias had grown into trees which
towered over the railings. And the flagstone path was covered over with leaves.
He stuck his foot into the iron webbing. Easy enough to jump this gate.
‘Hey, buddy, hey!’
Astonished, he turned to see
the cab driver next to him, and how short he was when he wasn’t inside
the cab. Just a little man with a big nose, his eyes in shadow under the bill
cap, like a troll of the oaks in this heightened moment. ‘What are you
trying to do? You lost your key?’
‘I don’t live
here,’ Michael said. ‘I don’t have a key.’ And suddenly
he laughed at the pure absurdity of it. He felt giddy. The sweet breeze coming
from the river was so luscious and the dark house was right here in front of
him, almost close enough for him to touch.
‘Come on, let me take
you back to your hotel, you said the Pontchartrain? Right? I’ll help you
get upstairs to your room.’
‘Not so fast,’
Michael said, ’just hang on a minute.’ He turned and walked down
the street, distracted suddenly by the broken and uneven flagstones, pure
purple, too, as he’d remembered. Was there nothing that would be faded
and disappointing? He wiped at his face. Tears. Then he turned and looked into
the side yard.
The crepe myrtles here had
grown enormously. Their pale waxy trunks were now quite thick. And the great
stretch of lawn he remembered was sad with weeds now, and the old boxwood was
growing wild and unkempt. Nevertheless he loved it. Loved even the old trellis
in the back, leaning under its burden of tangled vines.
And that’s where the
man always stood, he thought, as he made out the faraway crepe myrtle, the one
that went high up the wall of the neighboring house.
‘Where are you?’
he whispered. The visions hung thick over him suddenly. He felt himself fall
forward against the fence, and heard its iron tendons groan. A soft rustling
came from the foliage on the other side, just exactly to his right. He turned;
movement in the leaves. Camellia blossoms, bruised and falling on the soft
earth. He knelt and reached through the fence and caught one of them, red,
broken. Was the cab driver talking to him?
‘It’s OK, buddy,’
Michael said, looking at the broken camellia in his hand, trying the better to
see it in the gloom. Was that the gleam of a black shoe right in front of him,
on the other side? Again came the rustling. Why, he was staring at a man’s
pant leg. Someone was standing only an inch away. He lost his balance as he
looked up. And as his knees struck the flagstones, he saw a figure looming over
him, peering through the fence at him, eyes catching only a spark of light. The
figure appeared frozen, wide-eyed, perilously close to him, and violently alert
and focused upon him. A hand reached out, no more than a streak of white in the
shadows. Michael moved away on the flags, the alarm in him instinctive and
unquestioned. But now as he stared at the overgrown foliage, he realized that
there was no one there.
The emptiness was as
terrifying suddenly as the vanished figure. ‘God help me,’ he
whispered. His heart was knocking against his ribs. And he could not get up.
The cab driver tugged on his arm.
‘Come on, son, before
a patrol car passes here!’
He was pulled, swaying
dangerously, to his feet.
‘Did you see that?’
he whispered. ‘Christ almighty, that was the same man!’ He stared
at the cab driver. ‘I tell you it was the same man.’
‘I’m telling
you, son, I gotta take you back to the hotel now. This is the Garden District,
boy, don’t you remember? You can’t go staggering drunk around here!’
Michael lost his footing
again. He was going over. Heavily he backed off the flags into the grass, and
then turned, reaching out for the tree but there was no tree. Again the driver
caught him. Then another pair of hands steadied him. He spun round. If it was
the man again, he was going screaming crazy.
But of all people, it was
that Englishman, that white-haired fellow in the tweed suit who’d been on
the plane.
‘What the hell are you
doing here?’ Michael whispered. But even through his drunkenness he
caught the man’s benign face, his reserved and refined demeanor.
‘I want to help you,
Michael,’ the man said, with the utmost gentleness. It was one of those
rich and limitlessly polite English voices. ‘I’d be so grateful if
you’d allow me to take you back to the hotel.’
‘Yeah, that seems to
be the appropriate course of action,’ Michael said, keenly aware that he
could hardly make the words come out clear. He stared back at the garden, at
the high facade of the house again, now quite lost in the darkness, though the
sky in bits and pieces beyond the oak branches still carried a latent gleam. It
seemed that the cab driver and the Englishman were talking together. It seemed
the Englishman was paying the fare.
Michael tried to reach into
his pants pocket for his money clip, but his hand kept sliding right past the
cloth again and again. He moved away from the two men, falling forward and then
against the fence once more. Almost all the light was gone from the lawn now,
from the distant encroaching shrubs. The trellis and its weight of vines was a
mere hooded shape in the night.
Yet beneath the farthest
crepe myrtle, quite distinctly, Michael could make out a thin human shape. He
could see the pale oval of the man’s face, and to his disbelieving eye
came clear the same stiff white collar of the old days, the same silk tie at
the throat.
Like a man right out
of a novel. And he had seen these very same details only
moments before in his panic.
‘Come on, Michael, let
me take you back,’ said the Englishman.
‘First you have to
tell me something,’ Michael said. He was beginning to shake all over. ‘Look,
tell me, do you see that man?’
But now he saw only the
various shades of darkness. And out of memory, there came his mother’s
voice, young and crisp and painfully immediate. ‘Michael, now you know
there is no man there.’
EIGHT
AFTER MICHAEL LEFT, Rowan
sat on the western deck for hours, letting the sun warm her, and thinking in a
rather incoherent and sleepy way about all that had taken place. She was
slightly shocked and bruised by what had happened, rather deliciously bruised.
Nothing could efface the
shame and guilt she felt for having burdened Michael with her doubts and her
grief. But this was of no real concern to her now.
One did not become a good
neurosurgeon by dwelling for very long on one’s mistakes. The appropriate
thing, and the instinctive thing for Rowan, was to assess the error for what it
was, consider how to avoid it in the future, and then to go on from there.
And so she took stock of her
aloneness, her sadness, the revelation of her own need, which had caused her to
fall into Michael’s arms, and she took stock also of the fact that
Michael had enjoyed comforting her, that it had drawn the two of them together,
deeply coloring their new relationship in a wholly unforeseen way.
Then she moved on to
thinking about him.
Rowan had never loved a man
of Michael’s age; she had never imagined the degree of selflessness and
simplicity which was evident in Michael’s most spontaneous words or gestures.
She had been unprepared for and quite enthralled by Michael’s mellowness
of soul. As for his lovemaking, well, it was damn near perfect. He liked it
rough and tumble the way she did; rather like a rape from both sides, it seemed
to her. She wished they could do it again right now.
And for Rowan, who had so
long kept her spiritual hungers and her physical hungers completely separated,
satisfying the first through medicine and the second through near anonymous bed
partners, the sudden convergence of the two in one good-hearted, intelligent,
irresistibly huggable and charmingly cheerful and handsome figure with a
captivating combination of mysterious psychological and psychic problems was
just about more than she could handle. She shook her head, laughing softly to
herself, then sipping her coffee. ‘Dickens and Vivaldi,’ she
whispered aloud. ‘Oh, Michael, please come back to me. Come back soon.’
This was a gift from the sea, this man.
But what the hell was going
to happen to him, even if he did come back right away? This idee fixe about the
visions and the house and the purpose was destroying him. And furthermore, she
had the distinct feeling that he wasn’t going to come back.
There wasn’t any doubt
in her mind, as she sat half dreaming in the clear afternoon sun, that Michael
was drunk by now and that he would get drunker before he ever reached his
mysterious house. It would have been a lot better for him if she had gone with
him, to look after him and to try to steady him through the shocks of this trip.
In fact, it occurred to her
now that she had abandoned Michael twice - once when she had given him
up too soon and too easily to the Coast Guard; and this morning, when she had
let him go on to New Orleans alone.
Of course no one would have
expected her to go with him to New Orleans. But then nobody knew what she felt
for Michael, or what Michael had felt for her.
As for the nature of Michael’s
visions, and she thought about these at length, she had no conclusive opinion
except that they could not be attributed to a physiological cause. And again,
their particularity - their eccentricity - startled her and frightened her
somewhat. And there persisted in her a sense of Michael’s dangerous
innocence, his naivete, which seemed to her to be connected to his attitudes
about evil. He understood good better than he did evil.
Yet why, when they’d
been driving over from San Francisco, did he ask her that curious question: had
she been trying to throw him some sort of warning?
He had seen Graham’s
death when he touched her hand because she had been thinking of Graham’s
death. And the thought of it tortured her. But how could Michael construe this
to be a deliberate warning? Had he sensed something of which she was wholly
unaware?
The longer she sat in the
sun, the more she realized that she could not think clearly and that she could
not endure this longing for Michael, which was reaching the point of anguish.
She went upstairs to her
room. She was just stepping into the shower when she thought of something. She
had forgotten completely to use a contraceptive with Michael. It wasn’t
the first time in her life she had been so stupid, but it was the first time in
many years.
But it was done now, wasn’t
it? She turned on the tap and stood back against the tile, letting the water
flood over her. Imagine having a child by him. But that was crazy. Rowan didn’t
want babies. She had never wanted babies. She thought again of that fetus in
the laboratory, with all the wires and the tubes connected to it. No, her
destiny was to save lives, not to make them. So what did that mean? For two
weeks or so she’d be anxious; then when she knew she wasn’t
pregnant, she’d be all right.
She was so sleepy when she
came out of the shower that she was scarcely aware of what she was doing. She
found Michael’s discarded shirt by the bed, the one he’d taken off
the night before. It was a blue work shirt, starched and pressed as well as a
dress shirt, which she had liked. She folded it neatly, and then lay down with
it in her arms as if it were a child’s favorite blanket or stuffed toy.
And there she slept for six
hours.
When she awoke, she knew she
could not stay alone in the house. It seemed Michael had left his warm imprint
on everything. She could hear the timbre of his voice, his laughter, see his enormous
blue eyes peering at her earnestly through the horn-rimmed glasses, feel his
gloved fingers touching her nipples, her cheek.
It was too early still to
expect to hear from him, and now the house seemed all the more empty in the
aftermath of his warmth.
At once she called the
hospital. Of course they needed her. It was Saturday night in San Francisco,
wasn’t it? The Emergency Rooms at San Francisco General had already
overflowed. Accident victims were pouring into the Trauma Center at University
from a multicar crash on Highway 101, and there had been several shootings in
the Mission.
As soon as she arrived,
there was a patient waiting for her in surgery, already intubated and
anesthetized, the victim of an attempted ax murder, who had lost a great deal
of blood. The intern ran through the history as Rowan scrubbed. Dr Simmons had
already opened. She saw as soon as she entered the ice-box-cold Operating Room
that Dr Simmons was relieved that she had come.
She surveyed the scene
carefully as she stretched out her arms to receive the sterile green gown and
the plastic gloves. Two of the best nurses on duty; one intern getting sick,
the other powerfully excited by the proceedings; the anesthetists not her
favorites but adequate; Dr Simmons having done a good and tidy job of things so
far.
And there was the patient,
the anonymous patient, mounted in a slump of a sitting position, head bowed,
the skull opened, the face and limbs hidden completely beneath layers and
layers of green cotton drapery, except for two naked, helpless feet.
She moved towards the head
of the table, behind the slumped body, nodding to the few rapid words the
anesthetist spoke to her, and with her right foot she pressed down on the pedal
that adjusted the giant double surgical scope, bringing into focus the opened
brain, its tissues held back by the shining metal retractors.
‘What a god-awful mess,’
she whispered.
Soft, delicate laughter all
around.
‘She knew you were
coming in, Dr Mayfair,’ said the older of the two nurses, ‘so she
just told her husband to go on and give her another whack with that ax.’
Rowan smiled behind her
mask, her eyes crinkling. ‘What do you think, Dr Simmons?’ she
asked. ‘Can we clean up all this blood in here without sucking out too
much of this lady’s brain?’
For five hours, she did not
think of Michael at all.
It was two o’clock
when she reached home. The house was dark and cold as she expected it to be
when she came in. But for the first time since Elite’s death she did not
find herself brooding over Ellie. She didn’t think uneasily and painfully
of Graham.
No message on her machine
from Michael. She was disappointed but not surprised. She had a vivid image of
him staggering off the plane, drunk. It was four o’clock in New Orleans,
she figured. She couldn’t ring the Pontchartrain Hotel now.
Best not to think too much
about it, she reasoned as she went up to bed once more.
Best not to think about the
paper in the safe that said she couldn’t go back to New Orleans. Best not
to think about getting on a plane and going to him. Best not to think about
Andrew Slattery, her colleague, who still hadn’t been hired at Stanford,
and who might be all too happy to fill in for her at University for a couple of
weeks. Why the hell had she asked Lark tonight about Slattery, calling him just
after midnight, to ask specifically whether Slattery had found a job. Something
was going on in her feverish little brain.
It was three o’clock
when next she opened her eyes. Someone was in the house. She did not know what
noise or vibration had caused her to waken, only that someone else was there.
The numerals of the digital clock were the only illumination other than the
distant lights of the city. A great gust of wind hit the windows suddenly and
with it a shower of glittering spray.
She realized the house was
moving violently on its pilings. There was the faint rattle of glass.
She rose as quietly as she
could, removed a .38-caliber pistol from the dresser drawer, cocked it, and
went to the head of the stairs. She held the gun with two hands as Chase, her
cop friend, had taught her to do. She had practiced with this gun and she knew
how to use it. She was not afraid so much as angry, deeply angry, and quietly
alert.
She heard no footsteps. She
heard only the wind, howling distantly in the chimney, and making the thick
glass walls ever so faintly groan.
She could see the living
room directly below, in the usual glaze of bluish lunar light. Another volley
of droplets struck the windows. She heard the Sweet Christine slammed
dully against the rubber tires fixed along the northern pier.
Quietly she went down, step
by step, her eyes sweeping the empty rooms with each curve of the staircase,
until she reached the lower floor. There was not a crevice of the house she
could not see from where she stood, except the bathroom behind her. And seeing
only emptiness everywhere she looked, and the Sweet Christine rocking
awkwardly, she moved cautiously towards the bathroom door.
The little room was empty.
Nothing disturbed there. Michael’s coffee cup on the vanity counter.
Scent of Michael’s cologne.
Looking out once more
through the front rooms, she rested back against the frame of the door. The
ferocity of the wind slamming the glass walls alarmed her. She had heard it in
the past, many a time, however. And only once had it been strong enough to
break the glass. Such a storm had never come during the month of August. It had
always been a winter phenomenon, coupled with the heavy rains that poured down
on the hills of Marin County, washing mud into the streets, and sometimes
washing houses off their foundations as well.
Now she watched, vaguely
fascinated as the water splashed and spattered onto the long decks, staining
them darkly. She could see a frost of drops on the windshield of the Sweet
Christine. Had this sudden storm deceived her? She sent out her invisible
antennae. She listened.
Beyond the groaning of glass
and wood, she heard no alien sound. But something was wrong here. She wasn’t
alone. And
the intruder was not on the
second floor of the house, she was certain of that. He was near. He was
watching her. But where? She could find no explanation for what she felt.
The digital clock in the
kitchen made a tiny, near imperceptible clicking sound as it rolled over to
reveal that the time was five minutes after three a.m.
Something moved in the
corner of her eye. She did not turn to stare at it. She chose not to move at
all. And gradually, shifting her gaze sharply to the left without moving her
head, she took in the figure of a man standing on the western deck.
He appeared to be slight of
build, white-faced, with dark hair. His posture was not furtive or threatening.
He stood unaccountably straight, arms natural at his sides. Surely she wasn’t
seeing the figure clearly, for the clothes seemed improbable to the point of
impossibility — formal, and elegantly cut.
Her rage grew stronger, and
a cold calm settled over her. Her reasoning was instantaneous. He could not
gain entrance to the house through the deck doors. He could not batter his way
through the thick glass either. And if she fired the gun at him, which she
would have loved to do, she’d put a hole in the glass. Of course he might
fire a gun at her as soon as he saw her. But why would he do it? Intruders want
to get in. Besides, she was almost certain that he had already seen her, that he’d
been watching her, and was watching her now.
Very slowly she turned her
head. However dark the living room might have appeared to him, there was no
doubt that he could see her, that he was looking at her, in fact.
His boldness infuriated her.
And her sense of the danger of the situation mounted. She watched coldly as he
moved towards the glass.
‘Come on, you bastard,
I’ll cheerfully kill you,’ she whispered, feeling the hairs rise on
her neck. A delicious chill passed through her whole body. She wanted to kill
him, whoever he was, trespasser, madman, thief. She wanted to blow him right
off the deck with the -38-caliber bullet. Or to put it simply, with any power
she had at her command.
Slowly, with both hands, she
lifted the gun. She pointed it directly at him and stretched out her arms as
Chase had taught her to do.
Undeterred, the intruder
continued to look at her, and through her quiet, iron-cold fury, she marveled
at the physical details that she could make out. The dark hair was wavy, the
face wan and thin, and there seemed something sad and beseeching in the shadowy
expression. The head turned gently on the neck as though the man were pleading
with her, speaking to her.
Who in God’s name are
you? she thought. The incongruity of it struck her slowly, along with a
completely alien thought. This is not what it appears to be. This is some form
of illusion I’m looking at! And with a sudden interior shift, her anger
passed into suspicion and finally fear.
The dark eyes of the being
implored her. He raised his pale hands now and placed his fingers on the glass.
She could neither move nor
speak. Then, furious at her helplessness and at her terror, she cried:
‘You go back to hell
where you came from!’ her voice sounding loud and terrible in the empty
house.
As if to answer her, to
unsettle her and vanquish her totally, the intruder slowly disappeared. The
figure went transparent, then dissolved utterly, and nothing was left but the
faintly horrible and completely unsettling sight of the empty deck.
The immense pane of glass
rattled. There came another boom from it as though the wind had pushed against
it head on. Then the sea seemed to settle. The rushing of water died away. And
the house grew still. Even the Sweet Christine settled uneasily in the
channel beside the pier.
Rowan continued to look at
the empty deck. Then she realized her hands were wet with perspiration, and
shaking. The gun felt enormously heavy and dangerously uncontrollable. In fact,
she was shaking all over. Nevertheless, she went directly to the glass wall.
Furious at her defenselessness against this thing, she touched the glass where
the being had touched it. The glass was faintly but distinctly warm. Not warm
as it might be from a human hand, for that would be too subtle a thing to warm
such a cold surface, but warm as if heat had been directed at it.
Again she studied the bare
boards. She stared out at the dark, faceted water and distant cozy lights of
Sausalito on the other side of the bay.
She moved swiftly to the
kitchen counter, set down the gun, and picked up the phone.
‘I have to reach the
Pontchartrain Hotel in New Orleans. Please dial it,’ she said, her voice
quaking. And the only thing she could do to calm herself as she waited was to
listen, to reassure herself of what she already knew, that she was completely
alone.
Useless to check locks and
latches. Useless to go poking in drawers and nooks and crannies. Useless,
useless, useless.
She was frantic by the time
the hotel answered. ‘I have to speak to Michael Curry,’ she said.
He was to have checked in that night, she explained. No, it didn’t matter
that it was five-twenty in New Orleans. Please ring his room.
It seemed forever that she
stood there alone, too shaken to question the selfishness of waking Michael at
this hour. Then came the operator again: ‘I’m sorry, but Mr Curry
is not answering.’
‘Try him again. Send
someone up to the room, please. I have to talk to him.’
Finally, when they had
failed to rouse him altogether, and refused of course to enter the suite
without his permission — and for that she couldn’t blame them - she
left an urgent message, hung up and sank down on the hearth, and tried to
think.
She was certain of what she’d
seen, absolutely certain of it. An apparition there on the deck, looking at
her, drawing close to her, examining her! Some being that could appear and
disappear entirely at will. Yet why had she seen the gleam of light on the edge
of his collar; why the droplets of moisture in his hair? Why was the glass warm
to the touch? She wondered if the thing had substance to it when it was
visible, and if that substance dissolved when the creature ’appeared to
disappear.’
In sum, her mind ran to
science as it always had, and she knew this was her tack, but it could not stop
the panic in her, the great awful feeling of helplessness that had come over
her and stayed with her now, making her afraid in her own safe place, where she’d
never been afraid before.
Why had the wind and the
rain been part of it, she wondered. Surely she hadn’t imagined that part.
And why, above all else, had this creature appeared to her?
‘Michael,’ she
whispered. It was like a prayer dropping from her lips. Then she gave a little
whispered laugh. ‘I’m seeing them, too.’
She rose from the hearth and
went about the house slowly, with steady steps, turning on every light.
‘All right,’ she
said calmly, ’if you come back, it will have to be in a blaze of
illumination.’ But this was absurd, wasn’t it? Something that could
move the very waters of Richardson Bay could trip a circuit breaker easily
enough.
But she wanted these lights
on. She was scared. She went into the bedroom, locked the door behind her,
locked the door of the closet, and closed the door of the bathroom, and then
lay down, plumping the pillows under her head, and placing the gun within
reach.
She lit a cigarette, knowing
it was dreadful to smoke in bed, checked out the tiny winking red light on the
smoke alarm, and then continued to smoke.
A ghost, she thought.
Imagine it, I have seen one. I never believed in them, but I’ve seen one.
It had to be a ghost. There’s nothing else it could have been. But why
did this ghost appear to me? Again, she saw its imploring expression, and the
vividness of the experience returned to her.
It made her miserable suddenly
that she couldn’t reach Michael, that Michael was the only one in the
whole world who might believe what had happened, that Michael was the only one
she trusted enough to tell.
The fact was, she was
excited; it was curiously like her feeling after the rescue that night. I have been through something
awful and thrilling. She wanted to tell someone. She lay there,
wide-eyed in the bright shadowless yellow light of the bedroom thinking, Why
did it appear to me?
So curious the way it had
walked across the deck and peered through the glass at her. ‘You would
have thought I was the strange one.’
And the excitement
continued. But she was very relieved when the sun finally rose. Sooner or
later, Michael would wake up out of his drunken sleep. He’d see the message
light on his phone; and surely, he would call.
‘And here I am wanting
something from him again, reaching out to him right in the midst of whatever is
happening there, needing him…’
But now she was drifting
off, in the warm sweet safety of the sunlight pouring through the glass,
snuggling into the warm pillows and pulling the patchwork quilt over her,
thinking about him, about the dark fleecy hair on the backs of his arms and his
hands, about his large eyes again peering at her through the glasses. And only
on the cusp of dream did she think, Could this ghost possibly have something to
do with him?
The visions. She wanted to
say, ‘Michael, is it something to do with the visions?’ Then the
dream swung into absurdity, and she wakened, resisting the irrelevance and the
grotesque-ness as she always did, consciousness being so much better, thinking
- of course, Slattery could fill in for her, and if Ellie existed somewhere she
no longer cared whether Rowan went back to New Orleans, certainly, for we had
to believe that, didn’t we? That what was beyond this plane was
infinitely better; and then she fell back into exhausted sleep again.
NINE
MICHAEL AWOKE ABRUPTLY,
thirsting, and hot in the bed covers though the air in the room was quite cool.
He was wearing his shorts and his shirt, cuffs unbuttoned, collar undone. He
was also wearing his gloves.
A light burned at the end of
the little carpeted corridor.
Over the soft engulfing roar
of the air conditioner, he heard what sounded like the rustle of papers.
Good heavens, where am I? he
thought. He sat up. At the end of the little hallway, there appeared to be a
parlor, and a baby grand piano of pale and lustrous wood standing against a
bank of flowered drapes. His suite at the Pontchartrain Hotel, it had to be.
He had no memory of coming
here. And he was instantly angry with himself for having gotten so drunk. But
then the euphoria of the earlier evening returned to him, the vision of the
house on First Street beneath the violet sky.
I’m in New Orleans, he
thought. And he felt a surge of happiness which effaced all his present
confusion and guilt. ‘I’m home,’ he whispered. ‘Whatever
else I’ve done, I’m home.’
But how had he managed to
get into this hotel? And who was in the parlor? The Englishman. His last clear
memory was of speaking to the Englishman in front of the First Street house.
And with that little recollection came another: he saw the brown-haired man
behind the black iron fence again, staring down at him. He saw the glittering
eyes only a few feet above him, and the strangely white and impassive face. A
curious feeling passed over him. It wasn’t fear precisely. It was more
purely visceral. His body tensed as it might against a threat.
How could that man have
changed so little over the years? How could he have been there one minute and
gone the next?
It seemed to Michael that he
knew the answers to these questions, that he’d always understood the man
was no ordinary man. But his sudden familiarity with such a completely
unfamiliar notion almost made him laugh.
‘You’re losing
it, buddy,’ he whispered.
But he had to get his
bearings now, in this strange place, and find out what the Englishman wanted,
and why he was still here.
Quickly he surveyed the
room. Yes, the old hotel. A feeling of comfort and security came to him as he
saw the slightly faded carpet, the painted air conditioner beneath the windows,
and the heavy old-fashioned telephone sitting on the small inlaid desk with its
message light pulsing in the darkness.
The door of the bath stood
open revealing a dim slash of white tile.
To his left, the closet, and
his suitcase, opened on its stand, and wonder of wonders, on the table beside
him an ice bucket, beaded over beautifully with tiny drops of moisture, and
crammed into the ice three tall cans of Miller’s beer.
‘Well, isn’t
that just about perfect?’
He removed his right glove
and touched one of the beer cans. Immediate flash of a uniformed waiter, same
old load of distracting, irrelevant information. He put the glove back on and
opened the can. He drank down half of it in deep cold swallows. Then he climbed
to his feet and went into the bathroom and pissed.
Even in the soft morning
light coming through the slatted blinds, he could see his shaving kit laid out
on the marble dresser. He took out his toothbrush and toothpaste and brushed
his teeth.
Now he felt a little less
headachy, hung over, and downright miserable. He combed his hair, swallowed the
rest of the can of beer, and felt almost good.
He changed into a fresh
shirt, pulled on his trousers, and taking another beer from the ice bucket, he
went down the hallway and stood looking into a large, elegantly furnished room.
Beyond a gathering of velvet
couches and chairs, the Englishman sat at a small wooden table, bent over a
mass of manila folders and typewritten pages. He was a slightly built man with
a heavily lined face and rather luxuriant white hair. He wore a gray velvet
smoking jacket, tied at the waist, and gray tweed trousers, and he was looking
at Michael with an extremely friendly and agreeable expression.
He rose to his feet.
‘Mr Curry, are you
feeling better?’ he asked. It was one of those eloquent English voices
which make the simplest words take on new meaning, as if they’ve never
been properly pronounced before. He had small yet brilliant blue eyes.
‘Who are you?’
Michael asked.
The Englishman drew closer,
extending his hand.
Michael didn’t take
it, though it hurt him to be this rude to somebody who looked so friendly and
earnest and sort of nice. He took another sip of the beer.
‘My name’s Aaron
Lightner,’ the Englishman said. ‘I came from London to see you.’
Softly spoken, unobtrusive.
‘My aunt told me that
part. I saw you hanging around my house on Liberty Street. Why the hell did you
follow me here?’
‘Because I want to
talk to you, Mr Curry,’ the man said politely, almost reverentially. ‘I
want to talk to you so badly that I’m willing to risk any discomfort or
inconvenience I might incur. That I’ve risked your displeasure is
obvious. And I’m sorry for it, truly sorry. I only meant to be helpful in
bringing you here, and please allow me to point out that you were entirely
cooperative at the time.’
‘Was I?’ Michael
found he was bristling. Yet this guy was a real charmer, he had to give him
that. But another glance at the papers spread out on the table made Michael
furious. For fifty bucks, or considerably less, the cab driver would have lent
him a hand. And the cab driver wouldn’t be here now.
‘That’s quite
true,’ said Lightner in the same soft, well-tempered voice. ‘And
perhaps I should have retired to my own suite above, but I wasn’t certain
whether or not you’d be ill, and frankly I was worried on another count.’
Michael said nothing. He was
fully aware that the man had just read his mind, so to speak. ‘Well, you
just caught my attention with that little trick,’ he said. And he
thought, Can you do it again?
‘Yes, if you like,’
said the Englishman. ‘A man in your frame of mind is, unfortunately,
quite easy to read. Your increased sensitivity works both ways, I fear. But I
can show you how to hide your thoughts, how to throw up a screen if you wish.
On the other hand, it isn’t really necessary. Because there aren’t
very many people like me walking about.’
Michael smiled in spite of
himself. All was said with such genteel humility that he was overwhelmed and
definitely reassured. The man seemed completely truthful. In fact, the only
emotional impression received by Michael was one of goodness, which surprised
him somewhat.
Michael walked past the
piano to the flowered draperies and pulled the cord. He loathed being in an
electrically lighted room in the morning, and he felt immediately happy again
when he looked down on St Charles Avenue, on the wide band of grass and the
streetcar tracks, and the dusty foliage of the oaks. He had not remembered the
leaves of the oaks as being so darkly green. It seemed everything he saw was
remarkably vivid. And when the St Charles car passed beneath him, moving slowly
uptown, the old familiar roar — a sound like no other — brought the
excitement back to him. How drowsy and wonderfully familiar it all seemed.
He had to get back outside,
walk over to the First Street house again. But he was keenly aware of the
Englishman watching him. And again, he could detect nothing but honesty in the
man, and nothing but a sort of wholesome goodwill.
‘OK, I’m curious,’
he said turning around. ‘And I’m grateful. But I don’t like
all this. I really don’t. So out of curiosity and in gratitude, if you
follow me, I’ll give you twenty minutes to explain who you are, and why
you are here, and what this is all about.’ He sat down on the velvet
couch opposite the man and the messy table. He switched off the lamp. ‘Oh,
and thanks for the beer. I really appreciate the beer.’
‘There’s more in
the refrigerator in the kitchen behind me,’ said the Englishman.
Unflappably pleasant.
‘Thoughtful,’
said Michael. He felt comfortable in this room. He could not remember it really
from childhood, but it was pleasant with its dark papered walls and soft
upholstered pieces and low brass lamps.
The man seated himself at
the table, facing Michael. And for the first time Michael noticed a small
bottle of brandy and a glass. He saw that the man’s suit coat was on the
back of the other chair. A briefcase, the briefcase Michael had seen in the
airport, was standing by the chair.
‘You wouldn’t
care for a little cognac?’ the man asked.
‘No. Why do you have
the suite just overhead? What’s going on?’
‘Mr Curry, I belong to
an old organization,’ said the man. ‘It’s called the
Talamasca. Have you ever heard the name?’
Michael thought for a
moment. ‘No.’
‘We go back to the
eleventh century. More truly, we go back before that. But sometime during the
eleventh century we took the name Talamasca, and from that time on we had a
constitution, so to speak, and certain rules. What we are in modern parlance is
a group of historians interested primarily in psychic research. Witchcraft,
hauntings, vampires, people with remarkable psychic ability - all of these
things interest us and we keep an immense archive of information regarding them.’
‘You’ve been
doing this since the eleventh century?’
‘Yes, and before, as I
said. We are in many respects a passive group of people; we do not like to
interfere. As a matter of fact, let me show you our card and our motto.’
The Englishman drew the card
out of his pocket, gave it to Michael, and returned to his chair.
Michael read the card:
THE TALAMASCA
We watch
And we are always here.
There were phone numbers
given for Amsterdam, Rome, and London.
‘You have headquarters
in all those places?’ Michael asked.
‘Motherhouses, we call
them,’ said the Englishman. ‘But to continue, we are largely
passive, as I said. We collect data; we correlate, cross-reference, and
preserve information. But we are very active in making our information
available to those who might benefit from it. We heard about your experience
through the London papers, and through a contact in San Francisco. We thought
we might be able to… be of assistance to you.’
Michael took off his right
glove, tugging slowly at each finger, and then laid the glove aside. He picked
up the card again. Jarring flash of Lightner putting several such cards in his
pocket in another hotel room. New York City. Smell of cigars. Noise of traffic.
Flash of some woman somewhere, speaking to Lightner fast in a British
accent…
‘Why not ask it a
specific question, Mr Curry?’
The words brought Michael
out of it. ‘All right,’ he said. Is this man telling me the truth! The load continued,
debilitating and discouraging, voices growing louder, more confused. Through the
din, Michael heard Lightner speak to him again:
‘Focus, Mr Curry,
extract what you want to know. Are we good people or are we not?’
Michael nodded, repeating
the question silently, then he couldn’t take all this any longer. He set
the card down on the table, careful not to brush the table itself with his
fingertips. He was shaking slightly. He slipped his glove back on. His vision
cleared.
‘Now, what do you know?’
asked Lightner.
‘Something about the
Knights Templar, you stole their money,’ Michael said.
‘What?’ Lightner
was flabbergasted.
‘You stole their
money. That’s why you have all these Motherhouses all over kingdom come.
You stole their money when the king of France arrested them. They gave it to
you for safekeeping and you kept it. And you’re rich. You’re all
filthy rich. And you’re ashamed of what happened with the Knights
Templar, that they were accused of witchcraft and destroyed. I know that part,
of course, from the history books. I was a history major. I know all about what
happened to them. The king of France wanted to crack their power. Apparently he
didn’t know about you.’ Michael paused. ‘Very few people
really know about you.’
Lightner stared in what
seemed innocent amazement. Then his face colored. His discomfort seemed to be
increasing.
Michael laughed, though he
tried not to. He moved the fingers of the right glove. ‘Is that what you
mean by focus and extract information?’
‘Well, I suppose that
is what I meant, yes. But I never thought you would extract such an obscure -’
‘You’re ashamed
of what happened with the Knights Templar. You always have been. Sometimes you
go down into the basement archives in London and you read through all the old
material. Not the computer abstracts, but the old files, written in ink on
parchment. You try to convince yourself there was nothing that the order could
have done to help the Knights.’
‘Very impressive, Mr
Curry. But, Mr Curry, if you know your history, you’ll know that no one
except the Pope in Rome could have saved the Knights Templar. We certainly were
not in a position to do it, being an obscure and small and completely secret
organization. And frankly, when the persecutions were over, when Jacques de
Molay, and the others had been burnt alive, there wasn’t anyone left to
whom the money could be returned.’
Michael laughed again. ‘You
don’t have to tell all this to me, Mr Lightner. But you’re really
ashamed of something that happened six hundred years ago. What an odd bunch of
guys you must be. By the way, for what it’s worth, I did write a paper
once on the Knights, and I agree with you. Nobody could have helped them, not
even the Pope, as far as I can figure. If you guys had surfaced, they would
have burnt you at the stake too.’
Again, Lightner flushed. ‘Undoubtedly,’
he said. ‘Are you satisfied, that I’ve been telling you the truth?’
‘Satisfied? I’m
impressed!’ Michael studied him for a long moment. Again, the distinct
impression of a wholesome human being, one who shared the values which mattered
very much to Michael himself. ‘And this work of yours is the reason you
followed me,’ Michael asked, ’enduring, what was it discomfort and
inconvenience, and my displeasure?’ Michael picked up the card, which
took some doing with his gloved fingers, and slipped the card into the pocket
of his shirt.
‘Not entirely,’
said the Englishman. ‘Though I want to help you very much, and if that
sounds patronizing or insulting, I’m sorry. Truly sorry. But it’s
true, and it’s pointless to lie to someone like you.’
‘Well, I don’t
suppose it will come as any surprise to you that there have been times in the
last few weeks when I have prayed out loud for help. I’m a little better
off now than I was two days ago, however. A good deal better off. I’m on
my way to doing… what I feel I have to do.’
‘You have an enormous
power, and you don’t really understand it,’ Lightner said.
‘But the power is
unimportant. What I’m talking about is the purpose. Did you read the
articles on me in the papers?’
‘Yes, everything in
print that I could find.’
‘Well, then you know I
had these visions when I was dead; and that they involved a purpose in my
coming back; and that somehow or other, the entire memory has been wiped out.
Well, almost the entire memory.’
‘Yes, I understand.’
‘Then you know the
thing about the hands doesn’t matter,’ said Michael. Uneasiness. He
took another deep swallow of beer. ‘Nobody much believes about the
purpose. But it’s been over three months since the accident happened, and
the feeling I have is the same. I came back here on account of the purpose. It
has something to do with that house I went to last night. That house on First
Street. I intend to keep trying to figure out what that purpose is.’
The man was scanning him
intently. ‘It does? The house is connected to visions you saw when you
were drowned?’
‘Yes, but don’t
ask me how. For months, I’ve seen that house over and over again in my
mind. I’ve seen it in my sleep. It’s connected. I came two thousand
miles because it’s connected. But again, don’t ask me how or why.’
‘And Rowan Mayfair,
how is she connected?’
Michael set the beer down
slowly. He took a hard appraising look at the man. ‘You know Dr Mayfair?’
he asked.
‘No, but I know a
great deal about her, and about her family,’ said the Englishman.
‘You do? About her
family? She might be very interested to know that. But how do you know about
her family? What is her family to you? I thought you said you were waiting
outside my house in San Francisco because you wanted to talk to me.’
Lightner’s face
darkened for a moment. ‘I’m very confused, Mr Curry. Perhaps you’ll
enlighten me. How did Dr Mayfair happen to be there?’
‘Look, I’m
getting sick of your questions. She was there because she was trying to help
me. She’s a doctor.’
‘She was there in her
capacity as a doctor?’ Lightner asked in a half whisper. ‘I’ve
been laboring under a misimpression. Dr Mayfair didn’t send you here?’
‘Send me here? Good
Lord, no. Why the hell would she do that? She wasn’t even in favor of my
coming, except that I’d get it out of my system. The truth is, I was so
drunk when she picked me up it’s a wonder she didn’t have me
committed. I wish I was that drunk right now. But why would you have an idea
like that, Mr Lightner? Why would Rowan Mayfair send me here?’
‘Indulge me for a
moment, won’t you?’
‘I don’t know if
I will.’
‘You didn’t know
Dr Mayfair before you had the visions?’
‘No. Not till five
minutes afterwards.’
‘I don’t follow
you.’
‘She’s the one
who rescued me, Lightner. The one who pulled me out of the sea. That’s
the first time I ever laid eyes on her, when she brought me around on the deck
of her boat.’
‘Good Lord, I had no
idea.’
‘Well, neither did I
until Friday night. I mean I didn’t know her name or who she was or
anything about her. The Coast Guard flubbed it. They didn’t get her name
or the registry of the boat when the call came in. But she saved my life out
there. She’s got some kind of powerful diagnostic sense, some sort of
sixth sense about when a patient’s going to live or die. She started
trying to revive me immediately. I sometimes wonder if the Coast Guard had
spotted me, whether or not they would even have tried.’
Lightner lapsed into
silence, staring at the carpet. He seemed deeply troubled.
‘Yes, she is a
remarkable physician,’ he whispered, but this did not seem to be a full
expression of his thoughts. He seemed to be struggling to concentrate. ‘And
you told her about these visions.’
‘I wanted to get back
on her boat. I had this idea, that maybe if I knelt down on the deck and
touched the boards, well, something might come through my hands. Something that
might jog my memory. And the amazing thing was, she went along with it. She’s
not an ordinary doctor at all.’
‘No, I quite agree
with you there,’ said Lightner. ‘And what happened?’ he
asked.
‘Nothing, that is,
nothing except that I got to know Rowan.’ He paused. He wondered if this
man could guess how it was between him and Rowan. He was not going to say.
‘Now I think you owe
me some answers,’ Michael said. ‘Exactly what do you know about her
and her family, and what made you think she sent me here? Me, of all people.
Why the hell would she send me here?’
‘Well, that’s
what I was trying to discover. I thought perhaps it had to do with the power in
your hands, that she’d asked you to do some secretive research for her.
Why, it was the only explanation I could think of. But Mr Curry, how did you
know about this house? I mean, how did you make the connection between what you
saw in the visions and…’
‘I grew up here,
Lightner. I loved that house when I was a little kid. I used to walk past it
all the time. I never forgot it. Even before I drowned I used to think about
that house. I aim to find out who owns it and what this all means.’
‘Really…’
said Lightner, again in a half whisper. ‘You don’t know
who owns it?’
‘No, I just said I aim
to find out.’
‘You don’t have
any idea…"
‘I just told you, I
aim to find out!’
‘You tried to climb
over the fence last night.’
‘I remember. Now would
you mind telling me a few things, please? You know about me. You know about
Rowan Mayfair. You know about the house. You know about Rowan’s family -’
Michael stopped, staring fixedly at Lightner. ‘Rowan’s family!’
he said. ‘They own that house?’
Gravely, Lightner nodded.
‘That’s really
true?’
‘They have for
centuries,’ said Lightner quietly. ‘And if I’m not sadly
mistaken that house will belong to Rowan Mayfair, upon her mother’s death.’
‘I don’t believe
you,’ Michael whispered. But in truth he did. Once again the atmosphere
of the visions enveloped him, only to dissolve immediately as it always did. He
stared at Lightner, unable to form any of the questions teeming in his head.
‘Mr Curry. Indulge me
again. Please. Explain to me in detail how the house is connected with the
visions. Or more specifically, how you came to know it and remember it when you
were a child.’
‘Not till you tell me
what you know about all this,’ said Michael. ‘Do you realize that
Rowan —?’
Lightner interrupted him:
‘I am willing to tell
you a great deal about the house and about the family,’ he said, ’but
I ask in exchange that you speak first. That you tell me anything you can
recall, anything which seems significant, even if you don’t know what to
make of it. Possibly I shall know what to make of it. Do you follow my drift?’
‘All right, my info
for your info. But you are going to tell me what you know?’
‘Absolutely.’
It was worth it, obviously.
It was about the most exciting thing which had happened, outside of Rowan
coming to his door. And he was surprised how much he wanted to tell this man
everything, absolutely every last detail.
‘OK,’ he began. ‘As
I said, I used to pass that house all the time when I was a kid. I used to go
out of my way to pass it. I grew up on Annunciation Street by the river, about
six blocks away. I used to see a man in the garden of the house, the same man I
saw last night. Do you remember me asking you if you saw him? Well, I saw him
last night by the fence, and back further, in the garden, and damned if he didn’t
look exactly the same as he had when I was a little kid. And I mean I was four
years old the first time I saw that guy. I was six when I saw him in church.’
‘You saw him in church?’
Again the scanning, the eyes seeming to graze Michael’s face as Lightner
listened.
‘Right, at Christmas
time, at St Alphonsus, I’ve never forgotten it, because he was in the
sanctuary of all places, you know what I’m talking about? The crib was
set up at the altar rail, and he was back on the side altar steps.’
Lightner nodded. ‘And
you are certain it was he?’
Michael laughed. ‘Well,
given the part of town I come from, I was certain it was him,’ he said. ‘But
yes, seriously, it was the same man. I saw him another time, too, I’m almost
sure of it, but I haven’t thought about it for years. It was at a concert
downtown, a concert I’ll never forget because Isaac Stern played that
night. It was the first time I heard anything like that, live, you know. And
anyway, I saw that man in the auditorium. He was looking at me.’
Michael hesitated, the
ambience of that long-ago moment returning, without a welcome, actually,
because that had been such a sad and wrenching time. He shook if off. Lightner
was reading his thoughts again, he knew it.
‘They are not clear
when you’re upset,’ said Lightner softly. ‘But this is most
important, Mr Curry -’
‘You’re telling
me! It’s all got to do with what I saw when I was drowned. I know because
I kept thinking about it after the accident, when I couldn’t focus on
anything else. I mean I kept waking up, seeing that house, thinking yes, go
back there. It’s what Rowan Mayfair called an idee fixe.’
‘You did tell her
about it…’
Michael nodded. He finished
the beer. ‘Described it to her completely. She was patient, but she couldn’t
figure it out. She did say something that was very on the money, however. She
said it was too specific to be something pathological. I thought that made a
lot of sense.’
‘Let me ask for just a
little more patience,’ Lightner said. ‘Would you tell me what you
do remember of the visions? You said you had not entirely
forgotten…"
Michael’s faith in the
man was increasing. Maybe it was the mildly authoritative manner. But nobody
had asked about the visions with this kind of seriousness, not even Rowan. He
found himself completely disarmed. The man seemed so sympathetic.
‘Oh, I am,’ said
Lightner hastily. ‘Believe me, I’m entirely sympathetic, not only
to what’s happened to you, but to your belief in it. Please, do tell me.’
Michael described briefly
the woman with the black hair, the jewel that was mixed up with it, the vague
image or idea of a doorway… ‘Not the doorway of the house, though,
it can’t be. But it’s got to do with the house.’ And
something about a number now forgotten. No, not the address. It wasn’t a
long number, it was two digits, had some very important significance. And the
purpose, of course the purpose, the purpose was the saving thing, and Michael’s
strong sense that he might have refused.
‘I can’t believe
that they would have let me die if I had not accepted. They gave me a choice on
everything. I chose to come back, and to fulfill the purpose. I awoke knowing I
had something terribly important to do.’
He could see that what he
said was having an amazing effect upon Lightner. Lightner didn’t even
attempt to disguise his surprise.
‘Is there anything
else you remember?’
‘No. Sometimes it
seems I’m about to remember everything. Then it just slides away. I didn’t
start thinking about the house till about twenty-four hours afterwards. No,
maybe even a little longer. And immediately there was the sense of connection.
I felt the same sense last night. I’d come to the right place to find all
the answers, but I still couldn’t remember! It’s enough to drive a
man mad.’
‘I can imagine,’
said Lightner softly, but he was still deeply involved in his own surprise or
amazement at all that Michael had said. ‘Let me suggest something. Is it
possible that when you were revived you took Rowan’s hand in yours, and
that this image of the house came to you then from Rowan?’
‘Well, it’s
possible, except for one very important fact. Rowan doesn’t know anything
about that house. She doesn’t know anything about New Orleans. She doesn’t
know anything about her family, except for the adoptive mother who died last
year.’
Lightner seemed reluctant to
believe this.
‘Look,’ Michael
said. He was getting quite carried away now on the whole subject and he knew
it. The fact was, he liked talking to Lightner. But things were going too far. ‘You
have to tell me how you know about Rowan. Friday night when Rowan came to get
me in San Francisco, she saw you. She said something about having seen you
before. I want you to be straight with me, Lightner. What’s all this
about Rowan? How do you know about her?’
‘I shall tell you
everything,’ said Lightner with the same characteristic gentleness, ’but
let me ask you again, are you sure Rowan has never seen a picture of that house?’
‘No, we discussed that
very point. She was born in New Orleans -’
‘Yes…’
‘But they took her
away that very day. They made her sign a paper that she’d never come back
here. I asked her if she’d ever seen pictures of the houses here. She
told me she hadn’t. She couldn’t find a scrap of information about
her family after her adoptive mother’s death. Don’t you see? This
didn’t come from Rowan! It involves Rowan just as it involves me.’
‘How do you mean?’
Michael felt dazed trying to
compass it. ‘I mean, I knew that they chose me because of everything that
had ever happened to me… who I was, what I was, where I’d lived, it
was all connected. And don’t you see? I’m not the center of it.
Rowan is probably the center. But I have to call Rowan. I have to tell her. I
have to tell her that the house is her mother’s house.’
‘Please don’t do
that, Michael.’
‘What?
‘Michael, sit down,
please.’
‘What are you talking
about? Don’t you understand how incredible this is! That house belongs to
Rowan’s family. Rowan doesn’t even know anything about her family.
Rowan doesn’t even know her own mother’s full name.’
‘I don’t want
you to call her! said Lightner with sudden urgency. ‘Please, I haven’t
fulfilled my side of the bargain. You haven’t heard me out.’
‘God, don’t you
realize? Rowan was probably just taking out the Sweet Christine when I
was washed off that rock! We were on a collision course with each other, and
then these people, these people who knew everything chose to intervene.’
‘Yes, I do
realize… all I ask is that you allow for our exchange of information now,
before you call Rowan.’
The Englishman was saying
more, but Michael couldn’t hear him. He felt a sudden violent
disorientation as if he were slipping into unconsciousness, and if he didn’t
grab hold of the table he would black out. But this wasn’t a failure of
his body; it was his mind that was slipping; and for one brilliant second the
visions opened again, the black-haired woman was speaking directly to him, and
then from some vantage point high above, some lovely and airy place where he
was weightless and free he saw a small craft on the sea below, and he said, Yes,
I’ll do it.
He held his breath.
Desperate not to lose the visions, he didn’t reach out for them mentally.
He didn’t crowd them. He remained locked in stillness, feeling them leave
him again in confusion, feeling the coldness and the solidity of his body
around him, feeling the old familiar longing and anger and pain.
‘Oh, my God,’ he
whispered. ‘And Rowan doesn’t even have the slightest idea…’
He realized he was sitting
down on the couch again. Lightner had hold of him, and he was grateful.
Otherwise he might have fallen. He shut his eyes again. But the visions were
nowhere near. He saw only Rowan, soft and pretty and beautifully disheveled in
the big white terry-cloth robe, her neck bent, her blond hair falling down to
veil her face as she cried.
When he opened his eyes, he
saw that Lightner was sitting next to him. There was the horrifying feeling
that he had lost seconds, possibly minutes of time. He didn’t mind the
presence of the man, however. The man seemed genuinely kindly and respecting,
in spite of all the incredible things he had to say.
‘Only a second or two
has passed,’ said Lightner. (Mind reading again!) ‘But you were
dizzy. You almost fell.’
‘Right. You don’t
know how awful this is, not remembering. And Rowan said the strangest thing.’
‘What was that?’
‘That maybe they didn’t
mean for me to remember.’
‘And this struck you
as strange?’
‘They want me to
remember. They want me to do what I’m supposed to do. It has to do with the
doorway, I know it does. And the number thirteen. And Rowan said another thing
that really threw me. She said how did I know that these people 1 saw were
good? Christ, she asked me if I thought they were responsible for the accident,
you know, for me being washed out to sea like that. God, I tell you I’m
going crazy.’
‘Those are very good
questions,’ said the man with a sigh. ‘Did you say the number
thirteen?’
‘Did I? Is that what I
said? I don’t… I guess I did say that. Yes, it was the number
thirteen. Christ, I’ve got that back now. Yes, it was the number thirteen.’
‘Now I want you to
listen to me. I don’t want you to call Rowan. I want you to get dressed
and to come with me.’
‘Wait a second, my
friend. You’re a very interesting guy. You look better in a smoking
jacket than anybody I’ve ever seen in the movies and you have a very
persuasive and charming manner. But I’m right here, exactly where I want
to be. And I’m going back to that house after I call Rowan…’
‘And what exactly are
you going to do there? Ring the bell?’
‘Well, I’ll wait
till Rowan comes. Rowan wants to come, you know. She wants to see her family.
That’s got to be what this is all about.’
‘And the man, what do
you suppose he has to do with it all?’ asked Lightner.
Michael was stopped. He sat
there staring at Lightner. ‘Did you see that man?’ he asked.
‘No. He didn’t
allow time for that. He wanted you to see him. And why is what I would like to
know.’
‘But you know all
about him, don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘OK, it’s your
turn to talk, and I wish you’d start right now.’
‘Yes, that’s our
bargain,’ said Lightner. ‘But I find it’s more important than
ever that you know everything.’ He stood up, and walked slowly over to
the table, and began to gather up the papers that were scattered all over it,
placing them neatly into a large leather folder. ‘And everything is in
this file.’
Michael followed him. He
looked down at the impossibly large mass of materials which the man was
cramming into the folder. Mostly typewritten sheets, yet some were in longhand
as well.
‘Look, Lightner, you
owe me some answers,’ Michael said.
‘This is a compendium
of answers, Michael. It’s from our archives. It’s entirely devoted
to the Mayfair family. It goes back to the year 1664. But you must hear me out.
I cannot give it to you here.’
‘Where then?’
‘We have a retreat
house near here, an old plantation house, quite a lovely place.’
‘No!’ Michael
said impatiently.
Lightner gestured for quiet.
‘It’s less than an hour and a half away. I must insist that you
dress now and you come with me, and that you read the file in peace and quiet
at Oak Haven, and that you save all your questions until you’ve done so,
and all the aspects of this case are clear. Once you’ve read the records
you’ll understand why I’ve begged you to postpone your call to Dr
Mayfair. I think you’ll be glad that you did.’
‘Rowan should see this
record.’
‘Indeed, she should.
And if you were willing to place it in her hands for us, we would be eternally
grateful indeed.’
Michael studied the man,
trying to separate the charm of the man’s manner from the astonishing
content of what he said. He felt drawn to the man and reassured by his
knowledge on the one hand; yet suspicious on the other. And through it all, he
was powerfully fascinated by the pieces of the puzzle which were falling into
place.
Something else had come
clear to him also. The reason he so disliked this power in his hands was that
once he had touched another, or the belongings of another, a certain intimacy
was established. In the case of strangers, it was fairly quickly effaced. In
the case of Lightner it was gradually increasing.
‘I can’t go with
you to the country,’ Michael said. ‘There’s no doubt in my
mind that you’re sincere. But I have to call Rowan and I want you to give
this material to me here.’
‘Michael, there is
information here which is pertinent to everything you’ve told me. It
concerns a woman with black hair. It concerns a very significant jewel. As for
the doorway, I don’t know the meaning. As for the number thirteen, I
might. As for the man, the woman with the black hair and jewel are connected to
him. But I shall let it out of my hands only on my terms.’
Michael narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re
saying this is the woman I saw in the visions?’
‘Only you can
determine that for yourself.’
‘You wouldn’t play
games with me.’
‘No. Of course not.
But don’t play games with yourself either, Michael. You always knew that
man was not… what he appeared to be, didn’t you? What did you feel
last night when you saw him?’
‘Yeesss, I
knew…" Michael whispered. He felt the disorientation again. Yet a
dark unsettling thrill ran through him. He saw the man again peering down at
him through the fence. ‘Christ,’ he whispered. And before he could
stop himself, the most surprising thing happened. He raised his right hand and
made a quick, reflexive sign of the cross.
Embarrassed he looked at
Lightner.
Then the clearest thought
came to him. The sense of excitement in him was rising. ‘Could they have
meant for me to meet you?’ Michael asked. ‘The woman with the black
hair, could she have meant for this meeting between you and me to take place?’
‘Only you can be the
judge of that. Only you know what these beings said to you. Only you know who
they actually were.’
‘God, but I don’t.’
Michael put his hands to the side of his head. He found that he was staring
down at the leather folder. There was writing on it in English. Large letters,
embossed in gold, but half worn away. ’ "The Mayfair Witches,"’
he whispered. ‘Is that what those words say?’
‘Yes. Would you dress
now and come with me? They can have breakfast waiting for us in the country.
Please?’
‘You don’t
believe in witches!’ Michael said. But they were coming. Again
the room was fading. And Lightner’s voice was once again distant, his
words without meaning, merely faint, innocuous sounds coming from far away.
Michael shuddered all over. Sick feeling. He saw the room again in the dusty
morning light. Aunt Vivian had sat over there years ago, and his mother had sat
here. But this was now. Call Rowan…
‘Not yet,’ said
Lightner. ‘After you’ve read the file.’
‘You’re afraid
of Rowan. There’s something about Rowan herself, some reason you want to
protect me from Rowan…’ He could see the dust swirling around him
in motes. How could something so particular and so material give the scene an
air of unreality? He thought of touching Rowan’s hand in the car. Warning.
He thought of Rowan afterwards, in his arms.
‘You know what it is,’
Lightner said. ‘Rowan told you.’
‘Oh, that’s
crazy. She imagined it.’
‘No, she didn’t.
Look at me. You know I’m telling you the truth. Don’t ask me to
search out your thoughts for it. You know. You thought of it when you saw the
word "Witches."’
‘I didn’t. You
can’t kill people simply by wishing them dead.’
‘Michael, I’m
asking for less than twenty-four hours. This is a trust I am placing in you. I
ask for your respect for our methods, I ask that you give me this time.’
Michael watched in confused
silence as Lightner removed his smoking jacket, put on his suit coat, and then
folded the jacket neatly and put it in the briefcase along with the leather
file.
He had to read what was in
that leather folder. He watched Lightner zipper the briefcase and lift it and
hold it in both arms.
‘I don’t accept
it!’ said Michael. ‘Rowan is no witch. That’s crazy. Rowan’s
a doctor, and Rowan saved my life.’
And to think it was her
house, that beautiful house, the house he’d loved ever since he was a
little boy. He felt the evening again as it had been yesterday with the sky
breaking violet through the branches and the birds crying as if they were in a
wild wood.
All these years he’d
known that man wasn’t real. All his life he’d known it. He’d
known it in the church…
‘Michael, that man is
waiting for Rowan,’ Lightner said.
‘Waiting for Rowan?
But, Lightner, why, then, did he show himself to me?’
‘Listen, my friend.’
The Englishman put his hand on Michael’s hand and clasped it warmly. ‘It
isn’t my intention to alarm you or to exploit your fascination. But that
creature has been attached to the Mayfair family for generations. It can kill
people. But then so can Dr Rowan Mayfair. In fact, she may well be the first of
her kind to be able to kill entirely on her own, without that creature’s
aid. And they are coming together, that creature and Rowan. It’s only a
matter of time before they meet. Now, please, dress and come with me. If you
choose to be our mediator and to give the file on the Mayfair Witches to Rowan
for us, then our highest aims will have been served.’
Michael was quiet, trying to
absorb all this, his eyes moving anxiously over Lightner but seeing countless
other things.
He could not entirely
account for his feelings towards ‘the man’ now, the man who had
always seemed vaguely beautiful to him, an embodiment of elegance, a wan and
soulful figure, almost, who seemed to possess, in his deep garden hideaway,
some serenity that Michael himself wanted to possess. Behind the fence last
night, the man had tried to frighten him. Or was that so?
If only in that instant, he’d
been rid of his gloves, and had been able to touch the man!
He did not doubt Lightner’s
words. There was something ghastly in all this, something ominous, something
dark as the shadows that enclosed that house. Yet it seemed familiar.
He thought of the visions, not in a struggle to remember, but merely to sink
once more in the sensations evoked by them, and a conviction of goodness
settled on him, as it had before.
‘I’m meant to
intervene,’ he said, ‘surely I am. And maybe I’m meant to use
this power through touching. Rowan said…’
‘Yes?’
‘Rowan asked why I
thought the power in my hands had nothing to do with it, why I kept insisting
it was separate…’ He thought again of touching the man. ‘Maybe
it is part of it, maybe it’s not just a little curse visited on me to
drive me crazy and off course.’
‘That’s what you
thought?’
He nodded. ‘Seemed
like it. Like it was the thing preventing me from coming. I holed up on Liberty
Street for two months. I could have found Rowan sooner…" He looked
at the gloves. How he hated them. They made his hands into artificial hands.
He could think no further.
He couldn’t grasp all the aspects of this fully. The feeling of
familiarity lingered, taking the edges off the shocks of Lightner’s
revelations.
‘All right,’ he
said finally. Til go with you. I want to read that file, all of it. But I want
to be back here as soon as possible. I’m leaving word for her that I’ll
be back in case she should call. She matters to me. She matters to me more than
you know. And it’s got nothing to do with the visions. It’s got to
do with who she is, and how much I… care about her. She can’t be
subordinated to anything else.’
‘Not even to the
visions themselves?’ Lightner asked respectfully.
‘No. Twice, maybe
three times in a lifetime you feel about someone the way I do about Rowan. That
involves its own priorities, its own purposes.’
‘I understand,’
said Lightner. ‘I’ll be downstairs to meet you in twenty minutes.
And I wish that you would call me Aaron, from now on, if you’d like to.
We have a long way to go together. I’m afraid I lapsed into calling you
Michael quite some time ago. I want us to be friends.’
‘We’re friends,’
said Michael. ‘What the hell else could we possibly be?’ He gave a
little uneasy laugh, but he had to admit, he liked this guy. In fact, he felt
distinctly uneasy letting Lightner, and the briefcase, out of his sight.
Michael showered, shaved,
and dressed in less than fifteen minutes. He unpacked, except for a few
essentials. And only as he picked up his suitcase did he see the message light
still pulsing on the bedside phone. Why in the world hadn’t he responded
the first time he’d seen it? It infuriated him suddenly.
At once he called the
switchboard.
‘Yes. A Dr Rowan
Mayfair called you, Mr Curry, about five fifteen a.m.’ The woman gave him
Rowan’s number. ‘She insisted that we ring, and that we knock.’
‘And you did?’
‘We did, Mr Curry. We
didn’t get any answer.’
And my friend Aaron was
there all the time, Michael thought angrily.
‘We didn’t want
to use the passkey to go in.’
‘That’s fine.
Listen, I want to leave word with you for Dr Mayfair if she calls again.’
‘Yes, Mr Curry?’
‘That I arrived
safely, and that I’ll call within twenty-four hours. That I have to go
out now, but I’ll be here later on.’
He laid a five-dollar bill
for the maid on the coverlet and walked out.
The small narrow lobby was
bustling when he came down. The coffee shop was crowded and cheerfully noisy.
Lightner, having changed from his dark tweed into an immaculate seersucker
suit, stood by the doors, looking very much the southern gentleman of the old
school.
‘You might have answered
the phone when it rang,’ said Michael. He did not add that Lightner
looked like the old white-haired men he remembered from the old days who used to
take their evening walks through the Garden District and along the avenue
uptown.
‘I didn’t feel I
had the right to do that,’ said Aaron politely. He opened the door for
Michael and gestured to the gray car -a stretch limousine — at the curb. ‘Besides,
I was afraid it was Dr Mayfair.’
‘Well, it was,’
Michael said. Delicious gust of August heat. He wanted to take off on foot. How
comfortable the pavement felt to him. But he knew he had to make this journey.
He climbed into the backseat of the car.
‘I see,’
Lightner was saying. ‘But you haven’t called her back.’ He
seated himself beside Michael.
‘A deal is a deal,’
Michael said with a sigh. ‘But I don’t like it. I’ve tried to
make it clear to you how things are with me and Rowan. You know, when I was in
my twenties, falling in love with a person in one evening would have been damn
near impossible. Least it never happened. And when I was in my thirties? Well
maybe, but again it didn’t happen, though now and then I saw just the
promise… and maybe I ran away. But I’m in my late forties now, and I’m
either more stupid than ever, or I know enough finally that I can fall in love
with a person in one day or one night, I can size up the situation, so to
speak, and figure when something is just about perfect, you know what I mean?’
‘I think so.’
The car was somewhat old but
plenty agreeable enough, with well-kept gray leather upholstery and the little
refrigerator tucked to one side. Ample room for Michael’s long legs. St
Charles Avenue flashed by all too rapidly beyond the tinted glass.
‘Mr Curry, I respect
your feelings for Rowan, though I have to confess I’m both surprised and
intrigued. Oh, don’t get me wrong. The woman’s extraordinary by any
standard, an incomparable physician and a beautiful young creature of rather
amazing demeanor. I know. But what I ask that you understand is this: The File
on the Mayfair Witches would never normally be entrusted to anyone but a member
of our order or a member of the Mayfair family itself. Now I’m breaking
the rules in showing you this material. And the reasons for my decision are
obvious. Nevertheless, I want to use this precious time to explain to you about
the Talamasca, how we operate, and what small loyalty, in exchange for our
confidence, we should like to claim from you.’
‘OK, don’t get
so fired up. Is there some coffee in this glorified taxi?’
‘Yes, of course,’
said Aaron. He lifted a thermos from a pocket in the side door, and a mug with
it, and started to fill the mug.
‘Black will do just
fine,’ Michael said. A lump rose in his throat suddenly as he saw the big
proud houses of the avenue gliding past, with their deep porches and
colonnettes and gaily painted shutters, and the pastel sky enmeshed in a tangle
of groping branches and softly fluttering leaves. A sudden crazy thought came
to him, that some day he would buy a seersucker suit like Lightner’s
suit, and he would walk on the avenue, like the gentlemen of years past, walk
for hours, round curve after curve as the avenue followed the distant bends of
the river, past all these graceful old houses that had survived for so long. He
felt drugged and crazy drifting through this ragged and beautiful landscape, in
this insulated car, behind dimming glass.
‘Yes, it is beautiful,’
Lightner said. ‘Very beautiful indeed.’
‘O K, tell me about
this order. So you’re driving around in limousines thanks to the Knights
Templar. What else?’
Lightner shook his head
reprovingly, a trace of a smile on his lips. But again he colored, surprising
and amusing Michael.
‘Just kidding you,
Aaron,’ said Michael. ‘Come on, how did you come to know about the
Mayfair family in the first place? And what the hell damn is a witch, in your
book, do you mind telling me that?’
‘A witch is a person
who can attract and manipulate unseen forces,’ said Aaron. ‘That’s
our definition. It will suffice for sorcerer or seer, as well. We were created
to observe such things as witches. It all started in what we now call the Dark
Ages, long before the witchcraft persecutions, as I’m sure you know. And
it started with a single magician, an alchemist as he called himself, who began
his studies in a solitary spot, gathering together in a great book all the
tales of the supernatural he had ever read or heard.
‘His name and his life
story are not important for the moment. But what characterized his account was
that it was curiously secular for the times. He was perhaps the only historian
ever to write about the occult, or the unseen, or the mysterious without making
assumptions and assertions as to the demonic origin of apparitions, spirits,
and the like. And of his small band of followers he demanded the same open-mindedness.
"Merely study the work of the so-called spell binder," he would say.
"Do not assume you know whence his power comes."
‘We are very much the
same now,’ Aaron continued. ‘We are dogmatic only when it comes to
defending our lack of dogma. And though we are large and extremely secure, we
are always on the lookout for new members, for people who will respect our
passivity and our slow and thorough methods, people who find the investigation
of the occult as fascinating as we do, people who have been gifted with an extraordinary
talent such as the power you have in your hands…
‘Now when I first read
of you, I have to confess, I knew nothing about any connection between you and
Rowan May-fair or the house on First Street. It was membership that entered my
mind. Of course I hadn’t planned to tell you this immediately. But
everything is changed now, you’ll agree.
‘But whatever was to
happen on that account, I came to San Francisco to make available our knowledge
to you, to show you, if you wished, how to use your power, and then perhaps to
broach the subject that you might find our way of life fulfilling or enjoyable,
enough to consider it, at least for a while…
‘You see, there was
something about your life which intrigued me, that is, what I could learn of
it, from the public records, and from well, some simple investigation that we
conducted on our own. And that is, that you seemed to be at a crossroads before
the accident, it was as if you had achieved your goals, yet you were
unsatisfied -’
‘Yeah, you’re
right about all that,’ Michael said. He had forgotten completely about
the scenery beyond the windows. His eyes were fixed on Lightner. He held out
the mug to be refilled with coffee. ‘Go on, please.’
‘And well, there’s
your background in history,’ said Lightner, ’and the absence of any
close family, except for your darling aunt, whom I have come to simply adore on
short acquaintance, I must confess, and of course there is still the question
of this power you possess, which is considerably stronger than I ever supposed…
‘But to continue about
the order. We have observed occult phenomena throughout the world, as well you
can imagine. And our work with the witch families is but a small part of it,
and one of the few parts which involve real danger, for the observation of hauntings,
even cases of possession, and our work with reincarnation and mind reading and
the like involve almost no danger at all. With witches, it’s entirely
different… And as a consequence, only the most experienced members are
ever invited to work with this material, even to read it or try to understand
it. And almost never would a novice or even a young member be brought into the
field to approach a family such as the Mayfair family because the dangers are
too great.
‘All of that will come
clear to you when you read the File. What I want from you now is some
understanding that you won’t make light of what we offer and what we do.
That if we should part ways, either disagreeably or agreeably, you will respect
the privacy of the persons mentioned in the Mayfair history…’
‘You know you can
trust me on that score. You know what kind of a person I am,’ Michael
said. ‘But what do you mean about danger? You’re talking about this
spirit again, this man, and you’re talking about Rowan…’
‘Prematurely. What
more do you want to know about us?’
‘Membership, how does
it actually work?’
‘It begins with a
novitiate, just as it does in a religious order. But again, let me emphasize
one does not embrace a slate of teachings when one comes to us. One embraces an
approach to life. During one’s years as a novice, one comes to live in
the Motherhouse, to meet and associate with the older members, to work in the
libraries, and to browse in them at will…"
‘Now that would be
heaven,’ Michael said, dreamily. ‘But I didn’t mean to interrupt
you. Go on.’
‘After two years of
preparation, then we talk of serious commitment, we speak of fieldwork or
scholarly pursuits. Of course one may follow the other, and again, we are not
comparable to a religious order in providing our members with unrefusable
assignments, we do not take vows of obedience. Allegiance, confidentiality,
these are far more important to us. But you see, in the final analysis, it’s
all about understanding; about being inducted and absorbed into a special sort
of community…"
‘I can see it,’
said Michael. ‘Tell me about the Motherhouses. Where are they?’
‘The one in Amsterdam
is the oldest now,’ Aaron said. ‘Then there is the house outside of
London, and our largest house, and our most secret perhaps, in Rome. Of course
the Catholic Church doesn’t like us. It doesn’t understand us. It
puts us with the devil, just as it did the witches, and the sorcerers, and the
Knights Templar, but we have nothing to do with the devil. If the devil exists,
he is no friend to us…’ Michael laughed. ‘Do you think the
devil exists?’ ‘I don’t know, frankly. But that’s what
a good member of the Talamasca would say.’
‘Go on, about the
Motherhouses…" ‘Well, you’d like the one in London,
actually…’ Michael was scarcely aware that they had left New Orleans,
that they were speeding on through the swampland, on a barren strip of new
highway, and that the sky had narrowed to a ribbon of flawless blue overhead.
He was listening to every word Aaron said, quite enthralled. But a dark
troublesome feeling was brewing in him, which he tried to ignore. This was all
familiar, this unfolding story of the Talamasca. It was familiar as the
frightening words about Rowan and ‘the man’ had been familiar,
familiar as the house itself had been familiar. And tantalizing though this
was, it discouraged him suddenly, because the great design — of which he
felt he was part — seemed for all its vagueness to be growing, and the
bigger it grew, the more the world itself seemed to dwindle, to lose its
splendor and its promise of infinite natural wonders and ever-shifting fortune,
and even some of its ragged romance.
Aaron must have realized
what Michael was feeling, because Aaron paused once before continuing with his
story, to say tenderly but almost absently, ‘Michael, just listen now. Don’t
be afraid…"
‘Tell me something,
Aaron,’ he said.
‘If I can, of
course…"
‘Can you touch a
spirit? That man, I mean. Can you touch him with your hand?’
‘Well, there are times
when I think that would be entirely possible… At least you could touch something.
But of course, whether or not the being would allow himself to be touched is
quite another story, as you’ll soon see.’
Michael nodded. ‘It’s
all connected, then. The hands, the visions, and even you… and this
organization of yours. It’s connected.’
‘Wait, wait until you’ve
read the history. At each step of the game… wait and see.’
TEN
WHEN ROWAN AWOKE at ten she
began to doubt what she had seen. In the flood of sunlight warming the house,
the ghost seemed unreal. She tried to reinvoke the moment - the eerie noises of
the water and the wind. It all seemed thoroughly impossible now.
She began to be thankful
that she hadn’t reached Michael. She didn’t want to appear foolish,
and above all, she didn’t want to burden Michael again. On the other
hand, how could she have imagined such a thing as that? A man standing at the glass
with his fingers touching it, looking at her in that imploring way?
Well, there was no evidence
of the being here now. She went out on the deck, walked the length of it,
studied the pilings, the water. No signs of anything out of the ordinary. But
then what sort of signs would there be? She stood at the railing, feeling the
brisk wind for a while, and feeling thankful for the dark blue sky. Several
sailboats were making their way slowly and gracefully out of the marina across
the water. Soon the bay would be covered with them. She half wanted to take out
the Sweet Christine. But she decided against it. She went inside.
No call from Michael yet.
The thing to do was to take out the Sweet Christine, or go to work.
She was dressed and leaving
for the hospital when the phone rang. ‘Michael,’ she whispered.
Then she realized that it was Ellie’s old line.
‘Person to person,
please, for Miss Ellie Mayfair.’
‘I’m sorry, she
can’t answer,’ said Rowan. ‘She’s no longer here.’
Was that the way to say this? It was never pleasant telling these people that
Ellie was dead.
Conference on the other end.
‘Can you tell us where
we might reach her?’
‘Can you tell me who
is calling, please?’ Rowan asked. She set down her bag on the kitchen
counter. The house was warm from the morning sun, and she was a little hot in
her coat. ‘I’ll be glad to have you reverse the charges, if the
party is willing to speak to me.’
Another conference, then the
crisp voice of an older woman: 'I'll speak to this party.’
The operator rang off.
‘This is Rowan
Mayfair, can I help you?’
‘You can tell me when
and where I can reach Ellie,’ said the woman, impatient, perhaps even
angry, and certainly cold.
‘Are you a friend of
hers?’
‘If she cannot be
reached immediately, I would like to talk to her husband, Graham Franklin. You
have his office number perhaps?’
What an awful person, Rowan
thought. But a suspicion was growing in her that this was a family call.
‘Graham can’t be
reached either. If you’ll only tell me who you are, I’ll be glad to
explain the situation.’
‘Thank you, I don’t
care to do that.’ Steely. ‘It’s imperative that I reach Ellie
Mayfair or Graham Franklin.’
Be patient, Rowan told
herself. This is obviously an old woman, and if she is part of the family, it
is worth holding on.
‘I’m sorry to
have to tell you this,’ Rowan said. ‘Ellie Mayfair died last year.
She died of cancer. Graham died two months before Ellie. I’m their
daughter, Rowan. Is there anything I can do for you? Anything else perhaps that
you want to know?’
Silence.
‘This is your aunt,
Carlotta Mayfair,’ said the woman. ‘I’m calling you from New
Orleans. Why in the name of God was I not notified of Ellie’s death?’
An immediate anger kindled
in Rowan.
‘I don’t know
who you are, Miss Mayfair,’ she said, deliberately forcing herself to
speak slowly and calmly. ‘I don’t have an address or a phone number
for any of Ellie’s people in New Orleans. Ellie left no such information.
Her instructions to her lawyer were that no one be notified other than friends
here.’
Rowan suddenly realized she
was trembling, and her hand on the phone was slippery. She could not quite
believe that she had been so rude, but it was too soon to be sorry. She also
realized that she was powerfully excited. She didn’t want this woman to
hang up.
‘Are you still there,
Miss Mayfair?’ she asked. ‘I’m sorry. I think you caught me a
bit off guard.’
‘Yes,’ said the
woman, ’perhaps we were both caught off guard. It seems I have no choice
but to speak to you directly.’
‘I wish you would.’
‘It’s my
unfortunate duty to tell you that your mother died this morning. I presume you
understand what I’m saying? Your mother? It was my intention to tell
Ellie, and leave it entirely in her hands as to how or when this information
should be conveyed to you. I’m sorry to have to handle it in this
fashion. Your mother died this morning at five minutes after five.’
Rowan was too stunned to
respond. The woman might as well have struck her. This wasn’t grief. It
was too sharp, too awful for that. Her mother had sprung to life suddenly,
living and breathing and existing for a split second in spoken words. And in
the same instant the living entity was pronounced dead; she existed no more.
Rowan didn’t try to
speak. She shrank into her habitual and natural silence. She saw Ellie dead, in
the funeral home, surrounded by flowers; but there was no coherence to this, no
sweet bite of sadness. It was purely terrible. And the paper lay in the safe,
as it had for over a year. Ellie, she was alive and I could have known her
and now she’s dead.
‘There is no need
whatsoever for you to come here,’ said the woman with no perceptible
change of attitude or tone. ‘What is necessary is that you contact your
attorney immediately, and that you put me in touch with this person as there
are pressing matters regarding your property which must be discussed.’
‘Oh, but I want to
come,’ Rowan said, without hesitation. Her voice was thick. ‘I want
to come now. I want to see my mother before she’s buried.’ Damn the
paper, and this unspeakable woman, whoever she was.
‘That’s scarcely
appropriate,’ said the woman wearily.
‘I insist,’ said
Rowan. ‘I don’t wish to trouble you but I want to see my mother
before she’s buried. No one there need know who I am. I simply want to
come.’
‘It would be a useless
journey. Surely Ellie would not have wanted this. Ellie assured me that —’
‘Ellie’s dead!’
Rowan whispered, her voice scraping bottom in her effort to control it. She was
shaking all over. ‘Look, it means something to me to see my mother. Ellie
and Graham are both gone, as I told you. I…’ She could not say it.
It sounded too self-pitying and too intimate to confess that she was alone.
‘I must insist,’
said the woman in the same tired, worn-out feelingless voice, 'that you remain
exactly where you are.’
‘Why?’ Rowan
asked. ‘What does it matter to you if I come? I told you, no one needs to
know who I am.’
‘There isn’t
going to be a public wake or funeral,’ said the woman. ‘It doesn’t
matter who knows or doesn’t know. Your mother will be buried as soon as
it can be arranged. I have asked that it be done tomorrow afternoon. I am
trying to save you grief with my recommendations. But if you will not listen,
then do what you feel you must do.’
‘I’m coming,’
Rowan said. ‘What time tomorrow afternoon?’
‘Your mother will be
buried through Lonigan and Sons on Magazine Street. The Requiem Mass will be at
St Mary’s Assumption Church on Josephine Street. And the services will
take place just as soon as I can arrange for them. It is pointless for you to
come two thousand miles -’
‘I want to see my
mother. I ask you please to wait until I can get there.’
‘That is absolutely
out of the question,’ said the woman with a slight touch of anger or
impatience. ‘I advise you to leave immediately, if you are determined to
come. And please don’t expect to spend the night under this roof, I have
no means of properly receiving you. The house is yours, of course, and I shall
vacate it as soon as possible if that is your wish. But I ask that you remain
in a hotel until I can conveniently do so. Again, I have no means of making you
comfortable here.’
Carefully, in the same tired
manner, the woman gave Rowan the address.
‘You said First Street?’
Rowan asked. It was the street that Michael had described to her, she was sure
of it. ‘This was my mother’s house?’ she asked.
‘I’ve been awake
all night,’ said the woman, her words slow, spiritless. ‘If you’re
coming, then everything can be explained to you when you arrive.’
Rowan was about to ask
another question when, to her astonishment, the woman rang off.
She was so angry that for a
moment she did not feel her hurt. Then the hurt overshadowed everything. ‘Who
in the hell are you?’ she whispered, the tears rising, but not flowing. ‘And
why in the world would you speak this way to me!’ She slammed down the
phone, her teeth biting into her lip, and folded her arms. ‘God, what an
awful, awful woman,’ she whispered.
But this was no time for
crying or wishing for Michael. Quickly, she took out her handkerchief, blew her
nose and wiped her eyes, and then reached for the pad and pen on the kitchen
counter, and she jotted down the information the woman had given her.
First Street, she thought,
looking at it after she’d written it. Probably no more than coincidence.
And Lonigan and Sons, the words Ellie had mentioned in her delirium when she
had rambled on about her childhood and home. Quickly she called New Orleans
information, then the funeral home.
It was a Mr Jerry Lonigan
who answered.
‘My name is Dr Rowan
Mayfair, I’m calling from California about a funeral.’
‘Yes, Dr Mayfair,’
he said in a most agreeable voice that reminded her of Michael at once. ‘I
know who you are. I have your mother here now.’
Thank God, no subterfuge, no
need for false explanations. Yet she couldn’t help but wonder why did the
man know about her? Hadn’t the whole adoption been hush-hush?
‘Mr Lonigan,’
she said, trying to speak clearly and ignore the thickness in her voice, ’it’s
very important to me that I be there for the funeral. I want to see my mother
before she is put into the ground.’
‘Of course you do, Dr
Mayfair. I understand. But Miss Carlotta called here just now and said if we don’t
bury your mother tomorrow… Well, let’s just say she’s
insisting on it, Dr Mayfair. I can schedule the Mass for as late as three p.m.
Do you think you could make it by that time, Dr Mayfair? I will hold everything
up just as long as I can.’
‘Yes, absolutely, I
will make it,’ said Rowan. 'I'll leave tonight or early tomorrow morning
at the latest. But Mr Lonigan - if I get delayed -’
‘Dr Mayfair, if I know
you’re on your way, I won’t shut that coffin before you arrive.’
‘Thank you, Mr
Lonigan. I only just found out. I just…’
‘Well, Dr Mayfair, if
you don’t mind my saying so, it only just happened. I picked up your
mother at six a.m. this morning. I think Miss Carlotta’s rushing things.
But then Miss Carlotta is so old now, Dr Mayfair. So old…"
‘Listen, let me give
you my phone number at the hospital. If anything should happen, call me please.’
He took down the numbers. ‘Don’t
you worry, Dr Mayfair. Your mother will be here at Lonigan and Sons when you
come.’
Again the tears threatened. He
sounded so simple, so hopelessly sincere. ‘Mr Lonigan, can you tell me
something else?’ she said, her voice quavering badly.
‘Yes, Dr Mayfair.’
‘How old was my mother?’
‘Forty-eight, Dr
Mayfair.’
‘What was her name?’
Obviously this surprised
him, but he recovered quickly. ‘Deirdre was her name, Dr Mayfair. She was
a very pretty woman. My wife was a good friend of hers. She loved Deirdre, used
to go to visit. My wife is right here with me. My wife is glad that you called.’
For some reason, this
affected Rowan almost as deeply as all the other bits and pieces of information
had affected her. She pressed the handkerchief to her eyes tightly, and
swallowed.
‘Can you tell me what
my mother died of, Mr Lonigan? What does the death certificate say?’
‘It says natural
causes, Dr Mayfair, but your mother had been sick, real sick for many years. I
can give you the name of the doctor who treated her. I think he might talk to
you, being that you are a doctor yourself.’
‘I’ll get it
from you when I come,’ Rowan said. She could not continue this much
longer. She blew her nose quickly and quietly. ‘Mr Lonigan. I have the
name of a hotel. The Pontchartrain. Is that convenient to the funeral home and
the church?’
‘Why, you could walk
over here from there, Dr Mayfair, if the weather wasn’t so hot.’
'I'll call you as soon as I
get in. But please, again, promise me that you won’t let my mother be
buried without…’
‘Don’t worry
about it another minute, Dr Mayfair. But Dr Mayfair, there’s one thing
more. It’s my wife who wants me to take it up with you.’
‘Go ahead, Mr Lonigan.’
‘Your aunt, Carlotta
Mayfair, she doesn’t want any announcement of this in the morning paper,
and well, frankly, I don’t think there’s time for an announcement
now. But there are so many Mayfairs who would want to know about the funeral,
Dr Mayfair. I mean the cousins are going to be up in arms when they find out
how all this happened so fast. Now, it’s entirely up to you, you
understand, I’ll do as you say, but my wife was wondering, would you
maybe mind if she started calling the cousins. ‘Course once she gets one
or two of them, they’ll call everybody else. Now, if you don’t want
her to do that, Dr Mayfair, she won’t do it. But Rita Mae, my wife, that
is, she felt that it was a shame to bury Deirdre this way without anybody
knowing, and she felt maybe, you know, that it might do you good to see the
cousins who would turn out. God knows, they came out for Miss Nancy last year.
And Miss Ellie was here, your Miss Ellie from California, as I’m sure you
know…"
No, Rowan had not known.
Another dull shock struck her at the mention of Ellie’s name. She found
it painful to envision Ellie back there among these numberless and nameless
cousins, whom she herself had never seen. The heat of her anger and bitterness
surprised her. Ellie and the cousins. And Rowan here in this house alone. Once
again, she struggled for composure. She wondered if this was not one of the
more difficult moments she had endured since Ellie’s death.
‘Yes, I would be
grateful, Mr Lonigan, if your wife would do what she thinks best. I would like
to see the cousins…’ She stopped because she could not continue. ‘And
Mr Lonigan, regarding Ellie Mayfair, my adoptive mother — she is gone too
now. She died last year. If you think any of these cousins would want to be
told —’
‘Oh, I’d be glad
to do that, Dr Mayfair. Save you telling them when you arrive. And I’m so
sorry to hear it. We had no idea.’
It sounded so heartfelt. She
could actually believe that he was sorry. Such a nice old-fashioned sort of
man. There was almost a Damon Runyon quality to him.
‘Good-bye Mr Lonigan. I’ll
see you tomorrow afternoon.’
For one moment, as she put
down the phone, it seemed that if she let the tears go they’d never stop.
The stir of emotions was so thick in her it was dizzying, and the pain demanded
some violent action, and the strangest, most bizarre pictures filled her mind.
Choking back her tears, she
saw herself rushing into Ellie’s room. She saw herself dragging clothes
out of drawers and off hangers and ripping garments to shreds at random, in a
near uncontrollable rage. She saw herself smashing Ellie’s mirror and the
long row of bottles which still stood on her dresser, all those little bottles
of scent in which the perfume had dried to nothing but color over the months. ‘Dead,
dead, dead,’ she whispered. ‘She was alive yesterday and the day
before and the day before that, and I was here, and I did nothing! Dead! Dead!
Dead!’
And then the bizarre scene
shifted, as if the tragedy of her rage were passing into another act. She saw
herself beating with her fists on all the walls of wood and glass around her,
beating with her fists until the blood ran from her bruised hands. The hands
that had operated on so many, healed so many, saved so many lives.
But Rowan did none of these
things.
She sat down on the stool at
the kitchen corner, her body crumpling, hand up to shield her face, and she
began to sob aloud in the empty house, the images still passing through her
mind. Finally she laid her head down on her folded arms, and she cried and
cried, until she was choked and exhausted with it, and all she could do was
whisper over and over: ‘Deirdre Mayfair, aged forty-eight, dead dead.’
At last, she wiped her face
with the back of her hand, and she went to the rug before the fire and lay
down. Her head hurt and all the world seemed empty to her and hostile and
without the slightest promise of warmth or light.
It would pass. It had to.
She had felt this misery on the day Ellie was buried. She had felt it before,
standing in the hospital corridor as Ellie cried in pain. Yet it seemed
impossible now that things could get better. When she thought of the paper in
the safe, the paper which had kept her from going to New Orleans after Ellie’s
death, she despised herself for honoring it. She despised Ellie for ever having
made her sign it.
And her thoughts continued,
abysmal and miserable, sapping her spirit and her belief in herself.
It must have been an hour
that she lay there, the sun hot on the floor-boards around her, and on the side
of her face and her arms. She was ashamed of her loneliness. She was ashamed of
being the victim of this anguish. Before Ellie’s death, she had been such
a happy person, so carefree, utterly dedicated to her work, and coming and
going in this house, assured of warmth and love, and giving warmth and love in
return. When she thought of how much she had depended upon Michael, how much she
wanted him now, she was doubly lost.
Inexcusable really, to have
called him so desperately last night about the ghost, and to be wanting him so
desperately now. She began to grow calm. Then slowly it came to her -
the ghost last night, and last night her mother had died.
She sat up, folding her legs
Indian-style, and trying to remember the experience in cold detail. She’d
glanced at the clock last night only moments before the thing had appeared. It
had been five minutes after three. And hadn’t that awful woman said, ‘Your
mother died at five minutes after five’?
Same time exactly in New Orleans. But what a bewildering
possibility, she thought, that the two were linked.
Of course, if her mother had
appeared to her it would have been splendid beyond belief. It would have been
the kind of sacramental moment people talk about forever. All the lovely
cliches — ’life-changing, miraculous, beautiful’ - could have
come into play. In fact, it was almost impossible to contemplate the comfort of
such a moment. But it was not a woman who had appeared there, it was a man, a
strange and curiously elegant man.
Just thinking about it
again, thinking about the beseeching expression of the being, made her feel her
alarm of the night before. She turned and glanced anxiously at the glass wall.
Nothing there of course but the great empty blue sky over the dark distant
hills, and the flashing, sparkling panorama of the bay.
She grew coldly and
unexpectedly calm as she puzzled over it, as she reviewed in her mind all the
popular myths she’d heard about such apparitions, but then this brief
interlude of excitement began to fade.
Whatever it was, it seemed
vague, insubstantial, even trivial beside the fact of the death of her mother.
That was what had to be dealt with. And she was wasting precious time.
She climbed to her feet and
went to the phone. She called Dr Larkin at home.
‘Lark, I have to go on
leave,’ she explained. ‘It’s unavoidable. Can we talk about
Slattery filling in?’
How cool her voice sounded,
how like the old Rowan. But that was a lie. As they spoke, she stared at the
glass wall again, at the empty space on the deck where the tall, slender being
had stood. She saw his dark eyes again, searching her face. She could scarcely
follow what Lark was saying. No way I imagined that damned thing, she thought.
ELEVEN
THE DRIVE to the Talamasca
retreat house took less than an hour and a half. The limousine took the dull
path of the interstate, cutting over the river road only when they were within
a few miles of the house.
But it seemed like far less
to Michael, who was for the entire time immersed in his conversation with
Aaron.
By the time they reached the
house, Michael had a fairly good understanding of what the Talamasca was, and
he had assured Aaron that he would keep confidential forever what he was about
to read in the files. Michael loved the idea of the Talamasca; he loved the
genteel civilized way in which Aaron presented things; and he thought to
himself more than once, that had he not been hell-bent on this ’purpose’
of his, he would cheerfully have embraced the Talamasca.
But those were foolish
thoughts, because it was the drowning which had led to the sense of purpose and
to his psychic ability; and these things had led the Talamasca to him.
There also had sharpened in
Michael a sense of his love for Rowan - and it was love, he felt - as something
apart from his involvement with the visions, even though he knew now that the
visions had involved Rowan.
He tried to explain this to
Aaron as they approached the retreat house gates.
‘All you’ve told
me sounds familiar; there is a sense of recognition, just as I felt when I saw
the house last night. And you know of course that the Talamasca couldn’t
be familiar to me, it’s not possible that I would have heard of you and
forgotten except if they told me while I was drowned. But the point I’m
trying to make is that my affection for Rowan doesn’t feel familiar. It
doesn’t feel like something meant to be. It’s fresh; it’s
tied up in my mind somehow with rebellion. Why, I remember when I was with her
out there, you know, talking over breakfast, at her house in Tiburon, I looked
out over the water and I said almost defiantly to those beings, that this thing
with Rowan mattered to me.’
Aaron listened to all this
carefully, as he had listened to Michael, intermittently, all along.
It seemed to Michael that
both knew their knowledge of each other had deepened and become seemingly
natural to them, that they were now completely at ease.
Michael had drunk only
coffee since they’d left New Orleans. He intended to keep it that way, at
least until he had read all that Aaron had to give him to read.
Michael was also weary of
the limousine, weary of the smooth, brutal way it shot through the old swampy
landscape. He wanted to breathe fresh air.
As soon as they entered the
gates of the retreat house, turning left off the river road with the levee
behind them, Michael knew the place from the picture books. The oak-lined
avenue had been photographed countless times over the decades. It seemed lavishly
dreamlike in its southern Gothic perfection, the gargantuan black-barked trees
extending their gnarled and heavy limbs to form an unbroken ceiling of crude
and broken arches leading all the way to the verandas of the house.
Great streaks of gray Spanish
moss hung from the deep knotty elbows of these branches. Bulging roots crowded,
on either side, the narrow rutted gravel drive.
Michael loved it. It lay its
hands silently on his heart the same way that the beauty of the Garden District
had done so; a quiet faith sprang up in him, that no matter what else happened
to him, he was home in the south and things were somehow going to be all right.
The car tunneled deeper and
deeper into the green-tinted light, ragged rays of sun here and there piercing
the shadows, while beyond, the low country on both sides, full of high grass,
and tall shapeless shrubbery seemed to close in upon the sky and upon the house
itself.
Michael pressed the button
to lower the window. ‘God, feel that air,’ he whispered.
‘Yes, rather remarkable
I think,’ Aaron said softly. But he was smiling indulgently at Michael.
The heat was wilting. Michael didn’t care.
It seemed a hush fell over
the world as the car came to a stop, and they climbed out before the broad
two-story house. Built before the Civil War, it was one of those sublimely
simple structures — massive yet tropical, a square box graced with
floor-length windows, and surrounded on all sides by deep galleries and thick
unfiuted columns rising to support its flat roof.
It seemed a thing made to
capture the breezes, for sitting and gazing out over fields and river — a
strong brick structure made to survive hurricanes and drenching rains.
Hard to believe, Michael
thought, that beyond the distant levee was the river traffic of tugs and barges
which they had glimpsed less than an hour ago as a chugging ferry brought them
to the southern bank. All that was real now was this soft breeze stealing over
the brick floor on which they stood, the broad double doors of the house
suddenly open to receive them, the errant sun glinting in the glass of the
beautifully arched fanlight window above.
Where was the rest of the
world? It didn’t matter. Michael heard again the wondrous sounds that had
lulled him on First Street - the singing of insects, the wild, seemingly
desperate cry of birds.
Aaron pressed his arm as he
led Michael inside, apparently ignoring the shock of the artificially chilled
air. ‘We’ll have a quick tour,’ he said.
Michael scarcely followed
his words. The house had caught him up, as houses always did. He loved houses
made in this fashion with a wide central hallway, a simple staircase, and large
square rooms in perfect balance on either side. The restoration and furnishings
were sumptuous as well as meticulous. And rather characteristically British,
what with dark green carpets, and books in mahogany cases and shelves rising to
the ceilings in all the main rooms. Only a few ornate mirrors recalled the
antebellum period, and a little harpsichord pushed into a corner. All the rest
was solidly Victorian, but not unpleasing by any means.
‘Like a private club,’
Michael whispered. It was almost comical to him, the occasional person seated
deep in a tapestried chair who did not even glance up from a book or a paper as
they glided soundlessly past. But the overall atmosphere was unmistakably
inviting. He felt good here. He liked the quick smile of the woman who passed
him on the staircase. He wanted to find a chair himself at some time or other
in the library. And through all the many French doors, he caught the greenery
outside, a great sprawling net swallowing up the blue sky.
‘Come, we’ll
take you to your room,’ Aaron said.
‘Aaron, I’m not
staying. Where’s the file?’
‘Of course,’
Aaron said, ’but you must have quiet to read as you like.’
He led Michael along the
upper corridor to the front bedroom on the eastern side of the house.
Floor-length windows opened onto both the front and the side galleries. And
though the carpet was as dark and thick as everywhere else, the decor had
yielded to the plantation tradition with a couple of marble-top bureaus and one
of those overpowering poster beds which seemed made for this kind of house.
Several layers of handmade quilts covered its shapeless feather mattress. No
carvings ornamented its eight-foot-high posts.
But the room had a
surprising array of modern conveniences, including the small refrigerator and
television fitted into a carved armoire, and a chair and desk nestled in the
inside corner, so that they faced both the front windows and those to the east.
The phone was covered with buttons and tiny carefully inscribed numerals for
various extensions. A pair of Queen Anne wing chairs stood on tiptoe before the
fireplace. A door was open to an adjoining bath.
‘I’m moving in,’
Michael said. ‘Where’s the file?’
‘But we should have
lunch.’
‘You should. I can get
a sandwich and eat it while I’m reading. Please, you promised. The file.’
Aaron insisted that they go
at once to a small screened porch off the back of the second story, and there,
overlooking a formal garden with gravel paths and weathered fountains, they sat
down to eat. It was an enormous southern breakfast, complete with biscuits,
grits, and sausage; and plenty of chicory cafe au lait to drink.
Michael was ravenous. Again,
he had that feeling he’d had with Rowan - good to be off the booze. Good
to be clearheaded, looking out on the green garden with the branches of the
oaks dipping down to the very grass. Divine to be feeling the warm air again.
‘This has all happened
so fast,’ Aaron said, passing him the basket of steaming biscuits. ‘I
feel I should say something more, yet I don’t know what I can say. We
wanted to approach you slowly, we wanted to get to know you and for you to know
us.’
Michael couldn’t stop
thinking about Rowan suddenly. He resented it powerfully that he couldn’t
call Rowan. Yet it seemed useless to try to explain to Aaron how worried about
Rowan he was.
‘If I had made the
contact I hoped to make,’ said Aaron, ‘I would have invited you to
our Motherhouse in London, and your introduction to the order might have been
slow and graceful there. Even after years of field-work, you would not have
been asked to undertake a task as dangerous as intervention with regard to the
Mayfair Witches. There is no one in the order even qualified to undertake such
a task except for me. But you are involved, to use the simple modern expression.’
‘In it up to the
eyeballs,’ Michael said, eating steadily as he listened. ‘But I
hear what you’re saying. It would be like the Catholic Church asking me
to participate in an exorcism when they knew I wasn’t an ordained priest.’
‘Very nearly so,’
he said. ‘I sometimes think that on account of our lack of dogma and
ritual, we are all the more stringent. Our definition of right and wrong is
more subtle, and we become more angry with those who don’t comply.’
‘Aaron, look. I won’t
tell a blessed soul in Christendom about that file, except for Rowan. Agreed?’
Aaron was thoughtful for a
moment. ‘Michael,’ he said, ’when you’ve read the
material we must talk further about what you should do. Wait before you say no.
At least commit yourself to listening to my advice.’
‘You’re
personally afraid of Rowan, aren’t you?’
Aaron drank a swallow of
coffee. He stared at the plate for a moment. He had eaten nothing but half a
biscuit. ‘I’m not sure,’ he answered. ‘My one meeting
with Rowan was very peculiar. I could have sworn…"
‘What?’
‘That she wanted
desperately to talk to me. To talk to someone. And then again, there was a
hostility I perceived in her, a rather generalized hostility, as if the woman
were superhuman and bristled with something instinctively alien to other human
beings. Oh, I know that sounds far-fetched. Of course she isn’t
superhuman. But if we think of these psychic powers of ours as mutations, then
we can begin to think of a creature like Rowan as something different, as one
species of bird is different from another. I felt her differentness, so to
speak.’
He paused. He seemed to
notice for the first time that Michael was wearing his gloves as he ate. ‘Do
you want to try it without those? Perhaps I can teach you how to block the
images. It isn’t really as difficult as you…’
‘I want the file,’
said Michael. He wiped his mouth with the napkin and swallowed the rest of his
coffee.
‘Of course you do, and
you shall have it,’ said Aaron with a sigh.
‘Can I go to my room
now? Oh, and if they could manage another pot of this lovely black syrupy
coffee and hot milk…’
‘Of course.’
Aaron led Michael out of the
breakfast room, stopping only to give the order for the coffee, and then he led
Michael back down the broad central hallway to the front bedroom.
The dark damask drapes
covering the front floor-length windows had been opened, and through every pane
of glass shone the gentle summer light, filtered through the trees.
The briefcase with the
bulging file in its leather folder lay on the quilt-covered four-poster bed.
‘All right, my friend,’
Aaron said. ‘They’ll bring in the coffee without knocking so as not
to disturb you. Sit out on the front gallery if you like. And please read
carefully. There’s the phone if you need me. Dial the operator and ask
for Aaron. I’m going to be down the hall, a couple of doors, catching a
little sleep.’
Michael took off his tie and
his jacket, went into the bathroom and washed his face, and was just getting
his cigarettes out of his suitcase when the coffee arrived.
He was surprised and a little
disturbed to see Aaron appear, with a troubled expression on his face. Scarcely
five minutes had passed, or so it seemed.
Aaron told the young boy
servant to set the tray down on the desk facing out from the corner, and then
he waited for the boy to leave.
‘Bad news, Michael.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I just called London
for my messages. Seems they tried to reach me in San Francisco to tell me Rowan’s
mother was dying. But we failed to connect.’
‘Rowan will want to
know this, Aaron.’
‘It’s over,
Michael. Deirdre Mayfair died this morning, around five a.m.’ His voice
faltered slightly. ‘You and I were talking at the time, I believe.’
‘How awful for Rowan,’
said Michael. ‘You can’t imagine how this will affect her. You just
don’t know.’
‘She’s coming,
Michael,’ said Aaron. ‘She contacted the funeral parlor, and asked
them to postpone the services. They agreed. She inquired about the
Pontchartrain Hotel when she called. We’ll check, of course, to see
whether or not she’s made reservations. But I believe we can count on her
arriving very soon.’
‘You’re worse
than the Federal Bureau of Investigation, you know it?’ Michael said. But
he wasn’t angry. This was precisely the information he wanted. With a bit
of relief he reviewed in his mind the time of his arrival, his visit to the
house, and his waking afterwards. No, there was nothing he could have done to
effect a meeting with Rowan and her mother.
‘Yes, we are very thorough,’
said Aaron sadly. ‘We think of everything. I wonder if God is as
indifferent as we are to the proceedings we watch.’ His face underwent a
distinct change, as he appeared to draw inward. Then he moved to leave,
apparently without another word.
‘You actually knew
Rowan’s mother?’ Michael asked.
‘Yes, I knew her,’
said Aaron bitterly, ’and I was never able to do a single solitary thing
to help her. But that’s often how it is with us, you see. Perhaps this
time things will be different.
And then again, perhaps not.’
He turned the knob to go. ‘It’s all there,’ he said pointing
to the folder. ‘There’s no time anymore for talk.’
Michael watched helplessly
as he left in silence. The little display of emotion had surprised him
completely, but it had also reassured him. He felt sad that he had been unable
to say anything comforting. And if he started to think of Rowan, of seeing her
and holding her, and trying to explain all this to her, he would go crazy. No
time to lose.
Taking the leather folder
from the bed, he set it on the desk. He collected his cigarettes, and he took
his seat in the leather desk chair. Almost absently he reached for the silver
coffeepot, and poured himself a cup of coffee, and then added the hot milk.
The sweet aroma filled the
room.
He opened the cover, and
took up the manila folder inside it, marked simply ‘THE MAYFAIR WITCHES:
Number One.’ It contained a thick bound typescript, and an envelope
marked ‘Photocopies of the Original Documents.’
His heart ached for Rowan.
He began to read.
TWELVE
IT WAS AN HOUR later that
Rowan called the hotel. She had packed the few light summery things she had. In
fact, her packing had been a bit of a surprise to her, as she watched her own
choices and actions, seemingly from a remove. Light silk things had gone into
the suitcases, blouses and dresses bought for vacations years back and never
worn since. A load of jewelry, neglected since college. Unopened perfumes.
Delicate high 'heel shoes never taken out of the box. Her years in medicine had
left no time for such things. Same with the linen suits she’d worn a
couple of times in the Hawaiian Islands. Well, they would serve her well now.
She also packed a cosmetic kit which she hadn’t opened for over a year.
The flight was arranged for
midnight that night. She would drive in to the hospital, go over all the
patient histories in detail with Slattery, who would be filling in for her, and
then go on to the airport from there.
Now she must make her
reservation at the hotel and leave word for Michael that she was coming in.
An amiable southern voice
answered her at the hotel. Yes, they did have a suite vacant. And no, Mr Curry
was not in. He had left a message for her, however, that he was out but he
would call within twenty 'four hours. No, no word on where he was or when he’d
return.
‘OK,’ Rowan said
with a weary sigh. ‘Please take this message down for him. Tell him I’m
coming in. Tell him my mother died. That the funeral is tomorrow at Lonigan and
Sons. Have you got that?’
‘Yes, ma’am. And
let me tell you how sorry we all are to hear about your mother. I got kind of
used to seeing her on that screened porch whenever I passed.’
Rowan was amazed.
‘Tell me something, if
you will,’ Rowan said. ‘The house where she lived is on First
Street?’
‘Yes, Doctor.’
‘Is that in a
neighborhood called the Garden District?’
‘Yes, Doctor, it sure
is.’
She murmured her thanks and
hung up. Then it is the same stretch that Michael described to me, she thought.
And how is it they all know about it, she wondered. Why, I didn’t even tell
that woman my mother’s name.
But it was time to go. She
went out on the north deck and made sure the Sweet Christine was
thoroughly secured, as she might be for the worst weather. Then she locked the
wheel-house and went back into the house. She set the various household alarm
systems, which she had not used since Ellie died.
Time now to take one last
look about.
She thought of Michael
standing before that graceful old Victorian on Liberty Street, talking of
foreboding, of never coming back. Well, she had no such clear feeling. But
merely to look at everything here made her feel sad. The house felt cast off,
used up. And when she looked at the Sweet Christine she felt the same
way.
It was as if the Sweet
Christine had served her well, but did not matter anymore. All the men she’d
made love to in the cabin below deck no longer mattered. In fact, it was quite
remarkable really that she had not taken Michael down the little ladder into
the snug warmth of the cabin. She had not even thought of it. Michael seemed
part of a different world.
She had the strongest urge
to sink the Sweet Christine suddenly, along with all the memories
attached to it. But that was foolish. Why, the Sweet Christine had led
her to Michael. She must be losing her mind.
Thank God she was going to
New Orleans. Thank God she was going to see her mother before the burial, and
thank God she’d soon be with Michael, telling him everything, and having
him there with her. She had to believe that would happen, no matter why he hadn’t
called. She thought bitterly of the signed document in the safe. But it didn’t
matter to her now, not even enough to go to the safe, look at it, or tear it
up.
She shut the door without
looking back.
PART TWO
The Mayfair Witches
THIRTEEN
THE
FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES
TRANSLATOR‘S
FOREWORD TO PARTS I THROUGH IV:
THE FIRST FOUR parts of this
file contain material written by Petyr van Abel expressly for the Talamasca -
in Latin, and primarily in our Latin code, a form of Latin used by the
Talamasca in the fourteenth through the eighteenth centuries to keep its
epistles and diary entries secret from prying eyes. Enormous amounts of
material were written in English as well, as it was Petyr van Abel’s
custom to write in English when he was among the French, and in French when he
was among the English, to render the dialogue and certain thoughts and feelings
more naturally than the old Latin code would allow.
Almost all of this material
is in the form of epistles, as this was, and still is, the primary form in
which reports to the archives of the Talamasca are made.
Stefan Franck was at this
time the head of the order, and most of the following material is addressed to
him in an easy and intimate and sometimes informal style. However, Petyr van
Abel was always aware that he was writing for the record, and he took great
pains to explain and to clarify for the inevitable uninformed reader as he went
along. This is the reason that he might describe a canal in Amsterdam, though
writing to the man who lived on the very canal.
The translator has omitted
nothing. The material is adapted only where the original letters and diary
entries have been damaged and are no longer legible. Or where words or phrases
in the old Latin code elude the modern scholars within the order, or where obsolete
words in English obscure the meaning for the modern reader. The spelling has
been modernized, of course.
The modern reader should
take into account that English at this time - the late seventeenth century -
was already the tongue that we know. Such phrases as ’pretty good’
or ‘I guess’ or ‘I suppose’ were already current. They
have not been added to the text.
If Petyr’s world view
seems surprisingly ’existential’ for the period, one need only
reread Shakespeare, who wrote nearly seventy-five years before, to realize how
thoroughly atheistic, ironical, and existential were the thinkers of those
times. The same may be said of Petyr’s attitude towards sexuality. The
great repression of the nineteenth century sometimes causes us to forget that
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were far more liberal in matters of
the flesh.
Speaking of Shakespeare,
Petyr had a special love of him and read the plays as well as the sonnets for
pleasure. He often said that Shakespeare was his ’philosopher.’
As for the full story of
Petyr van Abel, quite a tale in its own right, it is told in the file under his
name, which consists of seventeen volumes in which are included complete
translations of every report he ever made, on every case which he investigated,
in the order in which those reports were written.
We also possess two
different portraits painted of him in Amsterdam, one by Franz Hals, done
expressly for Roemer Franz, our director of the period, showing Petyr to be a
tall, fair-haired youth -of almost Nordic height and blondness — with an
oval face, prominent nose, a high forehead, and large inquisitive eyes; and the
other, dated some twenty years later and painted by Thomas de Keyser, reveals a
heavier build and a fuller face, though still distinctly narrow, with a neatly
trimmed mustache and beard and long curling blond hair beneath a large-brimmed
black hat. In both pictures Petyr appears relaxed and somewhat cheerful, as was
so typical of the men featured in Dutch portraits of the time.
Petyr belonged to the Talamasca
from boyhood until he died in the line of duty at the age of forty-three - as
this, his last complete report to the Talamasca, will make clear.
By all accounts, Petyr was a
talker, a listener, and a natural writer, and a passionate and impulsive man.
He loved the artistic community of Amsterdam and spent many hours with painters
in his leisure time. He was never detached from his investigations, and his
commentary tends to be verbose, detailed, and at times excessively emotional.
Some readers may find it
annoying. Others may find it priceless, for not only does he give us florid
pictures of what he witnessed, he provides more than a glimpse of his own
character.
He was himself a limited
mind reader (he confessed that he was not competent in the use of this power
because he disliked and distrusted it), and he possessed the ability to move
small objects, to stop clocks, and do other ‘tricks’ at will.
As an orphan wandering the
streets of Amsterdam, he first came into contact with the Talamasca at the age
of eight. The story goes that, perceiving that the Motherhouse sheltered souls
who were ‘different’ just as he was different, he hung about,
finally falling asleep one winter night on the doorstep, where he might have
frozen had not Roemer Franz found him and brought him in. He was later
discovered to be educated and able to write both Latin and Dutch, and to
understand French as well.
All his life his memory of
his early years with his parents was sporadic and unreliable, though he did
undertake the investigation of his own background, and discovered not only the
identity of his father, Jan van Abel, the famous surgeon of Leiden, but also
voluminous writings by the man containing some of the most celebrated
anatomical and medical illustrations of the time.
Petyr often said that the
order became his father and mother. No member was ever more devoted.
Aaron
Lightner
the
Talamasca, London,
THE
MAYFAIR WITCHES
PART
I / TRANSCRIPT ONE
From the Writings of Petyr van Abel
for the Talamasca
1689
September
1689, Montcleve, France
Dear Stefan,
I have at last reached
Montcleve on the very edge of the Cevennes mountains - to wit in the foothills
of the region - and the grim little fortified town with its tiled roofs and
dreary bastions is indeed in readiness for the burning of a great witch as I
had been told.
It is early autumn here, and
the air from the valley is fresh, perhaps even touched with the heat of the
Mediterranean, and from the gates one has the most pleasing view of vineyards
where the local wine, Blanquette de Limoux, is made.
As I have drunk more than my
fill of it on this first evening, I can attest it is quite as good as these
poor townsfolk insist.
But you know, Stefan, I have
no love of this region, for these mountains echo still with the cries of the
murdered Cathars who were burned in such great numbers all through this region
centuries ago. How many centuries must pass before the blood of so many has
soaked deep enough into the earth to be forgotten?
The Talamasca will always
remember. We who live in a world of books and crumbling parchment, of
flickering candles and eyes sore and squinting in the shadows, have always our
hands on history. It is now for us. And I can remember, aye, long before I ever
heard the word Talamasca, how my father spoke of those murdered heretics, and
of the lies that were promulgated against them. For he had read much of them as
well.
Alas, what has this to do
with the tragedy of the Comtesse de Montcleve, who is to die tomorrow on the
pyre built beside the doors of the Cathedral of Saint-Michel? It is all stone,
this old fortified town, but not the hearts of its inhabitants, though nothing
can prevent this lady’s execution as I mean to show.
My heart is aching, Stefan.
I am more than helpless, for I am besieged by revelations and memories. And
have the most surprising story to tell.
But I shall take things in
order as best I can, attempting to confine myself as always - and failing - to
those aspects of this sad adventure which are worthy of note.
Allow me to say first off that
I cannot prevent this burning. For not only is the lady in question deemed to
be an unrepentant and powerful witch, but she stands accused of killing her
husband by poison, and the testimony against her is exceedingly grievous, as I
shall go on to make plain.
It is the mother of her
husband who had come forth to accuse her daughter-in-law of intercourse with
Satan, and of murder; and the two small sons of the unfortunate Comtesse have
joined with their grandmother in her accusations, while the only daughter of
the accused witch, one Charlotte, aged twenty and exceedingly beautiful, has
already fled to the West Indies with her young husband from Martinique and
their infant son, seeking to avert a charge of witchcraft against herself.
But not all of this is as it
seems. And I shall explain fully what I have discovered. Only bear with me as I
shall begin at the very beginning and then plunge into the dim past. There is
much here that is of interest to the Talamasca, but little that the Talamasca
can hope to do. And I am in torment as I write, for I know this lady, and came
here on the suspicion perhaps that I would know her, though I hoped and prayed
that I would be wrong.
When last I wrote you, I was
just leaving the German states, and weary to death of their awful persecutions,
and of how little I was able to interfere. I had witnessed two mass burnings in
Treves, of the most despicable suffering made all the worse by the Protestant
clerics who are as fierce as the Catholics and in complete agreement with them
that Satan is afoot in the land and waging his victories through the most
unlikely of townsfolk — mere simpletons in some cases, though in most
merely honest housewives, bakers, carpenters, beggars, and the like.
How curious it is that these
religious people believe the devil to be so stupid that he should seek to
corrupt only the poor and powerless — why not the king of France for
once? — and the population at large to be so weak.
But we have pondered these
things many times, you and I.
I was drawn here, rather
than home to Amsterdam for which I long with all my soul, because the
circumstances of this trial were well-known far and wide, and are most peculiar
in that it is a great Comtesse who is accused, and not the village midwife, a
stammering fool wont to name every other poor soul as her accomplice and so
forth and so on.
But I have found many of the
same elements which are found elsewhere in that there is present here the
popular inquisitor, Father Louvier, who has bragged for a decade that he had burned
hundreds of witches, and will find witches here if they be here to be found.
And there is present also a popular book on witchcraft and demonology by this
very same man, much circulated throughout France, and read with extreme
fascination by half-literate persons who pore over its lengthy descriptions of
demons as if they were biblical Scripture, when in fact they are stupid filth.
And oh, I must not fail to
make mention of the engravings in this fine text which is passed from hand to
hand with such reverence, for they are the cause of much clamor, being
skillfully done pictures of devils dancing by moonlight, and old hags feasting
upon babies or flying about on brooms.
This book has held this town
spellbound, and it will surprise no one of our order that it was the old
Comtesse who produced it, the very accuser of her daughter-in-law, who has said
straight out on the church steps that were it not for this worthy book she
should not have known a witch was living in her very midst.
Ah, Stefan, give me a man or
woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion.
Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous
enemy indeed.
But again, I stray from my
story.
I arrived here at four o’clock
this evening, coming through the mountains and down south towards the valley, a
slow and laborious journey on horseback indeed. And once in sight of the town,
which hovered above me like a great fortress, for that is what it once was, I
straightaway divested myself of all those documents which might prove me to be
other than as I have presented myself - a Catholic priest and student of the
witchcraft pestilence, making his way through the countryside to study
convicted witches so that he might better weed them out of his own parish at
home.
Placing all of my extraneous
and incriminating possessions in the strongbox, I buried it safely in the
woods. Then wearing my finest clerical garb and silver crucifix and other
accoutrements to present me as a rich cleric, I rode up and towards the gates,
and past the towers of the Chateau de Montcleve, the former home of the
unfortunate Comtesse whom I knew only by the title of the Bride of Satan, or
the Witch of Montcleve.
Straightaway, I began to
question those I met as to why there was such a great pyre set in the very
middle of the open place before the cathedral doors, and why the peddlers had
set up their stands to sell their drinks and cakes when there was no fair to be
seen, and what was the reason for the viewing stands having been built to the
north of the church and beside it against the walls of the jail? And why are
the four inn yards of the town overflowing with horses and coaches, and why are
so many milling and talking and pointing to the high barred window of the jail above
the viewing stand, and then to the loathsome pyre?
Was it to do with the Feast
of St Michael, which is tomorrow, the day that is called Michaelmas?
Not a person to whom I spoke
hesitated to enlighten me that it had nought to do with the saint, though this
is his cathedral, except that they had chosen his feast the better to please
God and all his angels and saints, with the execution tomorrow of the beautiful
Comtesse who is to be burnt alive, without benefit of being strangled
beforehand, so as to set an example to all witches in the neighborhood of whom
there were many, though the Comtesse had named absolutely none as her
accomplices even under the most unspeakable torture, so great was the devil’s
power over her, but the inquisitors would indeed find them out.
And from these sundry
persons who would have talked me into a stupor had I allowed it, I did learn
further that there was scarce a family in the vicinity of this prosperous
community who had not seen firsthand the great powers of the Comtesse, as she
did freely heal those who were sick, and prepare for them herb potions, and lay
her own hands upon their afflicted limbs and bodies, and for this she asked
nothing except that she be remembered in their prayers. She had in fact great
fame for countering the black magic of lesser witches; and those suffering from
spells went to her often for bread and salt to drive away the devils inflicted
on them by persons unknown.
Such raven hair you never
saw, said one of these to me, and ah, but she was so beautiful before they
broke her, said another, and yet another, my child is alive on account of her,
and yet a fourth that the Comtesse could cool the hottest fever, and that to
those under her she had given gold on feast days, and had nothing for anyone
but kind words.
Stefan, you would have
thought I was on my way to a canonization, not a burning. For no one whom I met
in this first hour, during which I took my time in the narrow streets, riding
hither and thither as if lost, and stopping to talk with any and all I passed,
had a cruel word for the lady at all.
But without a doubt, these
simple folk seemed all the more tantalized by the fact that it was a good and
great lady who would be committed to the flames before them, as if her beauty
and her kindnesses made her death a grand spectacle for them to enjoy. I tell
you, it was with fear in my heart of their eloquent praise of her, and their
quickness to describe her, and the glitter that came over them when they spoke
of her death, that I finally had enough of it and went on to the pyre itself
and rode back and forth before it, inspecting its great size.
Aye, it takes a great deal
of wood and coal to burn a human being complete and entire. I gazed on it with
dread as always, wondering why it is that I have chosen this work when I do not
ever enter a town such as this, with its barren stone buildings, and its old
cathedral with its three steeples, but that I do not hear in my ears the noise
of the mob, the crackling of the fire, and the coughing and gasping and finally
the shrieks of the dying. You know that no matter how often I witness these
despicable burnings, I cannot inure myself to them. What is it in my soul that
forces me to seek this same horror again and again?
Do I do penance for some
crime, Stefan? And when will I have done penance enough? Do not think I ramble
on. I have a point in all this, as you will soon see and understand. For I have
come face to face once more with a young woman I once loved as dearly as I have
loved anyone, and I remember more vividly than her charms the blankness of her
face when I first beheld her, chained to a cart on a lonely road in Scotland,
only hours after she had seen her own mother burnt.
Perhaps if you remember her
at all you have guessed the truth already. Do not read ahead. Bear with me. For
as I rode back and forth before the pyre, listening to the stammering and
stupidity of a pair of local wine sellers who boasted of having seen other
burnings as if this were something to be proud of, I did not know the full
history of the Comtesse. I do now.
At last, at perhaps five of
the clock, I went to the finest of the inns of the town, and the oldest, which
stands right opposite the church, and commands from all its front windows a
view of the doors of Saint-Michel and the place of execution which I have
described.
As the town was obviously
filling up for this event, I fully expected to be sent away. You can imagine my
surprise when I discovered that the occupants of the very best rooms on the
front of the house were being turned out for, in spite of their fine clothes
and airs, they had been discovered to be penniless. I at once paid the small
fortune required for these ’fine chambers,’ and, asking for a
quantity of-candles, that I might write late into the night as I am doing now,
I went up the crooked little stair and found that this was a tolerable place
with a decent straw mattress, not too filthy all things considered and one of
them being that this is not Amsterdam, and a small hearth of which I have no
need on account of the beautiful September weather, and the windows though
small do indeed look out upon the pyre.
‘You can see very well
from here,’ said the innkeeper to me proudly, and I wondered how many
times he had seen such a spectacle, and what were his thoughts on the
proceedings, but then he went to talking on his own of how beautiful was the
Comtesse Deborah and shaking his head sadly as did everyone else when they
spoke of her, and what was to come.
‘Deborah you said,
that is her name?’
‘Aye,’ he
answered, ‘Deborah de Montcleve, our beautiful Comtesse, though she is
not French you know, and if only she had been a little bit of a stronger
witch…’ and then he broke off with a bowed head.
I tell you the knife was at
my breast then, Stefan. I guessed who she was, and could scarce endure to press
him further. Yet I did. ‘Pray continue,’ I said.
‘She said when she saw
her husband dying that she could not save him, that it was beyond her
power…" And here with sad sighs he broke off once more.
Stefan, we have seen
countless such cases. The cunning woman of the village becomes a witch only
when her powers to heal do not work. Before that, she is everyone’s good
sorceress, and there is nary the slightest talk of devils. And so here it was
again.
I set up my writing desk, at
which I sit now, put away the candles, and then betook myself to the public
rooms below, where a little fire was going against the damp and dark in this
stony place, about which several local philosophers were warming themselves, or
drying out their besotted flesh, one or the other, and seating myself at a
comfortable table and ordering supper, I tried to banish from my mind the
curious obsession I have with all comfortable hearth fires, that the condemned
feel this cozy warmth before it turns to agony and their bodies are consumed.
‘Bring me the very
best of your wine,’ I said, ’and let me share it with these good
gentlemen here, in the hopes that they will tell me about this witch, as I have
much to learn.’
My invitation was at once
accepted and I ate at the very center of a parliament who commenced to talk all
at once, so that I might pick and choose at different times the one to whom I
wished to listen, and shut all the others out.
‘How were the charges
brought?’ I asked straightaway.
And the chorus began its
various unharmonized descriptions, that the Comte had been riding in the forest
when after a fall from his horse, he staggered into the house. After a good
meal and a good sleep, he rose well restored and prepared to go hunting, when a
pain came over him and he took to his bed again.
All night long the Comtesse
sat at his bedside, along with his mother, and listened to his groans. ‘The
injury is deep inside,’ declared the wife. ‘I can do
nothing to help it. Soon the blood will come to his lips. We must give him what
we can for his pain.’
And then as foretold the
blood did appear in his mouth, and his groans grew louder, and he cried to his
wife who had cured so many to bring her finest remedies to him. Again the
Comtesse confided to her mother-in-law and to her children that this was an
injury beyond her magic. The tears sprang to her eyes.
‘Now, can a witch cry,
I ask you,’ said the innkeeper, who had been listening as he wiped the
table.
I confessed that I did not
think that a witch could.
They went on to describe how
the Comte lingered, and finally screamed as his pains grew sharper, though his
wife had given him wine and herbs aplenty to dull his suffering and deliver his
mind.
‘Save me, Deborah,’
he screamed, and would not see the priest when he came to him. But then in his
last hour, white and feverish, and bleeding from the bowels and from his mouth,
he drew the priest close to him and declared that his wife was a witch and
always had been, that her mother had been burnt for witchcraft and now he was suffering
for all their wrongs.
In horror the priest drew
away, thinking these are the ravings of a dying man. For all his years here, he
had worshiped the Comtesse and lived on her generosity, but the old Comtesse
took her son by the shoulders and set him down on the pillow, and said, ‘Speak,
my son.’
‘A witch, that’s
what she is, and what’s she always been. All these things she confessed
to me, bewitching me, with the wiles of a young bride, crying upon my chest.
And by this means she bound me to her and her evil tricks. In the town of
Donnelaith in Scotland, her mother taught her the black arts, and there her
mother was burnt before her very eyes.’
And to his wife, who knelt
with her arms beneath her face on the side of the bed, sobbing, he cried, ‘Deborah,
for the love of God. I am in agony. You saved the baker’s wife; you saved
the miller’s daughter. Why will you not save me!’
So maddened was he that the
priest could not give him the viaticum, and he died cursing, a horrible death
indeed.
The young Comtesse went wild
as his eyes closed, calling out to him, and professing her love for him, and
then lay as if dead herself. Her son Chretien and her son Philippe gathered
about her, and her fair daughter Charlotte, and they sought to comfort her and
hold tight to her as she lay prostrate on the very floor.
But the old Comtesse had her
wits about her and had marked what her son said. To her daughter-in-law’s
private apartments she went, and found in the cabinets not only her countless
unguents and oils and potions for the curing of the ill and for poisoning, but
also a strange doll carved crudely of wood with a head made of bone, and eyes
and mouth drawn upon it, and black hair fixed to it, and tiny flowers in its
hair made from silk. In horror the old Comtesse dropped this effigy upon
knowing that it could only be evil, and that it looked far too much like the
corn dolls made by the peasants in their old Beltane rituals against which the
priests are forever preaching; and throwing open the other doors, she beheld jewels
and gold beyond all reckoning, in heaps and in caskets, and in little sacks of
silk, which, said the old Comtesse, the woman surely meant to steal when her
husband was dead.
The young Comtesse was
arrested that very hour, while the grandmother took into her private chambers
her grandchildren that she might instruct them in the nature of this terrible
evil, so that they might stand with her against the witch, and come to no harm.
‘But it was well
‘known,’ said the innkeeper’s son, who talked more than
anyone else present, ‘that the jewels were the property of the young
Comtesse and had been brought with her from Amsterdam where she had been the
widow of a rich man, and our Comte before he went in search of a rich wife had
little more than a handsome face, and threadbare clothes, and his father’s
castle and land.’
Oh, how these words bruised
me, Stefan, you cannot compass. Only wait and hear my tale.
Sad sighs came from the
entire little company.
‘And with her gold,
she was so generous,’ said another, ’for you had but to go to her
and beg for help and it was yours.’
‘Oh, she’s a
powerful witch, no doubt of it,’ said another, ’for how else could
she bind so many to herself as she bound the Comte?’ But even this was
not said with hate and fear.
I was reeling, Stefan.
‘So now the old
Comtesse has taken this money into her charge,’ I remarked, seeing the
bare bones of the plot. ‘And what, pray tell, was the fate of the doll?’
‘Disappeared,’
they said all in a chorus, as if they were answering the litany in the
cathedral. ‘Disappeared.’ But Chretien swore that he had seen this
hideous thing and knew it to be from Satan, and bore witness that his mother
had spoken to it, as if it were an idol.
And on they went, breaking
up into Babel again, and warring diatribes, that no doubt the beautiful Deborah
had more than likely murdered the Amsterdam husband before the Comte had ever
met her, for that was the way of a witch, wasn’t it, and could anyone
deny that she was a witch, once the story of her mother was known?
‘But is this story of
the mother’s death proven to be true?’ I pressed.
‘Letters were written
from the Parliament of Paris, to which the lady appealed, to the Scottish Privy
Council and they did send verification that indeed a Scottish witch had been
burnt in Donnelaith over twenty years before, and a daughter Deborah had
survived her, and been taken away from that place by a man of God.’
How my heart sank to hear
this, for I knew now there was no hope at all. For what worse testimony could
there be against her, than that her mother had been burnt before her? And I did
not even need to ask, had the Parliament of Pans turned down her appeal?
‘Yes, and with the
official letter from Paris, there came also an illustrated leaflet, much
circulated in Scotland still, which told of the evil witch of Donnelaith who
had been a midwife and a cunning woman of great renown until her fiendish
practices were made known.’
Stefan, if you do not
recognize the Scottish witch’s daughter now from this account you do not
remember the story. But I no longer held out the slightest doubt. ‘My
Deborah,’ I whispered in my heart. There was no chance that I could be
wrong.
Claiming that I had
witnessed many an execution in my time, and hoped to witness more, I asked the
name of the Scottish witch, for perhaps I had perused the record of her trial
in my own studies. ‘Mayfair,’ they said, ‘Suzanne of the
Mayfair, who called herself Suzanne Mayfair for want of any other name.’
Deborah. It could be no
other than the child I had rescued from the Highlands so very long ago.
‘Oh, but Father, there
are such dreadful truths in that little book of the Scottish witch, that I
hesitate to say.’
‘Such books are not
Scripture,’ I replied in defiance. But they went on to enlighten me to
the effect that the entire trial of Suzanne of the Mayfair had been sent on
through the Parliament of Pans, and was in the hands of the inquisitor now.
‘Was poison found in
the Contest's chambers?’ I asked, trying for what bit of truth I could
obtain.
No, they said, but so heavy
was the testimony against her that this did not matter, for her mother-in-law
had heard her address beings that were invisible, and her son Chretien had seen
this also, and her son Philippe, and even Charlotte, though Charlotte had fled
rather than answer questions against her mother, and other persons too had seen
the power of the Comtesse, who could move objects without touching them, and
judge the future, and know countless impossible things.
‘And she confesses
nothing?’
‘It was the devil who
would put her in a trance when she was tortured,’ said the innkeeper’s
son. ‘For how else could any human being slip into a stupor when a hot
iron is applied to the flesh?’
At this I felt myself sicken
and grow weary, and almost overcome. Yet I continued to question them. ‘And
named no accomplices?’ I asked. ‘For the naming of accomplices they
are always much urged to do.’
‘Ah, but she was the
most powerful witch ever heard of in these parts, Father,’ said the
vintner. ‘What need had she of others? The inquisitor, when he heard the
names of those whom she had cured, likened her to the great sorceresses of
mythology, and to the Witch of Endor herself.’
‘And would there were
a Solomon about,’ I said, ‘so that he might concur.’
But this they did not hear.
‘If there was another
witch, it was Charlotte,’ said the old vintner. ‘You never saw such
a sight as her Negroes, coming into the very church with her to Sunday Mass,
with fine wigs and satin clothes! And the three mulatto maids for her infant
boy. And her husband, tall and pale and like unto a willow tree, and suffering
as he does from a great weakness which has afflicted him from childhood and
which not even Charlotte’s mother could cure. And oh, to see Charlotte
command the Negroes to carry their master about the village, down the steps and
up the steps, and to pour his wine for him and hold the cup to his lip and the
napkin to his chin. At this very table they sat, the man as gaunt as a saint on
the church wall, and the black shining faces around him, and the tallest and
blackest of them all, Reginald, they called him, reading to his master from a
book in a booming voice. And to think Charlotte has lived among such persons
since the age of eighteen, having married this Antoine Fontenay of Martinique
at that tender age.’
‘Surely it was
Charlotte who stole the doll from the cabinet,’ said the innkeeper’s
son, ’before the priest could lay hands on it, for who else in the
terrified household would have touched such a thing?’
‘But you have said
that the mother could not cure the husband’s illness?’ I asked
gently. ‘And plainly Charlotte herself could not cure it. Maybe these
women are not witches.’
‘Ah, but curing and
cursing are two separate things,’ said the vintner. ‘Would they had
applied their talent merely to curing! But what had the evil doll to do with
curing?’
‘And what of Charlotte’s
desertion?’ asked another, who had only just joined the congregation and
seemed powerfully excited. ‘What can it mean but that they were witches
together? No sooner was the mother arrested than Charlotte fled with her
husband and her child, and her Negroes, back to the West Indies whence they
came. But not before Charlotte had gone to be with her mother in the prison,
and been locked up with her alone for more than an hour, this request granted
only for those in attendance were foolish enough to believe that Charlotte
would persuade her mother to confess, which of course she did not do.’
‘Seemed the wise thing
to have done,’ said I. ‘And where has Charlotte gone?’
‘To Martinique once
more, it is said, with the pale skin and bone crippled husband, who has made a
fortune there in the plantations, but no one knows that this is true. The
inquisitor has written to Martinique to demand of the authorities that they
question Charlotte, but they have not answered him, though there has been time
enough, and what hope has he of justice being done in such a place as that?’
For over half an hour I
listened on to this chatter, as the trial was described to me, and how Deborah
protested her innocence, even before the judges and before those of the village
who were admitted to witness it, and how she herself had written to His Majesty
King Louis, and how they had sent to Dole for the witch pricker, and had then
stripped her naked in her cell, and cut off her long raven hair, shaving her
head after that, and searched her for the devil’s mark.
‘And did they find it?’
I asked, trembling inside with disgust at these proceedings, and trying not to
recall in my mind’s eyes the girl I remembered from the past.
‘Aye, two marks they
found,’ said the innkeeper, who had now joined us with a third bottle of
white wine paid for by me and poured it out for all to enjoy. ‘And these
she claimed she had from birth and that they were the same as countless persons
had upon their bodies, demanding that all the town be searched for such marks,
if they were to prove anything, but no one believed her, and she was by then
worn white and thin from starvation and torture, yet her beauty was not gone.’
‘How so, not gone?’
asked I.
‘Oh, like a lily she
looks now,’ said the old vintner sadly, ‘very white and pure. Even
her jailers love her, so great is her power to charm everyone. And the priest
weeps when he takes her Communion, for though she is unconfessed, he will not
deny it to her.’
‘Ah but you see, she
could seduce Satan. And that is why they have called her his bride.’
‘But she cannot seduce
the witch judge,’ said I. And they all nodded, not seeming to know that I
spoke this in bitter jest.
‘And the daughter,’
I asked, ’what did she say on the matter of her mother’s guilt
before she made her escape?’
‘Not a single word to
any person. And in the dead of night, she slipped away.’
‘A witch,’ said
the innkeeper’s son, ’or how could she have left her mother to die
alone with her sons turned against her?’
This no one could answer,
but I could well guess.
By this time, Stefan, I had
little appetite for anything but to get clear of this inn and speak to the
parish priest, though this, as you know, is always the most dangerous part. For
what if the inquisitor were to be roused from wherever he sat feasting and
drinking on the money earned from this madness, and he should know me from some
other place, and horror of horrors know my work and my impostures.
Meanwhile my newfound
friends drank even more of my wine, and talked on that the young Comtesse had
been painted by many a renowned artist in Amsterdam, so great was her beauty;
but then I might have told them that part of the story, and so fell silent, in
anguish, quietly paying for another bottle for the company before I took my
leave.
The night was warm and full
of talk and laughter everywhere it seemed, with windows open and some still
coming and going from the cathedral, and others camped along the walls and
ready for the spectacle, and no light in the high barred window of the prison
beside the steeple where the women was held.
I stepped over those seated
and chatting in the dark as I went to the sacristy on the other side of the
great edifice and there struck the knocker until an old woman led me in and
called the pastor of the place. A bent and gray-haired man came at once to
greet me saying that he wished he had known of a traveling priest come to
visit, and I must move from the inn at once and lodge with him.
But my apologies he accepted
quick enough as well as my excuses about the pain in my hands which prevents me
now from saying Mass any longer, for which I have a dispensation, and all the
other lies I have to tell.
As luck would have it, the
inquisitor was being put up in fine style by the old Comtesse at the chateau
outside the town gates, and as all the great cronies of the place were gone
thither to dine with him, he would not show his face again tonight.
On this account the pastor
was obviously injured, as he had been by the whole proceedings, for everything
had been taken out of his hands by the witch judge and the witch pricker and
all the other ecclesiastic filth which rains down upon such affairs as this.
How fortunate you are, I
thought as he showed me into his dingy rooms, for had she broken under the
torture and named names, half your town would be in jail and everyone in a
state of terror. But she has chosen to die alone, by what strength I cannot
conceive of.
Though you know, Stefan,
there are always persons who do resist, though we have naught but sympathy for
those who find it impossible.
‘Come in and sit with
me for a while,’ said the priest, ’and I’ll tell you what I
know of her.’
To him immediately I put my
most important questions, on the thin hope that the townsfolk might have been
wrong. Had there been an appeal to the local bishop? Yes, and he had condemned
her. And to the Parliament of Paris? Yes, and they had refused to hear her
case.
‘You have seen these
documents yourself?’
He gave me a grave nod, and
then from a drawer in his cabinet produced for me the hated pamphlet of which
they had spoken, with its evil engraving of Suzanne Mayfair perishing in artful
flames. I put this bit of trash away from me.
‘Is the Comtesse such
a terrible witch?’ I said.
‘It was known far and
wide,’ he said in a whisper, with a great lift of his eyebrows, ’only
no one had the courage to speak the truth. And so the dying Comte spoke it, to
clear his conscience as it were, and the old Comtesse, having read the Demonologie
of the inquisitor, found in it the proper descriptions of all the strange
things which she and her grandsons had long seen.’ He gave a great sigh. ‘And
I shall tell you another loathsome secret.’ And here he dropped his voice
to a whisper. ‘The Comte had a mistress, a very great and powerful lady
whose name must not be spoken in connection with these proceedings. But we have
it from her own lips that the Comte was terrified of the Comtesse, and took
great pains to banish all thoughts of his mistress from his mind when he entered
the presence of his wife, for she could reach such things in his heart.’
‘Many a married man
might follow that advice,’ I said in disgust. ‘So what does it
prove? Nothing.’
‘Ah, but don’t
you see? This was her reason for poisoning her husband, once he had fallen from
the horse, and she thought that on account of the fall, she might not be blamed.’
I said nothing.
‘But it is known
hereabout,’ he said slyly, ’and tomorrow when the crowd gathers,
watch the eyes and upon whom they settle, and you will see the Comtesse de
Chamillart, from Carcassonne, in the viewing stand before the jail. However,
mark me. I do not say that it is she.’
I said nothing, but sank
only further into hopelessness.
‘You cannot imagine
the power which the devil has over the witch,’ he continued.
‘Pray, enlighten me.’
‘Even after the rack
on which she was cruelly tortured, and the boot being put on her foot to crush
it, and the irons being applied to the soles of her feet, she confessed
nothing, but did scream for her mother in torment, and cry out: "Roelant,
Roelant," and then "Petyr," which were surely the names of her
devils, as they belong to no one of her acquaintance here, and at once, through
the agency of these daimons she fell to dreaming, and could not be made to feel
the slightest pain.’
I could listen no more!
‘May I see her?’
I asked. ‘It is so important for me to gaze with my own eyes upon the
woman, to question her if I might.’ And here I produced my big thick book
of scholarly observations in Latin, which this old man could scarcely read, I
should say, and I babbled on about the trials I had witnessed at Bramberg, and
the witch house there, where they had tortured hundreds, and many other things
which impressed this priest sufficiently enough.
‘I’ll take you
to her,’ he said finally, ’but I warn you, it is most dangerous.
When you see her you’ll understand.’
‘How exactly?’ I
inquired, as he led me down the stairs with a candle.
‘Why, she is still
beautiful! That is how much the devil loves her. That is why they call her the devil’s
bride.’
He then directed me to a
tunnel which ran beneath the nave of the cathedral where the Romans had buried
their dead in olden times in this region, and through this we passed to the
jail on the other side. Then up the winding stairs we went to the highest
floor, where she was kept beyond a door so thick the jailers themselves could
scarce open it, and holding his candle aloft, the priest pointed then to the
far corner of a deep cell.
Only a trace of light came
through the bars. The rest fell from the candle. And there on a heap of hay I
beheld her, bald and thin and wretched, in a ragged gown of coarse cloth, yet
pure and shining as a lily as her admirers had so described. They had shaved
even the eyebrows from her, and the perfect shape of her bare head and her
hairlessness gave an unearthly radiance to her eyes and to her countenance as
she looked up at us, from one to the other, carefully, with a slight and
indifferent nod.
It was the face one expects
to see at the center of a halo, Stefan. And you, too, have seen this face,
Stefan, rendered in oil on canvas, as I shall clarify for you by and by.
She did not even move, but
merely regarded us calmly and in silence. Her knees were drawn up in front of
her, and she had wrapped her arms about her legs, as if she were cold.
Now you know, Stefan, that
as I knew this woman, there was the strong chance that at this moment she would
know me, that she should speak to me or implore me or even curse me in some way
as to cause my authenticity to be questioned, but I tell you in truth I had not
even thought of this in my haste.
But let me break off my
account of this miserable night, and tell you now the whole tale before I
proceed to relate what little did here take place.
Before you read another word
I have written, leave your chamber, go down the stairs into the main hall of
the Motherhouse, and look at the portrait of the dark-haired woman by Rembrandt
van Rijn which hangs just at the foot of the stairs. That is my Deborah
Mayfair, Stefan. This is the woman, now shorn of her long dark hair, who sits
shivering now as I write, in the prison across the square.
I am in my room at the inn,
having only lately left her. I have candles aplenty, as I have told you, and
too much wine to drink and a bit of a fire to drive out the cold. I am seated
at the table facing the window, and in our common code I will now tell you all.
For it was twenty-five years
ago that I first came upon this woman, as I have told you, and I was a young
man of eighteen years then and she only a girl of twelve.
This was before your time in
the Talamasca, Stefan, and I had come to it only some six years before as an
orphaned child. It seemed the pyres of the witches were burning from one end of
Europe to the other, and so I had been sent out early from my studies to
accompany Junius Paulus Keppelmeister, our old witch scholar, on his travels
throughout Europe, and he had only just begun to show to me his few poor
methods of trying to save the witches, by defending them where he could and
inclining them in private to name as accomplices their accusers as well as the
wives of the most prominent citizens of the town so the entire investigation
might be discredited, and the original charges be thrown out.
And I had only lately been
made to understand, as I traveled with him, that we were always in search of
the true magical person - the reader of minds, the mover of objects, the
commander of spirits, though seldom if ever, even in the worst persecutions,
was any true sorcerer to be found.
It was my eighteenth year as
I have told you, and my first to venture out of the Motherhouse since I had
begun my education there, and when Junius took ill and died in Edinburgh, I was
at my wits’ end. We had been on our way to investigate the trial of a
Scottish cunning woman, very much famed for her healing power, who had cursed a
milkmaid in her village and been accused of witchcraft though no evil had
befallen the maid.
On his last night in this
world, Junius ordered me to continue to the Highland village without him; and
told me to cling fast to my disguise as a Swiss Calvinist scholar. I was far
too young to be called a minister by anyone, and so could not make use of Junius’s
documents as such; but I had traveled as his scholarly companion in plain
Protestant clothes, and so went on in this manner on my own.
You cannot imagine my fear,
Stefan.
And the burnings of Scotland
terrified me. The Scots are and were, as you know, as fierce and terrible as
the French and Germans, learning nothing it seems from the more merciful and
reasonable English. And so afraid was I on this my first journey that even the
beauty of the Highlands did not work its spell upon me.
Rather when I saw that the
village was small and at a great remove from its nearest neighbor, and that its
people were sheepherders, I knew even greater dread for their ignorance and the
ferocity of their superstition. And to the dreary aspect of the whole was added
the nearby ruins of a once great cathedral, rising like the bones of a
leviathan out of the high grass, and far beyond across a deep valley, the
forlorn picture of a castle of rounded towers and tiny windows, which might
have been an empty ruin, for all I could see.
How shall I ever be of
assistance here, I thought, without Junius to aid me? And riding into the
village proper I soon discovered I had come too late, for the witch had been
burnt that very day, and the wagons had just come to clear away the pyre.
Cart after cart was filled
with ashes and charred bits of wood and bone and coal, and then the procession
moved out of the little place, with its solemn-faced folk standing about, and
into the green country again, and it was then that I laid eyes upon Deborah
Mayfair, the witch’s daughter.
Her hands bound, her dress
ragged and dirty, she had been taken to witness the casting of her mother’s
ashes to the four winds.
Mute she stood there, her
black hair parted in the middle and hanging down her back in rich waves, her
blue eyes dry of all tears.
"This the mark of the
witch,’ said an old woman who stood by watching, ‘that she cannot
shed a tear.’
Ahh, but I knew the child’s
blank face; I knew her sleeplike walk, her slow indifference to what she saw as
the ashes were dumped out and the horses rode through them to scatter them. I
knew because I knew myself in childhood, orphaned and roaming the streets of
Amsterdam after the death of my father; and I remembered how when men and women
spoke to me, it did not even cross my mind to answer, or to look away, or to
change my manner for any reason. And even when I was slapped or shaken, I
retained this extraordinary quietude, only wondering mildly why they would
bother to do such a curious thing; better to look perhaps at the slant of the
sunlight striking the wall behind them, as at the furious expressions on their faces,
or take heed of the growls that came from their lips.
This tall and stately girl
of twelve had been flogged as they burnt her mother. They had turned her head
to make her watch, as the lash fell.
‘What will they do
with her?’ I asked the old woman.
‘They should burn her,
but they are afraid to,’ she answered. ‘She is so young and a
merry-begot, and no one would bring harm to a merry-begot, and who knows who
her father might be.’ And with that the old woman turned and gave a grave
look to the castle that stood, leagues away across the green valley, clinging
to the high and barren rocks.
You know, Stefan, many a
child has been executed in these persecutions. But each village is different.
And this was Scotland. And I did not know what was a merry-begot or who lived
in the castle or how much any of this might mean.
I watched in silence as they
put the child on a cart and drove her back towards the town. Her dark hair blew
out with the wind as the horses picked up speed. She did not turn her head to
left or right, but stared straight forward, the ruffian beside her holding on
to her to keep her from falling as the rough wooden wheels bounced over the
ruts of the road.
‘Ah, but they should
burn her and be done with it,’ said the old woman now, as if I had argued
with her, when in truth I had said nothing, and then she spat to one side, and
said: ‘If the Duke does not move to stop them,’ and here she looked
once more to the distant castle, T think that burn her they will.’
Then and there I made my
decision. I would take her, by some ruse if I could.
Leaving the old woman to
return on foot to her farm, I followed the girl in the cart back to the
village, and only once did I see her wake from her seeming stupor, and this was
when we passed the ancient stones outside the village, and I mean by this those
huge standing stones in a circle, from the dark times before history, of which
you know more than I will ever know. To a circle of these she looked with great
and lingering curiosity, though why it was not possible to see.
For naught but a lone man
stood far out in the field, in their midst, staring back at her, with the
powerful light of the open valley beyond him — a man no older than myself
perhaps, tall and slight of build with dark hair, but I could hardly see him,
for so bright was the horizon that he seemed transparent, and I thought perhaps
he was a spirit and not a man at all.
It did seem that their
glances met as the girl’s cart passed, but of none of this part am I
certain, only that some person or thing was momentarily there. I marked it only
for she was so lifeless, and it may have some bearing upon our story; and I
think now that it does indeed have bearing; but that is for us both to
determine at some later time. I shall go on.
I went to the minister at
once, and to the commission which had been appointed by the Scottish Privy
Council and had not yet disbanded, for it was at this very hour dining, as was
the custom, with a good meal being provided by the estate of the dead witch.
She had had much gold in her hut, said the innkeeper to me as I entered, and
this gold had paid for her trial, her torture, the witch pricker, the witch
judge who tried her, and the wood and the coal used to burn her, and indeed the
carts that carried her ashes away.
‘Sup with us,’
said the fellow to me as he explained all this, ’for the witch is paying.
And there’s more gold still.’
I declined. And was not
pressed for explanation, thank heaven, and going right to the men at the board
I declared myself to be a student of the Bible and a God-fearing man. Might I
take the witch’s child with me to Switzerland, to a good Calvinist
minister there who would take her in and educate her and make a Christian of
her and wipe the memory of her mother from her mind?
I said far too much to these
men. Little was required. To wit, only the word Switzerland was required. For
they wanted to rid themselves of her, they said it straight out, and the Duke
wanted them to be rid of her, and not to burn her, and she was a merry-begot,
which made the villagers most afraid.
‘And what is that,
pray tell?’ I asked.
To which they explained that
the people of Highland villages were most attached still to the old customs,
and that on the eve of May they
built great bonfires in the open grass, these being lighted only from the need fire,
or the fire they made themselves from sticks, and they danced all night about
the bonfires, making merry. And in such revelry, this child’s mother,
Suzanne, the fairest in the village and the May Queen of that year, had
conceived of Deborah, the surviving child.
A merry-begot she was, and
therefore much beloved, for no one knew who was her father and it could have
been any of the village men. It could have been a man with noble blood. And in
the olden times, which were the times of the pagans and best forgotten, though
they could never make these villagers forget them, the merry-begots were the
children of the gods.
‘Take her now, brother,’
they said, ‘to this good minister in Switzerland and the Duke will be
glad of it, but have something to eat and drink before you go, for the witch
has paid for it, and there is plenty for all.’
Within the hour, I rode out
of the town with the child on my horse before me. And we rode right through the
ashes at the crossroads, to which she did not to my knowledge give even a
glance. To the circle of stones, she never once looked that I could tell. And
she gave no farewell to the castle either as we rode down to the road that runs
on the banks of Loch Donnelaith.
As soon as we reached the
first inn in which we had to lodge, I knew full well what I had done. The girl
was in my possession, mute, defenseless, and very beautiful, and big as a woman
in some respects, and there I was, little more than a boy, but plenty more to
make the difference, and I had taken her with no permission from the Talamasca
and might face the most terrible storm of reprimands when I returned.
We put up in two rooms as
was only proper, for she looked more woman than child. But I was afraid to
leave her alone lest she run away, and wrapping my cloak about me, as if it
would somehow restrain me, I lay down on the hay opposite her and stared at
her, and tried to think what to do.
I observed now by the light
of the reeking candle that she wore a few locks of her black hair in two small
knots on either side of her head, high up, so as to keep back the bulk of it,
and that her eyes were very like the eyes of a cat. By this I mean they were
oval and narrow and turned up ever so little on the outside ends, and they had
a shine to them. And beneath them she had rounded though dainty cheeks. It was
no peasant face by any measure, but far too delicate, and beneath her ragged
gown hung the high full breasts of a woman, and her ankles which she crossed
before her as she sat on the floor were very shapely indeed. Her mouth I could
not look at without wanting to kiss it, and I was ashamed of these fancies in
my head.
I had not given the
slightest thought to anything but rescuing her. And now my heart beat with
desire for her. And she a girl of twelve merely sat looking at me.
What were her thoughts, I
wondered, and sought to read them, but it seemed she knew this, and closed her
mind to me.
At last I thought of the
simple things, that she must have food and decent clothes - this seemed rather
like discovering that sunlight makes one warm and water satisfies thirst
— and so I went out to procure food for her and wine, and to acquire a
proper dress, and a bucket of warm water for washing, and a brush for her hair.
She stared at these things
as if she did not know what they were. And I could see now, by the light of the
candle, that she was covered with filth and marks from the lash, and that the
bones showed through her skin.
Stefan, does it take a
Dutchman to abhor such a condition? I swear to you that I was consumed with
pity as I undressed her and bathed her, but the man in me was burning in hell.
Her skin was fair and soft to the touch, and she was ready for childbearing,
and she gave me not the slightest resistance as I cleaned her, and then dressed
her and at last brushed her hair.
Now I had by that time
learned something of women, but it was not as much as I knew of books. And this
creature seemed all the more mysterious to me for her nakedness and helpless
quiet; but all the while, she peered out at me from the prison of her body with
fierce, silent eyes that frightened me somewhat, and made me feel that, were my
hands to stray in some improper way upon her body, she might strike me dead.
She did not flinch when I
washed the marks of the lash on her back.
I fed her the food with a
wooden spoon, Stefan, and though she took each morsel from me, she would reach
for nothing and assist in nothing, on her own.
During the night I woke
dreaming that I had taken her, much relieved to discover that I had not. But
she was awake and watching me, and with the eyes of a cat. For some time I
stared at her, again trying to divine her thoughts. The moonlight was pouring
into the uncovered window, along with a good deal of bracing cold air, and I
saw by the light that she had lost her blank expression and now seemed
malevolent and angry, and this was frightening to me. She seemed a wild thing,
dressed in her stiff starched white collar and bonnet, and blue dress.
In a soothing voice I tried
to tell her in English that she was safe with me, that 1 would take her to a
place where no one would accuse her of witchcraft, and that those who had
descended upon her mother were themselves wicked and cruel.
At this she seemed puzzled,
but she said nothing. I told her that I had heard tell of her mother, that her
mother was a healer and could help the afflicted, and that such persons have
always existed, and no one called them witches until these terrible times. But
an awful superstition was afoot in Europe; and whereas in the olden days, men
were admonished not to believe that people could speak to devils, now the
church itself believed such things, and went looking for witches in every
hamlet and town.
Nothing came from her, but
it seemed her face grew less terrible, as though my words had melted her anger.
And I saw the look of bewilderment again.
I told her I was of an order
of good people who did not want to hurt or burn the old healers. And that I
would take her to our Motherhouse, where men scoffed at the things which the
witch hunters believed. ‘This is not in Switzerland,’ I said, ’as
I told the bad men in your village, but in Amsterdam. Have you ever heard of
this city? It is a great place indeed.’
It seemed then the coldness
came back to her. Surely she understood my words. She gave a faint sneer at me,
and I heard her whisper under her breath in English, ‘You are no
churchman. You are a liar!’
At once I went to her and
took her hand. I was greatly pleased to see she understood English and did not
speak only the hopeless dialects one finds in these places, for now I could
talk to her with more courage. I explained that I had told these lies to save
her, and that she must believe that I was good.
But then she faded before my
eyes, drawing away from me, like a flower closing up.
All the next day she spoke
nothing to me, and all the next night the same, though she ate now unaided and
well, I thought, and seemed to be gaining in strength.
When we reached London, I
woke in the night in the inn to hear her speaking. I climbed up off the straw
and beheld her looking out the window, and I heard her say in English, and with
a thick Scottish accent to it, ‘Go away from me, devil! I will not see
you anymore.’
When she turned round, there
were tears shining in her eyes. More than ever she had the aspect of a woman,
looming over me, with her back to the window, and the light of my candle stub
rising up into her face. She saw me without surprise and with the same coldness
as she had shown me before. She lay down and turned her face to the wall.
‘But to whom did you
speak?’ I demanded. She said nothing to me. In the dark I sat and talked
to her, not knowing whether or not she heard. I told her that if she had seen
something, be it a ghost or a spirit, it need not be the devil. For who was to
say what these invisible things were? I begged her to talk to me of her mother
and tell me what her mother had done to bring the charge of witchcraft against
her, for now I was certain that she herself had powers and that her mother had
possessed them, but she would not answer even one word.
I took her to a bathing
house, and bought her another dress. These things brought no interest from her.
At the crowds and the passing coaches she stared with coldness. And wanting to
hurry from the place and reach home, I divested myself of my clerical black,
and put on the garments of a Dutch gentleman, as these would most likely bring
respect and good service.
But this change in me
provided her with some grim and secret amusement and again she sneered at me,
as if to say she knew I had some sordid purpose, but I did nothing to confirm
her in this suspicion any more than I had in the past. Could she read my
thoughts, I wondered, and know that every waking moment I imagined her as she
had been when I bathed her? I hoped it was not so.
She-looked so pretty in her
new dress, I thought to myself, I had never seen any young woman who was
prettier. Because she would not, I had braided a part of her hair for her, and
wound this braid around the top of her head, to hold her long locks back out of
her face, as I had seen women do, and ah, but she was a picture.
Stefan, it is agony for me
to write of these things, but I do it I think not only for our voluminous
records, but because the night is so still here in Montcleve, though it is not
yet even midnight, and I am so sick at heart. I wish to look at the wounds I
cannot heal. But you do not have to accept my pledges as to the woman’s
beauty, you have yourself seen her likeness; as I have said before.
On to Amsterdam we went, she
and I, posing now as the rich Dutch brother and sister, for all anyone might
know; and as I had hoped and dreamed, our city waked her from her torpor, with
its pretty tree-lined canals and all the handsome boats and the fine four-and
five-story houses which she did inspect with a new vigor.
And coming upon the grand
Motherhouse, with the canal at its feet, and seeing that it was ’my home’,
and was to be hers, she could not conceal her wonder. For what had this child
seen of the world but a miserable sheep-farming village and the dirty inns in
which we’d lodged; so you can quite understand how it was when she saw a
proper bedstead, in a clean Dutch bedroom. She spoke not a single word, but the
bit of a smile on her lips spoke volumes.
I went directly to my
superiors, to Roemer Franz and Petrus Lancaster, both of whom you fondly
remember, and confessed all that I had done.
I broke down in tears and
said the child was alone and so I had taken her, and I had no other excuse for
spending so much money, except that I did it; and to my astonishment, they
forgave me, but they also laughed because they knew my innermost secrets.
And Roemer said: ‘Petyr,
you have done such penance between here and Scotland that surely you deserve an
increase in your allowance, and perhaps a better room within the house.’
More laughter greeted these
words. I had to smile to myself, for I was drenched in fantasies of Deborah’s
beauty even then, but soon the good spirits had left me and I was again in
pain.
Deborah would answer no
questions put to her. But when the wife of Roemer, who lived with us all her
life, went to Deborah and put the needle and the embroidery in her hands,
Deborah did, with some skill, begin to sew.
By the end of the week,
Roemer’s wife and the other wives had taught her through example to make
lace, and she was hard at work at it by the hour, acknowledging nothing said to
her, but staring at those around her whenever she looked up and then returning
to her work without a word.
To the female members, those
who were not wives, but were scholars and had powers of their own, she seemed
to possess an obvious aversion. To me she would say nothing, but she had
stopped giving me hateful glances, and when I asked her to walk out with me,
she accepted and was soon dazzled by the city, and allowed me to buy her a
drink in the tavern, though the spectacle of respectable women drinking and
eating there seemed to amaze her, as it amazes other foreigners who have
traveled far more widely than she.
All the while I described
our city to her, I told of its history and its tolerance, of how Jews had come
here to escape persecution in Spain, and how Catholics even lived here in peace
among the Protestants, and there were no more executions for such things as
witchcraft here, and I took her to see the printers and the booksellers. And to
the house of Rembrandt van Rijn we went for a brief visit, as he was always so
very pleasant to visit, and there were always pupils about.
His beloved Hendrickje, of
whom I was always fond, had been gone two years, but Titus, his son, was still
living, and with him. And I for one preferred the paintings which he did at
this time of his life, for their curious melancholy, to those he did earlier
when he was all the fashion. We drank a glass of wine with the young painters
who were always gathered there to study with the master and this is when
Rembrandt first caught sight of Deborah, though it was later that he painted
her.
All the while, my intention
was to amuse her, and divert her out of her hellish thoughts, and show to her
the wide world of which she could now be a part.
She kept her silence, but I
could see that the painters delighted her, and the portraits of Rembrandt in
particular drew her, and so did this kindly and genial man himself. We went on
to other studios and spoke to other artists - to see Emmanuel de Witte and
others who were then painting in our city, some friends of ours then as they
are today. And she appeared to warm to this, and to come alive as it were, her
face at moments most gentle and sweet.
But it was when we passed
the shops of the jewelers that she begged me with a light touch of her white
fingers on my arm to stop. White fingers. I write this because I remember it so
well - her delicate hand shining like a lady’s hand as she touched me, and
the weak desire for her I felt at this touch.
She showed a great
fascination with those who were cutting and polishing diamonds and with the
comings and goings of the merchants and the rich patrons who had come from all
over Europe, nay the world, to buy their fine jewels. I wished that I had the
money to buy something pretty for her, and of course the merchants being much
taken with her beauty, and her fine clothes — for Roomer’s wife had
turned her out beautifully - began to play to her, and ask would she like to
see their wares.
A fine Brazilian emerald set
in gold was being shown to a rich Englishman, and this caught her eye. When the
Englishman forswore it on account of the expense, she sat down at the table to
look at it, as if she could well purchase it or I might for her, and it seemed
she fell into a spell staring at this rectangular gem, fixed in its filigree of
old gold. And then in English, she asked the price of it, and did not bat an
eye when told.
I assured the merchant we
would take it under consideration most deeply, as obviously the lady wanted it,
and with a smile, I helped her to the street. Then I fell into sadness that I
could not buy it for her.
And as we walked along the
quay together back to the house, she said to me, ‘Do not be sad. For who
expects such things of you?’ and for the very first time she smiled at
me, and pressed my hand. My heart leapt at this, but she lapsed again into her
coldness and her silence and would say nothing more.
I confessed all this to
Roemer, who advised me that we had not taken vows of chastity but that I was
behaving most honorably, which was as he expected, and that I should study my
English books now, as my writing in English was still dreadful, and thereby
occupy my mind.
On the seventh day of Deborah’s
time in the Motherhouse, one of our members of whom you have heard and studied
much, though she is dead these many years, came home from Harlem where she had
been visiting her brother, a rather ordinary sort of man. But she was no
ordinary woman, and it is of the great witch, Geertruid van Stolk, that I
speak. She was at that time the most powerful of all our members, be they men
or women; and at once the story of Deborah was told to her, and she was asked
to speak to the child and see if she could read Deborah’s thoughts.
‘She will not tell us
whether she can read or write,’ said Roemer, ’in fact, she will
tell us nothing, and we cannot divine what she reads from our minds or of our
intentions, and we do not know how to proceed. We feel in our hearts that she
has powers, but we are not sure of it; she has locked her mind to us.’
At once Geertruid went to
her, but Deborah, on merely hearing this woman approach, rose from her stool,
overturning it, and threw down her sewing and backed up against the wall. There
she stared at Geertruid with a look of pure hatred on her face, and then sought
to get out of the room, clawing at the walls as if to go through them, and at
last finding the door and rushing down the passage towards the street.
Roemer and I restrained her,
begging her to be calm, and telling her that no one meant to hurt her, and at
last Roemer said, ‘We must break the silence of this child.’
Meantime Geertruid gave to me a note, hastily scratched on paper, which said in
Latin, ‘The child is a powerful witch,’ and this I passed on to
Roemer without a word.
We implored Deborah to come
with us into Roemer’s study, a large and commodious room as you well know
as you inherited it, but in his time it was filled with clocks, for he loved
them, and these have since been distributed about the house.
Roemer always kept the
windows over the canal open, and all the healthy noises of the city flowed, it
seemed, into this room. It had about it a cheerful aspect. And as he brought
Deborah now into the sunlight, and bid her sit down and calm herself, she
seemed quieted and comforted, and then sat back and with a weary, pained manner
looked up into his eyes.
Pained. I saw such pain in
this instant as to nearly bring the tears to my own eyes. For the mask of
blankness had utterly melted, and her very lips were trembling, and she said in
English:
‘Who are you men and
women here? What in the name of God do you want with me!"
‘Deborah,’ he
said, speaking soothingly to her. ‘Listen to my words, child, and I shall
tell you plainly. All this while we have sought to know how much you could
understand.’
‘And what is there,’
she demanded hatefully, 'that I should understand!’ It seemed a woman’s
vibrant voice coining from her heaving bosom, and as her cheeks flamed, she
became a woman, hard and cold inside and bitter from the horrors she had seen.
Where was the child in her, I thought frantically, and then she turned and
glared at me, and again at Roemer, who was intimidated if I ever saw him, but
he worked fast to overcome it and he spoke again.
‘We are an order of
scholars, and it is our purpose to study those with singular powers, powers
such as your mother had, which were said wrongly to have come from the devil,
and powers which you yourself may possess as well. Was it not true that your
mother could heal? Child, such a power does not come from the devil. Do you see
these books around you? They are full of stories of such persons, called in one
place sorcerer, and in another witch, but what has the devil to do with such
things? If you have such powers, place your trust in us that we may teach you
what they can and cannot do.’
Roemer spoke further to her
of how we had helped witches to escape their persecutors and to come here, and
to be safe with us. And he spoke even to her about two of the women with us who
were both powerful seers of spirits, and of Geertruid, who could make the very
glass rattle in the windows with her mind, if she chose.
The child’s eyes grew
large but her face was hard. Her hands tightened on the arms of the chair, and
she cocked her head to the left as she fixed Roemer and looked him up and down.
I saw the look of hate come
back into her face, and Roemer whispered: ‘She is reading our thoughts,
Petyr, and she can hide her own thoughts from us.’
This gave her a start. But
still she said nothing.
‘Child,’ Roemer
said, ’what you have witnessed is terrible, but surely you did not
believe the accusations made against your mother. Tell us, please, to whom did
you speak the night in the inn when Petyr heard you? If you can see spirits,
tell these things to us. No harm will ever come to you.’
No answer.
‘Child, let me show
you my own power. It does not come from Satan, and no evocation of him is
required for its use. Child, I do not believe in Satan. Now, behold the clocks
around you — the tall case clock there, and the pendulum clock to the
left of you, and the clock on the mantelshelf, and that clock there on the far
desk.’
She looked at all these,
which greatly relieved us for at least she understood, and then she stared in
consternation as Roemer, without moving a particle of his physical being, made
them all come abruptly to a stop. The endless ticking was gone from the room
and had left a great silence after it, which seemed strong enough in its
emptiness to hush even the sounds from the canal below.
‘Child, trust in us,
for we share these powers,’ said Roemer, and then pointing to me, he told
me to start the clocks again by the power of my mind. I shut my eyes and said
to the clocks: ‘Start,’ and the clocks did as they were told and
the room was full of ticking once more.
The face of Deborah was
transformed from cold suspicion to sudden contempt, as she looked from me to
Roemer. She sprang from the chair. Backwards against the books she crept,
fixing me and then Roemer with her malevolent gaze.
‘Ah, witches!’
she cried. ‘Why did you not tell me? You are all witches! You are an
order of Satan." And then as the tears poured down her face, she sobbed. ‘It
is true, true, true!’
She wrapped her arms around
her to cover her breasts and she spit at us in her rage. Nothing we could say
would quiet her.
‘We are all damned!
And you hide here in this city of witches where they can’t burn you!’
she cried. ‘Oh, clever, clever witches in the devil’s house!’
‘No, child,’
cried Roemer. ‘We know nothing of the devil! We seek to understand what
others condemn.’
‘Deborah,’ I
cried out, ’forget the lies they taught you. There is no one in the city
of Amsterdam who would burn you! Think of your mother. What did she say of what
she did, before they tortured her and made her sing their songs?’
Ah, but these were the wrong
words! I could not know it, Stefan. I could not know it. Only as her face was
stricken, as she put her hands over her ears, did I realize my error. Her
mother had believed she was evil!
And then from Deborah’s
trembling mouth came more denunciations. ‘Wicked, are you? Witches, are
you? Stoppers of clocks! Well, I shall show you what the devil can do in the
hands of this witch!’
She moved into the very
center of the room and looking up and out the window, it seemed, to the blue
sky, she cried:
‘Come now, my Lasher,
show these poor witches the power of a great witch and her devil. Break the
clocks one and all!’
And at once a great dark
shadow appeared in the window, as if the spirit upon whom she had called had
condensed himself to become small and strong within the room.
The thin glass over the
faces of the clocks was shattered, the fine glued seams of their wooden cases
sprung open, the very springs breaking out of them, and the clocks tumbled off
the mantelshelf and the desk, and the tall case clock crashed to the floor.
Roemer was alarmed for
seldom had he seen a spirit of such power, and we could all but feel the thing
in our midst, brushing our garments, as it swept past us and shot out its
invisible tentacles, as it were, to obey the witch’s commands.
‘Damn you into hell,
witches. I shall not be your witch!’ Deborah cried, and as the books
began to fall around us, she fled once more from us, and the door slammed shut
after her and we could not pry it open, try as we might.
But the spirit was gone. We
had nothing more to fear from the thing. And after a long silence, the door was
made to open again, and we wandered out, bewildered to discover that Deborah
had long since left the house.
Now, you know, Stefan, by
that time, Amsterdam was one of the very great cities of all Europe, and she
held perhaps one hundred and fifty thousand persons, or more. And into this
great city Deborah had vanished. And no inquiry we made of her in the brothels
or the taverns bore fruit. Even to the Duchess Anna, the richest whore in
Amsterdam, we went, for that is where with certainty a beautiful girl like
Deborah might find refuge, and though the Duchess was as always glad to see us
and talk with us, and serve us good wine, she knew nothing of the mysterious
child.
I was now in such abject
misery that I did nothing but lie in my bed, with my face on my arms, and weep,
though all told me this was foolish, and Geertruid swore that she would find 'the
girl.’
Roemer told me that I must
write down what had happened with this young woman as part of my scholarly
work, but I can tell you, Stefan, that what I wrote was most pitiful and brief
and that is why I have not asked that you consult these old records. When I
return to Amsterdam, God willing, I shall replace my old entries with this more
vivid chronicle.
But to continue with what
little more there is to say, it was a fortnight later that a young student of
Rembrandt lately from Utrecht came to me and said that the girl for whom I had
been searching was now living with the old portraitist Roelant, who was known
by that name only, who had studied many years in Italy in his youth and still
had many flocking to him for his work, though he was exceedingly ill and
infirm, and could scarce pay his debts anymore.
You may not remember
Roelant, Stefan, but let me tell you now he was a fine painter, whose portraits
always evinced the happiness of Caravaggio, and had it not been for the malady
which struck his bones and crippled him before his time, he might have been
better regarded than he was.
At this time, he was a
widower with three sons, and a kindly man.
At once I went to see
Roelant, who was known to me and had always been genial, but now I found the
door shut in my face. He had no time for visiting with us ’mad scholars’
as he called us, and warned me in heated terms that even in Amsterdam those as
strange as we might be driven out.
Roemer said that I was to
leave it alone for a while, and you know, we survive, Stefan, because we avoid
notice, and so we kept our council. But in the days that followed we saw that
Roelant paid all his back debts, which were many, and that he and his children
by his first wife now dressed in fine clothes, which could only be called exceed’
ingly rich.
It was said that Deborah, a
Scottish girl of great beauty, taken in by him to nurse his children, had
prepared an unguent for his crippled fingers, which had heated them as it were
and loosened them and he could hold the brush again. Rumor had it he was being
well paid for his new portraits, but he would have had to paint three and four
a day, Stefan, to make the money to pay for the furnishings and clothes that
now went into that house.
So the Scottish woman was
rich, it was soon learned, the love child of a nobleman of that country, who
though he could not acknowledge her, sent her money aplenty which she shared
with the Roelants, who had been kind enough to take her in.
And who might that be, I
wondered? The nobleman in that great hulking Scottish castle which glowered
like a pile of natural rock over the valley from which I’d taken her, his
merry-begot, barefoot and filthy and scarred to the bone from the lash, unable
even to feed herself? Oh, what a pretty tale!
Roemer and I watched all of
these goings-on with trepidation, for you know as well as I the reason for our
own rule that we shall never use our powers for gain. And how was this wealth
being got, we wondered, if not through that spirit which had come crashing into
Roemer’s chamber to break the clocks as Deborah commanded him to do?
But all was contentment now
in the Roelant household and the old man married the young girl before the year
was out. But two months before this wedding took place, Rembrandt, the master,
had already painted her, and a month after the wedding the portrait was
displayed in Roelant’s parlor for all to see.
And around her neck in this
portrait was the very Brazilian emerald which Deborah had so coveted the day I
had taken her out. She had long ago bought it from the jeweler, along with
every bit of plate or jewelry that struck her fancy, and the paintings of
Rembrandt and Hals and Judith Leister which she so admired.
Finally I could stay away no
longer. The house was open for the viewing of the portrait by Rembrandt, of
which Roelant was justly proud. And as I crossed the threshold to see this
picture, old Roelant made no move to bar my entrance, but rather hobbled up to
me on his cane, and offered me with his own hand a glass of wine, and pointed
out to me his beloved Deborah in the library of the house, learning with a
tutor to read and write Latin and French, for this was her greatest wish. She
learnt so fast, said Roelant, that it amazed him, and she had of late been
reading the writing of Anna Maria van Schurman who held that women were indeed
as open to learning as men.
How brimming with joy he
seemed.
I doubted what I knew of her
age when I saw her. Arrayed in jewels and green velvet, she looked to be a
young woman of perhaps seventeen. Great sleeves she wore, and voluminous
skirts, and a green ribbon with satin rosettes in her black hair. Her eyes too
seemed green against the magnificent fabric that surrounded her. And it struck
me that Roelant himself did not know of her youth. Not a word had passed my
lips to expose any of the lies that circulated around her, and I stood stung by
her beauty as if she had rained blows on my head and shoulders, and then the
fatal blow to my heart was struck when she looked up and smiled.
Now I shall have to go, I
thought, and made to set down my wine. But she came towards me, smiling still,
and she held my hands, and said ‘Petyr, come with me,’ and took me
into a small chamber of cabinets where the household linen was kept.
What polish she had now, and
grace. A lady at court could not have done it better. But when I considered
this, I considered also my memory of her in the cart that day at the
crossroads, and how like the little Princess she had seemed.
Yet she was changed from
those times in every way. In the few thin shafts of light that pierced the
little linen room, I could inspect her in every detail, and I found her robust,
and perfumed, and red-cheeked, and there sat the great Brazilian emerald in its
filigree of gold upon her high plump breast.
‘Why have you not told
everyone what you know of me?’ she asked as if she did not know the
answer.
‘Deborah, we told you
the truth about ourselves. We only wanted to offer you shelter, and our
knowledge of the powers you possess. Come to us whenever you wish.’
She laughed. ‘You are
a fool, Petyr, but you brought me out of darkness and misery into this wondrous
place." She reached into the hidden right pocket of her great skirt and
pulled up out of it a handful of emeralds and rubies. ‘Take these, Petyr.’
I drew back and shook my
head.
‘You say you are not
of the devil,’ she said to me. ‘And your leader says that he does
not even believe in Satan, were those not his words? But what of God and the
Church, do you believe in, then, that you must live like monks in retreat with
your books, never knowing the pleasures of the world? Why did you not take me
in the inn, Petyr, when you had the chance to do it? You wanted it badly
enough. Take my thanks, for that is all you can have now. And these gems which
will make you rich. You need no longer depend on your monkish brethren. Stretch
out your hand!’
‘Deborah, how did you
come by these jewels!’ I whispered. ‘For what if you are accused of
stealing them?’
‘My devil is too
clever for that, Petyr. They come from far away. And I have but to ask for them
to have them. And with but a fraction of their endless supply I bought this
emerald which I wear about my neck. The name of my devil is carved on the back
of the gold fitting, Petyr. But you know his name. I admonish you, never call
upon him, Petyr, for he serves me and will only destroy anyone else who seeks
to command him through his given name.’
‘Deborah, come back to
us,’ I begged, ’only by day if you wish, for a few hours here and
there, to talk to us, when your husband would certainly allow. This spirit of
yours is no devil, but he is powerful, and can do evil things out of
recklessness and the prankishness that characterizes spirits. Deborah, this is
no plaything, surely you must know!’
But I could see such
concerns were far from her thoughts.
I pressed her further. I
explained that the first and foremost rule of our order was that no one of us,
regardless of his powers, would ever command a spirit for gain. ‘For
there is an old rule in the world, Deborah, among all sorcerers and those who
address powers unseen. That those who strive to use the invisible for evil
purposes cannot but invite their own ruin.’
‘But why is gain an
evil thing, Petyr?’ she said as if we were the same age, she and I. ‘Think
of what you are saying! What is rich is not evil! Who has been hurt by what my
devil brings to me? And all these in the household of Roelant have been helped.’
‘There are dangers in
what you do, Deborah! This thing grows stronger the more you speak to it -’
She hushed me. She had
contempt for me now. Again, she pressed me to take the jewels. She told me
bluntly I was a fool, for I did not know how to use my powers, and then she
thanked me for having taken her to the perfect city for witches, and with an
evil smile she laughed.
‘Deborah, we do not
believe in Satan," I said, ’but we believe in evil, and evil is what
is destructive to mankind. I beg you beware of this spirit. Do not believe what
it tells you of itself and its intentions. For no one knows what these beings
really are.’
‘Stop, you anger me,
Petyr. What makes you think this spirit tells me anything? It is I who speak to
it! Look to the demonologies, Petyr, the old books by the rabid clergy who do
believe in devils, for those books contain more true knowledge of how to
control these invisible beings than you might think. I saw them on your
shelves. I knew that one word in Latin, demonology, for I have seen such books
before.’
The books were full of truth
and
lies and I told her so. I drew back from her sadly. Once again she pressed me
to take the jewels. I would not. She slipped them in my pocket and pressed her
warm lips to my cheek. I went out of the house.
Roemer forbade me after that
to see her. What he did with the gems I have never asked. The great treasure
stores of the Talamasca have never been of much concern to me. I knew then only
what I know now: that my debts are paid, my clothes are bought, I have the
coins in my pockets I require.
Even when Roelant took ill,
and this was not her doing, Stefan, I quite assure you, I was told I could not
visit Deborah again.
But the strange thing was,
that very often in odd places, Stefan, I beheld her, alone, or with one of
Roelant’s sons in hand, watching me from afar. I saw her thus in the
public streets, and once passing the house of the Talamasca, beneath my window,
and when I went to call upon Rembrandt van Rijn, there she sat, sewing, with
Roelant beside her, staring at me out of her sideways eye.
There were times even when I
imagined that she pursued me. For I would be alone, walking and thinking of
her, and remembering moments of our first beginning together when I had fed her
and washed her like a child. I cannot pretend I thought of her as a child,
however, when I thought of this. But all of a sudden, I would break my stride,
turn, and there she would be, walking behind me in her rich velvet cloak and
hood, and she would fix me with her eye before she turned down another lane.
Oh, Stefan, imagine what I
suffered. And Roemer said, do not go to her. I forbid it. And Geertruid warned
me over and over that this fiercesome power of hers would grow too strong for
her to command.
The month before Roelant
died, a young female painter of exquisite talent, Judith de Wilde, came to
reside under his roof with Deborah, and to remain in the house with her aging
father, Anton de Wilde, when Roelant was gone.
Roelant’s brothers
took his sons home to the countryside, and the Widow Roelant and Judith de
Wilde now together maintained the house, caring for the old man with great
gentleness, but living a life of gaiety and many diversions as the rooms were
thrown open all day and evening to the writers and poets and scholars and
painters who chose to come there, and the students of Judith, who admired her
as much as they admired any male painter, for she was just as fine, and had her
membership in the Guild of St Luke the same as a man.
Under Roemer’s edict,
I could not enter. But many was the time I passed, and I swear to you, if I
lingered long enough, Deborah would appear at the upstairs window, a shadow behind
the glass. Sometimes I would see no more of her than a flashing light from the
green emerald, and at other times she would open the window and beckon, in
vain, for me to come inside.
Roemer himself went to see
her, but she only sent him away.
‘She thinks she knows
more than we do,’ he said sadly. ‘But she knows nothing or she
would not play with this thing. This is always the mistake of the sorceress,
you see, to imagine her power is complete over the unseen forces that do her
bidding, when in fact, it is not. And what of her will, her conscience, and her
ambition? How the thing does corrupt her! It is unnatural, Petyr, and
dangerous, indeed.’
‘Could I call such a
thing, Roemer, if I chose to do it?’
‘No one knows the
answer, Petyr. If you tried perhaps you could. And perhaps you could not get
rid of it, once you had called it, and therein lies the old trap. You will
never call up such a thing with my blessings, Petyr. You are listening to my
words?’
‘Yes, Roemer,’ I
said, obedient as always. But he knew my heart had been corrupted and won over
by Deborah, just as surely as if she had bewitched me, but it was not
bewitching, it was stronger even than that.
‘This woman is beyond
our help now,’ he said. ‘Turn your mind to other things.’
I did my best to obey the
order. Yet I could not help but learn that Deborah was being courted by many a
lord from England or France. Her wealth was so vast and solid that no one
anymore thought to question the source of it, or to ask if there had been a
time when she was not rich. Her education was proceeding with great speed, and
she had a pure devotion to Judith de Wilde and her father, and so was in no
hurry to marry, as she allowed the various suitors to call.
Well, one of those suitors
finally took her away!
I never knew who it was that
she married, or whence the marriage took place. I saw Deborah but once more,
and I did not know then what I know now — that it was perhaps her last
night before she left the place.
I was awakened in the dark
by a sound at my window, and realizing that it was a steady tapping on the
glass, such as could not be made by nature, I went to see if some knave had
come over the roof. I was after all on the fifth story then, being still little
more than a boy in the order, and given only a mean but very comfortable room.
The window was locked and
undisturbed as it ought to be. But far below on the quay stood a lone woman in
a garment of black cloth, who appeared to be gazing up at me, and when I opened
the glass, she made a motion with her arm, which meant that I must come down.
I knew it was Deborah. But I
was maddened, as if a succubus had come into my chamber and pulled the covers
off me and gone to work with her mouth.
I crept out of the house so
as to avoid all questions, and she stood waiting for me with the green emerald
winking in the darkness, like a great eye about her neck. She took me with her
through the back streets and into her house.
Now by this point, Stefan, I
thought myself to be dreaming. But I did not wish for this dream to end. The
lady had no maid or footman or anyone about her. She had come alone to me -
which is not I must say so dangerous in Amsterdam as it might be someplace else
— but it was enough to stir my blood to see her so unprotected and so
deliberate and mysterious, and clinging to me and urging me to hurry along.
How rich were this lady’s
furnishings, how thick her many rugs, how fine her parquet floors. And past
silver and fine china behind glimmering glass, she drew me up the stairs to her
private chamber, and there to a bed draped in green velvet.
‘I go to be married
tomorrow, Petyr,’ she said.
‘Then why have you
brought me here, Deborah?’ I asked, but I was shaking with desire,
Stefan. When she let loose of her outer garment and let it drop on the floor,
and I saw her full breasts plumped up by the tight lacing of her dress, I went
mad to touch them, though I did not move. Even her waist so tightly cinched
warmed me, and the sight of her fair neck and sloping shoulders. There was not
a succulent particle of her flesh for which I did not hunger. I was a rabid
beast in a cage.
‘Petyr,’ she
said looking up into my eyes, ‘I know that you gave the gems to your
order, and that you took nothing of my thanks for yourself. So let me give you
now what you wanted from me in our long journey here, and which you were too
gentle to take.’
‘But Deborah, why do
you do this?’ I asked, determined not to take the slightest advantage of
her. For in deep distress she was, I could read this in her eyes.
‘Because I want it,
Petyr,’ she said to me suddenly, and wrapping her arms around me, she
covered me with kisses. ‘Leave the Talamasca, Petyr, and come with me,’
she said. ‘Be my husband, and I will not marry this other man.’
‘But Deborah, why do
you want this of me?’ I asked again.
With bitterness and sadness
she laughed. ‘I am lonely for your understanding, Petyr. I am lonely for
one from whom I need hide nothing. We are witches, Petyr, whether we belong to
God or the devil, we are witches, you and I."
Oh, how her eyes glittered
as she said this, how plain was her triumph, yet how bitter. Her teeth were
clenched together for an instant. Then she put her hands on me and stroked my
face and neck and I was further maddened.
‘You know that you
desire me, Petyr, as you have always. Why do you not give in? Come with me; we
will leave Amsterdam if the Talamasca will not allow you to be free; we will go
away together, and there is nothing that I cannot get for you, nothing that I
will not give you, only be with me, and let me be close to you and no longer
afraid. I can speak to you of who I am and what befell my mother. I can speak
to you of all that troubles me, Petyr, and of you I am never afraid.’
At this her face grew sad
and the tears came to her eyes.
‘My young husband is
beautiful and all that I ever dreamed of when I sat, dirty and barefoot, at the
cottage door. He is the lord who rode by on his way to the castle, and to a
castle he shall take me now, though it be in another land. It is as if I have
entered into the fairy tales told by my mother, and I shall be the Comtesse,
and all those rhymes and songs shall be made real.
‘But Petyr, I love him
and do not love him. You are the first man that I loved, you who brought me
here, you who saw the pyre on which my mother died, and you who bathed me and
fed me and clothed me when I could not do these things for myself.’
I was past all hope of
leaving this chamber without having her. I knew it. Yet so fascinated was I by
the smallest fall of her lashes or the tiniest dimple of her cheek, that I let
her draw me not to the bed but down upon the carpet before the little coal
fire, and there in the flickering warmth she began to tell me of her woes.
‘My past is like
phantoms now to me,’ she cried softly, her eyes growing wide at the
wonder of it. ‘Did I ever live in such a place, Petyr? Did I watch my
mother die?’
‘Do not bring it back
into the light, Deborah," I said. ‘Let the old pictures fade away.’
‘But Petyr, you
remember when you first spoke to me and you told me that my mother was not
evil, that men had done evil to her. Why did you believe those things?’
‘You tell me if she
was a witch, Deborah, and what is a witch, by God!’
‘Oh, Petyr, I remember
going out into the fields with her, under the moonless sky where the stones
were.’
‘And what happened, my
dear?’ I begged her. ‘Did the devil come with cloven hoofs?’
She shook her head, and
gestured for me to listen to her and be still and be good. ‘Petyr,’
she said, ’it was a witch judge that taught her the black magic! She
showed me the very book. He had come through our village when I was but a small
thing, crawling still, and he came out to our hut for the mending of a cut in
his hand. By the fire he sat with her and told her of all the places he had
gone in his work and the witches he had burnt. "Be careful, my girl,"
he said to her, or so she told me afterwards, and then he took from his leather
pouch the evil book. Demonologie it was called and he read it to her,
for she could not read Latin, or any language for that matter, and the pictures
he held to the light of the fire all the better for her to see.
‘Hour by hour he
taught these things to her, what witches had done, and what witches could do.
"Be careful, my girl," he would say, "lest the devil tempt you,
for the devil loves the midwife and the cunning woman!" and then he would
turn another page.
‘That night as he lay
with her, he talked on of the torture houses, and of the burnings, and of the
cries of the condemned. "Be careful, my girl," he said again when he
left her.
‘And all these things
she later told to me. I was a child of six, maybe seven when she told the
story. At the kitchen fire we sat together. "Now, come," she said,
"and you shall see." Out into the field we went, feeling for the
stones before us, and finding the very middle of the circle and standing
stock-still in it to feel the wind.
‘Nary a sound in the
night, I tell you. Nary a glimmer of light. Not even the stars to show the
towers of the castle, or the far-away bit of water that one could see from
there of Loch Donnelaith.
‘I heard her humming
as she held my hand; then in a circle we danced together, making small circles
round and round as we did. Louder she hummed and then the Latin words she spoke
to call the demon, and then flinging out her arms she cried to him to come.
‘The night was empty.
Nothing answered. I drew close to her skirts and held her cold hand. Then over
the grasslands I felt it coming, a breeze it seemed, and then a wind as it
gathered itself about us. I felt it touching my hair and the back of my neck, I
felt it wrapping us round as it were with air. I heard it speak then, only not
in words, and yet I heard it and it said: "I am here, Suzanne!"
‘Oh, how she laughed
with delight; how she danced. Like a child, she wrung her hands, and laughed
again and threw back her hair. "Do you see him, my baby?" she said to
me. And I answered that I could feel him and hear him very near.
‘And once again, he
spoke, "Call me by my name, Suzanne."
‘"Lasher,"
she said, "for the wind which you send that lashes the grasslands, for the
wind that lashes the leaves from the trees. Come now, my Lasher, make a storm
over Donnelaith! And I shall know that I am a powerful witch and that you do
this for my love!"
‘By the time we
reached the hut, the wind was howling over the fields, and in the chimney as
she shut our door. By the fire, we sat laughing like two children together,
"You see, you see, I did it," she whispered. And looking into her
eyes, I saw what I had always seen and always would even to her last hour of
agony and pain: the eyes of a simpleton, a dim-witted girl laughing behind her
fingers with the stolen sweet in the other hand. It was a game to her, Petyr.
It was a game!’
‘I see it, my beloved,’
I said.
‘Now, tell me there is
no Satan. Tell me that he did not come through the darkness to claim the witch
of Donnelaith and lead her to the fire! It was Lasher who found for her the
objects which others lost, it was Lasher who brought the gold to her, which
they took from her, it was Lasher who told her the secrets of treachery which she
revealed to willing ears. And it was Lasher who rained hail upon the milkmaid
who quarreled with her, Lasher who sought to punish her enemies for her and
thereby made her power known! She could not instruct him, Petyr. She did not
know how to use him. And like a child playing with a candle, she kindled the
very fire that burnt her to death.’
‘Do not make the same
error, Deborah!’ I whispered, even as I kissed her face. ‘No one
instructs a daimon, for that is what this is.’
‘Oh, no, it is more
than that,’ she whispered, ’and you are most mistaken. But don’t
fear for me, Petyr. I am not my mother. There is no cause.’
We sat then in quiet by the
little fire, though I could not think that she would want to be near it, and as
she leaned her forehead on the stones above it, I kissed her again on her soft
cheek, and brushed back the long vagrant strands of her moist black hair.
‘Petyr,’ she
said, ‘I shall never live in hunger and filth as she lived. I shall never
be at the mercy of foolish men.’
‘Don’t marry, Deborah.
Don’t go! Come with me. Come into the Talamasca and we shall discover the
nature of this creature together…"
‘No, Petyr. You know I
will not.’ And here she smiled sadly. ‘It is you who must come with
me, and we shall go away. Speak to me now with your secret voice, the voice in
you that can command clocks to stop or spirits to come, and be with me, and be
my bridegroom, and this shall be the witches’ wedding night.’
I went to answer her with a
thousand protests, but she covered my mouth with her hand, and then with her
mouth, and she went to kissing me with such heat and charm that I knew nothing
anymore, but that I had to tear from her the garments that bound her, and have
her there in the bed with the green curtains drawn around us, this tender childlike
body with its woman’s breasts and woman’s secrets which I had
bathed and clothed.
Why do I torture myself to
write this? I am confessing my old sin, Stefan. I am telling you all that I
did, for I cannot write of this woman without this confession and so I go on.
Never have I celebrated the
rites with such abandon. Never have I known such voluptuousness and sweetness
as I knew in her.
For she believed herself to
be a witch, Stefan, and therefore to be evil, and these were the devil’s
rites to her that she celebrated with such willfulness. Yet hers was a tender
and loving heart, I swear it, and so the mixture was a rare and powerful witch’s
brew indeed.
I did not leave her bed till
morning. I slept against her perfumed breast. I wept now and then like a boy.
With a temptress’s skill, she had wakened all of my flesh to her. She had
discovered my most secret hungers and had toyed with them, and fed them. I was
her slave. But she knew that I would not stay with her, that I had to go back
to the Talamasca, and for hours finally she lay quiet and sad staring at the
wooden ceiling of the bed, as the light came through the seams of the curtains
and the bed began to grow warm from the sun.
I dressed wearily and
without desire for anything in the whole of Christendom but her soul and her
flesh. Yet I was leaving her. I was going home to tell Roemer what I had done.
I was going back to the Motherhouse, which was indeed my mother and my father,
and I knew no other choice.
I thought now she will send
me off with curses. But it was not to be. One last time, I begged her to remain
in Amsterdam, to come with me.
‘Good-bye, my little
priest,’ she said to me. Tare thee well, and may the Talamasca reward you
for what you have given up in me.’ Tears she shed, and I kissed her open
hands hungrily before I left her, and put my face once more into her hair. ‘Go
now, Petyr,’ she said finally. ‘Remember me.’
Perhaps a day or two passed
before I was told that she had gone. I was disconsolate and lay weeping and
trying to listen to Roemer and to Geertruid, but I could not hear what they had
to say. They were not angry with me as I had thought they would be, that much I
knew.
And it was Roemer who went
to Judith de Wilde and purchased from her the portrait of Deborah by Rembrandt
van Rijn which hangs in our house to this day.
It was a full year perhaps
before I regained true health of body and soul. And never after that did I
break the rules of the Talamasca as I had in those days, and went out again
through the German states and through France and even to Scotland to do my work
to save the witches, and to write of them and their tribulations as we have
always done.
So now you know, Stefan, the
story of Deborah, such as it is. And my shock to come upon the tragedy of the
Comtesse de Montcleve, so many years later, in this fortified town in the
Cevennes of the Languedoc and to discover that she was Deborah Mayfair, the
daugh’ ter of the Scottish witch.
Oh, if only that bit of
knowledge - that the mother had been burnt — had been kept from these
townsfolk. If only the young bride had not told her secrets to the young lord
when she cried on his chest. And her face lo, those many years ago, is fixed in
my memory, when she said to me, ‘Petyr, I can speak to you and not be
afraid.’
Now you see with what fear
and misery I entered the prison cell, and how in my haste, I gave no thought
until the very last moment that the lady, crouched there in rags upon her bed
of straw, might look up and recognize me and call out my name, and in her
despair, cheerfully give my disguise away.
But this did not happen.
As I stepped into the cell,
lifting the hem of my black cassock so as to appear as a cleric who did not
wish to soil himself with this filth, I looked down upon her and saw no look of
recognition in her face.
That she did look steadily
at me alarmed me however, and straight’ away I said to the old fool of a
parish priest that I must examine her alone. He was loathe to leave me with
her, but I told him that I had seen many a witch and she did not frighten me in
the slightest and that I must ask her many questions, and if only he would wait
for me at the rectory I should be back soon. Then I took from my pockets
several gold coins, and said, ‘You must take these for your church, for I
know I have given you much trouble.’ And that sealed it. The imbecile was
gone.
Need I tell you how
contemptible all these proceedings were, that this woman should be put into my
hands thus without guards? For what might I have done to her, had I chosen to
do it? And who had done such things before me?
At once the door was shut
up, and though I could hear much whispering in the passage beyond, we were
alone. I set down the candle upon the only furnishing in the place, which was a
wooden bench, and as I struggled not to give way to tears at the sight of her,
I heard her voice coming low, scarce more than a whisper as she said:
Tetyr, can it really be you?’
‘Yes, Deborah,’
I said.
‘Ah, but you have not
come to save me, have you?’ she asked wearily.
My heart was struck by the
very tone of her voice, for it was the same voice that had spoken to me in her
bedchamber in Amsterdam that last night. It had but a tiny fraction of deeper
resonance, and perhaps a dark music to it which suffering imparts.
‘I cannot do it,
Deborah. Though I shall try, I know that I will fail.’
This came as no surprise to
her, yet she smiled at me.
Taking up the candle once
more, I drew closer to her, and went down on my knees in the hay before her so
that I might look into her eyes. I saw the very same eyes I remembered, and the
same cheeks as she smiled, and it seemed this spare and waxen form was but my
Deborah made already into a spirit, with all her beauty intact.
She made no move towards me
but perused my face as she might a painting, and then in a rush of feeble and
pitiful words I told her that I had not known of her distress, but had come
upon this place alone, in my work for the Talamasca, and had discovered with
great sorrow that she was the one of whom I had heard so much talk. I had
ascertained that she had appealed to the bishop, and to the Parliament of
Paris, but here she silenced me with a simple gesture and said:
‘I shall die here on
the morrow, and there is nothing that you can do.’
‘Ah, but there is one
small mercy,’ I said, ’for I have in my possession a powder, which
when mixed with water and drunk, will make you stuporous and you will not
suffer as you might. Nay, I can give you such a measure of it that you will
die, if that is your wish, and thereby cheat the flames altogether. I know that
I can put this into your hands. The old priest is a fool.’
She seemed most deeply
affected by my offer, though in no urgency to accept it. ‘Petyr, I must
have my wits about me when I am taken down into the square. I warn you, do not
be in the town when this takes place. Or be safe behind a shuttered window, if
you must remain to see it for yourself.’
‘Are you speaking of
escape, Deborah?’ I asked, for I had to admit that my imagination was at
once inflamed. If only I could save her, cause a great confusion and then take
her away by some means. But how could I do such a thing?
‘No, no, Petyr, that
is beyond my power and the power of him whom I command. It is a simple thing
for a spirit to transport a small jewel or a gold coin into the hands of a
witch, but to open prison doors, to overcome armed guards? This cannot be done.’
Then, as if distracted, her eyes glancing wildly about, she said, ‘Do you
know my own sons have testified against me? That my beloved Chretien has called
his mother a witch?’
‘I think they made him
do it, Deborah. Shall I go to see him? What can I do that will help?’
‘Oh, kind, dear Petyr,’
she said. ‘Why did you not listen to me when I begged you to come with
me? But this is not your doing, all this. It is mine.’
‘How so, Deborah? That
you were innocent I never doubted. If you could have cured your husband of his
injury, there never would have been a cry of "witch."’
She shook her head at this. ‘There
is so much more to the story. When he died I believed myself to be blameless.
But I have spent many a long month in this cell thinking on it, Petyr. And
hunger and pain make the mind grow sharp.’
‘Deborah, do not
believe what your enemies say of you, no matter how often or well they say it!’
She did not answer me. She
seemed indifferent to it. And then she turned to me again. ‘Petyr, do
these things for me. If on the morrow I am brought bound into the square, which
is my worst fear, demand that my arms and legs be freed that I may carry the
heavy candle in penance, as has always been the custom in these parts. Do not
let my crippled feet wring pity from you, Petyr. I fear the bonds worse than I
fear the flames!’
‘I will do it,’
I said, ’but there is no cause for concern. They will make you carry the
candle, and make you walk the length of the town. You will be made to bring it
to the steps of the cathedral, and only then will they bind you and take you to
the pyre.’ I could scarce continue.
‘Listen, I have more
to ask of you,’ she said.
‘Yes, please, go on.’
‘When it is finished,
and you leave this town, then to my daughter, Charlotte Fontenay, wife of
Antoine Fontenay, in Saint-Domingue, which is in Hispaniola, in care of the
merchant Jean-Jacques Toussaint, Port-au-Prince, write what I tell you to say.’
I repeated the name and full
address to her.
‘Tell Charlotte that I
did not suffer in the flames even if this is not true.’
‘I will make her
believe it.’
At this she smiled bitterly.
‘Perhaps not,’ she said. ‘But do your best at it, for me.’
‘What else?’
‘Give a further
message, and this you must remember word for word. Tell her to proceed with
care — that he whom I have sent to obey her sometimes does those things
for us which he believes we want him to do. And further tell her that
he whom I am sending to her draws his belief in our purpose as much from our
random thoughts, as from the careful words we speak.’
‘Oh, Deborah!’
‘You understand what I
am saying to you, and why you must convey this to her?’
‘I see it. I see it
all. You wished your husband dead, on account of his treachery. And the demon struck
him down.’
‘It is deeper than
that. Do not seek to compass it. I never wished him dead. I loved him. And I
did not know of his treachery! But you must make known what I have said to
Charlotte, for her protection, for my invisible servant cannot tell her of his
own changing nature. He cannot speak to her of what he himself does not
understand."
‘Oh, but…’
‘Do not stand on
conscience with me now, Petyr. Better that you had never come here, if you do.
She has the emerald in her possession. He will go to her when I am dead.’
‘Do not send him,
Deborah!’
She sighed, with great
disappointment and desperation. ‘Please, I beg you, do as I ask.’
‘What took place with
your husband, Deborah?’
It seemed she would not
answer, and then she said, ‘My husband lay dying when my Lasher came to
me, and made known to me that he had tricked my husband and made him fall in
the woods. "How could you do such a thing," I demanded, "which I
never told you to do?" And then came his answer: "But Deborah, had
you seen into his heart as I did, it is what you would have told me to do."’
I was chilled to my very
bones then, Stefan, and I ask that when you have this letter copied out for our
records, that the above words be underlined. For when have we ever heard of
such conniving and willfulness from an invisible devil, such wit and such
stupidity in one?
I saw this imp, as if loosed
from a bottle, cavorting and wreaking havoc at will. I remembered Roemer’s
old warnings. I remembered Geertruid and the things which she had said. But
this was worse even than they might have imagined.
‘Aye, you are correct,’
she said to me, sadly, having read this from my mind. ‘You must write
this to Charlotte,’ she beseeched me. ‘Be careful with your words,
lest the letter fall into the wrong hands, but write it, write it so that
Charlotte sees the whole of what you have to say!’
‘Deborah, restrain
this thing. Let me tell her, at the behest of her mother, to drop the emerald
into the sea.’
‘It is too late for
that now, Petyr, and the world being what it is, I would send my Lasher to
Charlotte even if you had not come tonight to hear this last request from me.
My Lasher is powerful beyond your dreams of a daimon, and he has learnt much.’
‘Learned,’ I
repeated in amazement. ‘How learned, Deborah, for he is merely a spirit,
and they are forever foolish and therein lies the danger, that in granting our
wishes they do not understand the complexity of them, and thereby prove our
undoing. There are a thousand tales that prove it. Has this not happened? How
so do you say learned?’
‘Think on it, Petyr,
what I have told you. I tell you my Lasher has learnt much, and his error came
not from his unchangeable simplicity but from the sharpening of purpose in him.
But promise me, for all that passed between us once, write to my beloved
daughter! This you must do forme.’
‘Very well!’ I
declared, wringing my hands. ‘I shall do it, but I shall tell her also
all that I have just said to you.’
‘Fair enough, my good
priest, my good scholar,’ she said bitterly, and smiling. ‘Now go,
Petyr. I cannot bear your presence here any longer. And my Lasher is near to
me, and we would talk together, and on the morrow, I beg you, get indoors and
safe once you see that my hands and feet are unfettered and that I have come to
the church doors.’
‘God in heaven help
me, Deborah, if only I could take you from this place, if it were possible by
any means -’ And here I broke down, Stefan. I lost all conscience. ‘Deborah,
if your servant, Lasher, can effect an escape with my assistance, you have only
to tell me how it might be done!’
I saw myself wresting her
from the mad crowds that surrounded us and of stealing her away over the walls
of the town and into the woods.
How she smiled at me then,
how tenderly and sadly. It was the way she had smiled when we had parted years
before.
‘What fancies, Petyr,’
she said. Then her smile grew even broader, and she looked half mad in the
candlelight, or even more like an angel or a mad saint. Her white face was as
beautiful as the candle flame itself. ‘My life is over, but I have
traveled far and wide from this little cell,’ she said. ‘Now go. Go
and send my message to Charlotte, but only when you are safely away from this
town.’
I kissed her hands. They had
burnt the palms when they tortured her. There were deep scabs on them, and
these too I kissed. I did not care.
‘I have always loved
you,’ I said to her. And I said other things, many things, foolish and
tender, which I will not write here. All this she bore with perfect
resignation, and she knew what I had only just discovered: that I regretted
that I had not gone off with her, that I despised myself and my work and all my
life.
This will pass, Stefan. I
know it. I knew it then, only hours ago when I left her cell. But it is true
now, and I am like St John of the Cross in his ‘Dark Night of the Soul.’
I tell you all consolation has left me. And on what account?
That I love her, and only
that. For I know that her daimon has destroyed her, as surely as it destroyed
her mother. And that all the warnings of Roemer and Geertruid and all the
wizards of the ages, have been proven here to be true.
I could not leave her
without embracing her and kissing her. But I could feel her agony when I held
her - the agony of the burns and the bruises on her body, and her muscles torn
from the rack. And this had been my beautiful Deborah, this ruin that clung to
me, and wept suddenly as if I had turned a key in a lock.
‘I am sorry, my
beloved,’ I said, for 1 blamed myself for these tears.
‘It is sweet to hold
you,’ she whispered. And then she pushed me away from her. ‘Go now,
and remember everything that I have said.’
I went out a madman. The
square was still filling with those who had come to see the execution. By
torchlight there were those putting up their stalls, and others sleeping under
blankets along the walls.
I told the old priest I was
not at all convinced the woman was a witch, and I wanted to see the inquisitor
at once. I tell you, Stefan, I was bound to move heaven and earth for her.
But you know how it went.
We came to the chateau and
they admitted us, and this fool priest was very glad to be with someone of
importance, barging in upon the banquet to which he had not been invited, but I
pulled myself up now, and used my most impressive manner, questioning the
inquisitor directly in Latin, and the old Comtesse, a dark-skinned woman, very
Spanish in appearance, who received me with extraordinary patience considering
the manner in which I began.
The inquisitor, Father
Louvier, handsome and very well fed, with fine groomed beard and hair and
twinkling black eyes, saw nothing suspicious in my manner, and became
obsequious to me as if I were from the Vatican, which I might be for all he
knew, and merely sought to comfort me when I said perhaps an innocent woman was
to be burnt.
‘You never saw such a
witch," said the Comtesse, who laughed in an ugly deep-throated fashion
and offered me some wine. She then presented me to the Comtesse de Chamillart,
who sat beside her, and to every other noble of the surrounding area who had
come to lodge at the chateau and see the witch burnt.
Every question I asked and
objection I raised and suggestion I made to offer was met with the same easy
conviction by this assemblage. For them the battle had been fought and won. All
that remained was the celebration that would take place in the morning.
The boys were crying in
their chambers, true, but they would recover. And there was nothing to fear
from Deborah, for if her demon were strong enough to free her he would have
done so by now. And was it not so with all witches? Once they were in chains,
the devil left them to their fate.
‘But this woman has
not confessed,’ I declared, ’and her husband fell from his horse in
the forest, by his own admission. Surely you cannot convict on the evidence of
a feverish and dying man!’
It was as if I were flinging
dry leaves into their faces, for all the effect it had upon them.
‘I loved my son before
all things in this world,’ said the old Comtesse, her small black eyes
hard and her mouth ugly. Then as if thinking the better of her tone, she said
with complete hypocrisy, ‘Poor Deborah, have I ever said that I did not
love Deborah, that I did not forgive Deborah a thousand things?’
‘You say too much!’
declared Louvier very sanctimoniously, and with an exaggerated gesture as he
was drunk, the fiend.
‘I don’t speak
of witchcraft,’ said the old woman, quite unperturbed by his manner, ‘I
speak of my daughter-in-law and all her weaknesses and secrets, for who in this
town does not know that Charlotte was born too soon after the wedding, yet my
son was so blind to the charms of this woman, and so adoring of Charlotte, and
so grateful to Deborah for her dowry and so much a fool in all
respects…’
‘Must we speak of it!’
whispered the Comtesse de Chamillart, who appeared to tremble. ‘Charlotte
is gone from our midst.’
‘She will be found and
burnt like her mother,’ declared Louvier, and there were nods and assents
all around.
And they went to talking
amongst themselves about how very content they would all be after the
executions, and as I sought to question them, they merely gestured for me to be
quiet, to drink, not to concern myself.
It was horrible the manner
in which they then ignored me, like beings in a dream who cannot hear our
screams. Yet I persisted that they had no evidence of night flying, of Sabbats,
of intercourse with demons, and all the other foolish evidence which elsewhere
sends these creatures to the stake. As for the healing, what was this but the
skill of the cunning woman, and why convict for that? The doll might not have
been anything more than an instrument of healing.
To no avail!
How convivial and calm they
were as they dined at the table, which had been her table, and on silver which
had been her silver, and she in that wretched cell.
At last I pleaded that she
should be allowed to die by strangulation before the burning. ‘How many
of you have seen for yourselves a person die by fire!’ But this was met
with the weariest of dismissals.
‘The witch is
unrepentant,’ said the Comtesse de Chamillart, the only one of them who
seemed sober and even touched with a slight fear.
‘She will suffer what?
A quarter of an hour at most?’ the inquisitor asked, wiping his mouth
with his filthy napkin. ‘What is that to the eternal fires of hell!’
At last I went out and back
through the crowded square where it seemed a drunken revel was being held
around all the little fires burning, and I stood looking at the grim pyre, and
the stake high above with its iron manacles, and then by chance I found myself
looking to the left of it at the triple arches of the church doors. And there
in the crude carving of ages past were the imps of hell being driven down into
the flames by St Michael the Archangel with his trident through the fiend’s
belly.
The words of the inquisitor
rang in my ears as I looked at this ugly thing in the firelight. ‘She
will suffer what? A quarter of an hour at most? And what is that to the eternal
fires of hell?’
Oh, Deborah, who never
willfully harmed anyone, and had brought her healing arts to the poorest and
the richest, and been so unwise!
And where was her vengeful
spirit, her Lasher, who sought to save her grief by striking down her husband,
and had brought her to that miserable cell? Was he with her, as she had told
me? It was not his name she had cried out when she was tortured, it was my
name, and the name of her old and kindly husband Roelant.
Stefan, I have written this
tonight as much to stave off madness, as to make the record. I am weary now. I
have packed my valise, and I am ready to leave this town when I have seen this
bitter story to the end. I will seal this letter and put it in my valise with
the customary note affixed to it, that in the event of my death, a reward will
be waiting for it in Amsterdam, should it be delivered there, and so forth and
so on.
For I do not know what the
daylight will bring. And I shall continue this tragedy by means of a new letter
if I am settled tomorrow evening in another town.
The sunlight is just coming
through the windows. I pray somehow Deborah can be saved; but I know it is out
of the question. And Stefan, I would call her devil to me, if I thought he
would listen. I would try to command him in some desperate action. But I know I
have no such power, and so I wait.
Yours
Faithfully in the Talamasca,
Petyr
van Abel
Montcleve
Michaelmas, 1689
Michael had now finished the
first typescript. He withdrew the second from its manila folder, and he sat for
a long moment, his hands clasped on top of it, praying stupidly that somehow
Deborah was not going to burn.
Then unable to sit still any
longer, he picked up the phone, called the operator, and asked to speak to
Aaron.
‘That picture in
Amsterdam, Aaron, the one painted by Rembrandt,’ he said, ‘do you
still have it?’
‘Yes, it is still
there, Michael, in the Amsterdam Mother-house. I’ve already sent for a
photograph from the Archives. It’s going to take a little time.’
‘Aaron, you know this
is the dark-haired woman! You know it is. And the emerald - that must be the
jewel I saw. Aaron, I could swear I know Deborah. She must be the one who came
to me, and she had the emerald around her neck. And Lasher… Lasher is the
word I spoke when I opened my eyes on the boat.’
‘But you do not
actually remember it?’
‘No, but I’m
sure… And Aaron -’
‘Michael, try not to
interpret, or to analyze. Go on with your reading. There isn’t much time.’
‘I need a pen and
paper to take notes.’
‘What you need is a
notebook in which you can record all your thoughts, and anything that comes
back to you about the visions.’
‘Exactly, I wish I’d
been keeping a notebook all along.’
‘I’ll have one
sent up. Let me recommend that you merely date each entry as you would in a
free-form diary. But please continue. There’ll be some fresh coffee for
you shortly. Anything else, simply ring.’
‘That will do it.
Aaron, there are so many things…"
‘I know, Michael. Try
to stay calm. Just read.’
Michael hung up, lighted a
cigarette, drank a little more of the old coffee, and stared at the cover of
the second file.
At the first sound of a
knock, he went to the door.
The kindly woman he’d
seen earlier in the hallway was there with the fresh coffee, and several pens
and a nice leather notebook with very white lined paper. She set the tray down
on the desk and removed the old service, and quietly went out.
He seated himself again,
poured a fresh cup of black coffee, and immediately opened the notebook,
entered the date, and made his first note:
‘After reading the
first folder of the file, 1 know that Deborah is the woman I saw in the
visions. I know her. I know her face, and her character. I can hear her voice
if I try.
‘And it is more than a
safe guess that the word I spoke to Rowan when I came around was Lasher. But
Aaron is right. I don’t really remember this. I simply know it.
‘And of course the
power in my hands is connected. But how is it meant to be used? Surely not to
touch things at random, the way I’ve been doing, but to touch something
specific…
‘But it’s too
soon to draw conclusions…’
But if I only had something
of Deborah’s to touch, he thought. But he sensed there was nothing, or else
Aaron would have sent for it too. He examined the photocopies of Petyr van Abel’s
letters. That’s all they were — photocopies. No good for his
anxious hands.
He thought for a moment, if
such confusion in one’s mind could be called thought, and then he drew a
picture in the notebook of a necklace, showing a rectangular jewel in the
center, and a filigree border, and a chain of gold. He drew it the way he would
draw an architectural design, with very clean, straight lines and slightly
shaded detail.
He studied it, the gloved
fingers of his left hand working nervously in his hair, and then curling into a
fist as he rested his hand on the desk. He was about to scratch out the drawing
when he decided against it, and then he opened the second file and began to
read.
FOURTEEN
THE
FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES
PART
II
Marseille,
France October 4, 1689
Dear Stefan,
I am here in Marseille after
several days’ journey from Montcleve, during which I rested at Saint-Remy
and made my way very slowly from there, on account of my wounded shoulder and
wounded soul.
I have already drawn money
from our agent here, and will post this letter no later than one hour after I
finish it, and so you will receive it on the heels of my last, which I posted
upon my arrival last night.
I am heartsick, Stefan. The
comforts of a large and decent inn here mean little or nothing to me, though I
am glad to be out of the small villages and in a city of some size, where I
cannot help but feel at ease and somewhat safe.
If word has reached this
place of what happened at Montcleve, I have not heard of it yet. And as I put
away my clerical garb on the outskirts of Saint-Remy and have been since then
the Dutch traveler of means, I do not think that anyone will trouble me about
those recent events in the mountains, for what would I know about such things?
I write once more to stave
off madness as much as to report to you, which I am bound to do, and to
continue the business at hand.
The execution of Deborah
began in a manner similar to many others, in that as the morning light fell
down on the square before the doors of the Cathedral of Saint-Michel all the
town collected there with the wine sellers making their profits, and the old
Comtesse, somberly dressed, coming forward with the two trembling children,
both dark-haired and dark-skinned with the stamp of the Spanish blood on them,
but with a height and delicacy of bone that betrayed the blood of their mother,
and very much frightened, as they were taken high to the very top of the
viewing stand before the jail, and facing the pyre.
It seemed the little one,
Chretien, began to weep and cling to his grandmother, whereupon there ran
through the crowd excited murmurs, ‘Chretien, look at Chretien.’
This child’s lip trembled as he was seated, but his elder brother,
Philippe, evinced only fear and perhaps loathing of what he beheld around him,
and the old Comtesse embraced and comforted both of them, and on her other side
welcomed the Comtesse de Chamillart and the inquisitor Father Louvier, with two
young clerics in fine robes.
Four more priests, I know
not from where, also filled the topmost places in the stand, and a small band
of armed men stood at the very foot of it, these constituting the local
authorities, or so I presumed.
Other important personages,
or a great collection of those who think themselves very important, filled up
the rest of the elevated seats very quickly, and if there had been any window
anywhere that had not been opened beforehand, it was opened now and full of
eager faces, and those on foot pressed so close to the pyre that I could not
help but wonder how they would save themselves from being burnt.
A small band of armed men,
bearing a ladder with them, appeared from the thick of the crowd and laid this
ladder against the pyre. The young Chretien saw this and turned fearfully once
more to his grandmother, his shoulders shaking as he cried, but the young
Philippe remained as before.
At last the doors of
Saint-Michel were thrown open, and there appeared beneath the rounded arch, on
the very threshold, the pastor and some other despicable official, most likely
the mayor of this place, who held in his hands a rolled parchment, and a pair
of armed guards came forth to the left and to the right.
And between them there
emerged to a hushed and wonder-stricken audience my Deborah, standing straight
and with her head high, her thin body covered by a white robe which hung to her
bare feet, and in her hands the six-pound candle which she held before her as
her eyes swept the crowd.
Never have I seen such
fearlessness in all my life, Stefan, though as I looked down from the window of
the inn opposite, and my eyes met the eyes of Deborah, my own eyes were blurred
by tears.
I cannot say for certain
what then followed, except that at the very instant when heads might have
turned to see this person at whom ‘the witch’ stared so fixedly,
Deborah did look away, and again her eyes took in the scene before her,
lingering with equal care upon the stalls of the wine sellers and the peddlers,
and the groups of random persons who backed away from her as she looked at
them, and finally up at the viewing stand which loomed down upon her, and at
the old Comtesse, who steeled herself to this silent accusation, and then to
the Comtesse de Chamillart, who at once squirmed in her seat, her face
reddening, as she looked in panic to the old Comtesse, who remained as unmoved
as before.
Meantime Father Louvier, the
great and triumphant inquisitor, was shouting hoarsely to the mayor that he
should read the proclamation in his hands, and that ‘these proceedings
must commence!’
A hubbub rose from all
assembled, and the mayor cleared his throat to begin reading, and I then
satisfied myself of what I had already seen but failed to note, that Deborah’s
hands and feet were unbound.
It was now my intention to
come down from the window and to push my way, by the roughest means if need be,
to the very front of the crowd so that I might stand near her, regardless of
what danger this might mean to me.
And I was in the act of
turning from the window when the mayor began to read the Latin with torturous
slowness, and Deborah’s voice rang out, silencing him and commanding that
the crowd be still.
‘I never did you harm,
not the poorest of you!’ she declared, speaking slowly and loudly, her
voice echoing off the stone walls, and as Father Louvier stood and shouted for
silence, she raised her voice even louder and declared that she would speak.
‘Silence her!"
declared the old Comtesse, now in a fury, and again Louvier bellowed for the
mayor to read the proclamation and the frightened pastor looked to his armed
guards, but they had drawn away on either side and seemed fearful as they
stared at Deborah and at the frightened crowd.
‘I will be heard!’
my Deborah called out again, as loudly as before. And as she took but one step
forward, to stand more fully in the sunlight, the crowd drew back in a great
swarming mass.
‘I am unjustly
condemned of witchcraft,’ cried Deborah, ’for I am no heretic and I
do not worship Satan, and I have done no malice against any being here!’
And before the old Comtesse
could roar again, Deborah continued:
‘You, my sons, you
testified against me and I disown you! And you, my beloved mother-in-law, have
damned yourself to hell with your lies!’
‘Witch!’
screamed the Comtesse de Chamillart, now in panic. ‘Burn her. Throw her
on the pyre.’
And at this it seemed a
number did press forward, as much out of fear as a desire for heroism and to
draw favor upon themselves perhaps, or maybe it was mere confusion. But the
armed guards did not move.
‘Witch, you call me!’
Deborah answered at once. And with a great gesture, she threw down the candle
on the stones and threw up her hands before the men who would have taken hold
of her but did not. ‘Hearken to me!’ she declared. ‘I shall
show you witchcraft I have never shown you before!’
The crowd was now in
complete fright and some were leaving the square and others pressing to reach
the narrow streets leading away from it, and even those in the viewing stand
had risen to their feet, and the young Chretien buried his face against the old
Comtesse and again shook with sobs.
Yet the eyes of hundreds in
this narrow place remained fixed upon Deborah, who had raised her thin and
bruised arms. Her lips moved, but I could hear no words from her, and shrieks
now rang out from some below the window, and then a rumbling was heard over the
rooftops, far fainter than thunder and therefore more terrible, and a great
wind was gathering suddenly, and with it came another noise, a low creaking and
ripping sound, which at first I did not know and then I remembered from many
another storm - the old roofs of the place were giving up to the wind their
loose and broken tiles.
At once the tiles began to
fall from the parapets, raining down singly and here and there by the half
dozen, and the wind was howling and gathering itself over the square. The
wooden shutters of the inns had begun to flap on their hinges, and my Deborah
screamed again over this noise and over the frantic cries of the crowd.
‘Come now, my Lasher,
be my avenger, strike down my enemies!’ Bending double, she raised her
hands, her face red and stricken with her rage. ‘I see you, Lasher, I
know you! I call you!’ And straightening and flinging out her arms: ‘Destroy
my sons, destroy my accusers! Destroy those who have come to see me die!’
And the tiles came crashing
down off the roofs, off the church and the jail and the sacristy, and off the
roofs of the inns, striking the heads of those screaming below, and in the
wind, the viewing stand, built of fragile boards and sticks and ropes with
crude mortar, began to rock as those clinging to it shrieked for their lives.
Only Father Louvier stood
firm. ‘Burn the witch!’ he shouted, trying to get through the
panic-stricken men and women who tumbled over one another to get away. ‘Burn
the witch and you stop the storm.’
No one moved to obey him,
and though the church alone could provide shelter from this tempest, no one
dared moved towards it as Deborah commanded the door, her arms outstretched.
The armed men had run away from her in their panic. The parish priest had
shrunk to the far side. The mayor was gone from view.
Overhead the very sky had
gone dark, and people were fighting and cursing and falling in the crush, and
in the fierce rain of tiles the old Comtesse was struck and slumped over,
losing her balance and vaulting down over the bodies writhing in front of her,
on to the very stones. The two boys clung to each other as a shower of loose
stones broke upon them from the facade of the church. Chretien was bowed under
the stones as a tree in a hail storm, and then struck unconscious, falling to
his knees. The stand itself now collapsed, taking down with it both boys and
some twenty or more persons still struggling to get clear.
As far as I could see, all
the guards had deserted the square, and the pastor had run away. And now I
beheld my Deborah move backwards into the shadows, though her eyes were still
on the heavens:
‘I see you, Lasher!’
she cried out. ‘My strong and beautiful Lasher!’ And she vanished
into the dark of the nave.
At this I ran from the
window and down the stairs and into the frenzy of the square. What was in my
mind I could not tell you, save somehow I could reach her, and under cover of
the panic around us, get her free from this place.
But as I ran across the open
space, the tiles flew every which way, and one struck my shoulder, and another
my left hand. 1 could see nothing of her, only the doors of the church which
were, in spite of their great heaviness, swinging in the wind.
Shutters had broken loose
and were coming down upon the mad folk who could not get out through the little
streets. Bodies lay piled at every arch and doorway. The old Comtesse lay dead,
staring upwards, men and women tripping over her limbs. And in the ruin of the
viewing stand lay the body of Chretien, the little one, twisted so as it could
not have had life in it.
Philippe, the elder, crawled
upon his knees to seek shelter, his leg broken it appeared, when a wooden
shutter came down striking his neck and breaking it as well so that he fell
dead.
Then someone near me,
cowering against the wall, screamed: ‘The Comtesse!’ and pointed
up.
There she stood, high on the
parapets of the church, for she had gone in and upwards, and balancing
perilously upon the wall, she once again raised her hands to heaven and cried
out to her spirit. But in the howling of the wind, in the screaming of the
afflicted, in the falling of the tiles and the stones and the broken wood, I
could not hope to hear her words.
I ran for the church, and
once inside searched in panic for the steps. There was Louvier, the inquisitor,
running back and forth, and then finding the steps before me, leading the way.
Up and up I ran after him,
seeing his black skirts high above me, and his heels clacking on the stones.
Oh, Stefan, if I had had a dagger, but I had no dagger.
And as we reached the open
parapets, as he ran out before me, I saw Deborah’s thin body fly, as it
were, from the roof. Reaching the edge, I peered down upon the carnage and saw
her lying broken on the stones. Her face was turned upwards - one arm beneath
her head, and the other limp across her chest - and her eyes were closed as
though she slept.
Louvier cursed when he saw
her. ‘Burn her, take her body up to the pyre,’ he cried, but it was
useless. No one could hear him. In consternation he turned, perhaps to go back
down and further command the proceedings, when he beheld me standing there.
And with a great look of
amazement on his face, he regarded me helplessly and in confusion as, without
hesitation, I pushed him with all my might, squarely in the chest, and
backwards, so that he went flying off the edge of the roof.
No one saw this, Stefan. We
were at the highest point of Montcleve. No other rooftop rose above that of the
church. Even the distant chateau had no view of this parapet, and those below
could not have seen me, as I was shielded from view by Louvier himself as I
struck the blow.
But even if I am wrong as to
the possibility of it, the fact of it is that no one did see me.
Retreating at once, making
certain that no one had followed me to this place, I went down and to the
church door. There lay my handiwork, Louvier, as dead as my Deborah, and lying
very near her, his skull crushed and bleeding and his eyes open, in that dull
stupid expression that the dead have which is almost never approximated by a
human being in life.
How long the gale continued
I cannot tell you, only that it was already falling off when I reached the
church door. Perhaps a quarter of an hour, the very time the fiend had allotted
for Deborah to die on the pyre.
From the shadows of the
church foyer, I saw the square finally emptied, the very last climbing over the
bodies that now blocked the side streets. I saw the light brighten. I heard the
storm die away. I stood still regarding in silence the body of my Deborah, and
saw that the blood now poured from her mouth, and that her white gown was
stained with blood as well.
After a great while,
numerous persons moved into the open place, examining the bodies of the dead,
and the bodies of those who were still living and weeping and begging for
assistance; and here and there the wounded were picked up and carried away. The
innkeeper ran out, with his son beside him, and knelt down beside the body of
Louvier.
It was the son who saw me
and came to me and told me in great agitation that the parish priest had
perished and so had the mayor. The son had a wild look to him, as if he could
not believe that he was still living, and had witnessed such a thing.
‘I told you she was a
great witch,’ he whispered to me. And as he stood beside me, staring at
her, we saw the armed guards gathering, very shaken and bruised and fearful as,
at the command of a young cleric with a bleeding forehead, they lifted up
Deborah and looking about as if they feared the storm would come again, though
it did not, they took her to the pyre. The wood and coal began to tumble down
as they climbed the ladder propped against it, and they laid her gently down
and hurried away.
Others gathered as the young
cleric in his torn robe, and with his head still bleeding, lighted the torches,
and very soon the thing was set ablaze. The young cleric stood very near,
watching the wood burn, and then backed away from it, and weaving, finally fell
over in a faint, or perhaps dead.
I hoped dead.
Once again I climbed the
steps. I went out upon the roof of the church. I looked down upon the body of
my Deborah, dead and still and beyond all pain, as it was consumed by the
flames. I looked out over the rooftops, now spotted all over where the tiles
had been ripped out, and I thought of the spirit of Deborah and wondered if it
had risen into the clouds.
Only when the rising smoke
had become so thick and odoriferous from the coals and wood and pitch that I
could no longer breathe the air did I retreat. And going to the inn, where men
were drinking and babbling away in confusion and peering out at the fire and
then backing away from the doors timidly, I gathered my valise and went down to
seek my horse. It was gone in the melee.
But seeing another, in the
charge of a frightened stable boy, and in readiness for a rider, I managed to
buy it from him for twice what it was worth, though in all likelihood it was
not his to sell, and I rode out of the town.
After many hours of riding
very slowly through the forest, with much pain in my shoulder, and much more
pain in my mind, I came to Saint-Remy and there fell into a dead sleep.
No one there had heard of
the trouble yet, and I rode out very early on my way south to Marseille.
For the last two nights, I
have lain on my bed half sleeping, half dreaming, and thinking of the things I
saw. I wept for Deborah until there were no more tears in me. I thought of my
crime and knew that I felt no guilt, but only the conviction that I would do it
again.
All my life in the
Talamasca, I have never once raised my hand to another man. I have reasoned,
sought to persuade, connived and lied, and done my best to defeat the powers of
darkness as I knew them, and to serve the powers of good. But in Montcleve, my
anger rose, and with it my righteousness, and my vengeance. I rejoice that I
threw that fiend off the roof of the church, if this quiet satisfaction can be
called rejoicing.
Nevertheless, I have done
murder, Stefan. You have in your possession my confession of this. And I
anticipate nothing but your censure and the censure of the order, for when have
our scholars gone forth to do murder, to push witch judges off the roofs of
churches as I have done?
All I can say in my defense
is that the crime was committed in a moment of passion and thoughtlessness. But
I have no regret of it. You will know this as soon as you set eyes on me. I
have no lies to tell you to make it a simpler thing.
My thoughts are not on this
murder, as I write now. They are on my Deborah, and the spirit Lasher, and what
I saw with my own eyes at Montcleve. They are on Charlotte Fontenay, the
daughter of Deborah, who has gone on, not to Martinique as her enemies believe,
but to Port-au-Prince in Saint-Domingue, as perhaps only I know.
Stefan, I cannot but
continue my inquiry into this matter. I cannot lay down my pen and fall on my
knees and say I have murdered a priest and therefore I must renounce the world
and my work. So I, the murderer, continue as if I had never tainted this matter
with my own crime, or my confession.
What I must do now is go to
this unfortunate Charlotte - no matter how long the journey — and speak
to her from my heart and tell her all that I have seen and all that I know.
This can be no simple
exposition; no plea to sanity; no sentimental entreaty as I made in my youth to
Deborah. There must be meat to these arguments, there must be talk between me
and this woman, so that she will allow me to examine with her this thing
brought out of invisibility and out of chaos to do more harm than any daimon or
spirit of which I have ever heard tell.
For that is the essence of
it, Stefan, the thing is horrific, and each and every witch that seeks to
command it shall in the end lose control of it, I have no doubt. But what is
the career of the thing itself?
To wit, it struck down
Deborah’s husband on account of what it knew of the man. Why did it not
tell the witch herself? And what was meant by Deborah’s statements that
this being was learning, statements which have been made to me twice — the
first time years ago in Amsterdam, the second time only lately before these
tragic events.
What I mean to do is
consider the nature of the thing, that it meant to spare Deborah pain in
striking down her husband for her, without telling her the why of it, though it
had to confess when it was asked. Or that it sought to leap ahead and do for
her what she would have had done, to show itself a good and clever spirit.
Whatever the answer, this is
a most unusual and interesting spirit, indeed. And consider its strength,
Stefan, for I have exaggerated nothing of what befell the populace at
Montcleve. You will soon hear of this, for it was too horrifying and remarkable
for the story not to spread far and wide.
Now, during these long hours
of soreness and torment, as I have lain here, I have considered carefully in
memory all I have ever read of the old lore on spirits and daimons and the
like.
I have considered the
writings of wizards, through their warnings, and through anecdotes and the
teachings of the Church Fathers, for no matter what fools they be in some
matters, the Church Fathers do know a thing or two of spirits, in which they
are in agreement with the ancients, and that agreement is a significant point.
Because if the Romans, the
Greeks, the Hebrew scholars, and the Christians all describe the same entities,
and issue the same warnings and formulae for controlling them, then surely that
is something not to be dismissed.
And no nation or tribe to my
knowledge has not acknowledged that there are many invisible beings, and that
they divide into good spirits and evil spirits, according to how they benefit
man.
In the early days of the
Christian Church, the Church Fathers believed that these daimons were, in fact,
the old gods of the pagans. That is they believed in the existence of those
gods and that they were creatures of lesser power, a belief which the Church
surely does not hold now.
However, the witch judges do
hold this belief, crudely and in ignorance, for when they accuse the witch of
riding out at night, they are accusing her in foolish words of the old belief
in the goddess Diana, which did infect pagan Europe before the coming of
Christianity, and the goat devil whom the witch kisses is none other than the
pagan god Pan.
But the witch judge does not
know that this is what he is doing. Dogmatically he believes only in Satan,
‘the Devil,’ and the devil’s demons. And the historian must
point out to him, for all the good it will do, that the fabrications of his
demonologies come from the pagan peasant lore.
But to return to the main
consideration, all peoples have believed in spirits. And all peoples have told
us something of spirits, and it is what they have told us that I must examine
here. And if memory serves me now, I must aver that what we see through the
legends, the books of magic, and the demonologies is a legion of entities which
can be called up by name, and commanded by witches or sorcerers. Indeed, the
Book of Solomon lists them as numerous, giving not merely names and properties
of the beings, but in what manner they choose to appear.
And though we in the
Talamasca have long held that most of this is pure fancy, we know that there
are such entities, and we know that the books contain some worthwhile warnings
as to the danger inherent in evoking these beings, for they may grant our
wishes in ways that cause us to cry to heaven in desperation as the old tale of
King Midas and the peasant story of the three wishes make plain.
Indeed, the wisdom of the
wizard in any language is defined as knowing how to restrain and carefully use
the power of these invisible creatures, so that it is not turned upon the
wizard in some unforeseen way.
But no matter how much one
reads of learning about the spirits, where does one hear of teaching the
spirits to learn? Where does one hear of them changing? Growing strong with
evocation, yes, but changing?
And twice Deborah spoke to
me of that very thing, the education of her spirit, Lasher, which says that the
thing can change.
Stefan, what I perceive is
that this thing, called forth from invisibility and chaos, by the simpleton
Suzanne, is a complete mystery at this stage of its existence as the servant of
these witches, and that it has advanced itself, through the guidance of
Deborah, from a lowly spirit of the air, a storm maker that is, to a horrid
daimon capable of killing the witch’s enemies upon command. And I hold
that there is even more to it than that, which Deborah had not time or strength
to make known to me, but which I must make known to Charlotte, though not for
the purpose of guiding her in her devotion to this thing, but in the hope of
coming between her and the daimon and effecting the dissolution of it by some
means.
For Stefan, when I consider
the words of the being which Deborah quoted to me, I believe that the spirit
has not only characteristics to be learned by the witch, but a character through which he learns; in sum, not
only a nature to be understood, but a soul perhaps through which he
understands.
Further, I am also willing
to wager that this Charlotte Fontenay knows next to nothing of this daimon,
that she never learnt the black arts from Deborah; that only in the eleventh
hour did Deborah make known to Charlotte her secrets, and command Charlotte’s
loyalty, and send her away with her blessing that Charlotte might survive her,
and not see her suffer in the fire. My beloved daughter, she called her, which
I remember well.
Stefan, I must be
allowed to go to Charlotte. I must not shrink from it as I did years before
from Deborah on Roemer Franz’s command. For had I argued with Deborah and
studied with Deborah, perhaps I would have won ground with her, and this thing
could have been sent away.
And finally, Stefan,
consider my request for this mission on two further counts. One, I loved
Deborah and I met defeat with her; and therefore I must go to her daughter, for
this much is required of me on account of what passed between me and the woman
before.
And two, that I have in my
possession money enough to go to Saint-Domingue and can get more from our agent
here, who will advance me plenty, and I may go even if you do not allow.
But please, do not make me
break the rule of the order. Give me permission. Send me to Saint-Domingue.
For it so happens that I am
going.
Yours
Faithfully in the Talamasca,
Petyr
van Abel,
Marseille
The
Talamasca
Amsterdam
Petyr van Abel
Marseille
Dear Petyr,
Your letters never fail to
surprise us, but you have surpassed even all your past triumphs with these two
lately from Marseille.
All here have read them,
word for word, and the council has come together and these are our
recommendations:
That you come home at once
to Amsterdam.
We understand full well your
reasons for wishing to journey to Saint-Domingue but we cannot allow such a
thing. And we beg you to understand, that by your own admission, you have
become part of the evil of Deborah Mayfair’s daimon. In striking down
Father Louvier from the roof, you carried out the wishes of the woman and of
her spirit.
That you violated the rules
of the Talamasca by this rash action concerns us heavily because we fear for
you and we are of one mind that you must come home to take the advice of those
here, and to restore your conscience and your judgment.
Petyr, you are being ordered
under threat of excommunication: Return to us at once.
To the story of Deborah
Mayfair we have devoted much study, taking into account your letters to us, as
well as the very few observations which Roemer Franz saw fit to commit to paper
(Translator’s note: to date these have not been found); and we do agree with
you that this woman and what she has done with her daimon is of considerable
interest to the Talamasca; and please understand that we do intend to learn
what we can of Charlotte Fontenay, and her life in Saint-Domingue.
It is not beyond possibility
that we should in future send to the West Indies a nuncio to speak with this
woman, and to learn what can be learned. But such cannot be contemplated now.
Wisdom dictates that after
your return here, you write to this woman and make known to her the circumstances
of her mother’s death, with the omission of your crime against Father
Louvier, as there would be no good reason to broadcast your guilt, and that you
make known to Charlotte Fontenay also all that her mother has said. That you
invite her to enter into correspondence with you would be more than advisable;
and it is possible that you might exert upon her an influence that is
beneficial with no risk to yourself.
This is all that you may do
with regard to Charlotte Fontenay, and once more we order you to return at
once; please come to us over land or sea, as quickly as possible.
But please be assured of our
love and high regard for you, of our concern. We are of the opinion that if you
disobey only misery awaits you in the West Indies if not worse. We judge this
as much from your own words, and confessions, as from our premonitions
regarding the matter. We have laid hands on the letters. We see darkness and
disaster ahead.
Alexander, who as you know
has the greatest power to see through touch of any among us, is most adamant
that if you go on to Port-au-Prince, we will never see you again. He has taken
to his bed over this, and lies there, refusing food and speaking only in
strange sentences when he does choose to speak.
I should tell you further
that Alexander went into the hall at the foot of the stair and laid hands upon
the portrait by Rembrandt of Deborah, and withdrew near to fainting, and
refusing to speak, and was helped by the servants to his room.
‘To what purpose is
this silence?’ I demanded of him. To which he responded, that what he saw
made plain that it was futile to speak. I went into a rage at this and demanded
that he tell me. ‘I saw only death and ruin," he said. ‘There
were no figures or numbers or words in it. What do you want of me?’ And then
he went on to say that if I would know how it was, look again to the portrait,
to the darkness from which Rembrandt’s subjects are forever emerging, and
see how the light strikes the face of Deborah only partially, for that was the
only light he could divine in the history of these women, a partial and fragile
light, forever swallowed by darkness. Rembrandt van Rijn caught but a moment,
no more.
‘One can say that of
any life and any history,’ I persisted.
‘No, it is prophetic,’
he announced. ‘And if Petyr goes on to the West Indies he will vanish
into the darkness from which Deborah Mayfair emerged only for a little while.’
Make of that lovely exchange
what you will! I cannot withhold from you that Alexander said further that you would
go to the West Indies, that you would ignore our orders and you would ignore
the pronouncement of excommunication, and that the darkness would descend.
You may defy this
prediction, and if you do indeed defy it, you will work wonders for the health
of Alexander, who is wasting away. Come home, Petyr!!!!
Surely you are aware, as a
sensible man, that in the West Indies you need not meet with daimons or witches
to endanger your life. Fever, pestilence, rebellious slaves, and the beasts of
the jungle await you there, after all the perils of the sea voyage.
But let us leave the matter
of common injunctions against such travel, and the matter of our private
powers, and look at the documents which you have laid before us.
An interesting tale indeed.
We have long known that ’witchcraft’ is a great concoction of
judges, priests, philosophers, and so-called learned men. That by means of the
printing press they have disseminated this fantasy throughout Europe, and into
the Highlands of Scotland, and perhaps into the New World.
We have long known as well
that the peasant populations of the rural districts now see their cunning women
and midwives as witches, and the bits and pieces of custom and superstition
once held in high regard by them have now been woven into fantasies of
goat-footed devils, sacrilege, and preposterous Sabbats.
But where have we ever
perceived a more exquisite example of how the fantasies of these men have
created a witch than in the simpleton Suzanne Mayfair, who taking guidance
directly from the de-monologies has done what one in a million women could do conjured
up for herself a true spirit, and one of redoubtable power, a fiend which was
passed on to her clever and embittered daughter, Deborah, who has gone further
into the practice of Black Magic to perfect her hold over this being and now
has passed him on, along with her superstitions no doubt, to her daughter in
the New World.
Who among us does not wish
that he or she had stood with you at Montcleve to see the great power of this
spirit, and the ruin of the lady’s enemies, and surely had there been one
of us at your side, that one would have stayed your hand and let the good
Father Louvier meet his fate without your help.
I should say further that no
one among us fails to understand your desire to pursue this fiend and its witch
to Saint-Domingue. What would I not give to speak to such a person as this
Charlotte, and to ask what she has learnt from her mother, and what she means
to do.
But Petyr, you yourself have
described the power of this demon. You have related faithfully the strange
statements made in regard to it by the late Comtesse Deborah Mayfair de
Montcleve. You must know that this thing will seek to prevent your coming
between it and Charlotte, and that it is capable of bringing you to a bad end
as it did with the late Comte de Montcleve.
You cannot be other than
right in your conclusion that the thing is more clever than most daimons, if
only in what it has said to the witch, if not in what it does.
Aye, it is quite
irresistible to us, this tragic story. But you must come home to write your
letters to the daughter of Deborah, from the safety of Amsterdam allowing our
Dutch ships to take them over the sea.
It may interest you to know
as you prepare for your return journey, that we have only lately heard that
word of Father Louvier’s death has reached the French court.
That a storm struck the town
of Montcleve on the day of the execution of Deborah de Montcleve you will not
be surprised to know. That it was sent by God to show his displeasure over the
extent of witchcraft in France, and his condemnation in particular of this
unrepentant woman who would not confess even under torture, you may be very
interested to learn.
And that the good Father
Louvier died attempting to shelter others from falling brickbats will no doubt
touch your heart. The dead numbered some fifteen, we are told, and the brave
people of Montcleve burnt the witch, thereby ending the tempest, God willing,
and the lesson in all this is that the Lord Jesus Christ would see more witches
discovered and burnt. Amen.
How soon I wonder will we
see this in a pamphlet replete with the usual drawings, and a litany of
untruths? No doubt the printing presses, which forever feed the flames that
burn witches, are already hard at work.
And where, pray tell, is the
witch judge who spent a warm night by the fire of the cunning woman of
Donnelaith, and showed her the dark drawings in his demonology? Is he dead and
burning in hell? We shall never know.
Petyr, do not take time to
write to us. Only come home. Know that we love you, and that we do not condemn
you for what you have done, or for anything that you may do. We say what we
believe we must say!
Yours
Faithfully in the Talamasca,
Stefan
Franck
Amsterdam
Dear Stefan,
I write in haste as I am
already on board the French ship Sainte-Helene,
bound for the New World, and a boy is waiting here to take this to be posted to
you at once.
Before your letter reached
me I had drawn from our agents all that I required for the journey, and have
purchased what clothing and medicines I fear I shall need.
I go to Charlotte as I can
do nothing else, and this will not surprise you, and please tell Alexander for
me that I know he would do nothing else were he in my place.
But Stefan, you judge me
wrongly when you say that I have been caught up in the evil of this daimon.
True, I have broken the rules of the order only on account of Deborah Mayfair,
both in the past and in the present; but the daimon was never any part of my
love of Deborah, and when I struck down the witch judge I did what I wanted to
do.
I struck him down for
Deborah, and for all the poor and ignorant women I have seen screaming in the
flames, for the women who have expired on the rack or in cold prison cells, for
the families destroyed and for the villages laid waste by these awful lies.
But I waste time with this
defense of myself. You are good not to condemn me, for it was murder,
nevertheless.
Let me also say in great
haste that the tale of the storm of Montcleve reached here some time ago, and
is much garbled. It is ascribed to the power of the witch in one breath, and
put down to simple nature on the other, and the death of Louvier is judged an
accident in the melee, and there is much tiresome and endless argument over
what actually took place.
Now I can speak of what most
concerns me and that is what I have lately learnt of Charlotte Fontenay. She is
much remembered here as it was at Marseille that she arrived and from Marseille
that she sailed. And what has been told me by various persons is that she is very
rich, very beautiful, and very fair, with flowing flaxen locks and bewitching
blue eyes, and that her husband is indeed deeply crippled by a childhood
illness which has caused a progressive weakness in his limbs. He is a wraith of
a man. It was on this account that Charlotte brought him to Montcleve, with a
great retinue of Negroes to attend him, to appeal to her mother that she might
cure him, and also detect any sign of the illness in Charlotte’s infant
son. Indeed Deborah pronounced that the son was healthy. And mother and
daughter devised for the husband a salve for his limbs which gave him much
relief, but could not restore the feeling altogether, and it is thought that he
shall soon be as helpless as his father, who is afflicted with the same malady,
and though his mind is sharp and he can direct the affairs of his plantation,
he is rumored to lie helpless in a splendid bed with Negroes to feed him and
clean him as if he were a child. It was hoped the illness would progress with
less speed in young Antoine, who was quite the figure at court when Charlotte
first beheld him and accepted his proposal of marriage, though she was very
young at that time.
It is commonly known here as
well that Charlotte and young Antoine were enjoying their visit with Deborah,
and had been with her many weeks when tragedy befell the family with the death
of the Comte, and the rest you know. Except perhaps that those in Marseille do
not believe so much in witchcraft and ascribe the madness of the persecution to
the superstition of the mountain people, though what is that superstition
without the famous witch judge to goad it on7
It is most easy for me to
inquire about these two for no one here knows that I have been in the
mountains, and it seems that those whom I invite to join me in a cup of wine do
love to speak of Charlotte and Antome Fontenay as the townspeople of Montcleve
loved to speak of the entire family
A great stir was caused here
by Charlotte and young Fontenay, for apparently they live with much
extravagance and generosity to everyone, handing out coins as if they were
nothing, and they appeared at the church here for Mass with a retinue of
Negroes as they did in Montcleve, which drew all eyes It is said also that they
paid very well every doctor here whom they did consult with regard to Antome’s
affliction and there is much talk about the cause of this illness, as to
whether it springs from the intense heat of the West Indies, or is an old
malady of which many Europeans have suffered in ages past
There is no doubt among
these people as to the wealth of the Fontenays, and they did have agents in
this city for trade until very recently, but taking their departure here in
great haste, before the arrest of Deborah had become common knowledge, they
broke their ties with the local agents, and no one knows where they have gone
Now, I have more to tell you
Maintaining myself at great expense as the rich Dutch merchant, I managed to
discover the name of a very gracious and beautiful young woman, of fine family,
who was a friend to Charlotte Fontenay, a name mentioned in connection with
that of Charlotte whenever the name Charlotte is mentioned in a conversation of
any length Saying only that I had known and loved Deborah de Montcleve in her
youth in Amsterdam, I managed to secure this lady’s trust, and learned
more from her lips
Her name being Jeanne
Angehque de Roulet, she was at court during which time Charlotte was at court,
and they were presented to His Majesty together
Jeanne de Roulet, fearing
nothing of the superstition in the mountains, avers that Charlotte is of a
beguiling and sweet disposition and could never be a witch She too lays it down
to the ignorance of the mountamfolk that anyone could believe such a thing She
has offered a Mass for the repose of the soul of the unfortunate Com’ sse
As for Antome, the lady’s
impression of him is that he bears his illness with great fortitude, and indeed
loves his wife and is not, all things taken into account, a poor companion to
his wife However, the cause of their long journey home to Deborah was that the
young man may not now father any more children, so great is his weakness, and
the one boy child now living, though very strong and healthy, may inherit the
malady No one knows
It was further stated that
the father of Antome, the master of the plantation, was in favor of the
journey, so eager is he for male children through Antome and so disapproving of
his other sons, who are most dissolute and cohabit with their Negro mistresses,
rarely bothering to enter their father’s house
This young woman by the way
maintains a great devotion to Charlotte and laments that Charlotte did not take
leave of her before sailing from Marseille However, on account of the horrors
in the Cevennes, all is forgiven
When asked why no one came
to the defense of Deborah in these recent proceedings, the woman had to confess
that the Comte de Montcleve had himself never been to court, and neither had
his mother, and that they had been Huguenots at one time in their history, and
that no one in Paris knew the Comtesse, that Charlotte herself had been there
only briefly, and that when the tale went round that Deborah de Montcleve was
in fact the fatherless daughter of a Scottish witch, a mere peasant by all
accounts, outrage over her predicament turned to pity and finally to nothing at
all
‘Ah,’ says the
young woman, ‘those mountains and those towns ’ She herself is
eager to return to Paris, for what is there outside Paris7 And who can hope to
obtain favor or advancement if he or she is not in attendance upon the king7
That is all that I have time
to write We sail within the hour
Stefan, must I make it more
plain to you71 must see the girl, I must warn her against the spirit, and
where, for the love of heaven, do you imagine, that this child, born eight
months after Deborah took leave of me in Amsterdam, got her fair skin and her
flaxen hair?
I shall see you again My
love to all of you, my brothers and sisters in the Talamasca I go to the New
World with great anticipation I shall see Charlotte. I shall conquer this
being, Lasher, and perhaps I myself shall commune with this thing that has a
voice and such power, and learn from it wherefore it learns from us.
Yours
Faithfully as Ever in the Talamasca,
Petyr
van Abel
Marseille
FIFTEEN
THE
FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES
PART
III
Port-au-Prince
Saint-Domingue
Stefan,
Having sent you two brief
missives from the ports at which we dropped anchor before our arrival, I now
begin the bound journal of my travels, in which all of my entries shall be
addressed to you.
If time allows, I shall copy
my entries into letters and send them to you. If time does not allow, you shall
receive from me the entire journal.
As I write this I am in most
comfortable if not luxurious lodgings here in Port-au-Prince, and have spent
two hours in walking about the colonial city, much dazzled with its fine
houses, splendid public buildings, including a theater for the performance of
Italian opera, and with its richly dressed planters and their wives, and the
great plenitude of slaves.
No place equals
Port-au-Prince in my travels for its exotic qualities, and I do not think that
any city in Africa could offer so much to the eye.
For not only are there
Negroes everywhere performing all tasks here, there is a multitude of
foreigners engaged in all manner of trade.
I have also discovered a
large and prosperous ’colored’ population, composed entirely of the
offspring of the planters and their African concubines, most of which have been
freed by their white fathers, and have gone on to make a good living as
musicians or craftsmen, shopkeepers and undoubtedly women of ill fame. The
women of color I have seen are surpassingly beautiful. I cannot fault the men
for choosing them as mistresses or evening companions. Many have golden skin
and great liquid black eyes, and they are quite obviously aware of their
charms. They dress with great ostentation, possessing many black slaves of
their own.
This class is increasing
daily I am told. And one cannot help but wonder what will be its fate as the
years pass.
As for the slaves, they are
imported by the thousands. I watched two ships unload their miserable cargo.
The stench was past describing. It was horrible to see the conditions in which
these poor human beings have been maintained. It is said that they are worked to
death on the plantations for it is cheaper to import them than to keep them
alive.
Harsh punishments are
visited upon them for the smallest crimes. And the entire island lives in
terror of uprisings, and the masters and mistresses of the great houses live in
fear of being poisoned, for that is the slave’s weapon, or so I am told.
As for Charlotte and her
husband, all know of them here, but nothing of Charlotte’s family in
Europe. They have purchased one of the very largest and most prosperous
plantations very close to Port-au-Prince, yet near to the sea. It is perhaps an
hour’s carriage ride from the outskirts of the city, and borders great
cliffs over the beaches; and is famed for its large house and other fine
buildings, containing as it does an entire city with blacksmith and
leatherworks and seamstresses and weavers and furniture makers all within its
many arpents, which are planted with coffee and indigo, and yield a great
fortune with each harvest.
This plantation has made
rich men of three different owners in the short time that the French have been
here, engaged in endless battles with the Spanish who inhabit the southeast
portion of the island, and two of those owners quit it for Paris with their
earnings, whilst the third died of a fever, and now it is in possession of the
Fontenays, Antoine Pere and Antoine Fils, but all know that it is Charlotte who
runs this plantation, and she is known far and wide as Madame Charlotte, and
every merchant in this city pays court to her, and the local officials beg for
her favor and for her money, of which she has a seemingly endless amount.
It is said that she has
taken the management of the plantation into her own hands down to the smallest
detail, that she rides the fields with her overseer — Stefan, no one is held
in more contempt than these overseers — and that she knows the names of
all her slaves She spares nothing to provide them with food and with drink and
so binds them to her with extraordinary loyalty, and she inspects their houses,
and dotes upon their children, and looks into the souls of the accused before
meting punishment. But her judgment upon those who are treacherous is already
legendary, for there is no limit here to the power of these planters. They can
flog their slaves to death if they wish
As for the household
retinue, they are sleek, overly dressed, privileged, and audacious to hear the
local merchants tell it; five maids alone attend Charlotte Some sixteen slaves
keep the kitchen; and no one knows how many maintain the parlors, music rooms,
and ballrooms of the house The famous Reginald accompanies the master
everywhere that he goes, if he goes anywhere at all. And having much free time,
these slaves appear often in Port-au-Prince, with gold in their pockets, at
which time all shop doors are open to them.
It is Charlotte who is
almost never seen away from this great preserve, which is named Maye Faire by
the way, and this is always written in English as I have spelled it above, and
never in French.
The lady has given two
splendid balls since her arrival, during which her husband took a chair to view
the dancing, and even the old man was in attendance, weak as he was. The local
gentry, who think of nothing but pleasure in this place for there is not much
else to think of, adore her for these two entertainments and long for others,
with the certainty that Charlotte will not disappoint them.
Her own Negro musicians
provided the music; the wine flowed without cease; exotic native dishes were
offered, as well as splendid plain-cooked fowl and beef. Charlotte herself
danced with every gentleman present except of course her husband, who looked on
approvingly. She herself put the wineglass to his lips.
As far as I am able to
learn, this lady is called a witch only by her slaves and in awe and respect on
account of her healing powers which have already gained a reputation but allow
me to repeat - no one here knows
anything of the occurrence in France. The name of Montcleve is never
spoken by anyone. The history of this family is that it has come from Martinique
It is said that Charlotte is
most eager for all the planters to join together to create a sugar refinery
here, so that they may reap higher profits from their crops There is also much
talk of driving our Dutch ships out of the Caribbean, as it seems we are still
most prosperous, and the French and Spanish envy us But no doubt you know more
of that than I do, Stefan. I did see many Dutch ships in the port, and have no
doubt that my return to Amsterdam will be a simple matter, as soon as my work
here is done. As ’a Dutch merchant’ I am certainly treated with
every courtesy
This afternoon, when I grew
tired of my meandermgs, I came back here to my lodgings, where there are two
slaves to undress me and bathe me if I should allow it, and I wrote to the lady
and said that I should like to visit her, that I have a message for her which
is of the utmost importance and comes from someone very dear to her, dearer
perhaps than any other, who entrusted me with the proper address on the night
before her death. I have come in person, I said, because my message was too
important to be enclosed in a letter I signed my full name.
Just before I began this
entry, the reply arrived. I should come to Maye Faire this very evening Indeed
a carriage will be waiting for me at the entrance of the inn just before dark.
I am to bring what provisions I need to stay the night, and the night after, as
suits me This I intend to do.
Stefan, I am most excited
and not at all fearful I know now, after having given it the greatest thought, that
I go to see my own daughter. But how to make this known to her — whether
to make it known — deeply troubles me.
I am strongly convinced that
the tragedy of the Mayfair women will come to an end in this strange and
fertile place, this rich and exotic land. It will come to an end here with this
strong and clever young woman who has the world in her grasp, and surely has
seen enough to know what her mother and her grandmother have suffered in their
brief and tragic lives.
I go now to bathe and
properly dress and prepare for this adventure. I do not mind at all that I
shall see a great colonial plantation. Stefan, how shall I say what is in my
heart? It is as if my life before this were a thing painted in pale colors; but
now it takes on the vibrancy of Rembrandt van Rijn.
I feel the darkness near me;
I feel the light shining. And more keenly I feel the contrast between the two.
Until I pick up this pen
again,
Your
servant,
Petyr
Post Script- copied out and
sent by letter to Stefan Franck this same evening. PVA
Port-au-Prince
Saint-Dommgue
Dear Stefan,
It has been a full fortnight
since I last wrote to you. How can I describe all that has taken place? I fear
there is not time, my beloved friend - that my reprieve is short - yet I must
write all of it. I must tell you what I have seen, what I have suffered, and
what I have done.
It is late morning as I
write this. I did sleep two hours upon my return to this inn I have also eaten,
but only that I may have a little strength. I hope and pray that the thing which
has followed me here and tormented me on the long road from Maye Faire has at
last returned to the witch who sent it after me, to drive me mad and destroy
me, which I have not allowed it to do.
Stefan, if the fiend has not
been defeated, if the assault upon me is renewed with mortal vigor, I shall
break off my narrative and give you the most important elements in simple
sentences and close and seal this letter away in my iron box. I have already
this very morning spoken to the innkeeper, that in the event of my demise he is
to see that this box reaches Amsterdam. I have also spoken with a local agent
here, cousin and friend to our agent in Marseille, and he is instructed to ask
for the box.
Allow me to say, however,
that on account of my appearance these two men believe me to be a madman. Only
my gold commanded their attention, and they have been promised a rich reward
upon delivery of the box and this letter into your hands
Stefan, you were right in
all your warnings and presentiments. I am sunk now deeper and deeper into this
evil; I am beyond redemption. I should have come home to you For the second
time in my life I know the bitterness of regret.
I am now scarcely alive. My
clothes are in tatters, my shoes broken and useless, my hands scratched by
thorns. My head aches from my long night of running through darkness But there
is no time to rest further. I dare not leave by ship this very hour, for if the
thing means to come after me, it will do it here or at sea. And it is better
that it make its assault on land so that my iron box will not be lost
I must use what time I have
left to recount all that has taken place…
. . It was early evening on
the day I last wrote to you when I left this place. I had dressed in my finest
clothes and went down to meet the coach at the appointed time. All that I had
seen in the streets of Port-au-Prince had prepared me for a splendid equipage,
yet this surpassed my imaginings, being an exquisite glass carriage with
footman, coachmen, and two armed guards on horseback, all of them black
Africans, in full livery with powdered wigs and satin clothes
The journey into the hills
was most pleasant, the sky overhead stacked with high white clouds and the
hills themselves covered with beautiful woodland and fine colonial dwellings,
many surrounded by flowers, and the banana trees which grow here in abundance
I do not think you can
imagine the lushness of this landscape, for the tenderest hot house blooms grow
here in wild profusion all year round. Great clumps of banana trees rise up everywhere.
And so do giant red flowers upon slender stems which grow as high as trees
No less enchanting were the
sudden glimpses of the distant blue sea. If there is any sea as blue as the
Caribbean I have never beheld it, and when it is seen at twilight, it is most
spectacular, but then you will hear more of this later, for I have had much
time to contemplate the color of this sea.
On the road I also passed
two smaller plantation houses, very pleasing structures, set back from the road
behind great gardens And also just beside a small river, a graveyard laid out
with fine marble monuments inscribed with French names As we went very slowly over
the little bridge I had time to contemplate it, and think about those who had
come to live and die in this savage land.
I speak of these things for
two reasons, the important one to state now being that my senses were lulled by
the beauties I saw on this journey, and by the heavy moist twilight, and by the
long stretch of tended fields and the sudden spectacle of Charlotte’s
plantation house before me, grander than any I had beheld, at the end of a
paved road.
It is a giant colonial-style
mansion, and by that I mean it has a great pitched roof with many dormers, and
beneath there are porches stretching the length of it, supported by mud-brick
columns which have been plastered over to look not unlike marble.
All of its many windows
extend to the floor and are decorated with very green wooden shutters which can
be bolted both against enemy attack and against storms.
A heady profusion of light
came from the place as we approached. Never have I seen so many candles, not
even at the French court. Lanterns were hung in the branches of the trees. As
we drew nearer, I saw that every window was open to the porches both above and below,
and I could see the chandeliers and the fine furnishings, and other bits of
color gleaming in the dark
So distracted was I by all
this, that with a start I beheld the lady of the house, come out to the garden
gate to see me, and standing among the many flowers, waiting, her lemon-colored
satin dress very like the soft blooms that surrounded her, her eyes fixing me
harshly and perhaps coldly in her young and tender face so that she appeared,
if you can see it, a tall and angry child.
As I climbed down with the
aid of the footman onto the purple flags, she drew closer, and only then did I
judge her full height to be great for a woman, though she was much
smaller than I.
Fair-haired and beautiful I
found her, and so would anyone else looking at her, but the descriptions of her
could not prepare me for the picture she presented. Ah, if Rembrandt had ever
seen her, he would have painted her So young yet so like hard metal. Very
richly dressed she was, her gown ornamented with lace and pearls and displaying
a high full bosom, half naked one might say, and her arms were beautifully
shaped in their tight lace-trimmed sleeves
Ah, I linger on every detail
for I seek to understand my own weakness, and that you may forgive it. I am
mad, Stefan, mad over what I have done. But please, when you and the others
judge me, consider all that I have written here
It seemed as we faced each
other that something silent and frightening passed between us. This woman, her
face sweet and youthful almost to an absurdity of tender cheeks and lips and
large innocent blue eyes, studied me as if a very different soul lurked within
her, old and wise. Her beauty worked like a spell upon me. I stared foolishly
at her long neck, and at the tender slope of her shoulders and again at her shapely
arms.
It struck me stupidly that
it would be sweet to press my thumbs into the softness of her arms And it did
seem to me that she regarded me very much as her mother had regarded me many
years ago, when in the Scottish inn I had fought the devil of her beauty not to
ravage her there.
‘Ah, so, Petyr van
Abel,’ she said to me in English and with a touch of the Scottish to it, ’you
have come." I swear to you, Stefan, it was Deborah’s youthful voice.
How much they must have spoken together in English, why, it might have been a
secret language for them.
‘My child,’ I
answered, in the same language, ‘thank you for receiving me. I have made
a long journey to see you, but nothing could have kept me away’
But all the while she was
coldly taking my measure, as surely as if I were a slave on the auction block,
not disguising her appraisal as I had taken pains to disguise mine. And I was
shocked by what I saw in her face, a thin nose and deep-set eyes, for all their
size very like my own Cheeks a little low and full, very like my own And her
hair, though it was a glorious mane of pale gold, brushed straight back from
her forehead and held in place by a great jeweled comb, in color and texture
very like my own
A great sadness consumed me
She was my daughter I knew that she was. And there came to me again that
terrible regret I had known in Montcleve. I saw my Deborah, a broken puppet of
white wax on the stones before the church of Saint-Michel.
Perhaps my sadness was felt
by Charlotte, for a shadow fell over her countenance, and she seemed determined
to defy this feeling as she spoke:
‘You are as handsome
as my mother told me,’ she said, half musing, and half under her breath
and with a slight raise of one eyebrow. ‘You are tall and straight and
strong, and in the fullness of health, are you not?’
‘Mon Dieu, madam. What
strange words,’ I said. I laughed uneasily. ‘I do not know whether
you flatter me or not.’
‘I like the look of
you,’ she said. And the strangest smile spread over her face, very clever
and disdaining, yet at the same time childishly sweet. She gave a little bitter
stretch to her lips as a child might do it, almost to a pout, it seemed, and I
found this unspeakably charming. Then she seemed lost in contemplating me, and
said finally: ‘Come with me, Petyr van Abel. Tell me what you know of my
mother. Tell me what you know of her death. And whatever your purpose do not
lie to me.’
And there seemed in her then
a great vulnerability as if I might hurt her suddenly and she knew it, and was
afraid.
I felt such tenderness for
her. ‘No, I haven’t come to tell lies,’ I said. ‘Have
you heard nothing at all?’
She was silent, and then
coldly she said: ‘Nothing,’ as if she were lying. I saw that she
was scanning me in the very way that I have scanned others when trying to pry
loose their secret thoughts.
She led me towards the
house, bowing her head ever so slightly as she took my arm. Even the grace of
her movements distracted me, and the brush of her skirts against my leg. She
did not even look at the slaves who flanked the path, a very regiment of them,
all holding lanterns to light our way. Beyond lay the flowers glimmering in the
darkness, and the massive trees before the house.
We had all but reached the
front steps when we turned and followed the flags into the trees, and there
sought out a wooden bench.
I was seated at her behest.
Darkness came fast around us, and the lanterns strung here and there burned
bright and yellow, and the house itself gave forth an even greater dazzle of
light.
‘Tell me how I shall
begin, madam,’ I said. T am your servant. How would you hear it?’
‘Straight out,’
she answered, her eyes fixing on me again. She sat composed, turned slightly
towards me, her hands in her lap.
‘She did not die in
the flames. She threw herself from the church tower, and died when she struck
the stones.’
‘Ah, thank God!’
she whispered. ‘To hear it from human lips.’
I pondered these words for a
moment. Did she mean the spirit Lasher had already told her this, and she had
not believed it? She was most dejected and I was not sure I should say more.
Yet I continued. ‘A
great storm hit Montcleve,’ I said, ’called down by your mother.
Your brothers died. So did the old Comtesse.’
She said nothing, but looked
straight forward, heavy with sadness, and perhaps despair. Girlish she looked,
not a woman at all.
I continued, only now I took
several steps backwards in my account and told her how I had come to the town,
how I had met with her mother, and all the things which her mother had said to
me about the spirit Lasher, that he had caused the death of the Comte,
unbeknownst to Deborah, and how she had upbraided him for this, and what the
spirit had said to her in his defense. And how Deborah would have her know and
be warned.
Her face grew dark as she
listened; still she looked away from me. I explained what I thought was the
meaning of her mother’s warnings, and then what were my thoughts on this
spirit and how no magician had ever written of a spirit that could learn.
Still she did not move or
speak. Her face was so dark now she seemed in a pure rage. Finally, when I
sought to resume on this subject, saying that I knew something of spirits, she
interrupted me: ‘Don’t speak of this anymore,’ she said. ‘And
never speak of it to anyone here.’
‘No, I would not,’
I hastened to answer. I proceeded to explain what followed my meeting with
Deborah, and then to describe the day of her death in great detail, leaving out
only that I had thrown Louvier from the roof. I said merely that he had died.
But here she turned to me,
and with a dark smile she asked:
‘How died, Petyr van
Abel? Did you not push him off the roof?’
Her smile was cold and full
of anger, though I did not know whether it was against me or all that had taken
place. It did seem that she was defending her daimon, that she felt I had
insulted him, and this was her loyalty, for surely he had told her what I had
done. But I do not know if I am right in this conjecture. I know only that to
think she knew of my crime frightened me a little, and perhaps more than I
cared to say.
I didn’t answer her
question. She fell silent for a long time. It seemed she would cry but then she
did not. Finally:
‘They believed I
deserted my mother,’ she whispered ‘You know I did not!’
‘I know this, madam,’
I said to her. ‘Your mother sent you here.’
‘Ordered me to leave!’
she said, imploring me ‘Ordered me.’ She stopped only to catch her
breath. ’ "Go, Charlotte," she said, "for if I must see
you die before me or with me, my life is nothing I will not have you here,
Charlotte. If I am burnt I cannot bear it that you should see it, or suffer the
same." And so I did what she told me to do ’ Her mouth gave that
little twist again, that pout, and it seemed again she would cry. But she
ground her teeth, and widened her eyes, considering all of it, and then fell into
her anger again.
‘I loved your mother,’
I said to her.
‘Aye, I know that you
did,’ she said ‘They turned against her, her husband and my brothers’
I noticed that she did not
speak of this man as her father, but I said nothing 1 did not know whether I should
ever say anything on this account or not.
‘What can I say to
soothe your heart?’ I asked her ‘They are punished They do not
enjoy the life which they took from Deborah.’
‘Ah, you put it well.’
And here she smiled bitterly at me, and she bit her lip, and her little face
looked so tender and so soft to me, so like something which could be hurt, that
I leant over and kissed her and this she allowed, with her eyes downcast.
She seemed puzzled And so
was I, for I had found it so indescribably sweet to kiss her, to catch the
scent of her skin and to be so near her breasts, that I was in a state of pure
consternation actually. At once I said that I wished to talk of this spirit
again, for it seemed my only salvation was the business at hand ‘I must
make known to you my thoughts on this spirit, on the dangers of this thing.
Surely you know how I came to know your mother. Did she not tell you the whole
tale?’
‘You try my patience,’
she said suddenly.
I looked at her and saw her
anger again
‘How so7’
‘You know things that
I would not have you know’
‘What did your mother
tell you?’ I asked. ‘It was I who rescued her from Donnelaith’
She considered my words, but
her anger did not cool. ‘Answer me this,’ she said. ‘Do you
know how her mother came to summon her daimon, as you call him!’
‘From the book the
witch judge showed her, she took her idea. She learnt it all from the witch
judge, for before that she was the cunning woman and the midwife, as are so
many, and nothing more.’
‘Oh, she might have
been more, much more. We are all more than we seem. We only learn what we must.
To think what I have become here, since I left my mother’s house. And
listen to what I say, it was my mother’s house It was her gold which
furnished it and put the carpets on the stone floors, and the wood in the
fireplaces.’
‘The townsfolk talked
of that,’ I said ‘That the Comte had nothing but his title before
he met her.’
‘Aye, and debts. But
that is all past now. He is dead. And I know that you have told me all that my
mother said You have told me the truth. I only wonder that I want to tell you
what you do not know, and cannot guess. And I think on what my mother told me
of you, of how she could confess anything to you.’
‘I’m glad she
said this of me. I never betrayed her to anyone.’
‘Except to your order.
Your Talamasca’
‘Ah, but that was
never betrayal.’
She turned away from me.
‘My dearest Charlotte,’
I said to her. ‘I loved your mother, as I told you. I begged her to
beware of the spirit and the spirit’s power. I do not say I predicted
what happened to her. I did not. But I was afraid for her. I was afraid of her
ambition to use the spirit for her ends —’
‘I don’t want to
hear any more.’ She was in a rage again
‘What would you have
me do?’ I asked
She thought, but not
apparently on my question, and then she said: ‘I will never suffer what
my mother suffered, or her mother before her.’
‘I pray not. I have
come across the sea to…’
‘No, but your warnings
and your presence have nothing to do with it. I will not suffer those things
There was something sad in my mother, sad and broken inside, which had never
healed from girlhood.’
‘I understand.’
‘I have no such wound.
I was a woman here before these horrors befell her. I have seen other horrors
and you will see them tonight when you look upon my husband. There isn’t
a physician in all the world who can cure him And no cunning woman either. And
I have but one healthy son by him, and that is not enough.’
I sighed.
‘But come, we’ll
talk more,’ she said.
‘Yes, please, we must’
‘They are waiting for
us now.’ She stood up, and I with her. ‘Say nothing about my mother
in front of the others. Say nothing. You have come to see me…’
‘Because I am a
merchant and would set up in Port-au-Prince, and want your advice on it.’
She gave a weary nod to
that. ‘The less you say,’ she said, ‘the better.’ She
turned away and started towards the steps
‘Charlotte, please don’t
close your heart to me,’ I said to her, and tried to take her hand.
She stiffened against me,
and then assuming a false smile, very sweet and very calm, she led me up the
short steps to the mam floor of the house.
I was miserable as you can
imagine. What was I to make of her strange words? And she herself baffled me
for she seemed at one moment child and at another old woman. I could not say
that she had even considered my warnings, or rather the very warnings that
Deborah had implored me to give. Had I added too much of my own advice to it?
‘Madame Fontenay,’
I said as we reached the top of the short stairs and the door to the main floor
‘We must talk some more. I have your promise?’
‘When my husband is
put to bed,’ she said, ’we will be alone.’ She allowed her
gaze to linger on me as she pronounced this last phrase, and I fear a blush
rose to my face as I looked at her, and I saw the high color in her rounded
cheeks also, and then the little stretch of her lower hp and her playful smile.
We entered a central
hallway, very spacious, though nothing on the order of a French chateau, mind
you, but with much fancy plaster-work, and a fine chandelier all ablaze with
pure wax candles, and a door open at the far end to the rear porch, beyond
which I could just make out the edge of a cliff where the lanterns hung from
the tree branches as they did from those in the front garden, and very slowly I
realized that the roar I heard was not wind but the gentle sound of the sea.
The supper room, which we
entered to our right, gave an even greater view of the cliffs and the black
water beyond them which I saw as I followed Charlotte, for this room was the
entire width of the house. A bit of light still played upon the water or I
would not have been able to make it out. The roar filled this room most
delightfully and the breeze was moist and warm
As for the room itself it
was splendid, every European accoutrement having been brought to bear upon the
colonial simplicity The table was draped in the finest linen, and laid with the
heaviest and most elegantly carved plate.
Not anywhere in Europe have
I seen finer silver; the candelabra were heavy and well embossed with designs
Each place had its lace-trimmed napkin, and the chairs themselves were well
upholstered with the finest velvet, replete with fringes, and above the table,
a great square wooden fan hung from a hinge, moved back and forth by means of a
rope, threaded through hooks across the ceiling and down the wall, at the end
of which, in the far corner, sat a small African child.
What with the fan and all
the many doors open to the porch, the room had a coolness and sweet fragrance
to it, and was most inviting, though the candle flames did fight for their
lives No sooner had I been seated at the chair to the left of the head of the
table, than numerous slaves entered, all finely dressed in European silks and
lace, and began to set the table with platters. And at the same time, the young
husband of whom I had heard so much appeared.
He was upright, and did
slide his feet along the floor, but his entire weight was supported by the
large, heavily muscled black man who had an arm about his waist As for his
arms, they seemed as weak as his legs, with the wrists bent, and the fingers
hanging limp. Yet he was a handsome young man
Before the advance of this
illness, he must have cut a likely figure at Versailles where he won his bride.
And in well-fitted princely clothes, and with his fingers covered with jeweled
rings, and with his head adorned with an enormous and beautiful Parisian wig,
he did look very fine indeed. His eyes were of a piercing gray, and his mouth
very broad and narrow, and his chin very strong.
Once settled in the chair,
he struggled as it were to move himself backwards for more comfort, and when he
failed to accomplish his aim, the powerful slave moved him and then placed the
chair as the master wanted it, and then took his place at the master’s
back.
Charlotte had now taken her
place not at the end of the table, but at her husband’s right, just
opposite my place, so that she might feed and assist her husband. And two other
persons came, the brothers, I was soon to discover, Pierre and Andre, both of
them besotted and full of dull slurred drunken humor, and four ladies, fancily
dressed, two young and two old, cousins, it seemed, and permanent residents of
this house, the old ones being silent except for occasional confused questions
as they were both hard of hearing and a little decrepit, the young ones past
their prime but lively of mind and well-bred.
Just before we were served,
a doctor appeared, having just ridden over from a neighboring plantation —
a rather old and befuddled fellow dressed in somber black as was I, and he
was at once invited to join the company and sat down and began to drink the
wine in great gulps.
That composed the company,
each of us with a slave behind his chair, to reach forward and to serve our
plates from the platters before us, and to fill our wineglasses if we drank so
much as a sip.
The young husband spoke most
pleasantly to me, and it was at once perfectly clear that his mind was
wholly unaffected by his illness, and that he still had an appetite for
good food, which was fed to him both by Charlotte and by Reginald, Charlotte
taking the spoon in hand, and Reginald breaking the bread. Indeed the man had a
desire for living, that was plain enough. He remarked that the wine was
excellent and that he approved of it, and talking in a polite way with all the
company, consumed two bowls of soup.
The food was highly spiced
and very delicious, the soup being a seafood stew filled with much pepper, and
the meats being garnished with fried yams and fried bananas and much rice and
beans and other delicious things.
All the while everyone
conversed with vigor except for the old women, who seemed nevertheless to be
amused and content.
Charlotte spoke of the
weather and the business of the plantation, and how her husband must ride out
with her to see the crops tomorrow, and how the young slave girl bought last
winter was now coming along well with her sewing, and so forth and so on. This
chatter was in French for the most part, and the young husband was spirited in
his response, breaking off to ask me many polite questions as to the conditions
of my voyage, and my liking of Port-au-Prince, and how long I would be staying
with them, and other polite remarks as to the friendliness of the country, and
how they had prospered at Maye Faire and meant to buy the adjacent plantation
as soon as the owner, a drunken gambler, could be persuaded to sell.
The drunken brothers were
the only ones prone to argument and several times made sneering remarks, for it
seemed to the youngest, Pierre, who had none of the good looks of his ailing
brother, that they had enough land and did not need the neighboring plantation,
and Charlotte knew more about the business of the planter’s life than a
woman should.
This was met with cheers by
the loud and nasty Andre, who spilt his food all down his lace shirtfront, and
ate with his mouth stuffed, and put a greasy stain from his mouth upon his
glass when he drank. He was for selling all this land when their father died
and going back to France.
‘Do not speak of his
death,’ declared the eldest, the crippled Antoine. To which the others
sneered.
‘And how is he today?’
asked the doctor, belching as he did so. ‘I fear to inquire if he is any
better or worse.’
‘What can be expected?’
asked one of the female cousins, who had once been beautiful and was still
pleasing to look at, handsome one might say. ‘If he speaks a word today,
I shall be surprised.’
‘And why shouldn’t
he speak?’ asked Antoine. ‘His mind is as it always was.’
‘Aye/ said Charlotte, ’he
rules with a steady hand.’
There ensued a great verbal
brawl, with everyone talking at once, and one of the feeble old ladies
demanding to be told what was going on.
Finally the other old woman,
a crone if ever there was one, who had nibbled at her plate all the while with
the fixed attention of a busy insect, suddenly raised her head and cried to the
drunken brothers, ‘You are neither of you fit to run this plantation,’
to which the drunken brothers replied with boisterous laughter, though the two
younger females regarded this with much seriousness, their eyes passing over
Charlotte fearfully and then sweeping gently the near paralyzed and useless
husband, whose hands lay like dead birds beside his plate.
Then the old woman,
apparently approving of the response to her words, issued another pronouncement.
‘It is Charlotte who rules here!’ and this produced even more
fearful looks from the women, and more laughter and sneering from the drunken
brothers, and a winsome smile from the crippled Antoine.
Then the poor fellow became
most agitated, so that he in fact began to tremble, but Charlotte hastily spoke
of pleasant things. Once again I was questioned about my journey, about life in
Amsterdam, and the present state of things in Europe, which related to the
importation of coffee and indigo, and told that I should become very weary of
life in the plantations, for nobody did anything but eat and drink and seek
pleasure, and so forth and so on, until suddenly Charlotte broke off gently and
gave the order to the black slave, Reginald, that he should go and fetch the
old man and bring him down
‘He has been talking
to me all day,’ she said quietly to the others, with a vague look of
triumph
‘Indeed, a miracle!’
declared the drunken Andre, who now ate in slovenly fashion without the aid of
a knife or fork.
The old doctor narrowed his
eyes as he regarded Charlotte, quite indifferent to the food he had slopped
down his lace ruff, or the wine spilling from the glass which he held in his
uncertain hand That he should drop it was a distinct possibility. The young slave
boy behind him looked on anxiously
‘What do you mean
spoken to you all day?’ asked the doctor. ‘He was stuporous when
last I saw him’
‘He changes hourly,’
said one of the cousins.
‘He’ll never die!’
roared the old woman, who was again nibbling.
Then into the room came
Reginald, holding a tall gray-haired and much emaciated man, with one thin arm
flung about the slave’s shoulder, and head hanging, though his bright
eyes fixed all of us one by one.
Into the chair at the foot
of the table he was put, a mere skeleton, and as he could not sit upright,
bound to it with sashes of silk. Then the slave Reginald, who seemed a very
artist at all this, lifted the man’s chin as he could not hold up his
head on his own.
At once the female cousins
began to chatter at him, that it was good to see him so well. But they were
amazed at him, and so was the doctor, and then as the old man began to speak so
was I
One hand lifted off the
table with a floppy, jerky movement and then came crashing down. At the same
moment his mouth opened, though his face remained so smooth that only the lower
jaw dropped, and out came his hollow and toneless words.
‘I am nowhere near
death and will not hear of it!’ And again, the limp hand rose in a spasm
and came down with a bang.
Charlotte was studying this
all the while with narrow and glittering eyes. Indeed for the first time I
perceived her concentration, and how every particle of her attention was
directed to the man’s face and his one flopping hand.
‘Mon Dieu, Antoine,’
cried the doctor, ’you cannot blame us for worrying.’
‘My mind is as it ever
was!’ declared the old creature in the same toneless voice, and then
turning his head very slowly as though it were made of wood and grinding away
in a socket, he looked from right to left and then at Charlotte and gave a
crooked smile
Only now as I bent forward,
escaping the dazzle of the nearest candles and marveling at this strange
performance, did I perceive that his eyes were bloodshot, and that indeed his
face appeared frozen, and the expressions that broke out upon it were like
cracks in ice.
‘I trust in you, my
beloved daughter-in-law,’ he said to Charlotte, and this time his total
lack of modulation resulted in a great noise.
‘Yes, mon pere,’
said Charlotte with sweetness, ’and 1 shall take care of you, be assured
of it.’
And drawing closer to her
husband, she gave a squeeze to his useless hand. As for the husband, he was
staring at his father with suspicion and fear.
‘But Father, are you
in pain?’ he asked now softly.
‘No, my son,’
said the father, ’no pain, never any pain.’ And this seemed as much
a reassurance as an answer, for this picture was surely what the son saw as a
prophecy. Or was it?
For as I beheld this
creature, as I saw him turn his head again in that odd way, very like a doll
made of wooden parts, I knew that this was not the man at all speaking to us,
but something inside of him which had gamed possession of him, and at the
moment of recognition, I perceived the true Antoine Fontenay trapped within
this body, unable to command his vocal chords any longer, and peering out at me
with terrified eyes.
It was but a flash, yet I
saw it. And in the same instant, I turned to Charlotte, who stared at me
coldly, defiantly, as if daring me to acknowledge what I had realized, and the
old man himself stared at me, and with a suddenness that startled everyone gave
forth a loud cackling laugh.
‘Oh, for the love of
God, Antoine!’ cried the handsome female cousin.
‘Father, take a little
wine,’ said the feeble eldest son.
The black man Reginald reached
for the glass, but the old man suddenly lifted both hands, bringing them down
upon the table with a crash, and then lifting them again, his eyes glittering,
took the wineglass as if between two paws and, bringing it to his mouth,
slopped the contents onto his face so that it washed into his mouth and down
his chin.
The company was appalled.
The black Reginald was appalled. Only Charlotte gave a small steely smile as
she beheld this trick, and then said, ‘Good, Father, go to bed,’ as
she rose from the table.
Reginald tried to catch the
glass as it was suddenly released and the old man’s hand thumped down
beside it. But it fell to one side, the wine splattering all over the
tablecloth.
Once more the frozen mouth
cracked open and the hollow voice spoke. ‘I weary of this conversation. I
would go now.’
‘Yes, to bed,’
said Charlotte, approaching his chair, ’and we will come to see you by
and by.’
Did no one else perceive
this horror? That the useless limbs of the old man were being worked by the
demonic agency? The female cousins stared at the man in silence and revulsion
as he was drawn up out of the chair, his chin flopping down on his chest, and
taken away. Reginald was now quite completely responsible for the old man’s
movements and took him towards the door. The drunken brothers appeared angry
and petulant, and the old doctor, who had just downed another entire glass of
red wine, was merely shaking his head. Charlotte quietly observed all this and
then returned to her place at the table.
Our eyes met. I would swear
it was hatred I saw staring back at me.
Hatred for what I knew. In
awkwardness I took another drink of the wine, which was most delicious, though
I had begun to notice already that it was uncommonly strong or I was uncommonly
weak.
Very loudly again spoke (he
old deaf woman, the insectile one, saying to everyone and no one, ‘I have
not seen him move his hands like that in years.’
‘Well, he sounds to me
like the very devil!’ said the handsome female.
‘Damn him, he’ll
never die,’ whispered Andre and then fell to sleep, face down in his
plate, his overturned glass rolling off the table.
Charlotte, watching all of
this and more, with equal calm, gave a soft laugh, and said, ‘Oh, he is
very far from dead.’
Then a horrid sound startled
the entire company, for at the top of the stairs, or somewhere very close to
the head of it, the old man gave forth another loud terrible laugh.
Charlotte’s face grew
hard. Patting her husband’s hand gently, she took her leave with great
speed, but not so much speed that she did not look at me as she left the room.
Finally the old doctor, who
was at this point almost too besotted to rise from the table, which he started
to do once and then thought the better of, declared with a sigh that he must go
home. At which moment two other visitors arrived, well-dressed Frenchmen, to
whom the handsome older female cousin went immediately, as the three other
women rose and made their way out, the crone glaring back in condemnation at
the drunken brother, who had fallen into the plate, and muttering at him. The
other son meantime had risen to assist the drunken doctor, and these two
staggered out on the gallery.
Alone with Antoine and a
host of slaves cleaning the table, I asked the man if he would enjoy with me a
cigar, as I had bought two very good ones in Port-au-Prince.
‘Ah, but you must have
my own, from the tobacco I grow here," he declared. A young slave boy
brought the cigars to us and lighted them, and this young man stood there to
take the thing from the master’s mouth and replace it as he should.
‘You must excuse my
father,’ said Antoine to me softly, as if he did not like the slave to
hear it. ‘He is most keen of mind. This illness is a very horror.’
‘I can well imagine,’
I said. Much laughter and conversation came from the parlor across the hall
where the females had settled, it seemed, with the visitors, and possibly with
the drunken brother and the doctor.
Two black slave boys
meantime attempted to pick up the other brother, who suddenly shot to his feet,
indignant and belligerent, and struck one of the boys so that he began to cry.
‘Don’t be a
fool, Andre,’ said Antoine wearily. ‘Come here, my poor little one.’
The slave obeyed, as the
drunken brother rampaged out.
‘Take the coin from my
pocket,’ said the master. The slave, familiar with the ritual, obeyed,
his eyes shining as he held up his reward.
At last, Reginald and the
lady of the house appeared and this time with the rosy-cheeked infant son, a
blessed lambkin, two mulatto maids hovering behind them as though the child
were made of porcelain and might any moment be hurled to the floor.
The lambkin laughed and
kicked its little limbs with joy at the sight of his father. And what a sad
spectacle it was that its father could not even lift his miserable hands.
But he did smile at the
lambkin, and the lambkin was placed upon his lap for an instant, and he did
bend and kiss its blond head.
The child gave no sign of
infirmity, but neither had Antoine at such a tender age, I wager. And surely
the child had beauty both from its mother and father, for it had more than any
such child I have ever beheld.,
At last, the mulatto maids,
both very pretty, were allowed to descend upon it, and rescue it from the world
at large, and carry it away.
The husband then took his
leave of me, bidding me remain at Maye Faire for as long as I should please. I
took another drink of the wine, though I was resolved it should be my last, for
I was dizzy.
Immediately, I found myself
led out onto the darkened gallery by the fair Charlotte, so as to look out over
the front garden with its melancholy lanterns, the two of us quite alone as we
took our places on a wooden bench.
My head was most surely
swimming from the wine, though I could not quite determine how I had managed to
drink so much of it, and when I pleaded to have no more, Charlotte would not
hear of it, and insisted that I take another glass. ‘It is my finest,
brought from home.’
To be polite I drank it, feeling
then a wave of intoxication; and remembering in a blur the image of the drunken
brothers and wishing to get clearheaded, I rose and gripped the wooden railing
and looked down into the yard. It seemed the night was full of dark persons,
slaves perhaps moving in the foliage, and I did see one very shapely
light-skinned creature smiling up at me as she passed. In a dream, it seemed, I
heard Charlotte speaking to me:
‘All right, handsome
Petyr, what more would you say to me?’
Strange words I thought,
between father and daughter, for surely she knows it, she cannot but know it.
Yet again, perhaps she does not. I turned to her and began my warnings. Did she
not understand that this spirit was no ordinary spirit? That this thing which
could possess the body of the old man and make it do her bidding could turn
upon her, that it was, in fact, obtaining its very strength from her, that she
must seek to understand what spirits were, but she bid me hush.
And then it did seem to me
that I was seeing the most bizarre things through the window of the lighted
dining room, for the slave boys in their shining blue satin appeared to me to
be dancing as they dusted and swept the room, dancing like imps.
‘What a curious
illusion,’ I said. Only to realize that the young boys, dusting the seats
of the chairs and gathering the fallen napkins, were only cavorting, and
playing, and did not know that I watched.
Then staring back at
Charlotte, I beheld that she had let her hair down free over her shoulders and
that she was staring up at me with cold, beautiful eyes. It seemed also that
she had pushed down the sleeves of her dress, as a tavern wench might do it,
the better to reveal her magnificent white shoulders and the tops of her
breasts. That a father should stare at a daughter as I stared at her was
plainly wicked.
‘Ah, you think you
know so much,’ she said, obviously referring to the conversation which in
my general confusion I had all but forgot. ‘But you are like a priest, as
my mother told me. You know only rules and ideas. Who told you that spirits are
evil?’
‘You misunderstand. I
do not say evil, I say dangerous. I say hostile to man perhaps, and impossible
to control. I do not say hellish, I say unknown.’
I could feel my tongue thick
in my mouth. Yet still I continued. I explained to her that it was the teaching
of the Catholic Church that anything ’unknown’ was demonic, and
that was the greatest difference between the Church and the Talamasca. It was
upon that great difference that we had been founded long ago.
Again, I saw the boys were
dancing. They whirled about the room, leaping, turning, appearing and
reappearing at the windows. I blinked to clear my head.
‘And what makes you
think that I do not know this spirit intimately,’ said she, ’and
that I cannot control it? Do you really think that my mother did not control
it? Can you not see that there is a progression here from Suzanne to Deborah to
me?’
‘I see it, yes, I see
it. I saw the old man, did I not?’ I said, but I was losing the thought.
I could not form my words properly. And the remembrance of the old man upset my
logic. I wanted the wine, but did not want it, and did not drink any more.
‘Yes,’ she said,
quickening it seemed, and taking the wineglass from me, thank God. ‘My
mother did not know that Lasher could be sent into a person, though any priest
might have told her demons possess humans all the time, though of course they
do it to no avail.’
‘How so, no avail?’
‘They must leave
eventually; they cannot become that person, no matter how truly they want to
become that person. Ah, if Lasher could become the old man…’
This horrified me, and I
could see that she smiled at my horror, and she bid me sit down beside her. ‘What
is it however that you truly mean to convey to me?’ she pressed.
‘My warning, that you
give up this being, that you move away from it, that you not found your life
upon its power, for it is a mysterious thing, and that you teach it no more.
For it did not know it could go into a human until you taught it so, am I right?’
This gave her pause. She
refused to answer.
‘Ah, so you are
teaching it to be a better demon for your sake!’ I said. ‘Well, if
Suzanne could have read the demonology shown her by the witch judge, she would
have known you can send a demon into people. Deborah would have known had she
read enough too. But ah, it must be left to you to teach it this thing so that
the witch judge is upheld in the third generation! How much more will you teach
it, this thing which can go into humans, create storms, and make a handsome
phantom of itself in an open field?’
‘How so? What do you
mean phantom?’ she asked.
I told her what I had seen
at Donnelaith - the gauzy figure of the being among the ancient stones, and
that I had known it was not real. At once I saw that nothing I had said so far
caught her interest as this caught it.
‘You saw it?’
she asked me incredulously.
‘Yes, indeed I did see
it, and I saw her see it, your mother.’
She whispered, ‘Ah,
but he has never appeared thus to me.’ And then, ‘But do you see
the error, for Suzanne, the simpleton, thought he was the dark man, the Devil
as they call him, and so he was for her.’
‘But there was nothing
monstrous in his appearance, rather he made himself a handsome man.’
At this she gave a
mischievous laugh, and her eyes flashed with sudden vitality. ‘So she
imagined the Devil to be handsome and for her Lasher made himself handsome. For
you see, all that he is proceeds from us.’
‘Perhaps, lady,
perhaps.’ I looked at the empty glass. I was thirsty. But I would not be
drunk again. ‘But perhaps not.’
‘Aye, and that is what
makes it so interesting to me,’ she said. ‘That on its own it
cannot think, do you not see? It cannot gather its thoughts together; it was
the call of Suzanne which gathered it; it was the call of Deborah which
concentrated it further, and gave it the purpose to raise the storm; and I have
called it into the old man, and it delights in these tricks, and peers through
his eyes at us as if it were human, and is much amused. Do you not see, I love
this being for its changing, for its development, as it were.’
‘Dangerous!’ I
whispered. ‘The thing is a liar.’
‘No, that is
impossible. I thank you for your warnings, but they are so useless as to be
laughable.’ Here she reached for the bottle and filled my glass again.
But I did not take it.
‘Charlotte, I implore
you…"
‘Petyr,’ she
said, ’let me be plainspoken with you, for you deserve as much. We strive
for many things in life; we struggle against many obstacles. The obstacle of
Suzanne was her simple mind and her ignorance; of Deborah that she had been
brought up a peasant girl in rags. Even in her castle, she was that frightened
country lass always, counting Lasher as the sole cause of her fortune, and
nothing else.
‘Well, I am no village
cunning woman, no frightened merry-begot, but a woman born to riches, and
educated from the time I can remember, and given all that I could possibly
desire. And now in my twenty-second year, already a mother and soon perhaps to
be a widow, I rule in this place. I ruled before my mother gave to me all her
secrets, and her great familiar, Lasher, and I mean to study this thing, and
make use of it, and allow it to enhance my considerable strength.
‘Now surely you
understand this, Petyr van Abel, for we are alike, you and I, and with reason.
You are strong as I am strong. Understand as well that I have come to love this
spirit, love, do you hear me? For this spirit has become my will!’
‘It killed your
mother, beautiful daughter,’ I said Whereupon I reminded her of all that
was known of the trickery of the supernatural in tales and fables, and what the
moral was: this thing cannot be fully understood by reason, and cannot by
reason be ruled
‘My mother knew you
for what you were,’ she said sadly, shaking her head, and offering me the
wine which I did not take. ‘You of the Talamasca are as bad as the
Catholics and the Calvmists, when all is said and done’
‘No,’ I said to her.
‘Of a different ilk entirely We draw our knowledge from observation and
experience! We are of this age, and like unto its surgeons and physicians and
philosophers, not the men of the cloth!’
‘Which means what?’
she sneered
‘The men of the cloth
look to revelation, to Scripture as it were. When I tell you of the old tales
of demons, it is to draw attention to a distilled knowledge’ I do not say
take the Demonologie on its face, for it is poison I say read what is
worthwhile and discard the rest.’
She gave no reply
‘You say you are
educated, my daughter, well then consider my father, a surgeon at the
University of Leiden, a man who went to Padua to study, and then to England to
hear the lectures of William Harvey, who learned French that he might read the
writings of Pare. Great doctors cast aside the "scripture" of
Aristotle and Galen. They learn from the dissection of dead bodies, and from
the dissection of live animals! They learn from what they observe! That is our
method. I am saying look at this thing, look at what it has done! I say that it
brought down Deborah with its tricks. It brought down Suzanne.’
Silence
‘Ah, but you give me
the means to study it better You tell me to approach it as a doctor might
approach it And be done with incantations and the like.’
‘Ah, for this I came
here,’ I sighed
‘You have come here
for better things than this,’ she said, and gave me a most devilish and
charming smile. ‘Come now, let us be friends. Drink with me.’
‘I would go to bed now’
She gave a sweet laugh. ‘So
would I,’ she said ‘By and by’
Again she pushed the glass
at me, and so to be polite I took it and drank, and there came the drunkenness
again as if it had been hovering like an imp in the bottle. ‘No more,’
I said
‘Oh, yes, my finest
claret, you must drink it ’ And once again she pushed it at me.
‘All right, all right,’
I said to her and drank
Did I know, then, Stefan,
what was to happen’ Was I even then peering over the edge of the glass at
her succulent little mouth and juicy little arms?
‘Oh, sweet beautiful
Charlotte,’ I said to her ‘Do you know how I love you? We have
spoken of love, but I have not told you .’
‘I know,’ she
whispered lovingly to me. ‘Don’t upset yourself, Petyr. I know.’
She rose and took me by the arm
‘Look,’ I said
to her, for it seemed the lights below were dancing in the trees, dancing as if
they were fireflies, and the trees themselves seemed quite alive and to be
watching us, and the night sky to rise higher and higher, its moonlit clouds
rising beyond the stars.
‘Come, dearest,’
she said, now pulling me down the stairs, for I tell you, Stefan, my limbs were
weakened by the wine I was stumbling
A low music had meantime
commenced, if one could call it that, for it was made up entirely of African
drums, and some eerie and mournful horn playing which I found I liked and then
did not like at all.
‘Let me go, Charlotte,’
I said to her, for she was pulling me towards the cliffs. ‘I would go to
bed now’
‘Yes, and you shall.’
‘Then why do we go to
the cliffs, my dear? You mean to throw me over the edge?’
She laughed ‘You are
so handsome in spite of all your propriety and your Dutch manners!’ She
danced in front of me, with her hair blowing in the breeze, a lithesome figure
against the dark glittering sea
Ah, such beauty More
beautiful even than my Deborah I looked down and saw the glass was in my left
hand, most strange, and she was filling it once more, and I was so thirsty for
it that I drank it down as if it were ale
Taking my arm once more, she
pointed the way down a steep path, which led perilously close to the edge, but
I could see a roof beyond and light and what seemed a whitewashed wall
‘Do you think I am
ungrateful for what you’ve told me7’ she said in my ear ‘I am
grateful We must talk more of your father, the physician, and of the ways of
those men’
‘I can tell you many
things, but not so that you use them to do evil’ I looked about me,
stumbling still, and trying to see the slaves who played the drums and the
horn, for surely they were very near The music seemed to echo off the rocks and
off the trunks of the trees
‘Ah, and so you do
believe in evil1’ She laughed ‘You are a man of angels and devils,
and you would be an angel, like the angel Michael who drove the devils into hell’
She placed her arm about me so that I did not fall, her breasts crushed up
against me, and her soft cheek touching my shoulder
‘I do not like that
music,’ I said ‘Why must they play it?’
‘Oh, it makes them
happy The planters hereabouts do not think sufficiently about what makes them
happy If they did they would get more from them, but now we are back to
observations, are we not7 But come now, such pleasures await you,’ she
told me
‘Pleasures? Oh, but I
do not care for pleasures," I said, and my tongue was thick again and my
head swimming and I could not get accustomed to the music
‘What on earth are you
saying, you do not care for pleasures1’ she scoffed ‘How can one
not care for pleasures?’
We had come to the small
building, and I saw in the bright light of the moon that it was a house of
sorts with the usual pitched roof, but that it was built to the very edge of
the cliff Indeed the light I had seen came from the front of it, which perhaps
was open, but we could gain
entrance only through a heavy door, which she did unbar from the outside.
She was still laughing at
me, for what I had said, when I stopped her
‘What is this, a prison’’
‘You are in prison,
within your body,’ she said, and pushed me through the door
I drew myself up and meant
to go back out, but the door was shut and being bolted by others I heard the
bolt slide into place I looked about me, in anger and confusion
A spacious apartment I saw,
with a great four-poster bed, fit for the king of England, though it was fitted
out in muslin rather than velvet, and in the netting they use here to fend off the
mosquitoes, and on either side of it burned candles Rugs covered the tiled
floor, and indeed the front of the little house was entirely open, its shutters
back, but I soon saw why, for to walk even ten steps out was to come to a
balustrade, and beyond that, I soon saw upon clumsy investigation, as she held
my arm to steady me, was nothing but a great plunge to the beach below and the
lapping sea
‘I do not care to
spend the night here,’ I said to her, ’and if you will not provide
me with a coach, I shall walk to Port-au-Prince’
‘Explain this to me,
that you do not like pleasure,’ she said gently, tugging at my coat ‘Surely
you are hot in these miserable garments Do all Dutchmen wear such clothes?’
‘Stop those drums,
will you7’ I said ‘I cannot bear the sound ’ For the music
seemed to come through the walls There was a melody to it now, however, and
that was a slight bit reassuring, though the melody kept putting its hooks into
me and dragging me with it mentally so that I was dancing in my head against my
will
And somehow or other I was
now on the side of the bed, with Charlotte removing my shirt On the table but a
few feet away sat a silver tray with bottles of wine and fine glasses, and to
this she went now, and poured a glass full of claret and brought this to me and
put it in my hand I went to dash it to the floor, but she held it, and looked
into my eyes, and said
‘Petyr, drink a little
only that you may sleep When you wish to leave you may leave’
‘You are lying to me,’
I said Whereupon I felt other hands upon me, and other skirts brushing my legs.
Two stately mulatto women had somehow managed to enter this chamber, both of
them exquisitely pretty, and voluptuous in their freshly pressed skirts and
ruffled blouses, moving with ease no doubt through the general fog which now
shrouded all my perceptions, to pound the pillows, and straighten the netting
of the bed, and take my boots from me and my trousers.
Hindu princesses they might
have been with their dark eyes and dark eyelashes and dusky arms and innocent
smiles.
‘Charlotte, I will not
have this," I said, yet I was drinking the wine, as she held it to my
mouth, and again there came the swoon. ‘Oh, Charlotte, why, what is this?’
‘Surely you want to
observe pleasure,’ she whispered, stroking my hair in such a way that I
was very disturbed by it. ‘I am quite serious. Listen to me. You must
experiment with pleasure to be certain that you do not care for it, if you know
what I mean.’
‘I don’t. I wish
to go.’
‘No, Petyr. Don’t
now,’ she said as if talking to a child.
She knelt before me, looking
up at me, her dress binding her naked breasts so tightly that I wanted to free
them. ‘Drink some more, Petyr,’ she said.
I shut my eyes, and at once
lost my balance. The music of the drums and the horn was now slower and even
more melodic, and put me in mind of madrigals though it was far more savage.
Lips brushed my cheeks and my mouth, and when I opened my eyes in alarm, I saw
the mulatto women were naked and offering themselves to me, for how else could
their gestures be described.
At some remove Charlotte
stood, with her hand upon the table, a picture in the stillness, though
everything was now quite beyond my grasp. She seemed a statue against the dim
blue light of the sky; the candles sputtered in the breeze; the music was as
strong as ever, and I found myself lost in contemplating the two naked women,
their huge breasts and their dark fleecy private hair.
It then came to me that in
this warmth I did not mind at all being naked, which had seldom been the case
in my life. It seemed quite fine to be naked, and that the women should be, and
I fell into contemplating their various secrets, and how they differed from
other women, and how all women were alike.
One of them kissed me again,
her hair and skin very silky against me, and this time I opened my mouth.
But by then, you know,
Stefan, I was a lost man.
I was now covered with
kisses by these two and laid back on the pillows, and there was no part of my
anatomy which did not receive their skilled attentions, and each gesture was
prolonged and rendered all the more exquisite in my drunkenness. And so loving
and cheerful they seemed, the two women, so innocent, and the silkiness of
their skin was maddening me.
I knew that Charlotte
watched these proceedings but that did not seem of importance any longer, so
much as kissing these women and touching them all over as they touched me, for
the potion I had drunk was working no doubt to remove all restraint and yet to
slow down the natural rhythm of a man under such circumstances, as there seemed
all the time in the world.
The room grew darker; the
music more soothing. I grew more impassioned, slowly, deliciously, and
completely consumed by sensations of the most extraordinary sort. One of the
women, very ripe and yielding in my arms, showed me now a band of black silk,
and as I puzzled what this could be, this broad ribbon, she put it over my
eyes, and the other tied it tight behind my head.
How can I explain how this
sudden bondage fanned the flame in me, how, blindfolded like Cupid, I lost
whatever decency remained to me, as we tumbled together in the bed?
In this intoxicating
darkness, I finally mounted my victim, feeling my hands fall gently upon a
great mass of hair.
A mouth sucked at me, and
strong arms drew me down into a veritable field of soft breasts and belly and
sweet perfumed female flesh, and as I cried out in my passion, a lost soul,
unquestioning, the blindfold was ripped from me, and I looked down in the dim
light to see the face of Charlotte beneath me, her eyes closed demurely, her
lips parted, and her face flushed with an ecstasy equal to my own.
There was no one but the two
of us in this bed! No one, I saw, but the two of us in this little house.
Like a madman I was up and
away from her. But it had been done. I had reached the very edge of the cliff,
when she came after me.
‘What would you do!’
she cried miserably. ‘Jump into the sea!’
I could not answer her but
clung to her lest I fall. If she had not pulled me back, I would have fallen.
And all I could think was, this is my daughter, my daughter! What have I done?
Yet when I knew it, my
daughter, and repeated it, my daughter, and looked full in the face of it, I
found myself turning to her, and catching hold of her, and bringing her to me.
Would I punish her with kisses? How could rage and passion be so melded? I have
never been a soldier in a siege but are they so inflamed when they tear the
garments from their screaming female captives?
I only knew I would crush
her in my lust. And as she threw back her head and sighed, I whispered ‘My
daughter." I buried my face in her naked breasts
It was as if I had never
spent my passion, so great was it then. Into the room she dragged me, for I
would have taken her in the sand. My roughness held no fear for her. She pulled
me down onto the bed, and never since that night in Amsterdam with Deborah have
I known such release Nay, I was not even checked by the tenderness I knew then.
‘You foul little witch,’
I cried out to her. And she took it like kissing. She writhed on the bed
beneath me, rising to meet me, as I came down upon her
At last I fell back into the
pillow. I wished to die, and to have her again at once
Twice more before dawn, I
took her surely unless I had gone completely mad. But I was so drunk then I
scarce knew what I did, except that all I had ever wanted in a woman was there
for the taking.
Close to morning, I remember
that I did he with her, and study her, as if to know her and her beauty, for
she was sleeping, and nothing came between me and my observations - ah, yes, I
thought bitterly on her mockery of me, but that is what they were, Stefan,
observations -and I learnt more of a woman I suppose in that hour than ever in
my entire life.
How lovely in its youth was
her body, how firm and sweet to the touch her young limbs and her fresh skin I
did not want her to wake and look at me with the wise and cunning eyes of
Charlotte. I wanted to weep that all this had taken place.
It seemed she did wake and
that we talked for a while, but I remember more truly the things I saw than the
words we spoke.
She was again plying me with
her drink, her poison, and had added to the mix an even greater inducement, for
now she seemed deep and saddened and more eager than ever to know my thoughts.
As she sat there with her golden hair falling all about her, the Lady Godiva of
the English, she puzzled again that I had seen Lasher in the stone circle in
Donnelaith
And it seemed the trick of
the potion now, Stefan, that I was there! For I heard the creaking of the cart
once more, and saw my precious little Deborah, and in the distance the thin
image of the dark man.
‘Ah, but you see, it
was to Deborah that he meant to appear," I heard myself explain, ’and
that I saw him proves only that anyone could see him, that he had gathered by
some mysterious means a physical shape’
‘Aye, and how did he
do it?’
And once more I pulled out
of the archive of my head the teachings of the ancients. ‘If this thing
can gather jewels for you…’
‘-that he does.’
‘— then he can
gather tiny particles to create a human shape’
Then in a twinkling, I found
myself in Amsterdam in bed with my Deborah, and all her words to me of that
night were spoken again, as if I stood with her in the very room And all this I
then told to my daughter, the witch in my arms, who poured the wine for me,
whom I meant to take a thousand times before I should be released
‘But if you know then
that I am your father, why did you do this?’ I asked, while at the same
time seeking to kiss her again
She held me off as she might
hold off her child ‘I need your height and your strength, Father. I need
a child by you - a son that will not inherit Antome’s illness, or a
daughter that will see Lasher, for Lasher will not show himself to a man ’
She considered for a moment and then said to me: ‘And you see, you are
not merely a man to me, but a man bound to me by blood.’
So it was all planned
‘But there is more to
it,’ she said. ‘Do you know what it is to me to feel a true man
with his arms about me7’ she asked ‘To feel a true man on top of
me? And why should it not be my father, if my father is the most pleasing of
all the men I have ever seen?’
I thought of you, Stefan I
thought of your warnings to me. I thought of Alexander Was he at this moment
mourning for me still in the Motherhouse?
Surely I shed tears, for I
remember her comforting me, and how touching was her distress. Then she did
cling to me, like a child herself curled beside me, and said that we two knew
things that no one else had ever known save Deborah and Deborah was dead. She
cried then. She cried for Deborah.
‘When he came to me
and told me that she was dead, I wept and wept. I could not stop weeping. And
they beat on the doors and said, "Charlotte, come out." I had not
seen him or known him until that moment. My mother had said: "Put on the
emerald necklace, and by its light he will find you." But he did not need
that thing. I know it now. I was lying in the darkness alone when he came to
me. I will tell you a terrible secret. Until that moment I did not believe in
him! I did not. I had held the little doll she gave me, the doll of her
mother…’
‘It was described to
me in Montcleve.’
‘Now that is made of
the bone and the hair of Suzanne, or so my mother claimed it was, for Lasher,
she said, had brought the hair to her after they cut it from Suzanne in prison,
and the bone after she was burnt. And from this she had made the doll as
Suzanne had told her to do, and she would hold it and call upon Suzanne.
‘Now, 1 had this, and
I had done as she had instructed me. But Suzanne didn’t come to me! I
heard nothing and felt nothing, and I wondered about all the things which my
mother had believed.
‘Then he came, as I
told you. I felt him come in the darkness, I felt his caress.’
‘How so, caress?’
‘Touching me as you
have touched me. I lay in the darkness, and there were lips upon my breasts.
Lips upon my lips. Between my legs he stroked me. I rose up, thinking, Ah well,
this is a dream, a dream of when Antoine was still a man. But he was there!. "You have no need of
Antoine," he said to me. "My beautiful Charlotte." And then, you
see, I put on the emerald. I put it on as she had told me to do.’
‘He told you that she
was dead?’
‘Aye, that she had
fallen from the cathedral battlements, and that you had thrown the evil priest
to his death. Ah, but he speaks most strangely. You cannot imagine how strange
his words are. As if he had picked them up from all over the world the way he
picks up bits and pieces of jewels and gold.’
‘Tell me,’ I
said to her.
She thought. ‘I cannot,’
she said with a sigh. Then she tried it, and now I shall do my best to recount
it. ‘"I am here, Charlotte, I am Lasher, and I am here. The spirit
of Deborah went up out of her body; it did not see me; it left the earth. Her
enemies ran to the left and to the right and to the left in fear. See me,
Charlotte, and hear me, for I exist to serve you, and only in serving you, do 1
exist."’ She gave another sigh. ‘But it is even stranger than
that when he tells me a long tale. For I questioned him as to what happened to
my mother and he said, "I came and I drew together, and I lifted the tiles
of the roofs and made them fly through the air. And I lifted the dirt from the
ground and made it fly through the air.‘"
‘And what else does
this spirit say as to his own nature?’
‘Only that he always
was. Before there were men and women, he was.’
‘Ah, and you believe
this?’
‘Why should I not
believe it?’
I did not answer her, but in
my soul I did not believe it, and I did not know why.
‘How did he come to be
near the stones of Donnelaith?’ I asked her. ‘For that was where
Suzanne first called him, was it not?’
‘He was nowhere when
she called him; he came into being at her call. That is to say, he has no
knowledge of himself before that time. His knowledge of himself begins with her
knowledge of him, and strengthens with mine.’
‘Ah, but you see this
could be flattery,’ I said to her.
‘You speak of him as
if he were without feeling. That isn’t so. I tell you I have heard him
weep.’
‘Over what, pray tell?’
‘The death of my
mother. If she had allowed it, he could have destroyed all the citizenry of
Montcleve. The innocent and the guilty would have been punished. But my mother
could not imagine such a thing. My mother sought only her release when she
threw herself from the battlements. Had she been stronger…"
‘And you are stronger.’
‘Using his powers for
destruction is nothing.’
‘Aye, in that I think
you are wise, I have to confess."
I puzzled over all of it,
trying to memorize what was said which I believe I have done. And perhaps she
understood, for next she said sadly to me:
‘Ah, how can I allow
you to leave this place when you know these things of him and of me?’
‘So you would kill me?’
I asked her.
She wept. She turned her
head into the pillow. ‘Stay with me,’ she said. ‘My mother
asked this of you, and you refused her. Stay with me. By you I could have
strong children.’
‘I am your father. You
are mad to ask this of me.’
‘What does it matter!’
she declared. ‘All around us there is nothing but darkness and mystery.
What does it matter?’ And her voice filled me with sadness.
It seemed I too was weeping,
but more quietly. I kissed her cheeks and soothed her. I told her what we had
come to believe in the Talamasca, that, with or without God, we must be honest
men and women, that we must be saints, for only as saints can we prevail. But
she merely cried all the more sadly.
‘All your life has
been in vain,’ she said. ‘You have wasted it. You have forsworn
pleasure and for nothing.’
‘Ah, but you miss the
depths,’ I said. ‘For my reading and my study have been my
pleasures, as surgery and study were the pleasures for my father, and these
pleasures are lasting. I do not need the pleasure of the flesh. I never did. I
do not need riches, and therefore I am free.’
‘Are you lying to me
or to yourself? You are afraid of the flesh. The Talamasca offered safety to
you as convents offer it to nuns. You have always done what is safe…’
‘Was it safe for me to
go into Donnelaith, or safe for me to go to Montcleve?’
‘No, you were brave in
that, true. And brave I suppose to come here. But I speak not of that part of
you but the private, secret part of you which might have known love and known
passion and shrank from it for fear of it, disliking the very heat. You must
realize that sin such as we have committed tonight can only strengthen us and
cause us to grow more solitary and willful and cold towards others as if our
secrets were shields.’
‘But my dearest,’
I said, ‘I do not want to be solitary and willful and cold towards
others. I am that enough already when I go into the towns where witches are to
be burnt. I want my soul to be in harmony with other souls. And this sin has
made of me a monster in my eyes.’
‘And so what, then,
Petyr?’
‘I don’t know,’
I said. ‘I don’t know. But you are my daughter all right. You think
about what you do, that much I give you. You ponder and you consider. But you
do not suffer enough!’
‘And why should I?’
She gave the most innocent laugh. ‘Why should I!’ she cried out,
staring right into my face.
And unable to answer that
question, sick to death of my guilt, and of this drunkenness, I fell into a
deep sleep.
Before dawn I awakened.
The morning sky filled with
great pink-tinged clouds, and the roar of the sea was a wondrous sound.
Charlotte was nowhere about. I could see that the door to the outside world was
shut, and I knew without testing it that it was bolted from the outside. As for
the small windows in the walls on either side of me, they were not large enough
to allow a child to escape. Slatted shutters covered them now, through which
the breeze ran, singing; and the little room was filled with the fresh air of
the sea.
Dazed I stared out at the
brightening light. I wanted to be back in Amsterdam, though I felt tainted
beyond reprieve. And as I tried to rouse myself, to ignore the sickness in my
head and belly, I perceived a ghostly shape standing to the left of the open
doors, in the shady corner of the room.
For a long time, I
considered it, whether it was not some product of the drug I had imbibed, or
indeed of the light and the shadow playing together; but it was not. A man it
appeared to be, tall, and dark of hair, and gazing down upon me as I lay there,
and wanting to speak or so it seemed.
‘Lasher,’ I
whispered aloud.
‘Fool of a man that
you should come here,’ said the being. But its lips did not move and I
did not hear this voice through the ears. ‘Fool that you should seek to
come between me and the witch whom I love, once again.’
‘And what did you do
with my precious Deborah?’
‘You know but you do
not know.’
I laughed. ‘Should I
be honored that you pass judgment on me?’ I sat up in my bed. ‘Show
yourself more plainly,’ I said.
And before my eyes, the
shape grew denser and more vivid, and I saw the aspects of a particular man.
Thin of nose, dark of eye, and dressed in the very same garments I had spied
for but an instant years ago in Scotland, a leather jerkin and coarse-cut
breeches, and a homespun shirt of bag sleeves.
Yet even as I surmised these
things, it seemed that the nose became plainer, and the dark eyes more vivid,
and the leather of the jerkin more plainly leather.
‘Who are you, spirit?’
I asked. ‘Tell me your true name, not the name my Deborah gave you.’
A terrible bitter expression
came over its face; or no, it was only that the illusion had begun to crumple,
and the air was filled with lamentation, a terrible soundless crying. And the
thing faded away.
‘Come back, spirit!’
I declared. ‘Or more truly, if you love Charlotte, go away! Go back into
the chaos from which you came and leave my Charlotte alone.’
And I could have sworn that
in a whisper the being spoke again to say, ‘I am patient, Petyr von Abel.
I see very far. I shall drink the wine and eat the meat and know the warmth of
the woman when you are no longer even bones.’
‘Come back!’ I
cried. ‘Tell me the meaning of this! I saw you, Lasher, as clearly as the
witch saw you, and I can make you strong.’
But there was only silence.
And 1 fell back upon the pillow, knowing that this was the strongest spirit I
have ever beheld. No ghost has ever been stronger, more truly visible. And the
words spoken to me by the demon had nothing to do with the will of the witch.
Oh, if only I had my books
with me. If only I had had them then.
Once more in my mind’s
eye I see the circle of stones at Donnelaith. I tell you there is some reason
that the spirit came from that spot! This is no mean daimon, no familiar, no
Ariel ready to bow to Prospero’s wand! So feverish was I finally that I
drank the wine again so that it would dull my pain.
And so there, Stefan, you
have but the first day of my captivity and wretchedness.
How well I came to know the
little house. How well I was to know the cliff beyond from which no path led
down to the beach. Even if I had had a seaman’s rope, wrapped about the
balustrade, I could not have made that awful descent.
But let me go on with my
tale.
It was noon perhaps before
Charlotte came to me, and when I saw the mulatto maids enter with her I knew
that I had not created them out of my imagination, and only watched them in
cold silence as they put fresh flowers about the room. They had my shirt clean
and ironed for me and more clothing, of the lighter fabrics worn in these
places. And a large tub they brought, sliding it across the sandy earth like a
boat, with two heavily muscled male slaves to guard them lest I rush out the door.
This they filled with hot
water, and said that I might have a bath whenever I chose.
I took it, hoping to wash
away my sins, I guess, and then when I was clean and dressed and my beard and
mustache properly trimmed, I sat down and ate the food given me without looking
at Charlotte who alone remained.
Finally, putting the plate
aside, I asked: ‘How long do you mean to keep me in this place?’
‘Until I have
conceived a child by you,’ she said. ‘And I may have a sign of that
very soon.’
‘Well, you have had your
chance,’ I said, but even as the words came out, I felt last night’s
lust again, and saw myself, as if in a dream, ripping her pretty silk frock
from her and tearing loose her breasts again so that I might suckle them
savagely as a babe. There came again the delicious idea that she was wicked and
therefore I might do anything to her and with her, and I should avail myself of
that opportunity as soon as I could.
She knew. Undoubtedly she
knew. She came and sat on my lap, and looked into my eyes. A very tender little
weight indeed. ‘Rip the silk if you like,’ she said. ‘You
cannot get out of here. So do what you can in your prison.’
I reached for her throat. At
once I was thrown back upon the floor. The chair was turned over. Only she had
not done it, she had merely moved aside so as not to be hurt.
‘Ah, so he is here,’
I said with a sigh. I could not see him, but then again I could, a gathering as
it were just over me, and then the dispersal as the billowy presence grew
broader and thinner and then disappeared. ‘Make yourself a man as you did
this morning,’ I said. ‘Speak to me as you did this morning, little
coward, little spirit!’
All the silver in the place
began to rattle. A great ripple ran through the mosquito netting. I laughed. ‘Stupid
little devil,’ I said, climbing to my feet and brushing off my clothes.
The thing struck me again, but I caught the back of the chair. ‘Mean
little devil,’ I said. ‘And such a coward, too.’
Amazed, she watched all
this. I could not tell what it was in her face, suspicion or fear. Then she
whispered something under her breath, and I saw the netting hung from the
windows move as though the thing had flown out. We were alone.
She turned her face away
from me, but I could see her cheeks burning, and see the tears in her eyes. She
looked so tender then. I hated myself for wanting her.
‘Surely you do not
blame me for trying to hurt you,’ I said politely to her. ‘You hold
me here against my will.’
‘Don’t challenge
him again," she said fearfully, her lip trembling. ‘I would not have
him hurt you.’
‘Oh, and cannot the
powerful witch restrain him?’
Lost she seemed, clinging to
the bedpost, her head bowed. And so beguiling! So seductive! She did not need
to be a witch to be a witch.
‘You want me,’
she said softly. ‘Take me. And I shall tell you something that will warm
your blood better than any drug I can give you.’ Here she looked up, her
lip trembling as if she would cry.
‘What is that?’
I said to her.
‘That I want you,’
she said. ‘I find you beautiful. I find I ache for you as I lie beside
Antoine.’
‘Your misfortune,
daughter,’ I said coldly, but what a lie.
‘Is it!’
‘Steel yourself.
Remember that a man does not have to find a woman beautiful to ravage her. Be
as cold as a man. It suits you better, for you hold me here against my will.’
She said nothing for a
moment, and then she came towards me and began her seduction again, with soft
daughterly kissing, and then her hand seeking me out, and her kisses growing
more ardent. And I was just as much a fool as before.
Only my anger would not
permit it, so I fought her. ‘Does your spirit like it?’ I asked,
looking up and around in the emptiness. ‘That you let me touch you when
he would touch you?’
‘Don’t play with
him!’ she said fearfully.
‘Ah, for all his
touching of you, caressing of you, kissing of you, he cannot get you with
child, can he? He is not the incubus of the demonologies who can steal the seed
from sleeping men. And so he suffers me to live until I get you with child!’
‘He will not hurt you,
Petyr, for I will not allow it. I have forbidden it!’
Her cheeks grew red again as
she looked at me, and now she searched the emptiness around her.
‘Keep that thought in
your mind, daughter, for he can read what you think, remember. And he may tell
you that he does what you wish, but he does what he wishes. He came to me this
morning; he taunted me.’
‘Don’t lie to
me, Petyr.’
‘I never lie,
Charlotte. He came.’ And I described to her the full apparition, and I
confessed his strange words. ‘Now, what can that mean, my pretty? You
think he has no will of his own? You are a fool, Charlotte. Lie with him
instead of me!’ I laughed at her, and seeing the pain in her eyes, I
laughed more. ‘I should like to see it, you and your daimon. Lie there
and call him to come now.’
She struck me. I laughed all
the more, the sting feeling sweet to me, suddenly, and again she slapped me,
and again, and then I had what I wanted, which was the rage to take hold of her
by her wrists and hurl her onto the bed. And there I tore loose her dress and
the ribbons binding her hair. With the fine clothes her maids had put on me,
she was just as rough, and we were together in it as hot as before.
Finally it was over three
times, and as I lay in half sleep, she left me in silence, with only the roar
of the sea to keep me company.
By late afternoon, I knew
that I could not get out of the house, for I had tried. I had tried to batter
down the door, using the one chair in the place to help me. I had tried to
climb around the edges of the walls. I had tried to fit through the small
windows. All in vain. This place had been carefully made as a prison. I tried
even to get up on the roof, but that too had been studied and provided for. The
slope was impossibly steep, and the tiles slippery, and the climb far too long
and too great. And as twilight came, a supper was brought to me, being put,
plate by plate, through one of the small windows, which after a long
hesitation, I did take, more out of boredom and near madness than hunger.
And as the sun sank in the
sea, I sat by the balustrade, drinking wine and looking at it, and looking at
the dark blue of the waves, as they broke with their white foam upon the clean
beach below.
No one ever came or went
there on the beach in all my captivity. I suspect that it is a spot which could
be reached only by sea. And anyone reaching it would have died there, for there
was no way up the cliff, as I have said.
But it was most beautiful to
look at. And getting drunker and drunker I fell into watching the colors of the
sea and the light change, as if in a spell.
When the sun had vanished, a
great fiery layer lay upon the horizon from end to end of the world. That
lasted perhaps an hour and then the sky was but a pale pink and at last a deep
blue, blue as the sea.
I resolved, naturally, that
I should not touch Charlotte again, no matter what the provocation, and that
finding me useless to her she would soon allow me to go. But I suspected that
she would indeed kill me, or that the spirit would kill me. And that she could
not stop him, I did not doubt.
I do not know when I fell to
sleep. Or how late it was when I awoke and saw that Charlotte had come, and was
seated inside by the candle. I toused myself to pour another glass of wine, for
I was now completely taken up with drinking, and conceived an insupportable
thirst within minutes of the last drink.
I said nothing to her, but I
was frightened by the beauty she held for me, and that at the very first sight
of her, my body had quickened and wanted her, and expected the old games to
begin. I gave myself stern lectures in silence; but my body is no schoolboy.
It laughed in my face, so to
speak. And I shall never forget the expression on her face as she looked at me,
and looked into my heart.
I went to her, as she came
to me. And this affection humiliated us both.
Finally when we were
finished with it again, and sitting quietly, she began to talk to me.
‘There are no laws for
me,’ she said. ‘Men and women are not merely cursed with
weaknesses. Some of us are cursed with virtues as well. And my virtue is
strength. I can rule those around me. I knew it when I was a child. I ruled my
brothers, and when my mother was accused, I begged to remain in Montcleve, for
I felt certain I could turn their testimony to her side.
‘But she would not
allow it, and she I never could rule. I rule my husband and have from our first
meeting. 1 rule the house so skillfully that the other planters remark upon it,
and come to me for advice. One might say that I rule the parish, as I am the
richest planter in it, and I could rule the colony perhaps if I chose.
‘I have always had
this strength, and I see that you too have it. It is the strength which enables
you to defy all civil and church authority, to go into villages and towns with
a pack of lies, and believe in what you do. You have submitted to but one
authority on earth, and that is the Talamasca, and you are not entirely in
submission even to them.’
I had never thought of this,
but it was true. You know, Stefan, we have members who cannot do the work in
the field for they haven’t the skepticism regarding pomp and ceremony.
And so she was right.
I did not tell her so,
however. I drank the wine, and looked out over the sea. The moon had risen and
made a path across it. I wondered that I had spent so little time in my life
regarding the sea.
It seemed I had been a long
time on the edge of this cliff in my little prison, and there was nothing
remarkable about it now.
She continued to talk to me.
‘I have come to the very place in which my strength can be best used,’
she said. ‘And I mean to have many children before Antoine dies. I mean
to have many! If you remain with me as my lover, there is nothing that you
cannot have.’
‘Don’t say such
things. You know that cannot be.’
‘Consider it. Envision
it. You learn by observation. Well, what have you learned by observing things
here? I could make a house for you on my land, a library as large as you like.
You could receive your friends from Europe. You could have whatever you wish.’
I thought for a long time
before I answered, as this was her request.
‘I need more than what
you offer me,’ I said. ‘Even if I could accept that you are my
daughter and that we are outside the laws of nature, so to speak.’
‘What laws,’ she
sneered.
‘Allow me to finish
and then I shall tell you,’ I explained. ‘I need mote than the
pleasures of the flesh, and even more than the beauty of the sea, and more than
my every wish granted. I need more than money.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I am afraid
of death,’ I said. ‘I believe nothing, and therefore like many who
believe nothing, I must make something, and that something is the meaning which
I give to my life. The saving of witches, the study of the supernatural, these
are my lasting pleasures; they make me forget that I do not know why we are
born, or why we die, or why the world is here.
‘Had my father not
died, I would have been a surgeon, and studied the workings of the body, and
made beautiful drawings of my studies as he did. And had not the Talamasca
found me after my father’s death, I might have been a painter, for they
make worlds of meaning on the canvas. But I cannot be those things now, as I
have no training in them, and it is too late for that, and so I must return to
Europe and do what I have always done. I must. It is not a matter of choice. I
should go mad in this savage place. I should come to hate you more than I
already do.’
This greatly intrigued her,
though it hurt her and disappointed her. Her face took on the look of soft
tragedy as she studied me, and never did my heart go out to her so much as it
did at that moment, when she heard my answer and sat there pondering it before
me, without a word.
Talk to me,’ she said.
‘Tell me all your life.’
‘I will not!’
‘Why?’
‘Because you want it,
and you hold me against my will.’
She thought again in
silence, her eyes very beautiful in their sadness as before.
‘You came here to sway
me and to teach me, did you not?’
I smiled at her, for it was
true. ‘All right, then, daughter. I’ll tell you everything I know.
Will it do the trick?’
And at that moment, on my
second day in this prison, it was changed, changed until the very hour many
days later when I went free. I did not yet realize it, but it was changed.
For after that, I fought her
no more. And I fought no more my love for her, and my lust for her, which were
not always mingled, but always very much alive.
Whatever happened in the
days that followed, we talked together by the hour, I in my drunkenness and she
in her pointed sobriety, and all the story of my life came out for her to
examine and discuss and a great deal which I knew of the world.
It seemed then that my life
was nothing but drunkenness, making love to her, and talking to her; and then
those long periods of dreaminess in which I continued my studies of the
changing sea.
Some time and I do not know
how long it was after - perhaps five days, perhaps more - she brought pen and
paper to me and asked that I write for her what I knew of my lineage — of
my father’s people, and how he had come to be a physician as was his
father, and how they had both studied at Padua, and what they had learnt and
written. And the names of my father’s books.
This I did with pleasure,
though I was drunk so much that it took me hours, and after I lay, trying to
remember my former self as she took my writing away.
Meantime, she had had fine
clothes made for me, and she had her maids dress me each day, though I lay now
indifferent to such things, and in a similar indifference I allowed them to
pare my fingernails and trim my hair.
I suspected nothing in this,
only that it was their regular meticulous attention to which I had become
accustomed, but she then revealed to me a cloth mannequin made from the shirt I
had worn when I first came to her, and explained to me that within its various
knots were my fingernails, and that the hair affixed to its head was my hair.
I was stuporous then, as she
had planned, no doubt. And in silence I watched as she slit my finger with her
knife, and let my blood fall into the body of this doll. Nay, all of it she
stained with my blood until it was a red thing with blond hair.
‘What do you mean to
do with this hideous thing?’ I asked her.
‘You know what I mean
to do,’ she said.
‘Ah, then my death is
assured.’
‘Petyr,’ she
said most imploringly, the tears springing to her eyes, ’it may be years
before you die, but this doll gives me power.’
I said nothing. When she had
gone I took up the rum which had always been there for me, and which was
naturally much stronger than the wine, and I drank myself into horrid dreams
with that.
But late in the night, this
little incident of the doll produced in me a great horror, and so I went once
more to the table, and took up my pen, and wrote for her all I knew of daimons,
and this time it was with no hope of warning her, so much as guiding her.
I felt she must know that:
- the ancients had believed
in spirits as we do, but they believed that they might grow old and die away;
and there was in Plutarch the story of the Great Pan dying finally and all the
daimons of the world weeping for they realized they would one day die as well.
- when a people of ancient
times were conquered, it was believed that their fallen gods became daimons and
hovered about the ruins of their cities and temples. And she must remember that
Suzanne had called up the daimon Lasher at the ancient stones in Scotland,
though what people had assembled those stones no one knows.
— the early Christians
believed that the pagan gods were daimons, and that they could be called up for
curses and spells.
And that in summary, all of
these beliefs have to them a consistency, for we know that daimons are
strengthened by our belief in them. So naturally, they might become as gods to
those who invoke them, and when their worshipers are conquered and scattered,
the daimons would once more lapse back into chaos, or be but minor entities answering
the occasional magician’s call.
I wrote further about the
power of daimons. That they can create illusions for us; that they can enter
bodies as in possession; that they can move objects; that they can appear to
us, though whence they gather their bodies we do not know.
As for Lasher, it was my
belief that his body was made of matter and held together by his power, but
this could only be done by him for a short spell.
I did further describe how
the daimon had appeared to me, and the strange words he said to me, and how I
had puzzled over them, and how she must be aware that this thing might be the
ghost of some long dead person - earthbound and vengeful, for all the ancients
believed that the spirits of those who died in youth, or by violence, might become
vengeful daimons, whereas the spirits of the good go out of this world.
Whatever else I wrote - and
there was much - I no longer now remember, for I was utterly given over to
drunkenness, and perhaps what I placed into her tender hands the next day was
no more than a sorry scrawl. But many things I did attempt to explain to her,
over her protests, though she claimed I had said them all before.
As for Lasher’s words
to me that morning, his strange prediction, she only smiled at this, and told
me whenever I did mention it, that Lasher took his speech from us in fragments
and much that he said did not make sense.
‘That is only partly
true,’ I warned her. ‘He is unaccustomed to language, but not to
thinking. That is your mistake.’
More and more as the days passed,
I gave myself over to the rum and to sleeping. I would open my eyes only to see
if she was there.
And just when I was maddened
by her absence, nay, ready to beat her in a rage, she would appear without
fail. Beautiful, yielding, soft in my arms, the embodiment of all poetry, the
very face I would endlessly paint were I Rembrandt, the very body the Succubus
would take to win me to the Devil complete and entire.
I was satiated in all ways,
yet always craving for more. I did crawl from bed now and then to watch the
sea. And I woke often to see and study the falling of the rain.
For the rain in this place
was most warm and gentle, and I loved the song of it on the rooftop, and the
sheet of it, catching the light as the breeze carried it at an angle past the
doors.
Many thoughts came to me,
Stefan, thoughts nourished by loneliness and warmth and the singing of the
birds in the distance and the sweet fresh air from the waves roaring gently on
the beach below.
In my little prison, I knew
what I had wasted in life, but it is so simple and sad to put it into words. At
times I fancied myself mad Lear on the moors, putting the flowers in his hair,
having become king of nothing but the wilderness.
For I, in this savage place,
had become so simplified, the grateful scholar of the rain and of the sea.
At last one afternoon late
when the light was just dying, I was awakened by the savory aroma of a hot
supper, and I knew that I had been drunk for a full day round the clock, and
that she had not come.
I devoured the supper, as
liquor never stops my hunger, and then I dressed in fresh clothes, and sat to
thinking of what had become of me, and trying to calculate how long I had been
in this place.
I thought it was twelve
days.
I resolved then that no
matter how despondent I became, I would drink nothing further. That I must be
released or go mad.
And feeling disgust for all
my weakness, I put on my boots, which I had not touched in all this time, and
the new coat brought to me long ago by Charlotte, and went to the balustrade to
look out over the sea. I thought, surely she will kill me rather than let me
go. But it must be known one way or the other. This I can no longer endure.
Many hours passed; I drank
nothing. Then Charlotte came. She was weary from her long day of riding and
tending to the plantation, and when she saw that I was dressed, when she saw
that I wore my boots and my coat, she sank down into the chair and wept.
I said nothing, for surely
it was her decision whether or not I should leave this place, not mine.
Then she said: ‘I have
conceived; I am with child.’
Again, I made no answer. But
I knew it. I knew that it was the reason she had been away for so long.
Finally when she would do
nothing but sit there, dejected, and sad, with her head down, crying, I said:
‘Charlotte, let me go.’
At last she said that I must
swear to her to leave the island at once. And that I must not tell anyone what
I knew of her or her mother or of anything that had passed between us.
‘Charlotte,’ I
said, ‘I will go home to Amsterdam on the first Dutch ship I can find in
the harbor, and you will see me no more.’
‘But you must swear to
tell no one — not even your brethren in the Talamasca.’
‘They know,’ I
said. ‘And I shall tell them all that has taken place. They are my father
and my mother.’
‘Petyr,’ she
said. ‘Haven’t you the good sense even to lie to me?’
‘Charlotte,’ I
said. ‘Either let me go or kill me now.’
Again, she wept, but I felt
cold towards her, cold towards myself. I would not look at her, lest my passion
be aroused again.
At last she dried her eyes. ‘I
have made him swear that he will never harm you. He knows that I shall withdraw
all love and trust from him if he disobeys my command.’
‘You have made a pact
with the wind,’ I said.
‘But he protests that
you will tell our secrets.’
‘That I shall.’
‘Petyr, give me your
pledge! Give it to me so that he can hear.’
I considered this, for I
wanted so to be free of this place, and to live, and to believe that both were
still possible, and finally I said:
‘Charlotte, I will
never do you harm. My brothers and sisters in the Talamasca are not priests or
judges. Nor are they witches. What they know of you is secret in the true sense.’
She looked at me with sad
tear-filled eyes, and then she came to me, and kissed me, and though I tried to
make of myself a wooden statue, I could not do it.
‘Once more, Petyr,
once more, from your heart,’ she said, her voice full of sorrow, and
longing. ‘And then you may leave me forever, and I will never look into
your eyes again until I look some day into the eyes of our child.’
I fell to kissing her again,
for I believed her that she would let me go. I believed her that she did love
me; and I believed for that last hour as we lay together, that perhaps there
were no laws for us, as she had said, and that there was a love between us
which perhaps no one else would ever understand.
‘I love you, Charlotte,’
I whispered to her as she lay beside me, and I kissed her forehead. But she
would not answer. She would not look at me.
And as I dressed once more,
she turned her face into the pillow and cried.
Going to the door, I
discovered that it had never been bolted behind her, and I wondered how many
times that had been the case.
But it did not matter now.
What mattered was that I go, if that damnable spirit would not stop me, and
that I not look back, or speak to her again, or catch the scent of her
sweetness, or think about the soft touch of her lips or her hand.
And on this account I asked
her for no horse or coach to take me into Port-au-Prince, but resolved that I should
simply leave without a word.
It had been an hour’s
ride out and so I fancied that it not being yet midnight I should easily make
the city by dawn. Oh, Stefan, thanks be to God, I did not know what that
journey would be! Would I have ever had the courage to set out!
But let me break my story
here, to say that for twelve hours I have been scribbling. And now it is
midnight once more, and the thing is near.
For that reason I shall shut
up in my iron box this and all the other pages I have written, so that at least
this much of my tale will reach you, if what I write from here on is lost.
I love you, my dear friend,
and I do not expect your forgiveness. Only keep my record. Keep it, for this
story is not finished and may not be for many a generation. I have that from
the spirit’s own voice.
Yours
in the Talamasca,
Petyr
van Abel
Port-au-Prince
SIXTEEN
THE
FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES
PART
IV
Stefan,
After a bit of refreshment,
I begin again. The thing is here. Only a moment ago, it made itself visible, in
its manly guise, an inch from me, as is its wont, and then caused my candle to
go out, though it had no breath of its own with which to do it.
I had to go downstairs to
procure another light. Coming back I found my windows open and flapping in the
breeze, and had to bolt them again. My ink was spilt. But I have more ink. The
covers had been snatched from the bed, and my books had been scattered about.
Thank God the iron box is on
its way to you. Enough said, for perhaps the thing can read.
It makes the sound of wings
flapping in this close space, and then laughter.
I wonder if far away in her
bedroom at Maye Faire Charlotte sleeps, and that is why I am the victim of
these tricks.
Only the bawdy houses and
taverns are open; all the rest of the little colonial city is quiet.
But let me relate the events
of last night as fast as I can…
… I started out upon
the road on foot. The moon was high; the path was clear before me with all its
twists and turns, rising and falling gently here and there over what we would
scarce call hills.
I walked fast, with great
vigor, all but giddy with my freedom, and the realization that the spirit had
not stopped me, and that I was smelling the sweet air around me, and thinking
that I might make Port-au-Prince well before dawn.
I am alive, I thought; I am
out of my prison; and perhaps I shall live to reach the Motherhouse again!
With each step I believed it
all the more, and wondered at it, for during my captivity I had given up all
hope of such a thing.
Again and again, however, my
mind was overtaken by thoughts of Charlotte, as though a spell had fallen over
me, and I remembered her in the bed where I had left her, and I weakened,
thinking even that I was a fool to leave such beauty and such excitement, for
indeed I loved her; I loved her madly! And what would it mean, I wondered, were
I to remain and become her lover, and see the birth of one child after another,
and live in luxury as she had suggested to me? That I should within a matter of
hours be separated from her forever was more than I could endure.
So I would not think on it.
I drove the thoughts from my mind whenever I became aware that they had once
more stolen in.
On and on I walked. Now and
then I spied a light over the darkened fields on either side of me. And once a
rider passed, thundering along the road, as if driven on an important mission.
He did not even see me. And I continued alone, with only the moon and the stars
for witnesses, and plotted out my letter to you and how I would describe what
had taken place.
I had been on my way perhaps
three-quarters of an hour when I saw a man at some distance ahead of me, merely
standing and watching me approach, so it seemed. And what was so remarkable was
that he was a Dutchman, which I saw by his enormous black hat.
Now, my hat I had left
behind me. I had worn it as always when I had come to Maye Faire, but had not
seen it from the time I gave it up to the slaves before supper on my first
night.
And now as I saw this tall
man ahead of me I thought of it, and lamented it, and wondered also who was
this Dutchman standing by the side of the road, facing me and staring at me, it
seemed, a shadowy thing with blond hair and a blond beard.
I slowed my pace, for as I
approached, the figure did not move, and the closer I came to it, the more I
perceived the strangeness of it, that a man should stand alone in this
darkness, so idly, and then it came to me that I was being foolish, for it was
only another man there, and so why should it make me feel all the more
undefended in the dark of night?
But no sooner had that
thought occurred to me, when I drew close enough to see the man’s face.
And in the same instant as I beheld that this was my own double standing there,
the creature leapt out at me, drawing up not one inch from me as my own voice
issued from his lips.
‘Ah, Petyr, but you
have forgot your hat!’ he cried, and gave forth a terrible laugh.
I fell backwards onto the
road, my heart roaring in my chest.
Over me, he bent like a
vulture. ‘Oh, come on, Petyr, pick up your hat for you have let it drop
in the dust!’
‘Get away from me!’
I screamed in my terror, and turning away, I covered my head. Like a miserable
crab, I scrambled to escape the thing. Then rising, I rushed at him, as a bull
might have done it, only to find myself charging the empty air.
Nothing on this road but my
miserable self and my black hat lying crushed in the dirt.
Shaking like a child, I took
it up and brushed it off.
‘Damn you, spirit!’
I cried. ‘I know your tricks.’
‘Do you?’ a
voice spoke to me, and this time it was a woman speaking. I spun around to see
the creature! And there beheld my Deborah, as she had been in girlhood, but for
a flash.
‘It isn’t she,’
I declared. ‘You liar from hell!’
But Stefan, that one glimpse
of her was a sword passing through me. For I had caught her girlish smile and
her flashing eye. A sob rose in my throat. ‘Damn you, spirit,’ I
whispered. I searched the blackness for her. I would have seen her, real or
illusion. And I felt the fool.
The night was quiet. But I
did not trust it. Only slowly did I stop my shaking, and put on my hat.
I walked on, but nothing as
fast as before. Everywhere I looked, I thought I beheld a face and figure, only
to discover that it was a trick of the darkness - the banana trees shifting in
the breeze, or those giant red flowers drowsing on their weak stems as they
hung over the fences bordering the road.
I resolved to look straight
ahead. But then I heard a footfall behind me; I heard the breathing of another
man. Steady came the feet, out of step with my own walking; and as I resolved
to ignore it, I felt the hot breath of the creature on my very neck.
‘Damn you!’ I
cried again, spinning round, only to see a perfect horror looming over me, the
monstrous image of myself once more but with nothing but a naked and blazing
skull for my face.
Flames leapt from the empty
eye sockets beneath the blond hair and the great Dutch hat.
‘Go to hell!’ I
screamed and shoved it with all my might as it fell forward on me, the fire
scorching me. And where I had been certain there would be nothing, was a solid
chest.
Growling like a monster
myself, I fought it, forcing it to stagger backwards, and only then did it
vanish, with a great blast of warmth.
I found I had fallen without
even realizing it. I was on my knees and had torn my breeches. I could think of
nothing but the flaming skull I had just beheld. Once more my body shook
stupidly and uncontrollably. And the night was darker as the moon was no longer
high, and God only knew how long I must walk on this road until I reached Port-au-Prince.
‘All right, evil one,’
I said. ‘I shall not believe my eyes no matter what they reveal to me.’
And without further
hesitation, I turned back to the right direction, and began to run. I ran, with
my eyes down, until I was out of breath. And slowing to a walk, went on
doggedly in the same manner, looking only at the dust beneath my feet.
It was only a little while
before I saw feet next to mine, naked, bleeding, but I paid no mind to them for
1 knew they could not be real. I smelled flesh burning but I took no note of
it, for I knew it could not be real.
‘I know your game,’
I said. ‘You have pledged not to hurt me, and so you go by the letter of
the pledge. You would drive me mad, would you?’ And then remembering the
rules of the ancients, that I was but strengthening it by talking to it, I
stopped talking and fell to saying the old prayers.
‘May all the forces of
goodness protect me, may the higher spirits protect me, may no harm come to me;
may the white light shine upon me, and keep me from this thing.’
The feet that had walked
along with me were gone now, and so was the stench of burning flesh. But far
ahead I heard an eerie noise. It was the sound of wood splintering, aye, of
many pieces of wood splintering, and perhaps of things being ripped up from the
earth.
This is no illusion, I
thought. The thing has uprooted the very trees and will now hurl them down in
my path.
On I walked, confident that
I should dodge such dangers, and remembering that it was playing games with me,
and I must not fall into its trap. But then I saw the bridge ahead of me, and I
realized that I had come to the little river, and the sounds I heard were
coming from the graveyard! The thing was breaking open the graves!
A terror seized me which was
far worse than any I had felt before. We all have our private fears, Stefan. A
man can fight tigers, yet shrink from the sight of a beetle; another can cut
his way through an enemy regiment, yet not remain with a dead body in a
closed-up room.
For me, the places of the
dead have always held terror; and now to know what the spirit meant to do, and
that I must cross the bridge and pass through the graveyard held me petrified
and dripping with sweat. And to hear ever more loudly the ripping and the
tearing; to see the trees above the graves swaying, I did not know how I should
ever move again.
But to remain here was
folly. I forced myself to move, drawing closer, step by step to the bridge.
Then I beheld the ravaged graveyard, I saw the coffins torn up from the soft
wet earth. I saw the things climbing out of them, or rather pulled from them,
for they were lifeless, surely they were lifeless, and he moved them as he
would move puppets!
‘Petyr, run!’ I
cried, and tried to obey my own command.
I crossed the bridge in an
instant, but I could see them coming up the banks on both sides. I heard them!
I heard the rotted coffins breaking under their feet. Illusion, trickery, I
told myself once more, but as the first of these horrid cadavers came into my
path, I screamed like a frightened woman, ‘Get away from me!’ and
then found myself unable to touch the putrid arms that flailed at me, merely
stumbling away from this assault, only to fall against another such rotted
corpse, and at last to collapse upon my knees.
I prayed, Stefan. I cried
out loud to the spirit of my father and to Roemer Franz, please help me! These
things had now surrounded me and were pushing against me, and the stench was
unbearable, for some of them were newly buried, and others but half decomposed,
and others reeked purely of the earth itself.
My arms and hair were
drenched from their disgusting wetness, and shivering I covered my head with
both arms.
Then I heard a voice
speaking to me, clearly, and I knew it was the voice of Roemer, and he said: ‘Petyr,
they are lifeless! They are as fruit fallen on the floor of the orchard. Rise
and push them aside; you cannot offend them!’
And emboldened, I did.
On I ran once more, crashing
into them, tripping over them and then dancing back and forth to catch my
balance and go on ahead. At last I ripped off my coat to flail at them, and
discovering them weak and unable to sustain an assault upon me, I beat them
back with the coat, and got clear of the graveyard. And I knelt down once more
to rest.
I could still hear them back
there; hear the trudge of their aimless dead feet.
Then glancing over my
shoulder, I saw that they struggled to follow, a legion of horrid corpses,
pulled as if by strings.
Again I rose; again I went
on; my coat I carried now, for it was filthy from the battle, and my hat, ah,
my priceless hat, I had lost. Within minutes I outdistanced the dead ones. I
suppose that he let them drop finally.
And as I continued, my feet
aching now, and my chest burning from my exertions, I saw that my sleeves were
covered with stains from the battle. Dead flesh clung to my hair. My boots were
smeared with it. And the smell would follow me all the way to Port-au-Prince.
But it was still and quiet around me. The thing was resting! The thing had
exhausted itself So this was no time to worry about stenches and garments I
must rush on
I began in my madness to
talk to Roemer ‘What shall I do, Roemer? For you know this thing will
follow me to the ends of the earth’
But there came no answer,
and I thought that I had imagined his voice when I heard it before And all the
while I knew the spirit might take on his voice, if I thought too long and too
hard on Roemer, and that would drive me mad, madder than I already was
The peace continued The sky
was growing light I heard carts upon the road behind me, and saw that the
fields were coming alive to the right and the left Indeed, coming to the top of
a rise I saw the colonial city below me, and I breathed a great sigh
Now one of these carts
approached, a small rickety wooden cart, laden with fruit and vegetables for
market, and driven by two pale-skinned mulattoes, and they did stop and stare
at me, at which point I said on my best French that I needed their help and God
would bless them if they gave it to me And then remembering that I had money,
or had had, I went into my pockets for it, and gave them several livres which
they took with gratitude, and I climbed upon the tail of the cart
I lay back against a great
heap of vegetables and fruits, and went to sleeping, and the cart rocked me and
knocked me about, but it was as if I were in the most luxurious coach
Then as a dream overcame me,
as I imagined I was back in Amsterdam, I felt a hand touch mine A gentle hand
It patted my left hand and I lifted my right to touch it in the same gentle
manner, and opening my eyes, and rolling my head to my left, I beheld the burnt
and blackened body of Deborah peering at me, bald and shriveled with only her
blue eyes alive, and the teeth grinning at me from behind her burnt lips
I screamed so loud I
frightened the drivers of the cart and the horse But no matter, I had fallen
off onto the road Their horse ran away, and they could not stop it, and they
were soon gone way ahead, and over the rise
I sat cross-legged, crying, ‘You
damnable spirit’ What is it you want of me’ Tell me’ Why do
you not kill me’ Surely you have it in your power if you can do such
things’’
No voice answered me But I
knew that he was there Looking up, I saw him, and in no horrible guise now
Merely the dark-haired one again, in the leather jerkin, the handsome man I had
seen twice before
Very solid he appeared, so
that even the sunlight fell on him, as he sat idly on the fence at the edge of
the road He peered down at me, thoughtfully, it would seem, for his face was
all blank
And I found myself staring at
him, studying him as if he were nothing to fear And I perceived something now
which was most important for me to understand
The burnt body of Deborah,
it had been illusion1 From within my mind, he had taken this image and made it
bloom My double, that too had been illusion’ It was as perfect as my
reflection in a mirror And the other demon follower whom I fought — his
weight had been an illusion
And of course the corpses
had been real, and they were corpses and nothing more
But this was no illusion,
the man sitting on the fence It was a body which this thing had made
‘Aye,’ he said
to me, and again his lips did not move And I understand why For he could not
yet make them move ‘But I shall,’ he said ‘I shall’
I continued to peer at him
Perhaps in my exhaustion, I had lost my wits But I knew no fear And as the
morning sun grew brighter, I saw it shine through him1 I saw the particles of
which he was made swirling in it, like so much dust
‘Dust thou art,’
I whispered, thinking of the biblical phrase But he had at that very instant
begun to dissolve He went pale and then was nothing, and the sun rose over the
field, more beautiful than any morning sun that I have ever seen
Had Charlotte waked7 Did
Charlotte stay his hand7
I cannot answer I may never
know I reached my lodgings here less than an hour later, after meeting with the
agent and speaking again to the innkeeper, as I related to you before
And now it is long past
midnight by my good watch, which I set by the clock in the inn at noon today
And the fiend has not left the room for some time
For over an hour, he has
come and gone in his manly shape, watching me He sits in one corner and then in
another, once I spied him in the looking glass peering out at me Stefan, how
does the spirit do such things? Does he trick my eyes? For surely he cannot be
in the glass1 - but I refused to raise my eyes to it, and finally the
image faded away
He has now begun to move the
furniture about, and once again to make the sound of wings flapping, and I must
flee this room I go to send this letter with the rest.
Yours
in the Talamasca,
Petyr
Stefan,
It is dawn, and all my
letters are on their way to you, the ship having sailed an hour ago with them,
and much as I would have gone with it, I knew that I must not For if this thing
means to destroy me, better he play with me here, whilst my letters be carried
safely on
I fear, too, that the thing
may have the strength to sink a ship, for no sooner had I set foot on it, to
speak with the captain and make certain that my letters would be safely
conveyed, than a wind came up and rain struck the windows, and the boat itself
began to move
My reason told me the fiend
does not have such strength as would be required to drown the vessel, but
horror of horrors, what if I am wrong I cannot be the cause of such harm to
others
So I remain, here in a
crowded tavern in Port-au-Prince - the second to which I have gone this morning
- and I fear to be alone
A short while ago, as I
returned from the docks, the thing so affrighted me with the image of a woman
falling before a coach that I ran out into the path of the horses to save her,
only to discover that there was no woman, and 1 myself was all but trampled How
the coachman did curse me, calling me a madman
And that is surely how I
seem In the first tavern, I fell asleep for perhaps a quarter of an hour, and
was waked by flames around me, only to discover that the candle had been
overturned into the spilt brandy I was blamed for it, and told to take my money
elsewhere And there the thing stood, in the shadows behind the chimneypiece It
would have smiled if it could make its waxy face move Mark what I say now about
its power When it would be itself, it is a made-up body over which it has scant
control
Nevertheless my
understanding of its art is imperfect And I am so weary, Stefan I went again to
my room and tried to sleep, but it flung me from my bed
Even here in this public
room full of late night drinkers and early morning travelers, it plays its
tricks with me, and no one is the wiser, for they do not know that the image of
Roemer seated by the fire is not truly there Or that the woman who appears for
an instant on the stairs, scarcely noticed by them, is Geertruid — dead
now twenty years The thing snatches these images from my mind, surely, and then
expands them, though how I cannot guess
I have tried to talk with it
In the street, I pleaded with it to tell me its purpose Is there any chance
that I shall live7 What could I do for it that it would cease its evil tricks7
And what had Charlotte commanded it to do7
Then when I had seated
myself here and ordered my wine, for I am thirsty for it again, and drinking
too much of it, I beheld that it did move my pen and make scrawl marks on my
paper which say Tetyr will die’
This I enclose with the
letter, for it is the writing of a spirit I myself had no hand in it Perhaps
Alexander might lay his hands on the paper and learn from it For I can learn
nothing from the fool thing except that he and I together can make images the
like of which would have driven Jesus from the desert, mad
I know now there is only one
means of salvation for me As soon as I finish this communication and leave it
with the agent I shall go to Charlotte and beg her to make the fiend stop
Nothing else will do for it, Stefan Only Charlotte can save me And I pray I can
reach Maye Faire unharmed
I shall rent a mount for the
trip, and count upon the road at midmorning being well traveled and that
Charlotte is awake and in control of the fiend
But I have one terrible
fear, my friend, and that is, that Charlotte knows what this devil does to me,
and has commanded it to do so That Charlotte is the author of the entire
diabolical plan
If you hear nothing more
from me and allow me to remind you that Dutch ships leave here daily for our
fair city - follow these instructions. Write to the witch and tell her of my
disappearance. But see to it that your letter does not originate from the
Motherhouse; and that no address provided for her reply is given which should
enable the fiend to penetrate our walls.
Do not, and I beg you, do
not send anyone after me! For he will only meet with a worse fate than mine.
Learn what you can of the
progress of this woman from other sources, and remember the child she bears
within nine months will surely be mine.
What else can I tell you?
After my death, I shall try
to reach you or to reach Alexander if such be possible. But my beloved friend,
I fear there is no ‘after.’ That only darkness waits for me, and my
time in the light is at an end.
I have no regrets in these
final hours. The Talamasca has been my life, and I have spent many years in the
defense of the innocent and in the pure seeking of knowledge. I love you, my
brothers and sisters. Remember me not for my weakness, for my sins, or for my
poor judgment. But that I loved you.
Ah, allow me to tell you
what just happened for it was very interesting indeed.
I saw Roemer again, my
beloved Roemer, the first director of our order I knew and loved. And Roemer
looked so young and fine to me, and I was so glad to see him that I wept, and
did not want the image to disappear.
Let me play with this, I
thought, for it comes from my mind, does it not? And the fiend does not know
what he does. And so I spoke to Roemer. I said, ‘My dearest Roemer, you
do not know how I have missed you, and where have you been, and what have you
learned?’
And the stout handsome
figure of Roemer comes towards me, and I know now that no one else sees it for
they are glancing at me, the muttering madman, but I do not care. Again I say, ‘Sit
down, Roemer, drink with me.’ And this, my beloved teacher, sits and
leans against the table, and speaks the most foul obscenities to me, ah, you
have never heard such language, as he tells me that he would strip off my
clothes in this very tavern, and what pleasure he would give me, and how he had
always wanted to do it when I was a boy, and even that he did do it, in the
night, coming into my room, and laughing afterwards about it, and letting
others watch.
Like a statue, I must have
appeared, staring into the face of this monster, who with Roemer’s smile
whispered like an old bawd to me, such filth, and then finally this creature’s
mouth ceases to move, but merely grows bigger and bigger, and the tongue inside
it becomes a black thing, big and shining like the humpback of a whale.
Like a puppet, I reach for
my pen and dip it and begin to write the above description, and now the thing
is gone.
But you know what it has
done, Stefan? It has turned my mind inside out. Let me tell you a secret. Of
course, my beloved Roemer never took such liberties with me! But I used to pray
that he would! And the fiend drew that out of me, that as a boy I lay in my bed
in the Motherhouse dreaming that Roemer would come and pull down the covers and
lie with me. I dreamed those things!
Had you asked me last year,
did I ever have such a dream, I would have said never, but I had it, and the
fiend remembered me of it. Should I thank him?
Maybe he can bring my mother
back and she and I will sit by the kitchen fire once more and sing.
I go now. The sun is fully
risen. The thing is not near. I will entrust this to our agent before I go on
towards Maye Faire - that is, if I am not stopped by the local constables, and
thrown into jail. I do look like a vagabond and a madman. Charlotte will help
me. Charlotte will restrain this demon.
What else is there to say?
Petyr
NOTE TO THE ARCHIVES:
This
was the last letter ever received from Petyr van Abel.
On the Death of Petyr van Abel
SUMMARY
OF TWENTY-THREE LETTERS, AND NUMEROUS REPORTS TO THE FILES
(See Inventory):
Two weeks after Petyr’s
last letter reached the Motherhouse, a communication was received from a Jan
van Clausen, Dutch merchant in Port-au-Prince, that Petyr was dead. This letter
was dated only twenty-four hours after Petyr’s last letter. Petyr’s
body had been discovered some twelve hours after he was known to have rented a
horse at the livery stables and to have ridden out of Port-au-Prince.
It was the assumption of the
local authorities that Petyr had met with foul play on the road, perhaps coming
upon a band of runaway slaves in the early morning, who might have been in the
process of again desecrating a cemetery in which they had wreaked considerable
havoc only a day or two before. The original desecration had caused a great
disturbance among the local slaves, who, much to the dismay of their masters,
were reluctant to participate in the restoration of the site, and it was still
in a state of considerable disarray and deserted when the assault upon Petyr
occurred.
Petyr was apparently beaten
and driven into a large brick crypt where he was trapped by a fallen tree and
much heavy debris. When he was found, the fingers of his right hand were
entangled in the debris as if he had been trying to dig his way out. Two
fingers from his left hand had been severed and were never found.
The perpetrators of the
desecration and the murder were never discovered. That Petyr’s money, his
gold watch, and his papers were not stolen added to the mystery of his death.
Ongoing repairs to the site
led to the early discovery of Petyr’s remains. In spite of extensive head
wounds, Petyr was easily and undeniably identified by van Clausen, as well as
by Charlotte Fontenay, who rode into Port-au-Prince when she heard tell of it,
and was violently disturbed by Petyr’s death, and ‘took to her bed’
in grief.
Van Clausen returned Petyr’s
possessions to the Motherhouse, and at the behest of the order undertook a
further investigation of Petyr’s death.
The files contain letters
not only to and from van Clausen, but also to and from several priests in the
colony, and other persons as well.
Essentially, nothing of any
real importance was discovered, except that Petyr was thought to be mad during
his last day and night in Port-au-Prince, what with his repeated requests for
letters to be mailed to Amsterdam, and repeated instructions that the
Motherhouse be notified in the event of his death.
Several mentions are made of his having been in the company of a strange
dark-haired young man, with whom he conversed at length.
It is difficult to know
how to interpret these statements. But more analysis of Lasher and Lasher’s
powers is contained in the later chapters of these files. It is sufficient to
say that others saw Lasher with Petyr, and believed Lasher to be a human being.
Via Jan van Clausen, Stefan
Franck wrote to Charlotte Fontenay a letter which could not have been
understood by anyone else, explaining what Petyr had written in his last hours,
and imploring her to take heed of whatever Petyr had told her.
No response to this was ever
received.
The desecration of the
cemetery, along with Petyr’s murder, led to its abandonment. No further
burials were made there, and some bodies were moved elsewhere. Even one hundred
years later it was still regarded as a ’haunted place.’
Before Petyr’s last
letters reached Amsterdam, Alexander announced to the other members in the
Motherhouse that Petyr was dead. He asked that the portrait of Deborah Mayfair
by Rembrandt be taken down from the wall.
Stefan Franck complied, and
the painting was stored in the vaults.
Alexander laid hands upon
the piece of paper on which Lasher had written the words ‘Petyr will die,’
and said only that the words were true, but the spirit was ’a liar.’
He could ascertain nothing
more. He warned Stefan Franck to abide by Petyr’s wishes that no one be
sent to Port-au-Prince to speak further with Charlotte as such a person would
be going to his most certain death.
Stefan Franck frequently
attempted to make contact with the spirit of Petyr van Abel. With relief he
reported again and again in notes to the file that his attempts had been a
failure and he was confident that Petyr’s spirit had ’moved on to a
higher plane.’
Ghost stories regarding the
stretch of road where Petyr died were copied into the files as late as 1956.
However none of them pertain to any recognizable figures in this tale.
This brings to a conclusion
the story of Petyr’s investigation of the Mayfair Witches, who can
reliably be considered Petyr’s descendants on the basis of his reports.
The story continues…
Please go to Part V.
SEVENTEEN
THE
FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES
PART
V
The May fair Family from 1689 to 1900
Narrative Abstract by Aaron Lightner
AFTER PETYR‘S DEATH,
it was the decision of Stefan Franck that no further direct contact with the
Mayfair Witches would be attempted in his lifetime. This judgment was upheld by
his successors, Martin Geller and Richard Kramer, respectively.
Though numerous members
petitioned the order to allow them to attempt contact, the decision of the
governing board was always unanimously against it, and the cautionary ban
remained in effect into the twentieth century.
However, the order continued
its investigation of the Mayfair Witches from afar. Information was frequently
sought from people in the colony who never knew the reason for the inquiry, or
the meaning of the information which they sent on.
RESEARCH
METHODS
The Talamasca, during these
centuries, was developing an entire network of ’observers’
worldwide who forwarded newspaper clippings and gossip back to the Motherhouse.
And in Saint-Domingue several people were relied upon for such information,
including Dutch merchants who thought the inquiries of a strictly financial
nature, and various persons in the colony who were told only that people in
Europe would pay dearly for information regarding the Mayfair family. No
professional investigators, comparable to the twentieth century ’private
eye’, existed at this time. Yet an amazing amount of information was
gathered.
Notes to the archives were
brief and often hurried, sometimes no more than a small introduction to the
material being transcribed.
Information about the
Mayfair legacy was obtained surreptitiously and probably illegally through
people in the banks involved who were bribed into revealing it. The Talamasca
has always used such means to acquire information and was only a little less
unscrupulous than it is now in years past. The standard excuse was then, and is
today, that the records obtained in this manner are usually seen by scores of
people in various capacities. Never were private letters purloined, or persons’
homes or businesses violated in criminal fashion.
Paintings of the plantation
house and of various members of the family were obtained through various means.
One portrait of Jeanne Louise Mayfair was obtained from a disgruntled painter
after the lady had rejected the work. A daguerreotype of Katherine and her
husband, Darcy Monahan, was obtained in similar fashion, as the family bought
only five of the ten different pictures attempted at that sitting.
There was evidence from time
to time that the Mayfairs knew of our existence and of our observations. At
least one observer - a Frenchman who worked for a time as an overseer on the
Mayfair plantation in Saint-Domingue — met with a suspicious and violent
death. This led to greater secrecy and greater care, and less information in
the years that followed.
The bulk of the original
material is very fragile. Numerous photocopies and photographs of the materials
have been made, however, and this work continues with painstaking care.
THE
NARRATIVE YOU ARE NOW READING
The history which follows is
a narrative abstract based upon all of the collected materials and notes,
including several earlier fragmentary narratives in French and in Latin, and in
Talamasca Latin. A full inventory of these materials is attached to the
documents boxes in the Archives in London.
I began familiarizing myself
with this history in 1945 when I first became a member of the Talamasca, and
before I was ever directly involved with the Mayfair Witches. I finished the
first ‘complete version’ of this material in 1956 I have updated,
revised and added to the material continuously ever since The full revision was
done by me in 1979 when the entire history, including Petyr van Abel’s
reoorts, was entered into the computer system of the Talamasca It has been
extremely easy to fully update the material ever since
I did not become directly
involved with the Mayfair Witches until the year 1958 I shall introduce myself
at the appropriate time
Aaron
Lightner, January 1989
THE
HISTORY CONTINUES
Charlotte Mayfair Fontenay
lived to be almost seventy-six years old, dying in 1743, at which time she had
five children and seventeen grandchildren Maye Faire remained throughout her
lifetime the most prosperous plantation in Saint-Dommgue Several of her grand
children returned to France, and their descendants perished in the Revolution
at the end of the century
Charlotte’s firstborn,
by her husband Antoine, did not inherit his father’s disability, but grew
up to be healthy, to marry, and to have seven children However, the plantation
called Maye Faire passed to him only in name It was in fact inherited by
Charlotte’s daughter Jeanne Louise, who was born nine months after Petyr’s
death
All his life Antoine
Fontenay III deferred to Jeanne Louise and to her twin brother, Peter, who was
never called by the French version of that name, Pierre There is little doubt
that these were the children of Petyr van Abel Both Jeanne Louise and Peter
were fair of complexion, with light brown hair and pale eyes
Charlotte gave birth to two
more boys before the death of her crippled husband The gossip in the colonies
named two different individuals as the fathers Both these boys grew to manhood
and emigrated to France They used the name Fontenay
Jeanne Louise went only by
the name of Mayfair on all official documents, and though she married young to
a dissolute and drunken husband, her lifelong companion was her brother, Peter,
who never married He died only hours before Jeanne Louise, in 1771. No one
questioned the legality of her using the name Mayfair, but accepted her word
that it was a family custom Later, her only daughter, Angelique, was to do the
same thing
Charlotte wore the emerald
necklace given her by her mother until she died Thereafter Jeanne Louise wore
it, and passed it on to her fifth child, Angelique, who was born in 1725 By the
time this daughter was born, Jeanne Louise’s husband was mad and confined
to ’a small house’ on the property, which from all descriptions
seems to be the house in which Petyr was imprisoned years before
It is doubtful that this man
was the father of Angelique And it seems reasonable, though by no means
certain, that Angelique was the child of Jeanne Louise and her brother Peter
Angelique called Peter her ‘Papa’
in front of everyone, and it was said among the servants that she believed
Peter was her father as she had never known the madman in the outbuilding, who
was chained in his last years rather like a wild beast It should be noted that
the treatment of this madman was not considered cruel or unusual by those who
knew the family
It was also rumored that
Jeanne Louise and Peter shared a suite of connecting bedrooms and parlors added
to the old plantation house shortly after Jeanne Louise’s marriage
Whatever gossip circulated
about the secret habits of the family, Jeanne Louise wielded the same power
over everyone that Charlotte had wielded, maintaining a hold upon her slaves
through immense generosity and personal attention in an era that was famed for quite
the opposite
Jeanne Louise is described
as an exceptionally beautiful woman, much admired and much sought after She was
never described as evil, sinister, or a witch Those whom the Talamasca
contacted during Jeanne Louise’s lifetime knew nothing of the family’s
European origins
Runaway slaves frequently
came to Jeanne Louise to implore her intervention with a cruel master or
mistress She often bought such unfortunates, binding them to her with a fierce
loyalty She was a law unto herself at Maye Farre, and did execute more than one
slave for treachery However, the goodwill of her slaves towards her was well
known
Angehque was Jeanne Louise’s
favorite child, and Angelique was devoted to her grandmother, Charlotte, and
was with the old woman when she died.
A fierce storm surrounded
Maye Faire on the night of Charlotte’s death, which did not abate till
early morning, at which time one of Angelique’s brothers was found dead.
Angelique married a very
handsome and rich planter by the name of Vincent St Christophe in the year
1755, giving birth five years later to Marie Claudette Mayfair, who later
married Henri Marie Landry and was the first of the Mayfair witches to come to
Louisiana. Angehque also had two sons, one of whom died in childhood, and the
second of whom, Lestan, lived into old age
Every evidence indicates
that Angehque loved Vincent St Christophe and was faithful to him all their
lives. Mane Claudette was also devoted to him and there seems no question that
he was her father.
The pictures which we possess
of Angehque show her to be not as beautiful as either her mother or her
daughter, her features being smaller and her eyes being smaller. But she was
nevertheless extremely attractive, with very curly dark brown hair, and was
thought of as a beauty in her prime.
Marie Claudette was
exceptionally beautiful, strongly resembling her handsome father Vincent St Christophe
as much as her mother She had very dark hair and blue eyes, and was extremely
small and delicate Her husband, Henri Marie Landry, was also a good-looking
man. In fact, it was said of the family by that time that they always married
for beauty, and never for money or for love.
Vincent St Christophe was a
sweet, gentle soul who liked to paint pictures and play the guitar. He spent
much time on a small lake built for him on the plantation, making up songs
which he would later sing to Angehque. After his death Angehque had several
lovers, but refused to remarry. This too was a pattern with the Mayfair women;
they usually married once only, or only once with any success.
What characterizes the
family through the lifetimes of Charlotte, Jeanne Louise, Angelique, and Marie
Claudette is respectability, wealth, and power Mayfair wealth was legendary
within the Caribbean world, and those who entered into disputes with the
Mayfairs met with violence often enough for there to be talk of it. It was said
to be ’unlucky’ to fight with the Mayfair family
The slaves regarded
Charlotte, Jeanne Louise, Angehque, and Marie Claudette as powerful
sorceresses. They came to them for the curing of illnesses; and they believed
that their mistresses ’knew’ everything
But there is scant evidence
that anyone other than the slaves took these stories seriously Or that the
Mayfair Witches aroused either suspicion or ’irrational’ fear among
their peers The preeminence of the family remained completely unchallenged
People vied for invitations to Maye Faire. The family entertained often and
lavishly. Both the men and the women were much sought after in the marriage
market.
How much other members of
the family understood about the power of the witches is uncertain. Angehque had
both a brother and a sister who emigrated to France, and another brother,
Maurice, who remained at home, having two sons — Louis-Pierre and Martin —
who also married and remained part of the Saint-Domingue family. They later
went to Louisiana with Mane Claudette Maurice and his sons went by the name of
Mayfair, as do their descendants in Louisiana to the present day.
Of Angehque’s six
children, two girls died early, and two boys emigrated to France, the other,
Lestan, going to Louisiana with his sister Mane Claudette.
The men of the family never
attempted to claim the plantation or to control the money, though under French
law they were entitled to do both On the contrary, they tended to accept the
dominance of the chosen women; and financial records as well as gossip indicate
that they were enormously wealthy men.
Perhaps some compensation
was paid to them for their submissiveness. Or perhaps they were accepting by
nature. No tales of rebellion or quarrels have been passed on The brother of
Angehque who died during the storm on the night of Charlotte’s death was
a young boy said to be kindly and acquiescent by nature. Her brother Maurice
was known to be an agreeable, likable man, who participated in the management
of the plantation.
Several descendants of those
who emigrated to France during the 17005 were executed in the French Revolution
None of those emigrating before 1770 used the name Mayfair. And the Talamasca
has lost track of these various lines
During this entire period
the family was Catholic. It supported the Catholic church in Saint-Domingue,
and one son of Pierre Fontenay, Charlotte’s brother-in-law, became a
priest Two women in the family became Carmelite nuns One was executed in the
French Revolution, along with all the members of her community
The money of the colonial
family, during all these years as their coffee and sugar and tobacco poured
into Europe and into North America, was frequently deposited in foreign banks
The degree of wealth was enormous even for the multimillionaires of Hispaniola,
and the family seems always to have possessed quite fantastic amounts of gold
and jewels This is not at all typical of a planter family, whose fortunes are
generally connected with the land and easily subject to ruin
As a consequence the Mayfair
family survived the Haitian revolution with enormous wealth, though all of its
land holdings on the island were irretrievably lost
It was Marie Claudette, who
established the Mayfair legacy in 1789, right before the revolution that forced
the family to leave Saint-Domingue Her parents were by that time dead The
legacy was later enhanced and refined by Mane Claudette after she was settled
in Louisiana, at which time she shifted a great portion of her money from banks
in Holland and Rome to banks in London and in New York
THE LEGACY
The legacy is an immensely
complicated and quasi-legal series of arrangements, made largely through the
banks holding the money, which establishes a fortune that cannot be manipulated
by any one country’s inheritance laws Essentially it conserves the bulk
of the Mayfair money and property in the hands of one person in each
generation, this heir to the fortune being designated by the living
beneficiary, except that should the beneficiary die without making the
designation, the money goes to her eldest daughter Only if there is no living
female descendant will the legacy go to a man However, the beneficiary may
designate a male, if she chooses
To the knowledge of the
Talamasca, the beneficiary of the legacy has never died without designating an
heir, and the legacy has never passed to a male child Rowan Mayfair, the
youngest living Mayfair Witch, was designated at birth by her mother Deirdre,
who was designated at birth by Antha, who was designated by Stella, and so
forth and so on
However, there have been
times in the history of the family when the designee has been changed For
example, Marie Claudette designated her first daughter, Claire Marie, and then
later changed this designation to Marguerite, her third child, and there is no
evidence that Claire Marie ever knew that she was designated, though Marguerite
knew she was the heiress long before Marie Claudette’s death
The legacy also provides
enormous benefits for the beneficiary’s other children (the siblings of
the heir) in each generation, the amount for women usually being twice that
given to the men However, no member of the family could inherit from the legacy
unless he or she used the name Mayfair publicly and privately Where laws
prohibited the heir from using the name legally, it was nevertheless used
customarily, and never legally challenged
This served to keep alive
the name of Mayfair well into the present century And in numerous instances,
members of the family passed the rule on to their descendants along with their
fortunes, though nothing legally required them to do so, once they were one
step removed from the original legacy
The original legacy also
contains complex provisions for destitute Mayfairs claiming assistance, as long
as they have always used the name Mayfair and are descended from those who used
it The beneficiary may also leave up to ten percent of the legacy to other ‘Mayfairs’
who are not her children, but once more, the name Mayfair must be in active use
by such a person or the provisions of the will are null and void
In the twentieth century,
numerous ’cousins’ have received money from the legacy, primarily
through Mary Beth Mayfair, and her daughter Stella, but some also through
Deirdre, the money being administered for her by Cortland Mayfair Many of these
people are now ’rich,’ as the bequest was frequently made in
connection with investments or business ventures of which the beneficiary or
her administrator approved
The Talamasca knows today of
some five hundred and fifty descendants all using the name Mayfair, easily one
half of these people know the core family in New Orleans, and know something
about the legacy, though they are many generations removed from their original
inheritance
Stella gathered together
some four hundred Mayfairs and related families in 1927 at the house on First
Street, and there is considerable evidence that she was interested in the other
psychic members of the family, but the story of Stella will be related further
on.
DESCENDANTS
The Talamasca has
investigated numerous descendants, and found that among them mild psychic
powers are common Some exhibit exceptional psychic powers It is also common to
speak of the ancestors of Saint-Domingueas ’witches’ and to say
that they were ‘lovers of the devil’ and sold their souls to him,
and that the devil made the family rich
These tales are now told
lightly and often with humor or with wonder and curiosity, and the majority of
the descendants with whom the Talamasca has made limited contact do not really
know anything concrete about their history They do not even know the names of
the ’witches ’ They know nothing of Suzanne or Deborah, though they
do banter about statements such as ‘Our ancestors were burnt at the stake
in Europe,’ and ‘We have a long history of witchcraft ’ They
have rather vague notions about the legacy, knowing that one person is the mam
beneficiary of the legacy and they know the name of that one person, but not
much else
However, descendants in the
New Orleans area know a great deal about the core family They attend wakes and
funerals, and were gathered together on countless occasions by Mary Beth and by
Stella, as we shall see The Talamasca possesses numerous pictures of these
people, in family gatherings and singly
Stories among all these
people of seeing ghosts, of precognition, of ’phone calls from the dead,’
and of mild telekinesis are by no means uncommon Mayfairs who know almost
nothing of the New Orleans family have been involved in no less than ten
different ghost stories contained in various published books Three different
distantly related Mayfairs have exhibited enormous powers But there is no
evidence that they understood or used these powers to any purpose To the best
of our knowledge, they have no connection to the witches, to the legacy, to the
emerald necklace, or to Lasher.
There is a saying that all
the Mayfairs ’feel it’ when the beneficiary of the legacy dies
Descendants of the Mayfair
family fear Carlotta Mayfair, the guardian of Deirdre Mayfair, the present
beneficiary, and regard her as a ’witch,’ but the word in this case
is more closely related to the vernacular term for an unpleasant woman than to
anything pertaining to the supernatural.
SUMMARY
OF MATERIALS
RELATING
TO THE SAINT-DO MINGUE YEARS
To return to an appraisal of
the family in the seventeen hundreds, it is undeniably characterized by
strength, success, and wealth, by longevity and enduring relationships And the
witches of the period must be perceived as extremely successful It can safely
be assumed that they controlled Lasher completely to their satisfaction However,
we honestly do not know whether or not this is true We simply
have no evidence to the contrary There are no specific sightings of Lasher
There is no evidence of tragedy within the family
Accidents befalling enemies
of the family, the family’s continued accumulation of jewels and gold,
and the countless stories told by the slaves as to the omnipotence or
infallibility of their mistresses constitute the only evidence of supernatural
intervention, and none of this is reliable evidence
Closer observation through
trained investigators might have told a very different tale.
THE
MAYFAIR FAMILY IN LOUISIANA
IN
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Several days before the
Haitian revolution (the only successful slave uprising in history), Marie
Claudette was warned by her slaves that she and her family might be massacred
She and her children, her brother Lestan and his wife and children, and her
uncle Maurice and his two sons and their wives and children escaped with
apparent ease and an amazing amount of personal possessions, a veritable
caravan of wagons leaving Maye Faire for the nearby port Some fifty of Marie
Claudette’s personal slaves, half of whom were of mixed blood, and some
of whom were undoubtedly the progeny of Mayfair men, went with the family to
Louisiana. We can assume that numerous books and written records also went with
them, and some of these materials have been glimpsed since, as these reports
will show.
Almost from the moment of
their arrival in Louisiana, the Talamasca was able to acquire more information
about the Mayfair Witches. Several of our contacts in Louisiana were already
established on account of two dramatic hauntings that had taken place in that
city; and at least two of our members had visited the city, one to investigate
a haunting and the other on his way to other places in the South.
Another reason for the
increased information was that the Mayfair family itself seems to have become
more ’visible’ to people. Torn from its position of near feudal
power and isolation in Saint-Domingue, it was thrown into contact with
countless new persons, including merchants, churchmen, slave traders, brokers,
colonial officials, and the like. And the wealth of the Mayfairs, as well as
their sudden appearance on the scene so to speak, aroused immense curiosity.
All sorts of tales were
collected about them from the very hour of their arrival. And the flow of
information became even richer as time went on.
Changes in the nineteenth
century also contributed, inevitably, to the increased flow of information. The
growth of newspapers and periodicals, the increase in the keeping of detailed
records, the invention of photography, all made it easier to compile a more
detailed anecdotal history of the Mayfair family.
Indeed, the growth of New
Orleans into a teeming and prosperous port city created an environment in which
dozens of people could be questioned about the Mayfairs without anyone’s
ever noticing us or our investigators.
So what must be borne in
mind as we study the continued history of the Mayfairs is that, though the
family appears to change dramatically in the nineteenth century, it could be
that the family did not change at all. The only change may have been in
our investigative methods. We learned more about what went on behind closed
doors.
In other words, if we knew
more about the Saint-Domingue years, we might have seen greater continuity. But
then again, perhaps not.
Whatever the case, the
witches of the 1900s — with the exception of Mary Beth Mayfair, who was
not born until 1872 - appear to have been
much weaker than those who ruled the family during the Saint’ Domingue
years. And the decline of the Mayfair Witches, which became so marked in the
twentieth century, can be seen - on the basis of our fragmentary evidence - to
have begun before the Civil War. But the picture is more complicated than that,
as we shall see.
Changing attitudes and
changing times in general may have played a significant role in the decline of
the witches. That is, as the family became less aristocratic and feudal, and
more ’civilized’ or ’bourgeois,’ its members might have
become more confused regarding their heritage and their powers, and more
generally inhibited. For though the planter class of Louisiana referred to
itself as ‘the aristocracy,’ it was definitely not aristocratic in
the European sense of that word, and was characterized by what we now define as
’middle-class values.’
‘Modern psychiatry’
also seems to have played a role in inhibiting and confusing the Mayfair
Witches, and we will go into that in greater detail when we deal with the
Mayfair family in the twentieth century.
But for the most part we can
only speculate about these things. Even when direct contact between the order
and the Mayfair Witches was established in the twentieth century, we were
unable to learn as much as we had hoped.
Bearing all this in
mind…
THE HISTORY CONTINUES…
Upon arrival in New Orleans,
Marie Claudette moved her family into a large house in the Rue Dumaine, and
immediately acquired an enormous plantation at Riverbend, south of the city,
building a plantation house that was larger and more luxurious than its
counterpart in Saint-Domingue. This plantation was called La Victoire at
Riverbend, and was known later simply as Riverbend. It was carried away by the
river in 1896; however, much of the land there is still owned by the Mayfairs,
and is presently the site of an oil refinery.
Maurice Mayfair, Marie
Claudette’s uncle, lived out his life at this plantation, but his two
sons purchased adjacent plantations of their own, where they lived in close
contact with Marie Claudette’s family. A few descendants of these men
stayed on that land up until 1890, and many other descendants moved to New
Orleans. They made up the ever increasing number of ’cousins’ who
were a constant factor in Mayfair life for the next one hundred years
There are numerous published
drawings of Mane Claudette’s plantation house and even several photographs
in old books, now out of print It was large even for the period and, predating
the ostentatious Greek Revival style, it was a simple colonial structure with
plain rounded columns, a pitched roof, and galleries, much like the house in
Saint-Domingue It was two rooms thick, with hallways bisecting it from north to
south and east to west, and had a full lower floor, as well as a very high and
spacious attic floor
The plantation included two
enormous gargonmeres where the male members of the family lived, including
Lestan in his later widowhood, and his four sons, all of whom went by the name
of Mayfair (Maurice always lived in the main house )
Marie Claudette was every
bit as successful in Louisiana as she and her ancestors had been in Saint-Dommgue
Once again, she cultivated sugar, but gave up the cultivation of coffee and
tobacco She bought smaller plantations for each of Lestan’s sons, and
gave lavish gifts to their children and their children’s children
From the first weeks of
their arrival, the family was regarded with awe and suspicion Mane Claudette
frightened people, and entered into a number of disputes in setting up business
in Louisiana, and was not above threatening anyone who stood in her path She
bought up enormous numbers of slaves for her fields, and in the tradition of
her ancestors, treated these slaves very well But she did not treat merchants
very well, and drove more than one merchant off her property with a whip,
insisting that he had tried to cheat her
She was described by the
local witnesses as ‘formidable’ and ‘unpleasant,’
though still a handsome woman And her personal slaves and free mixed-blood
servants were greatly feared by the slaves she purchased in Louisiana
Within a short time, she was
heralded as a sorceress by the slaves on her land, it was said that she could
not be deceived, and that she could give ‘the evil eye, and that she had
a demon whom she could send after anyone who crossed her brother Lestan was
more generally liked, and apparently fell in at once with the drinking and
gambling planter class of the area
Henri Mane Landry, her
husband, seems to have been a likable but passive individual who left
absolutely everything to his wife He read botanical journals from Europe and
collected rare flowers from all over the South and designed and cultivated an
enormous garden at Riverbend
He died in bed, in 1824,
after receiving the sacraments
In 1799 Marie Claudette gave
birth to the last of her children, Marguerite, who later became the designee of
the legacy, and who lived in Marie Claudette’s shadow until Marie
Claudette’s death in.
There was much gossip about
Marie Claudette’s family life It was said that her oldest daughter,
Claire Marie, was feeble-minded, and there are numerous stories about this
young woman wandering about in her nightgown, and saying strange though often
delightful things to people She saw ghosts and talked to them all the time,
sometimes right in the middle of supper before amazed guests.
She also ’knew’
things about people and would blurt out these secrets at odd moments She was
kept at home, and though more than one man fell in love with her, Marie
Claudette never allowed Claire Marie to marry In her old age, after the death
of her husband, Henri Marie Landry, Marie Claudette slept with Claire Mane, to
watch her and keep her from roaming about and getting lost.
She was often seen on the
galleries in her nightgown.
Marie Claudette’s only
son, Pierre, was never allowed to marry either He ’fell in love’
twice, but both times gave in to his mother when she refused to grant
permission for the wedding His second ‘secret fiancee’ tried to
take her own life when she was rejected by Pierre After that he seldom went
out, but was often seen in the company of his mother
Pierre was a doctor of sorts
to the slaves, curing them with various potions and remedies He even studied
medicine for a while with an old drunken doctor in New Orleans But nothing much
came of this He also enjoyed botany and spent much time working in the garden,
and drawing pictures of flowers Botanical sketches done by Pierre are in
existence today in the famous Mayfair house on First Street.
It was no secret that about
the year 1820 Pierre took a quadroon mistress in New Orleans, an exquisite
young woman who might have passed for white, according to the gossip By her
Pierre had two children, a daughter who went north and passed into the white
race, and a son, Francois, born in 1825, who remained in Louisiana and later
handled substantial amounts of paperwork for the family in New Orleans A
genteel clerk, he seems to have been thought of affectionately by the white
Mayfairs, especially the men who came into town to conduct business
Everyone in the family
apparently adored Marguerite When she was ten years old, her portrait was
painted, showing her wearing the famous emerald necklace This is an odd
picture, because the child is small and the necklace is large As of 1927, the
picture was hanging on a wall in the First Street house in New Orleans
Marguerite was delicate of
build, with dark hair and large slightly upturned black eyes She was considered
a beauty, and called La Petite Gypsy by her nurses, who loved to brush her long
black wavy hair Unlike her feebleminded sister and her compliant brother, she
had a fierce temper and a violent and unpredictable sense of humor.
At age twenty, against Marie
Claudette’s wishes, she married Tyrone Clifford McNamara, an opera
singer, and another Very hand-some’ man, of an extremely impractical
nature, who toured widely in the United States, starring in operas in New York,
Boston, St Louis, and other cities It was only after he had left on one such
tour that Marguerite returned from New Orleans to Riverbend and was received
once more by her mother In 1827 and 1828, she gave birth to boys, Remy and
Julien McNamara came home frequently during this period, but only for brief
visits In New York, Boston, Baltimore, and other places where he appeared he
was famous for womanizing and drinking, and for getting into brawls But he was
a very popular ‘Irish tenor’ of the period, and he packed houses
wherever he went.
In 1829, Tyrone Clifford
McNamara and an Irishwoman, presumably his mistress, were found dead after a
fire in a little house in the French Quarter which had been bought for the
woman by McNamara Police reports and newspaper stories of the time indicate the
pair was overcome with smoke when trying vainly to escape The lock on the front
door had been broken There was a child from this union, apparently, who was not
in the house at the time of the fire He later went north
This fire engendered
considerable gossip in New Orleans, and it was at this time that the Talamasca
gamed more personal information about the family than it had been able to
acquire in years.
A French Quarter merchant
told one of our ’witnesses’ that Marguerite had sent her devil to
take care of 'those two’ and that Marguerite knew more about voodoo than
any black person in Louisiana Marguerite was reputed to have a voodoo altar in
her home, to work with unguents and potions as cures and for love, and to go everywhere
in the company of two beautiful quadroon servants, Marie and Virgime, and a
mulatto coachman named Octavius Octavius was said to be a bastard son of one of
Maurice Mayfair’s sons, Louis-Pierre, but this was not a well-circulated
tale
Marie Claudette was still
living then, but seldom went out anymore, and it was said that she had taught
her daughter the black arts learned in Haiti It was Marguerite who drew
attention everywhere that she went, especially in view of the fact that her
brother Pierre lived a fairly respectable life, was very discreet about his
quadroon mistress, and Uncle Lestan’s children were also entirely
respectable and well liked
Even by her late twenties,
Marguerite had become a gaunt and somewhat frightening figure, with often unkempt
hair and glowing dark eyes, and a sudden disconcerting laugh She always wore
the Mayfair emerald
She received merchants and
brokers and guests in an immense book-lined study at Riverbend which was full
of ’horrible and disgusting’ things such as human skulls, stuffed
and mounted swamp animals, trophy heads from African safaris, and animal-skin
rugs She had numerous mysterious bottles and jars, and people claimed to have
seen human body parts in these jars She was reputed to be an avid collector of trinkets
and amulets made by slaves, especially those who had recently been imported
from Africa
There were several cases of ’possession’
among her slaves at the time, which involved frightened slave witnesses running
away and priests coming to the plantation In every case, the victim was chained
up and exorcism was tried without success, and the ‘possessed’
creature died either from hunger because he could not be made to eat, or from
some injury sustained in his wild convulsions
There were rumors that such
a possessed slave was chained in the attic, but the local authorities never
acted upon this by investigation
At least four different
witnesses mention Marguerite’s ’mysterious dark-haired lover,’
a man seen in her private apartments by her slaves, and also seen in her suite at
the St Louis Hotel when she came into New Orleans, and in her box at the French
Opera. Much gossip surrounded the question of this lover or companion. The
mysterious manner in which he came and went puzzled everyone.
‘Now you see him, now
you don’t,’ was the saying.
These constitute the
first mentions of Lasher in over one hundred years.
Marguerite married almost
immediately after Tyrone Clifford McNamara’s death, a tall penniless
riverboat gambler named Arlington Kerr who vanished completely six months after
the marriage. Nothing is known about him except that he was ’as beautiful
as a woman,’ and a drunkard, and played cards all night long in the
garconniere with various drunken guests and with the mulatto coachman. It is
worth noting that more was heard about this man than was ever seen of him. That
is, most of our stories about him are third hand or even fourth hand. It is
interesting to speculate that perhaps such a person never existed.
He was however legally the
father of Katherine Mayfair, born 1830, who became the next beneficiary of the
legacy and the first of the Mayfair Witches in many generations who did not
know her grandmother, as Marie Claudette died the following year.
Slaves up and down the river
coast circulated the tale that Marguerite had murdered Arlington Kerr and put
his body in pieces in various jars, but no one ever investigated this tale, and
the story let out by the family was that Arlington Kerr could not adapt to the
planter’s life, and so left Louisiana, penniless as he had come, and
Marguerite said ’good riddance.’
In her twenties, Marguerite
was famous for attending the dances of the slaves, and even for dancing with
them. Without doubt she had the Mayfair power to heal, and presided at births
regularly. But as time passed she was accused of stealing the babies of her
slaves, and this is the first Mayfair witch whom the slaves not only feared but
came to personally abhor.
After the age of
thirty-five, she did not actively manage the plantation but put everything in
the hands of her cousin Augustin, a son of her uncle Lestan, who proved a more
than capable manager. Pierre, Marguerite’s brother, helped somewhat in
the decisions that were made; but it was principally Augustin, answering only
to Marguerite, who ran things.
Augustin was feared by the
slaves, but they apparently regarded him as predictable and sane.
Whatever, the plantation
during these years made a fortune. And the Mayfairs continued to make enormous
deposits in foreign banks and northern American banks, and to throw money
around wherever they went.
By forty, Marguerite was ’a
hag,’ according to observers, though she could have been a handsome woman
had she bothered to pin up her hair and give even the smallest attention to her
clothing.
When her eldest son, Julien,
was fifteen, he began to manage the plantation along with his cousin Augustin,
and gradually Julien took over the management completely. At his eighteenth
birthday supper, an unfortunate ’accident’ took place with a new
pistol, at which time ’poor Uncle Augustin’ was shot in the head
and killed by Julien.
This may have been a
legitimate accident, as every report of it indicates that Julien was ’prostrate
with grief afterwards. More than one story maintains that the two were
wrestling with the gun when the accident happened. One story says that Julien
had challenged Augustin’s honesty, and Augustin had threatened to blow
his own brains out on account of this, and Julien was trying to stop him. Another
story says that Augustin accused Julien of a ’crime against nature’
with another boy and on that account they began to quarrel, and Augustin
brought out the gun, which Julien tried to take from him.
Whatever the case, no one
was ever charged with any crime, and Julien became the undisputed manager of
the plantation. And even at the tender age of fifteen, Julien had proved well
suited to it, and restored order among the slaves, and doubled the output of
the plantation in the next decade. Throughout his life he remained the true
manager of the property, though Katherine, his younger sister, inherited the
legacy.
Marguerite spent the last
decades of her very long life reading all the time in the library full of ’horrible
and disgusting’ things. She talked to herself out loud almost all the
time. And would stand in front of mirrors and have very long conversations in
English with her reflection. She would also talk at length to her plants, many
of which had come from the original garden created by her father, Henri Marie
Landry.
She was very fond of her many
cousins, children and grandchildren of Maurice Mayfair and Lestan Mayfair, and
they were fiercely loyal to her, though she engendered talk continuously.
The slaves grew to hate
Marguerite and would not go near her, except for her quadroons Virginie and
Mane, and it was said that Virgime bullied her a bit in her old age.
A runaway in 1859 told the
parish priest that Marguerite had stolen her baby and cut it up for the devil
The priest told the local authorities and there were inquiries, but apparently
Julien and Kathenne, who were very well liked and admired by everyone and quite
capably running Riverbend, explained that the slave woman had miscarried and
there was no baby to speak of, but that it had been baptized and buried
properly.
Whatever else was going on,
Remy, Julien, and Katherine grew up apparently happy and inundated with luxury,
enjoying all that antebellum New Orleans had to offer at its height, including
the theater, the opera, and endless private entertainments.
They frequently came to town
as a trio, with only a quadroon governess to watch over them, staying in a
lavish suite at the St Louis Hotel and buying out the fashionable stores before
their return to the country There was a shocking story at the time that
Katherine wanted to see the famous quadroon balls where the young women of
mixed blood danced with their white suitors; and so she went with her quadroon
maid to the balls, and had herself presented there as being of mixed blood, and
fooled everyone. She had very dark hair and dark eyes and pale skin, and did
not look in the least African, but then many of the quadroons did not. Julien
had a hand in the affair, introducing his sister to several white men who had
not met her before and believed her to be a quadroon.
The tale stunned the old
guard when they heard it. The young white men who had danced with Katherine,
believing her to be ’colored,’ were humiliated and outraged
Katherine and Julien and Remy thought the story was amusing. Julien fought at
least one duel over the affair, badly wounding his opponent.
In 1857, when Katherine was
seventeen, she and her brothers bought a piece of property on First Street in
the Garden District of New Orleans and hired Darcy Monahan, the Irish
architect, to build a house there, which is the present Mayfair home. It is
likely that the purchase was the idea of Julien, who wanted a permanent city
residence.
Whatever the case, Katherine
and Darcy Monahan fell deeply in love, and Juhen proved to be insanely jealous
of his sister and would not permit her to marry so young. An enormous family
squabble ensued. Juhen moved out of the family home at Riverbend and spent some
time in a flat in the French Quarter with a male companion of whom we know
little except that he was from New York and rumored to be very handsome and
devoted to Juhen in a way that caused people to whisper that the pair were
lovers.
The gossip further relates
that Katherine stole away to New Orleans to be alone with Darcy Monahan in the
unfinished house at First Street, and there the two lovers pledged their fealty
in roofless rooms, or in the wild unfinished garden Juhen became increasingly
miserable in his anger and disapproval, and implored his mother, Marguerite, to
interfere, but Marguerite would take no interest in the matter.
At last Katherine threatened
to run away if her wishes were not granted; and Marguerite gave her official
consent to a small church wedding In a daguerreotype taken after the ceremony, Katherine
is wearing the Mayfair emerald.
Katherine and Darcy moved
into the house on First Street in 1858, and Monahan became the most fashionable
architect and builder in uptown New Orleans. Many witnesses of the period
mention Katherine’s beauty and Darcy’s charm, and what fun it was
to attend the balls given by the two in their new home The Mayfair emerald is
mentioned any number of times.
It was no secret that Juhen
Mayfair was so bitter about the marriage, however, that he would not even visit
his sister He did go back to Riverbend, but spent much time in his French
Quarter flat. At Riverbend, in 1863, Juhen and Darcy and Katherine had a
violent quarrel. Before the servants and some guests, Darcy begged Julien to
accept him, to be affectionate to Katherine, and to be ‘reasonable.’
Juhen threatened to kill
Darcy. And Katherine and Darcy left, never returning as a couple to Riverbend
Katherine gave birth to a
boy named Clay in 1859 and thereafter to three children who all died in
babyhood. Then in 1865, she gave birth to another boy named Vincent, and to two
more children who died in babyhood.
It was said that these lost
children broke her heart, that she took their deaths as a judgment from God,
and that she changed somewhat from the gay, high-spirited girl she had been to
a diffident and confused woman. Nevertheless her life with Darcy seems to have
been rich and full. She loved him very much, and did everything to support him
in his various building enterprises.
We should mention here that
the Civil War had brought no harm whatever to the Mayfair family or fortune.
New Orleans was captured and occupied very early on, with the result that it
was never shelled or burned. And the Mayfairs had much too much money invested
in Europe to be affected by the occupation or subsequent boom-and-bust cycles
in Louisiana.
Union troops were never
quartered on their property, and they were in business with ‘the Yanquees’
almost as soon as the occupation of New Orleans began. Indeed Katherine and
Darcy Monahan entertained Yanquees at First Street much to the bitter disgust
of Julien and Remy, and other members of the family.
This happy life came to an
end when Darcy himself died in 1871 of yellow fever. Katherine, broken-hearted
and half mad, pleaded with her brother Julien to come to her. He was in his
French Quarter flat at the time, and came to her immediately, setting foot in
the First Street house for the first time since its completion.
Julien then remained with
Katherine night and day while the servants took care of the forgotten children.
He slept with her in the master bedroom over the library on the north side of
the house, and even people passing in the street below could hear Katherine’s
continued crying and miserable exclamations of grief over Darcy and her dead
babies.
Twice, Katherine tried to
take her life through poison. The servants told stories of doctors rushing to
the house, of Katherine being given antidotes and made to walk about though she
was only semiconscious and ready to drop, and of a distraught Julien who could
not keep back his tears as he attended to her.
Finally Julien brought
Katherine and the two boys back home to Riverbend, and there in 1872 Katherine
gave birth to Mary Beth Mayfair, who was baptized and registered as Darcy
Monahan’s child, though it seems highly unlikely that Mary Beth was Darcy’s
child, since she was born ten and one-half months after the death of her
father. Julien is almost certainly Mary Beth’s father.
As far as the Talamasca
could determine the servants spread the tale that Julien was, and so did
various nurses who took care of the children. It was common knowledge that
Julien and Katherine slept in the same bed, behind closed doors, and that
Katherine could not have had a lover after Darcy’s death as she never
went out of the house except to make the journey home to the plantation.
But this tale, though
circulated widely among the servant class, never seems to have been accepted or
acknowledged by the peers of the Mayfairs.
Katherine was not only
completely respectable in every other regard, she was enormously rich and
generous and well liked for it, often giving money freely to family and friends
whom the war had devastated. Her attempts at suicide had aroused only pity. And
the old tales of her having gone to the quadroon balls had been completely
erased from the public memory. Also the financial influence of the family was
so far-reaching at the time as to be almost immeasurable. Julien was very
popular in New Orleans society. The talk soon died away and it is doubtful that
it ever had any impact whatsoever on the private or public life of the Mayfairs.
Katherine is described in
1872 as still pretty, in spite of being prematurely gray, and was said to have
a wholesome and engaging manner that easily won people over. A lovely and very
well-preserved tintype of the period shows her seated in a chair with the baby
in her lap, asleep, and the two little boys beside her. She appears healthy and
serene, an attractive woman with a hint of sadness in her eyes. She is not
wearing the Mayfair emerald.
While Mary Beth and her
older brothers, Clay and Vincent, were growing up in the country, Julien’s
brother, Remy Mayfair, and his wife - a Mayfair cousin and grandchild of Lestan
Mayfair - took possession of the Mayfair house, and lived there for years,
having three children, all of whom went by the name of Mayfair and two of whom
have descendants in Louisiana.
It was during this time that
Julien began to visit the house, and to make an office for himself in the
library there. (This library, and master bedroom above it, was part of a wing
added to the original structure by Darcy in 1867.) Julien had bookcases built
into two walls of the room, and stocked them with many of the Mayfair family
records that had always been kept at the plantation. We know that many of these
books were very old and some were written in Latin Julien also moved many old
paintings to the house, including ’portraits from the i6oos’
Julien loved books and
filled the library as well with the classics and with popular novels He adored
Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe, and also Charles Dickens
There is some evidence that
quarrels with Katherine drove Julien into town, away from Riverbend, though he
never neglected his duties there But if Katherine drove him away, certainly his
little niece (or daughter) Mary Beth brought him back, for he was always
swooping down upon her with cartloads of gifts and stealing her away for weeks
on end in New Orleans This devotion did not prevent him from getting married,
in 1875, to a Mayfair cousin, a descendant of Maurice and a celebrated beauty
Her name was Suzette
Mayfair, and Julien so loved her that he commissioned no less than ten
portraits of her during the first years of their marriage They lived together
in the First Street house apparently in complete harmony with Remy and his
family, perhaps because in every respect Remy deferred to Juhen
Suzette seems to have loved
little Mary Beth, though she had four children of her own in the next five
years, including three boys and a girl, named Jeannette
Katherine never voluntarily
returned to the First Street house It reminded her too much of Darcy When in
old age she was forced to return, it unsettled her mind, and at the turn of the
century she became a tragic figure, eternally dressed in black, and roaming the
gardens in search of Darcy
Of all the Mayfair Witches
studied to date, Katherine was perhaps the weakest and the least significant
Her children Clay and Vincent were both entirely respectable and unremarkable
Clay and Vincent married early and had large families, and their descendants
now live in New Orleans
What we know seems to
indicate that Katherine was ’broken’ by Darcy’s death And is
thereafter never described as anything but ‘sweet’ and ’gentle’
and ’patient’ She never took part in the management of Riverbend,
but left it all to Julien, who eventually put it in the hands of Clay and
Vincent Mayfair and of paid overseers
Katherine spent more and
more of her time with her mother, Marguerite, who had become with each decade
ever more peculiar A visitor in the i88os describes Marguerite as ’quite
impossible,’ a crone who went about night and day in stained white lace,
and spent hours reading aloud in a horrid unmodulated voice in her library She
is said to have insulted people carelessly and at random She was fond of her
niece Angehne (Remy’s daughter) and of Katherine She constantly mistook
Kathenne’s children Clay and Vincent for their uncles, Julien or Remy Katherine
was described as gray-haired and worn, and always at work on her embroidery
Katherine seems to have been
a strict Catholic in later life She went to daily Mass at the parish church and
lavish christening parties were held for all of Clay’s children and
Vincent’s children
Marguerite did not die until
she was ninety-two, at which time Katherine was sixty-one years old
But other than the tales of
incest, which characterize the Mayfair history since the time of Jeanne Louise
and Pierre, there are no occult stories about Katherine
The black servants, slave or
free, were never afraid of Katherine There are no sightings of any mysterious
dark-haired lover And there is no evidence to indicate that Darcy Monahan died
of anything but plain old yellow fever
It has even been speculated
by the members of the Talamasca that Julien was actually ‘the witch’
of this entire period that perhaps no other natural medium was presented in
this generation of the family, and as Marguerite grew old, Julien began to
exhibit the power It has also been speculated that Katherine was a natural
medium but that she rejected her role when she fell in love with Darcy, and that
is why Julien was so against her marriage, for Julien knew the secrets of the
family
Indeed, we have an abundance
of information to suggest that Julien was a witch, if not the witch of the
Mayfair family
It is therefore imperative
that we study Julien in some detail As late as the 19505, fascinating
information about Julien was recounted to us At some point, the history of
Julien must be enlarged through further investigations and further collation
and examination of the existing documents Our reports on the Mayfairs
throughout these decades are voluminous and repetitive And there are numerous
public and recorded mentions of Julien, and there are three oil portraits of
him in American museums, and one in London.
Julien’s black hair
turned completely white while he was still quite young, and his numerous
photographs as well as these oil paintings show him to be a man of considerable
presence and charm, as well as physical beauty Some have said that he resembled
his opera singer father, Tyrone Clifford McNamara.
But it has struck some
members of the Talamasca that Juhen strongly resembled his ancestors Deborah
Mayfair and Petyr van Abel, who of course in no way resembled each other Juhen
seems a remarkable combination of these two forebears He has Petyr’s height,
profile, and blue eyes, and Deborah’s delicate cheekbones and mouth His
expression in several of his portraits is amazingly like that of Deborah.
It is as if the
nineteenth-century portraitist had seen the Rembrandt of Deborah - which was of
course impossible as it has always been in our vault and consciously sought to
imitate the ’personality’ captured by Rembrandt We can only assume
that Juhen evinced that personality It is also worth noting that in most of his
photographs, in spite of the somber pose and other formal aspects of the work,
Juhen is smiling.
It is a ‘Mona Lisa’
smile, but it is nevertheless a smile, and strikes a bizarre note since it is
wholly out of keeping with nineteenth-century photographic conventions Five
tintypes of Juhen in our possession show the same subtle little smile And
smiles in tintypes of this era are completely unknown It is as if Juhen found ’picture
taking’ amusing Photographs taken near the end of Julien’s life, in
the twentieth century, also show a smile, but it is broader and more generous
It is worth noting that in these later pictures he appears extremely
good-natured, and quite simply happy.
Juhen was certainly the
magnate of the family all of his life, more or less governing nieces and
nephews as well as his sister, Katherine, and his brother, Remy.
That he incited fear and
confusion in his enemies was well-known It was reported by one furious cotton
factor that Juhen had, in a dispute, caused another man’s clothing to
burst into flame The fire was hastily put out, and the man recovered from his
rather serious burns, and no action was ever taken against Juhen Indeed, many
who heard the story including the local police - did not believe it Juhen
laughed whenever he was asked about it But there is also a story, told by only
one witness, that Juhen could set anything on fire by his will, and that his
mother teased him about it
In another famous incident,
Juhen caused all the objects of a room to fly about when he went into a rage,
and then could not bring a halt to the confusion He went out, shut the door on
the little storm, and sank into helpless laughter There is also an isolated
story, dependent upon one witness, that Juhen murdered one of his boyhood
tutors
None of the Mayfairs up to
this period attended any regular school But all were well educated privately
Juhen was no exception, having several tutors during his youth One of these, a
handsome Yankee from Boston, was found drowned in a bayou near Riverbend, and
it was said that Juhen strangled him and threw him in the water Again, this was
never investigated, and the entire Mayfair family was indignant at this gossip
Servants who spread the story at once retracted it
This Boston schoolteacher
had been a great source of information about the family He gossiped continuously
about Marguerite’s strange habits, and about how the slaves feared her It
is from him that we gained our descriptions of her bottles and jars full of
strange body parts and objects He claimed to have fought off advances from
Marguerite Indeed, so vicious and unwise was his gossip that more than one
person warned the family about it
Whether Juhen did kill the
man cannot be known, but if he did, he had given the attitudes of the day at
least some reason
Juhen was said to give out
foreign gold coins as if they were copper pennies Waiters at the fashionable
restaurants vied with one another to serve his table He was a fabled horseman
and maintained several horses of his own, as well as two carriages and teams in
his stables near to First Street
Even into old age, he often
rode his chestnut mare all the way up St Charles Avenue to Carrolton and back
in the morning He would toss coins to the black children whom he passed
After his death, four
different witnesses claimed to have seen his ghost riding through the mist on
St Charles Avenue, and these stories were printed in the newspapers of the
period
Juhen was also a great
supporter of the Mardi Gras, which began as we know it today around 1872 He
entertained lavishly at the First Street house during the Mardi Gras season
It was also said countless
times that Juhen had the gift of ‘bilocation,’ that is, he could be
in two places at the same time This story was widely circulated among the
servants Julien would appear to be in the library, for instance, but then would
be sighted almost immediately in the back garden Or a maidservant would see
Julien go out the front door, and then turn around to see him coming down the
stairway
More than one servant quit
working in the First Street house rather than cope with the ‘strange
Monsieur Julien’
It has been speculated that
appearances of Lasher might have been responsible for this confusion Whatever
the case, later descriptions of Lasher’s clothes bear a remarkable
resemblance to those worn by Julien in two different portraits Lasher as cited
throughout the twentieth century is invariably dressed as Julien might have
been dressed in the 18703 and i88os
Julien stuffed handfuls of
bills into the pockets of the priests who came to call or the visiting Little
Sisters of the Poor or other such persons He gave lavishly to the parish
church, and to every charitable fund whose officials approached him He often
said that money didn’t matter to him Yet he was a tireless accumulator of
wealth
We know that he loved his
mother, Marguerite, and though he did not spend much time in her company, he
purchased books for her all the time in New Orleans, and ordered them for her
from New York and Europe Only once did a quarrel between them attract attention
and that was over ^Catherine’s marriage to Darcy Monahan, at which time
Marguerite struck Julien several times in front of the servants By all accounts
he was deeply emotionally hurt and simply withdrew, in tears, from his mother’s
company
After the death of Juhen’s
wife, Suzette, Julien spent less time than ever at Riverbend His children were
brought up entirely at First Street Julien, who had always been a debonair
figure, took a more active role in society Long before that, however, he
appeared at the opera and the theater with his little niece (or daughter) Mary
Beth He gave many charity balls and actively supported young amateur musicians,
presenting them in small private concerts in the double parlor at First Street
Julien not only made huge
profits at Riverbend, he also went into merchandising with two New York
affiliates and made a considerable fortune in that endeavor He bought up
property all over New Orleans, which he left to his niece Mary Beth, even
though she was the designee of the Mayfair legacy and thereby stood to inherit
a fortune larger than Julien’s
There seems little doubt
that Julien’s wife, Suzette, was a disappointment to him Servants and
friends spoke of many unfortunate arguments It was said that Suzette for all
her beauty was deeply religious and Julien’s high-spirited nature
disturbed her She eschewed the jewels and fine clothes which he wanted her to
wear She did not like to go out at night She disliked loud music A lovely
creature, with pale skin and shining eyes, Suzette was always sickly and died
young after the birth in rapid succession of her four children, and there is no
doubt that the one girl, Jeannette, had some sort of ‘second sight’
or psychic power
More than once Jeannette was
heard by the servants to scream in uncontrollable panic at the sight of some ghost
or apparition Her sudden frights and mad dashes from the house into the street
became well-known in the Garden District, and were even written up in the
papers In fact, it was Jeannette who gave rise to the first ’ghost stories’
surrounding First Street
There are several stories of
Juhen’s being extremely impatient with Jeannette and locking her up But
by all accounts he loved his children All three of his sons went to Harvard,
returning to New Orleans to practice civil law, and to amass great fortunes of
their own Their descendants are Mayfairs to this day, regardless of sex or
marital connection And it is the law firm founded by Julien’s sons which
has, for decades, administered the Mayfair legacy
We have at least seven
different photographs of Juhen with his children, including some with Jeannette
(who died young) In every one, the family seems extremely cheerful, and Barclay
and Cortland strongly resemble their father Though Barclay and Garland both
died in their late sixties, Cortland lived to be eighty years old, dying in
late October in 1959 This member of the Talamasca made direct contact with
Cortland the preceding year, but we shall come to that at the proper time
(Elhe Mayfair, adoptive
mother of Rowan Mayfair, the present designee of the legacy, is a
descendant of Juhen Mayfair, being a granddaughter of Julien’s son
Cortland, the only child of Cortland’s son Sheffield Mayfair and his
wife, a French-speaking cousin named Eugenie Mayfair, who died when Ellie was
seven years old. Sheffield died before Cortland, of a severe heart attack in
the family law offices on Camp Street in 1952, at which time he was forty-five.
His daughter Elbe was a student at Stanford in Palo Alto, California at the
time, where she was already engaged to Graham Franklin, whom she later married.
She never lived in New Orleans after that, though she returned for frequent
visits and came back to adopt Rowan Mayfair in 1959).
Some of our most interesting
evidence regarding Julien himself has to do with Mary Beth, and with the birth
of Belle, her first daughter. Upon Mary Beth Julien bestowed everything she
could possibly desire, holding balls for her at First Street that rivaled any
private entertainment in New Orleans. The garden walks, balustrades, and
fountains at First Street were all designed and laid out for Mary Beth’s
fifteenth birthday party.
Mary Beth was already tall
by the age of fifteen, and in her photographs from this period she appears
stately, serious, and darkly beautiful, with large black eyes and very clearly
defined and beautifully shaped eyebrows. Her air is decidedly indifferent
however. And this apparent absence of narcissism or vanity was to characterize
her photographs all her life Sometimes her mannish posture is almost defiantly
casual in these pictures; but it is highly doubtful that she was ever defiant
so much as simply distracted. It was frequently said that she looked like her
grandmother Marguerite and not like her mother, Kathenne.
In 1887, Julien took his
fifteen-year-old niece to New York with him. There Julien and Mary Beth visited
one of Lestan’s grandsons, Cornngton Mayfair, who was an attorney and in
the merchandising business with Julien. Julien and Mary Beth went on to Europe
in 1888, remaining an entire year and a half, during which time New Orleans was
informed by numerous letters to friends and relatives that sixteen-year-old
Mary Beth had ’married’ a Scottish Mayfair — an Old World
cousin — and given birth to a little girl named Belle. This marriage,
taking place in a Scottish Catholic church, was described in rich detail in a
letter which Julien wrote to a friend in the French Quarter, a notorious gossip
of a woman, who passed the letter around to everyone. Other letters from both
Julien and Mary Beth described the marriage in more abbreviated form for other
talkative friends and relatives.
It is worth noting that when
Katherine heard of her daughter’s marriage, she took to her bed and would
not eat or speak for five days. Only when threatened with a private asylum did
she sit up and agree to drink some soup. ‘Julien is the devil,’ she
whispered, at which point Marguerite drove everyone out of the room.
Unfortunately the mysterious
Lord Mayfair died in a fall from his ancestral tower in Scotland two months
before the birth of his little daughter. Again, Juhen wrote home full accounts
of everything which took place Mary Beth wrote tearful letters to her friends.
This Lord Mayfair is almost
certainly a fictitious character. Mary Beth and Julien did visit Scotland;
indeed they spent some time in Edinburgh and even visited Donnelaith, where
they purchased the very castle on the hill above the town described in detail
by Petyr van Abel. But the castle, once the family home of the Donnelaith clan,
had been an abandoned rum since the late i6oos. There is no record anywhere in
Scotland of any lord or lords Mayfair.
However, inquiries made by
the Talamasca in this century have unearthed some rather startling evidence
about the Donnelaith ruin A fire gutted it in the year 1689, in the fall,
apparently very near the time of Deborah’s execution in Montcleve, France
It might have been the very day, but that we have been unable to discover. In
the fire, the last of the Donnelaith clan - the old lord, his eldest son, and
his young grandson - perished.
It is tantalizing to suppose
that the old lord was the father of Deborah Mayfair. It is also tantalizing to
suppose that he was a wretched coward, who did not dare to interfere with the
burning of the poor simplemmded peasant girl Suzanne, even when their ’merry-begot’
daughter Deborah was in danger of the same awful fate.
But we cannot know. And we
cannot know whether or not Lasher played any role in starting the fire that
wiped out the Donnelaith family. History tells us only that the old man’s
body was burnt, while the infant grandson smothered in the smoke, and several
women in the family leapt to their death from the battlements. The eldest son
apparently died when a wooden stairway collapsed under him.
History also tells us that
Julien and Mary Beth purchased Donnelaith castle after only one afternoon spent
in the ruins. It remains the property of the Mayfair family to this day, and
other Mayfairs have visited it.
It has never been occupied
or restored, but it is kept cleared of all debris and rather safely maintained,
and during Stella’s life in the twentieth century, it was open to the
public.
Why Julien bought the
castle, what he knew about it and what he meant to do with it, has never been
known. Surely he had some knowledge of Deborah and Suzanne, either through the
family history, or through Lasher.
The Talamasca has devoted an
enormous amount of thought to this whole question — who knew what and
when — because there is strong evidence to indicate that the Mayfairs of
the nineteenth century did not know their full history. {Catherine confessed on
more than one occasion that she really didn’t know much about the family’s
beginnings, only that they had come from Martinique to Saint-Domingue sometime
in the sixteen hundreds. Many other Mayfairs made similar remarks.
And even Mary Beth as late
as 1920 told the parish priests at St Alphonsus Church that it was ’all
lost in the dust.’ She seemed even a little confused when talking to
local architecture students about who built Riverbend and when. Books of the period
list Marguerite as the builder when, in fact, Marguerite was born there. When
asked by the servants to identify certain persons in the old portraits at First
Street, Mary Beth said that she could not. She wished somebody back then had
had the presence of mind to write the names on the backs of the pictures.
As far as we have been able
to ascertain, the names are on the backs of at least some of the pictures.
Perhaps Julien, and Julien
alone, read the old records, for certainly there were old records. And Julien
had started to move them from Riverbend to First Street as early as 1872.
Whatever the case, Julien
went to Donnelaith in 1888 and bought the ruined castle. And Mary Beth Mayfair
told the story to the end of her days that Lord Mayfair was the father of her
poor sweet little daughter Belle, who turned out to be the very opposite of her
powerful mother.
In 1892, an artist was hired
to paint a picture of the ruin, and this oil painting hangs in the house on
First Street.
To return to the chronology,
the supposed uncle and niece returned home with baby Belle in late 1889, at
which time Marguerite, aged ninety and extremely decrepit, took a special
interest in the baby.
In fact, Katherine and Mary
Beth had to keep watch on the child all the time it was at Riverbend, lest
Marguerite go walking with it in her arms and then forget about it, and drop it
or lay it on a stairstep or a table. Julien laughed at these cautions and said
before the servants numerous times that the baby had a special guardian angel who
would take care of it.
By this time there seems to
have been no talk at all about Julien having been Mary Beth’s father, and
none whatsoever about his being the father, by his daughter, of Belle.
But for the purposes of this
record, we are certain that he was Mary Beth’s father and the father of
her daughter Belle.
Mary Beth, Julien, and Belle
all lived together happily at First Street, and Mary Beth, though she loved to
dance and to go to the theater and to parties, showed no immediate interest in
finding ’another’ husband.
Eventually, she did remarry,
as we shall see, a man named Daniel McIntyre, giving birth to three more
children - Carlotta, Lionel, and Stella.
The night before Marguerite’s
death in 1891, Mary Beth woke up in her bedroom on First Street, screaming. She
insisted she had to leave for Riverbend at once, that her grandmother lay
dying. Why had no one sent for her? The servants found Julien sitting
motionless in the library of the first floor, apparently weeping. He seemed not
to hear or see Mary Beth as she pleaded with him to take her to River-bend.
A young Irish maid then
heard the old quadroon housekeeper remark that maybe that wasn’t Julien
at all sitting at the desk, and they ought to go look for him. This terrified
the maid, especially since the housekeeper began to call out to ‘Michie
Julien’ about the house while this motionless weeping individual remained
at the desk, staring forward as if he could not hear her.
At last Mary Beth set out on
foot, at which point Julien leapt up from the desk, ran his fingers through his
white hair, and ordered the servants to bring round the brougham. He caught up
with Mary Beth before she had reached Magazine Street.
It is worth noting that
Julien was sixty-three at this time, and described as being a very handsome man
with the flamboyant appearance and demeanor of a stage actor. Mary Beth was
nineteen and exceedingly beautiful Belle was only two years old and there is no
mention of her in this story.
Juhen and Mary Beth arrived
at Riverbend just as messengers were being sent to fetch them. Marguerite was
almost comatose, a wraith of a ninety-two-year-old woman, clutching a curious
little doll with her bony fingers, which she called her maman much to
the confusion of the attending doctor and nurse, who told all of New Orleans
about it afterwards. A priest was also in attendance and his detailed account
of the whole matter has also worked its way into our records.
The doll was reputedly a
ghastly thing with real human bones for limbs, strung together by means of
black wire, and a mane of horrid white hair affixed to its head of rags with
its crudely drawn features.
Katherine, then aged
sixty-one, and her two sons were both sitting by the bed, as they had been for
hours Remy was also there, having been at the plantation for a month before his
mother took ill.
The priest, Father Martin,
had just given Marguerite the last sacraments, and the blessed candles were
burning on the altar.
When Marguerite breathed her
last, the priest watched with curiosity as Katherine rose from her chair, went
to the jewel box on the dresser which she had always shared with her mother,
took out the emerald necklace, and gave it to Mary Beth. Mary Beth received it
gratefully, put it around her neck, and then continued to weep
The priest then observed
that it had begun to ram, and the wind about the house was extremely strong,
banging the shutters and causing the leaves to fall. Julien seemed to be
delighted by this and even laughed.
Katherine appeared weary and
frightened. And Mary Beth cried inconsolably Clay, a personable young man,
seemed fascinated by what was going on. His brother Vincent merely looked
indifferent.
Julien then opened the
windows to let in the wind and rain, which frightened the priest somewhat and
certainly made him uncomfortable, as it was winter. He nevertheless stayed at
the bedside as he thought proper, though rain was actually falling on the bed.
The trees were crashing against the house. The priest was afraid one of the
limbs might come right through the window nearest him.
Julien, quite unperturbed
and with his eyes full of tears, kissed the dead Marguerite and closed her
eyes, and took the doll from her, which he put inside his coat. He then laid
her hands on her chest and made a speech to the priest explaining that his
mother had been born at the end of the ’old century’ and had lived
almost a hundred years, that she had seen and understood things which she could
never tell anyone.
‘In most families,’
Julien declared in French, ’when a person dies, all that the person knows
dies with that person. Not so with the Mayfairs. Her blood is in us, and all
she knew is passed into us and we are stronger.’
Katherine merely nodded
sadly to this speech. Mary Beth continued to weep. Clay stood in the corner
with his arms folded, watching.
When the priest asked
timidly if the window might be closed, Juhen told him that the heavens were
weeping for Marguerite, and that it would be disrespectful to close the window.
Julien then knocked the blessed candles off the Catholic altar by the bed,
which offended the priest. It also startled Katherine.
‘Now, Julien, don’t
go crazy!’ Katherine whispered. At which Vincent laughed in spite of
himself, and Clay smiled unwillingly also. All glanced awkwardly at the priest,
who was horrified. Julien then gave the company a playful smile and a shrug,
and then looking at his mother again, he became miserable, and knelt down
beside the bed, and buried his face in the covers beside the dead woman.
Clay quietly left the room
As the priest was taking his
leave, he asked Katherine about the emerald. Rather offhandedly she said that
it was a jewel she had inherited from her mother, but never much liked, as it
was so big and so heavy. Mary Beth could have it.
The priest then left the
house and discovered that within a few hundred yards, the ram was not falling
and there was no wind The sky was quite clear. He came upon Clay sitting in a
white straight-backed chair by the picket fence at the very end of the frontage
of the plantation; Clay was smoking and watching the distant storm which was
quite visible in the darkness. The priest greeted Clay but Clay did not appear
to hear him.
This is the first detailed
account of the death of a Mayfair witch that we possess since Petyr van Abel’s
description of the death of Deborah.
There are many other stories
about Julien which could be included here, and indeed perhaps they should be in
future. We will hear more of him as the story of Mary Beth unfolds
But we should not move on to
Mary Beth without treating one more aspect of Julien, that is, his bisexuahty.
And it is worthwhile to recount in detail the significant stories told of
Julien by one of his lovers, Richard Llewellyn
As indicated above, Julien
was mentioned in connection with a ’crime against nature’ very
early in his life, at which point he killed — either accidentally or
deliberately — one of his uncles. We have also made mention of his male
companion in the French Quarter in the late 18505.
Julien was to have such
companions throughout his life, but of most of them we know nothing.
Two of whom we have some
record are a quadroon named Victor Gregoire and an Englishman named Richard
Llewellyn.
Victor Gregoire worked for
Julien in the i88os, as a private secretary of sorts, and even a sort of valet
He lived in the servants’ quarters on First Street. He was a remarkably
handsome man as were all Juhen’s companions, male or female. And he was
rumored to be a Mayfair descendant.
Investigation has confirmed
in fact that he was the great-grandson of a quadroon maid who emigrated from Saint-Domingue
with the family, a possible descendant of Peter Fontenay Mayfair, brother of
Jeanne Louise, and son of Charlotte and Petyr van Abel.
Whatever, Victor was much
beloved by Julien, but the two had a quarrel in about 1885, around the time of
Suzette’s death. The one rather thin story we have about the quarrel
indicates that Victor accused Julien of not treating Suzette in her final
illness with sufficient compassion And Julien, outraged, beat Victor rather
badly. Cousins repeated this tale within the family enough for outsiders to
hear of it.
The consensus seemed to be
that Victor was probably right, and as Victor was a most devoted servant to
Julien he had a servant’s right to tell his master the truth. It was
common knowledge at this time that no one was closer to Juhen than Victor, and
that Victor did everything for Julien.
It should also be added,
however, that there is strong evidence that Juhen loved Suzette, no matter how
disappointed he was in her, and that he took good care of her. His sons
certainly thought that he loved their mother; and at Suzette’s funeral,
Juhen was distraught. He comforted Suzette’s father and mother for hours
after; and took time off from all business pursuits to remain with his daughter
Jeannette, who ’never recovered’ from her mother’s death.
We should also note that
Juhen was near hysteria at Jeannette’s funeral, which occurred several
years later. Indeed, at one point he held tight to the coffin and refused to
allow it to be placed in the crypt. Garland, Barclay, and Cortland had to
physically support their father as the entombment took place.
Descendants of Suzette’s
sisters and brothers say in the present time that ‘Great-aunt Suzette’
who once lived at First Street was, in fact, driven mad by her husband Juhen -
that he was perverse, cruel, and mischievous in a way that indicated congenital
insanity. But these tales are vague and contain no real knowledge of the
period.
To proceed with the story of
Victor, the young man died tragically while Juhen and Mary Beth were in Europe.
Walking home one night
through the Garden District, Victor stepped in the path of a speeding carriage
at the corner of Philip and Prytama streets, and suffered a dreadful fall and a
blow to the head. Two days later he succumbed from massive’ cerebral
injuries. Juhen received word on his return to New York. He had a beautiful
monument built for Victor in the St Louis No. 3 Cemetery.
What argues for this having
been a homosexual relationship is circumstantial except for a later statement
by Richard Llewellyn, the last of Julien’s male companions. Julien bought
enormous amounts of clothes for Victor. He also bought Victor beautiful riding
horses, and gave him exorbitant amounts of money The two spent days and nights
together, traveled together to and from Riverbend, and to New York, and Victor
often slept on the couch in the library at First Street, rather than retire to
his room at the very back of the house.
As for the statement of
Richard Llewellyn, he never knew Victor, but he told this member of the order
personally that Julien had once had a colored lover named Victor.
THE
TESTIMONY OF RICHARD LLEWELLYN
Richard Llewellyn is the
only observer of Julien ever personally interviewed by a member of the order,
and he was more than a casual observer
What he has to say -
concerning other members of the family as well as Julien - makes his testimony
of very special interest even though his statements are for the most part
uncorroborated He has given some of the most intimate glimpses of the Mayfair
family which we possess
Therefore, we feel that it
is worthwhile to quote our reconstruction of his words in its entirety
Richard Llewellyn came to
New Orleans in 1900 at the age of twenty and he became an employee of Julien,
just as Victor had once been, for Julien though he was then seventy-two years
old, still maintained enormous interests in merchandising, cotton factoring,
real estate, and banking Until the week of his death some fourteen years later,
Julien kept regular business hours in the library at First Street
Llewellyn worked for Julien
until his death, and Llewellyn admitted candidly to me in 1958, when I first
began my field investigation of the Mayfair Witches, that he had been Julien’s
lover
Llewellyn was in 1958 just past
seventy-seven years of age He was a man of medium height, healthy build, and
had curly black hair, heavily streaked with gray, and very large and slightly
protruding blue eyes He had acquired by that time what I would call a New
Orleans accent, and no longer sounded like a Yankee or a Bostoman, though there
are definite similarities between the ways that New Orleamans and Bostomans
speak Whatever the case, he was unmistakably a New Orleaman and he looked the
part as well.
He owned an antiquarian
bookstore in the French Quarter, on Chartres Street, specializing in books on
music, especially operas There were always phonograph records of Caruso playing
in the store, and Llewellyn, who invariably sat at a desk to the rear of the
shop, was always dressed in a suit and tie
It was a bequest from Julien
which had enabled him to own the building, where he also lived in the second
floor flat, and he worked in his shop until one month before his death in.
I visited him several times
in the summer of 1958 but I was only able to persuade him to talk at length on
one occasion, and I must confess that the wine he drank, at my invitation, had
a great deal to do with it I have of course shamelessly employed this method
lunch, wine, and then more wine with many a witness of the Mayfair family It
seems to work particularly well in New Orleans and during the summer I think I
was a little too brash and insistent with Llewellyn, but his information has
proved invaluable.
An entirely ’casual’
meeting with Llewellyn was effected when I happened into his bookstore one July
afternoon, and we commenced to talk about the great castrati opera singers,
especially Fannelli It was not difficult to persuade Llewellyn to lock up the
shop for a Caribbean siesta at two thirty and come with me for a late lunch at
Galatoire’s.
I did not broach the subject
of the Mayfair family for some time, and then only timidly and in connection
with the old house on First Street I said frankly that I was interested in the
place and the people who live there By then Llewellyn was pleasantly ’high’
and plunged into reminiscences of his first days in New Orleans.
At first he would say
nothing about Juhen but then began to speak of Julien as if I knew all about
the man I supplied various well-known dates and facts and that moved the
conversation along briskly We left Galatoire’s finally for a small, quiet
Bourbon Street cafe and continued our conversation until well after eight
thirty that evening.
At some point during this
conversation Llewellyn realized that I had no prejudice whatsoever against him
on account of his sexual preferences, indeed that nothing he was saying came as
shock to me, and this added to his relaxed attitude towards the story he told.
This was long before our use
of tape recorders, and I reconstructed the conversation as best I could as soon
as I returned to my hotel, trying to capture Llewellyn’s particular
expressions But it is a re-construction And throughout I have omitted my own
persistent questions I believe the substance to be accurate.
Essentially, Llewellyn was
deeply in love with Julien Mayfair, and one of the early shocks of Llewellyn’s
life was to discover that Julien was at least ten to fifteen years older than
Llewellyn ever imagined, and Llewellyn only discovered this when Julien
suffered his first stroke in early 1914 Until that time Julien had been a
fairly romantic and vigorous lover of Llewellyn, and Llewellyn remained with
Juhen until he died, some four months later. Juhen was partially paralyzed at
that time, but still managed to spend an hour or two each day in his office
Llewellyn supplied a vivid
description of Juhen in the early igoos, as a thin man who had lost some of his
height, but was generally spry and energetic, and full of good humor and
imagination.
Llewellyn said frankly that
Juhen had initiated him in the erotic secrets of life, and not only had Juhen
taught Llewellyn how to be an attentive lover, he also took the young man with
him to Storyville -the notorious red-light district of New Orleans - and
introduced him to the better houses operating there.
But let us move on directly
to his account.
‘Oh, the tricks he
taught me,’ Llewellyn said, referring to their amorous relationship, ’and
what a sense of humor he had. It was as if the whole world were a joke
to him, and there was never the slightest bitterness in it. I’ll tell you
a very private thing about him. He made love to me just as if I were a woman.
If you don’t know what I mean, there’s no use explaining it. And
that voice he had, that French accent. I tell you when he started talking in my
ear…
‘And he would tell me
the funniest stories about his antics with his other lovers, about how they
fooled everyone, and indeed, one of his boys, Aleister by name, used to dress
up as a woman and go to the opera with Juhen and no one ever had the slightest
suspicion about it Juhen tried to persuade me to do that, but I told him I
could never carry it off, never! He understood. He was extremely good-natured.
In fact, it was impossible to involve him in a quarrel. He said he was done
with all that, and besides he had a horrible temper, and couldn’t bear to
lose it. It exhausted him.
‘The one time I was
unfaithful and came back after two days, fully expecting a terrible argument,
he treated me with what would you call it? Bemused cordiality. It turned out he
knew everything that I had done and with whom, and in the most pleasant and
sincere way he asked me why I had been such a fool. It was positively eerie. At
last I burst into tears and confessed that I had meant to show my independence.
After all he was such an overwhelming man. But I was then ready to do anything
to get back into his good graces. I don’t know what I would have done if
he’d thrown me out!
‘He accepted this with
a smile. He patted my shoulder and said not to worry. I’ll tell you it
cured me of wandering out forever! It was no fun at all to feel so dreadful and
have him so calm and so accepting Taught me a few things, it really did.
‘And then he went into
all that about being a reader of minds, and of being able to see what was going
on in other places. He talked a lot about that. I could never tell whether or
not he meant it, or if it was just another one of his jokes. He had the
prettiest eyes. He was a very handsome old man, really. And there was a flare to
the way he dressed. I suppose you might say he was something of a dandy When he
was dressed up in a fine white linen suit with a yellow silk waistcoat and a
white Panama hat, he looked splendid
‘I think I imitate him
to this day. Isn’t that sad? I go about trying to look like Julien
Mayfair.
‘Oh, but that reminds
me, I’ll tell you, he did the strangest thing to frighten me once! And to
this day I don’t really know what happened We had been talking the night
before about what Julien looked like when he was young, how handsome he
appeared in all the photographs, and you know it was like going through a
veritable history of photography to study all that Tb(e first pictures of him
were daguerreotypes, and then came the tintypes and the later genuine photographs
in sepia on cardboard, and finally the sort of black and white pictures we have
today. Anyway, he had shown me a batch of them and I had said, "Oh, I wish
I’d known you when you were young, I imagine you were truly
beautiful." Then I’d stopped I was so ashamed. I thought perhaps I’d
hurt him. But there he was, merely smiling at me. I shall never forget it. He
was seated at the far end of his leather couch, legs crossed, just looking at
me through the smoke from his pipe, and he said, "Well, Richard, if you’d
like to know how I was then, maybe I’ll show you. I’ll surprise
you."
‘That night, I was
downtown. I don’t remember why I went out I had to get out perhaps. You
know sometimes that house could be so oppressive! It was full of children and
old people, and Mary Beth Mayfair was always about, and she was such a
presence, to put it politely. Don’t get me wrong, I liked Mary Beth,
everybody liked Mary Beth. And I liked her a great deal, until Juhen died, at
least She was easy to talk to, actually. She would really listen to you when
you talked to her, that is one thing I always found rather unusual about her.
But she had a way of filling up a room when she came in. She outshmed everyone
else, you might say, and then there was her husband, Judge McIntyre.
‘Judge McIntyre was a
terrible sot. He was always drunk. And what a quarrelsome drunk I tell you I
had to go looking for him more than once and bring him home from the Irish bars
on Magazine Street. You know, the Mayfairs weren’t his kind of people,
really. He was an educated man, lace curtain Irish, to be sure. Yet I think
Mary Beth made him feel inferior. She was always saying little things to him,
such as that he ought to put his napkin in his lap, or not smoke his cigars in
the dining room, or that he was biting the edge of his silver when he ate, and
the noise annoyed her. He was eternally offended by her. But I think he really
loved her. That’s why she could hurt him so easily. He really loved her.
You would have had to have known her to understand. She wasn’t beautiful
That wasn’t it. But she was… she was absolutely captivating! I
could tell you about her and the young men, but then I don’t want to talk
about all that But what I was trying to say was that they would sit there at
the table till all hours after dinner, Mary Beth and Judge McIntyre and Julien,
of course, and Clay Mayfair, too, while he was there. I never saw people who
liked to talk so much after dinner.
‘Juhen could put away
half a fifth of brandy. And little Stella would fall asleep in his lap. Ah,
Stella with the ringlets, dear pretty Stella. And beautiful little Belle. She’d
come wandering in with her doll. And Millie Dear They called her Millie Dear
then but they stopped later on. She was younger than Belle, but she, you know,
sort of watched out for Belle. It took a long time to catch on about Belle. You
just thought she was sweet at first, an angel of a girl, if you know what I
mean. There were some other cousins who used to come Seems Julien’s boy,
Garland, was around plenty after he came home from school And Cortland, I
really liked Cortland. And for a while there was talk he might marry Millie,
but she was only a first cousin, being Remy’s girl, and people didn’t
do that sort of thing anymore. Millie has never married. What a sad
thing…
‘But you know, Judge McIntyre
was the kind of Irishman who really can’t stand to be around his wife, if
you follow my meaning. He had to be with men, drinking and arguing all the
time, and not men like Julien, but men like himself, hard-drinking, hard-talking
Irishmen. He spent a great deal of time downtown at his club, but many an
evening he went to those rougher drinking places on Magazine Street
‘When he was home, he
was always very noisy He was a good judge however. He wouldn’t drink till
he came home from court, and since he always came home early he had plenty of
time to be completely drunk by ten o’clock. Then he would go wandering,
and round midnight Juhen would say, "Richard, I think you had better go
look for him."
‘Juhen just took it
all in stride He thought Judge McIntyre was funny. He would laugh at anything
Judge McIntyre said. Judge McIntyre would go on and on about Ireland and the
political situation over there, and Juhen would wait until he was finished and
say cheerfully and with a twinkle in his eye, "I don’t care if they
all kill each other " Judge McIntyre would go crazy Mary Beth would laugh
and shake her head and kick Juhen under the table But Judge McIntyre was so far
gone in those last years How he ever managed to live so long I cannot imagine.
Didn’t die till 1925, three months after Mary Beth died They said it was
pneumonia The hell it was pneumonia! They found him in the gutter, you know And
it was Christmas Eve and so cold the pipes were freezing Pneumonia. I heard
when Mary Beth was dying, she was in such pain they gave her almost enough
morphia to kill her She would be lying there out of her mind, and in he’d
come, drunk, and wake her up, saying, "Mary Beth, I need you." What a
poor drunken fool he was And she would say to him. "Come, Daniel, lie
beside me, Daniel " And to think she was in such pain. It was Stella who
told me that the last time I ever saw her Alive that is. I went up there one
last time after that — for Stella’s funeral. And there she was in
the coffin, it was a miracle the way Lomgan closed up that wound. Just
beautiful she was, lying there, and all the Mayfairs in that room. But that was
the last time I saw her alive, as I was saying And the things said about
Carlotta, of how Carlotta was cold to Mary Beth in those last months, why, it
would make your hair stand on end.
‘Imagine a daughter
being cold to a mother who was dying like that But Mary Beth took no notice of
it. She just lay there, in pain, half dreaming, Stella said, not knowing where
she was, sometimes talking out loud to Juhen as if she could see him in the
room, and of course Stella was by her night and day, you can be sure of that;
how Mary Beth loved Stella.
‘Why, Mary Beth told
me once that she could put all her other children in a sack and throw them in
the Mississippi River, for all she cared. Stella was the only one that
mattered. ‘Course she was joking. She was never mean to those children. I
remember how she used to read by the hour to Lionel when he was little, and
help him with his schooling. She got him the best teachers when he didn’t
want to go to school None of the children did well in school, except for
Carlotta, naturally. Stella was expelled from three different schools, I
believe. Carlotta was the only one who really did well, and a lot of good it
did her
‘But what was I
saying? Oh, yes. Sometimes I felt I had no place in the house. Whatever the
case, I went out. I went to the Quarter. It was the days of Storyville, you
know, when prostitution was legal here, and Juhen had taken me down to Lulu
White’s Mahogany Hall himself one night and to the other fashionable
places, and he didn’t much care if I went on my own.
‘Well, I said I was
going that night. And Juhen didn’t mind. He was up there snug in the
third-floor bedroom with his books and his hot chocolate, and his Victrola.
Besides, he knew I was only looking. And so I went down there, strolling past
all those little houses — you know, the cribs they used to call them -
with the girls in the front doors beckoning for me to come in, and of course I
had not the slightest intention of doing it.
‘Then my eyes fell on
this beautiful young man, I mean a simply beautiful young man And he stood in
one of the alleyways down there, with his arms folded, leaning against the side
of the house, simply looking at me. "Bon soir, Richard," he said to
me and I recognized the voice at once, the French accent. It was Julien’s.
And I saw that the man was Juhen! Only he couldn’t have been past twenty!
I tell you I never had such a start. I almost cried out. It was worse than
seeing a ghost. And the fellow was gone, like that, vanished.
‘I couldn’t get
to a cab fast enough and I went right straight home to First Street Juhen
opened the front door for me. He was wearing his robe, and puffing on his
obnoxious pipe and laughing. "I told you I would show you what I looked
like when I was twenty!" he said. He laughed and laughed.
‘I remember I followed him into the
parlor And it was such a lovely room, then, nothing like it is now, you should
have seen it Absolutely lovely French pieces, mostly Louis Quinze, which Julien
had bought himself in Europe when he went with Mary Beth. So light and elegant
and simply lovely. That art deco furniture was all Stella’s doing. She
thought it was quite the thing, what with potted palms everywhere! The only
good piece of furniture was that Bozendorfer piano. The place looked perfectly
mad when I went up there for the funeral, and you know of course that Stella
was buried from the house. No funeral parlor for Stella. Why, Stella was laid
out in the very front room in which she’d been shot, do you know that? I
kept looking around, wondering where exactly it had happened And don’t
you know everybody else was doing that, and they had already locked up Lionel,
of course. Oh, I couldn’t believe it Lionel had been such a sweet boy,
and so good-looking And he and Stella used to go everywhere together But what
was I saying?
‘Oh, yes, that
incredible night. I’d just seen young Julien downtown, beautiful young
Julien, speaking French to me, and then I was home again and following old
Juhen into the parlor and he sat down on the couch there, and stretched out his
legs and said, "Ah, Richard, there are so many things I could tell you, so
many things I could show you But I’m old now. And what’s the point?
One very fine consolation of old age is you don’t need to be understood
anymore A sort of resignation sets in with the inevitable hardening of the
arteries."
‘Of course I was still
upset "Julien," I said. "I demand to know how you did it."
He wouldn’t answer me. It was as if I wasn’t there He was staring
at the fire. He always had both fires going in that room in winter It has two
fireplaces, you know, and one is slightly smaller than the other
‘A little later he
waked from his dream and he reminded me that he was writing his life story. I
might read that after his death, perhaps He wasn’t sure.
‘I have enjoyed my
life,’ he said. ‘Perhaps a person shouldn’t enjoy his life as
much as I have enjoyed mine Ah, there is so much misery in the world and I have
always had such a splendid time! Seems unfair, doesn’t it? I should have
done more for others, much more. I should have been more inventive! But all of
that is in my book. You can read it later.’
‘He said more than once that he was
writing his life story. He really had quite an interesting life, you know,
being born so long before the Civil War, and seeing so very much. I used to
ride with him uptown, and we would ride through Audubon Park and he would talk
about the days when all that land had been a plantation. He talked about taking
the steamboat from Riverbend. He talked about the old opera house and the
quadroon balls. On and on, he talked. I should have written it down. He used to
tell little Lionel and Stella those stories too, and how they both listened. He’d
take them downtown in the carriage with us, and he would point out places in
the French Quarter to them, and tell them wonderful little tales.
‘I tell you I wanted
to read that life story. I remember several occasions on which I came into the
library and he was writing away, and remarked that it was the autobiography. He
wrote by hand, though he did have a typewriter. And he didn’t mind at all
that the children were underfoot. Lionel would be in there reading by the fire,
or Stella would be playing with her doll on the couch, didn’t matter one
bit, he would just be writing away on his autobiography.
‘And what do you
think? When he died, there was no life story. That’s what Mary Beth told
me. I begged her to let me see whatever he’d written. She said
offhandedly there was nothing. She would not let me touch anything on his desk.
She locked me out of the library. Oh, I hated her for it, positively hated her.
And she did it in such an offhanded way. She would have convinced anybody else
she was telling the truth, that’s how sure of herself she was. But I had
seen the manuscript. She did give me something which belonged to him, and I’ve
always been grateful.’
At that point Llewellyn
produced a beautiful carbuncle ring and showed it to me. I complimented him on
it, and told him I was curious about the days of Storyville. What had it been
like to go there with Julien? His answer was quite lengthy:
‘Oh, Julien loved
Storyville, he really did. And the women at Lulu White’s Hall of Mirrors,
adored him, I can tell you. They waited on him as if he were a king. Same thing
everywhere he went. Lots of things happened down there, however, that I don’t
much like to talk about. It wasn’t that I was jealous of Julien. It was
very simply shocking to a clean-living Yankee boy such as I had been.’
Llewellyn laughed. ‘But you’ll understand better what I mean if I
tell you.
‘The first time Julien
took me it was winter, and he had his coachman drive us up to the front doors
of one of the best houses. There was a pianist playing there then — I’m
not sure who it was now, maybe Manuel Perez, maybe Jelly Roll Morton — I
was never the fan of jazz and ragtime that Julien was. He just loved that
pianist - they always called those pianists the professor, you know - and we
sat in the parlor listening, and drinking champagne, and it was quite good
champagne, and of course the girls came in with all their tawdry finery and
foolish airs — there was the Duchess this and the Countess that - and
they tried to seduce Julien, and he was just perfectly charming to all of them.
Then finally he made his choice and it was this older woman, rather plain, and
that puzzled me, and he said we were both going upstairs. Of course I didn’t
want to be with her; nothing could have persuaded me to be with her, but Julien
only smiled at that, and said that I should watch and that way I’d learn
something of the world. Very typical Julien.
‘And what do you think
happened when we went into the bedroom? Well, it wasn’t the woman Julien
was interested in, it was her two daughters, nine and eleven years old. They
sort of helped with preparations - the examination of Julien, to put it
delicately, to make certain that he didn’t have you know… and then
the washing. I tell you I was stunned to watch those children perform these
intimate duties, and do you know that when Julien went to it with the mother,
the two little girls were there on the bed? They were both very pretty, one
with dark hair, the other with blond curls. They wore little chemises, and dark
stockings, if you can imagine, and they were enticing, I think even to me. Why,
you could see their little nipples through the chemises. Didn’t have
hardly any breasts at all. I don’t know why that was so enticing. They
sat against the high carved back of the bed -you know, it was one of those
machine-made atrocities that went clear to the ceiling with the half tester and
the crown - and they even kissed him like attending angels when he…
he… mounted the mother, so to speak.
‘I’ll never
forget those children, the way it all seemed so natural to them! And natural to
Julien.
‘Of course he behaved
throughout all this as gracefully in such a situation as a human being could
possibly behave. You would have thought that he was Darius, King of Persia, and
that these ladies were his harem, and there was not the slightest bit of
self-consciousness in him or crudery. Afterwards, he drank some more champagne
with them, and even the little girls drank it. The mother tried to work her
charms on me, but I would have none of it. Julien would have stayed there all
night if I hadn’t asked him to leave. He was teaching both the girls
"a new poem." Seems he taught them a poem every time he came down;
and they recited three or four of the past lessons for him, one a Shakespeare
sonnet. The new one was Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
‘I couldn’t wait
to leave that place. And on the way home, I really lit into him. "Julien,
whatever we are, we are grown people. Those were just children," I said.
He was his usual genial self. "Come on, now, Richard," he said,
"don’t be foolish. Those were what are called trick babies. They
were born in a house of prostitution; and they’ll live out their lives
that way. I didn’t do anything to them that would hurt them. And if I hadn’t
been with their mother this evening, somebody else would have been with her and
with them. But I’ll tell you what strikes me, Richard, about the whole
matter. It’s the way that life asserts itself, no matter what the
circumstances. Of course it must be a miserable existence. How could it not be?
Yet those little girls manage to live; to breathe; to enjoy themselves. They
laugh and they are full of curiosity and tenderness. They adjust, I believe that’s
the word. They adjust and they reach for the stars in their own way. I tell you
it’s wondrous to me. They make me think of the wild flowers that grow in
the cracks of the pavement, just pushing up into the sun, no matter how many
feet crush them down."
‘I didn’t argue
with him any further. But I remember that he talked on and on. He said there were
children in every city in the country who were more miserable than those
children. Of course that didn’t make it all right.
‘I know he went to
Storyville often, and he didn’t take me along. But I’ll tell you
something else rather strange…’ (Here he hesitated. He required
some prodding.) ‘He used to take Mary Beth with him. He took her to Lulu
White’s and to the Arlington, and the way they managed it was that Mary
Beth dressed as a man.
‘I saw them go out
together on more than one occasion, and of course if you ever saw Mary Beth you
would understand. She was not an ugly woman in any sense, but she wasn’t
delicate. She was tall and strongly built, and she had rather large features.
In one of her husband’s three-piece suits, she made a damned good-looking
man. She’d wrap her long hair up under a hat, and wear a scarf around her
neck, and sometimes she wore glasses, though I’m not sure why, and off
she went with Julien.
‘I remember that
happening at least five times. And I heard them talking about it after, how she
fooled everyone. And Judge McIntyre sometimes went with them, but I think in
truth that Julien and Mary Beth didn’t want him along.
‘And then once Julien
told me that that was how Judge McIntyre had met Mary Beth Mayfair - that it
was in Storyville about two years before I came. He wasn’t Judge McIntyre
yet, then, just Daniel McIntyre. And he’d met Mary Beth down there and
spent the evening gambling with her and with Julien, and didn’t know till
the next morning that Mary Beth was a woman, and when he discovered that he
wouldn’t leave her alone.
‘Julien told me all
about it. They had gone down just to roam around and to catch what they could
of the Razzy Dazzy Spasm Band. Now you’ve heard of them, I imagine, and
they were good, they really were. And somehow Julien and Mary Beth, who went by
the name of Jules on these excursions, went into Willie Piazza’s and
there they ran into Daniel McIntyre, and after that they wandered from place to
place, looking for a good pool game, because Mary Beth was very good at pocket
billiards, always was.
‘Anyway, it must have
been daylight when they decided to go home, and Judge McIntyre had talked a lot
of business with Julien, since he wasn’t the Judge yet of course and he
was a lawyer, and it was determined they would meet uptown for lunch and that
maybe Julien would do something to help McIntyre get into a firm. And at that
point, when the Judge was giving "Jules" a big hug of farewell, she
pulled off her fedora, and down came all her black hair, and she told him she
was a woman, and he almost died on the spot.
‘I think he was in
love with her from that day on. I came the year after they were married, and
they already had Miss Carlotta, a baby in the crib, and Lionel came along
within ten months, and then a year and half later, Stella, the prettiest of
them all.
‘To tell you the
truth, Judge McIntyre never fell out of love with Mary Beth. That was his
trouble. Nineteen hundred thirteen was the last full year I spent in that
house, and of course he had been a judge for over eight years by then, thanks
to Julien’s influence, and I tell you he was just as much in love with
Mary Beth as he had ever been. And in her own way she was in love with him,
too. Don’t guess she could have put up with him if she hadn’t been.
‘Of course there were
the young men. People talked about those young men. You know, her stable boys
and her messenger boys, and they were good-looking, they really were. You’d
see them coming down the back steps, you know, looking scared sort of, as they
went out the back door. But she loved Judge McIntyre, she really did, and I’ll
tell you another thing. I don’t think he ever guessed. He was so damned
drunk all the time. And Mary Beth was just as cool about all that as she was
about anything else. Mary Beth was the calmest person I ever knew, in a way.
Nothing ruffled her, not for very long, at any rate. She didn’t have much
patience with anyone who opposed her, but she wasn’t interested in being
enemies with a person, you know. She wasn’t one to fight or pit her will
against anyone else.
‘It always amazed me
the way she put up with Carlotta. Carlotta was thirteen years old when I left.
She was a witch, that child! She wanted to go to school away from home, and
Mary Beth tried to persuade her not to do it, but that girl was determined, and
so Mary Beth finally just let her go.
‘Mary Beth dismissed
people like that, that’s the way it was, really, and you might say she
dismissed Carlotta. Part of her coldness, I suppose, and it could be maddening.
When Julien died, the way she locked me out of the library, and out of the
third-floor bedroom, that I’ll never forget. She never did get the least
bit excited. "Go on, now Richard, you go downstairs, and have some coffee,
and then you best get packed," she said, as if she was talking to a little
child. She bought a building for me down here, lickety split. I mean Julien wasn’t
in the ground when she had bought that building and moved me downtown. Of
course, it was Julien’s money.
‘But no, she never got
excited. Except when I told her Julien was dead. Then she got excited. Yes, to
tell the truth, she went mad. But just for a little while. Then when she saw he
really was gone, she just snapped to and started straightening him up and
straightening up the bedcovers. And I never saw her shed another tear.
‘I’ll tell you a
strange thing about Julien’s funeral, though. Mary Beth did a strange
thing. It was in that front room, of course, and the coffin was open and Julien
was a handsome corpse and every Mayfair in Louisiana was there. Why, there were
carriages and automobiles lined up for blocks on First and Chestnut streets.
And it rained, oh, did it rain! I thought it would never stop. It was so thick
it was like a veil around the house. But the main thing was this. They were
waking Julien, you know, and it wasn’t really what you’d call an
Irish wake, of course, because they were far too high-toned for that sort of
thing, but there was wine and food, and the Judge was blind drunk naturally. And
at one point, with all those people in the room and all the goings-on, and
people all over the hallway and back in the dining room and in the library and
up the steps, well, with all that just going on, Mary Beth just moved a
straight-backed chair up, right beside the coffin, and she put her hand in the
coffin and clasped Julien’s dead hand, and she just went to dozing right
there, in that chair, with her head to one side, holding on to Julien as the
cousins came and went to see him, and kneel on the priedieu and so forth and so
on.
‘It was a tender thing
that. But jealous as I had always been of her, I loved her for it. I wish I
could have done it. Julien certainly did look fine in the coffin. And you
should have seen the umbrellas in the Lafayette Cemetery the next day! I tell
you when they slipped that coffin inside the vault, I died myself inside. And
Mary Beth came up to me at that very moment, and she put her arm around my
shoulder, and so that I could hear it, she whispered, "Au revoir, mon cher
Julien!" She did it for me, I know she did. She did it for me, but that
was about the warmest thing she ever did. And to her dying day, she denied that
he had ever written any autobiography.’
I prodded him at this point,
asking him if Carlotta had cried at the funeral.
‘Indeed not. I don’t
even remember seeing her there. She was such an awful child. So
humorless and antagonistic to everyone. Mary Beth could take it in stride. But
Julien used to get so upset with her. It was Mary Beth who calmed him down.
Julien told me once that Carlotta would waste her life the same way his sister,
Katherine, had wasted hers.
‘"Some people don’t
like living," he said to me. Wasn’t that strange? "They just can’t
stand life. They treat it like it’s a terrible disease." I laughed
at that. I’ve thought about it since many a time.
Juhen loved being alive. He
really did. He was the first one in the family to ever buy a motor car A Stutz
Bearcat it was, quite incredible! And we went riding in that thing, all over
New Orleans. He thought it was wonderful1
‘He would sit on the
front seat next to me — I had to do the driving, of course - all wrapped
up in a lap rug, and with his goggles on, just laughing and enjoying the whole
affair, what with me climbing out to crank the thing! It was fun, though, it
really was. Stella loved that car too I wish I had that car now. You know, Mary
Beth tried to give it to me. And I refused it. Didn’t want the
responsibility of the thing, I suppose. I should have taken it
‘Mary Beth later gave
that car to one of her men, some young Irish fella she’d hired as a
coachman. Didn’t know a thing about horses as I recall Didn’t have
to I believe he went back to being a policeman later on. But she gave him that
car. I know because I saw him in it once and we talked and he told me about it.
Of course he didn’t say a word against her to me. He knew better than
that But imagine, your lady employer giving you a car like that. I tell you,
some of the things she did just drove the cousins up the wall. But they didn’t
dare talk about it And it was her manner that carried things through. She just
acted as if the strangest things she did were perfectly normal.
‘But for all her
coolness, you know, you might say that she loved being ahvesas much as Juhen
She really did. Yes, Juhen loved being alive. He was never old, not really.
‘Juhen told me all
about how it had been with his sister Katherine in the years before the war. He
had done the same tricks with her he did with Mary Beth later on. Only there
was no Storyville in those days. They’d gone to Gallatin Street, to the roughest
riverfront bars in town Katherine had dressed up as a young sailor, and she put
a bandage on her head to cover up her hair.
‘"She was
adorable," Juhen said, "you should have seen her. Then that Darcy
Monahan destroyed her. She sold her soul to him. I tell you, Richard, if you
ever get ready to sell your soul, don’t bother to sell it to another
human being It’s bad business to even consider such a thing"
‘Juhen said so many
strange things. Of course by the time I came along, Katherine was a burnt-out,
crazy old woman. Just crazy, I tell you, the stubborn repetitious kind of crazy
that gets on people’s nerves.
‘She would sit on a
bench in the back garden talking to her dead husband, Darcy. It disgusted
Juhen. So did her religion And I think she had some influence on Carlotta,
little as she was. Though I was never sure of it. Carlotta used to go to Mass
at the Cathedral with Katherine.
‘I recall once later
on Carlotta had a terrible fight with Julien, but I never knew what it was
about. Julien was such an ingratiating man; he was so easy to like. But that
child couldn’t stand him She couldn’t stand to be near him. And
then they were shouting at each other behind closed doors in the library. They
were shouting in French, and I couldn’t understand a word Finally Julien
came out and went upstairs. There were tears in his eyes. And there was a cut
on his face, and he was holding his handkerchief to it. I think that little
beast actually struck him. That’s the only time I ever saw him cry.
‘And that awful Carlotta,
she was such a cold mean little person. She just stood there watching him go
upstairs, and then she said she was going out on the front steps to wait for
her daddy to come home
‘Mary Beth was there,
and she said, "Well you are going to be waiting a very long time, because
your father is drunk right now at the club, and they won’t load him into
a carnage till about ten o’clock So you had better wear a coat when you go
outside.’
‘This wasn’t
said in a mean way, really, just matter-of-fact, the way she said everything,
but you should have seen the way that girl looked at her mother. I think she
blamed her mother for her father’s drinking, and if she did what a little
fool of a child she was. A man like Daniel McIntyre would have been a drunk if
he had married the Virgin Mary or the Whore of Babylon. Didn’t matter a
particle at all. He told me himself how his father had died of drink, and his
father before him. And both of them at the age of forty-eight, no less. And he
was afraid he’d die at forty-eight. I don’t know whether he made it
past forty-eight or not. And you know his family had money. Plenty of money.
You ask me, Mary Beth kept Judge McIntyre up and running a bit longer than
anyone else might have been able to do.
‘But Carlotta never
understood. Never for a moment. I think Lionel understood, and Stella too. They
loved both their parents, at least it always seemed that way to me. Maybe
Lionel was a little embarrassed by the Judge from time to time, but he was a
good boy, a devoted boy. And Stella, why, Stella adored her mother and father.
‘Ah, that Juhen. I can
remember that last year, he did the damnedest thing He took Lionel and Stella
both with him down to the French Quarter to see the unseemly sights, so to
speak, when they were no more than ten and eleven years old, I kid you not! And
you know, I don’t think it was the first time either. I think it was just
the first time that he couldn’t keep it from me, the mischief he was up
to. And you know he had Stella dressed as a little sailor boy and did she ever
look cute. And they had driven around all evening down there, with him pointing
out the fancy clubs to them, though of course he didn’t take them in, not
even Juhen could have pulled that off, I suppose, but they’d been
drinking, I can tell you.
‘I was awake when they
came home. Lionel was quiet, he was always quiet. But Stella was all fired up
with everything she’d seen down there in those cribs, you know, with the
women right on the street. And we sat on the steps together, Stella and I,
talking about it in whispers long after Lionel had helped Juhen up to the third
floor and put him to bed.
‘Stella and I went out
and opened up a bottle of champagne in the kitchen. She said she was old enough
to have a few drinks, and of course she didn’t listen to me, and who was
I to stop her And she and Lionel and I ended up dancing out on the back patio
as the sun came up Stella was doing some ragtime dance she’d seen down
there. She said Juhen was going to take them to Europe, and to see the whole
world, but of course that never happened. I don’t think they really knew
how old Juhen was, any more that I did . When I saw the year 1828 written on
that stone, I was shocked, I tell you But then so much about Juhen made sense
to me. No wonder he had such a peculiar perspective. He had seen an entire
century pass, he really had.
‘Stella should have
lived so long, really she should have. I remember she said something to me I
never forgot. It was long after Juhen died. We had lunch down here together at
the Court of Two Sisters She had already had Antha by then, and of course she
hadn’t bothered to marry or even identify the father. Now, that’s a
story, let me tell you. She just about turned society on its ear with that one.
But what am I trying to say? We had lunch, and she told me she was going to
live to be as old as Julien. She said Julien had looked into her palm and told
her so. A long life, she would have.
‘And think of it, shot
dead like that by Lionel when she wasn’t even thirty years old. Good God!
But you know it was Carlotta all along, don’t you?’
Llewellyn was by this time
almost incoherent. I pressed on the matter of Carlotta and the shooting, but he
would say no more about it. The whole subject began to frighten him. He
returned to the subject of Juhen’s ’autobiography’ and how
much he wanted it. And what he wouldn’t give to get into that house some
day and lay hands on those pages if they were still in that upstairs room. But
then so long as Carlotta was there, he didn’t have a chance of it
‘You know there were
storage rooms up there, right along the front of the house under the roof You
can’t see the roof slope from the street, but they’re there Julien
had trunks in there I’ll bet that’s where she put the autobiography
She didn’t bother to burn it Not Mary Beth She just didn’t want it
to fall into my hands But then that beast Carlotta, who knows what she’s
done with all those things?’
Not wanting to miss an
opportunity, I pressed as to whether there was ever anything strange in the
house, anything supernatural. (That is, other than Juhen’s power to cause
apparitions ) This was of course the kind of leading question that I try not to
ask, but I had been with him for hours and he had volunteered nothing on this
score other than his strange experiences with Julien I was searching for
something more
His reaction to my question
about a ghost was very strong ‘Oh, that,’ he said. ‘That was
awful, just awful. I can’t tell anyone that. Besides, it must have been
my imagination ’ He all but passed out.
I helped him back to his
flat above the bookstore on Chartres Street. Over and over, he mentioned that
Juhen had left him the money for the building, and for the opening of a shop
Julien knew Llewellyn loved poetry and music and really despised his work as a
clerk. Julien sought to set him free, and he had done it. But the one book he
wished he had was Juhen’s life story
I was never able to obtain
another interview of similar depth and length
When I tried to talk to
Llewellyn again a few days later, he was very polite but cautious. He
apologized for having gotten so drunk and talked so much, though he said he had
enjoyed it. And I could never persuade him to lunch with me again or to speak
at any length about Juhen Mayfair.
Several times after that, I
stopped in his shop. I asked him many questions about the family and its
various members. But I could never regain his trust. Once I asked again if that
house on First Street was haunted as people said. There were so many stories.
The very same expression
came over him that I had seen the first night I spoke to him. He looked away,
his eyes wide, and he shuddered. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘It
might have been what you call a ghost. I don’t like to think about those
things. I always thought it was my . guilt, you know, that I was imagining it.’
When I found myself
pressing, perhaps a little too much, he said to me that the Mayfair family was
a hard and strange family. ‘You don’t want to run afoul of those
people. That Carlotta Mayfair, she’s a monster. A real monster.’ He
looked very uncomfortable.
I asked if she had ever
given him trouble, to which he replied dismissively that she gave everyone
trouble. He seemed distracted, troubled. Then he said a most curious thing,
which 1 wrote down as soon as I returned to my hotel room. He said that he had
never believed in life after death, but when he thought of Juhen, he was
convinced that Juhen was still in existence somewhere.
‘I know you think I’m
out of mind to say something like that,’ he said, ’but I could
swear it’s true. The night after we first met, I could swear I dreamed of
Juhen and Juhen told me a lot of things. When I woke up, I couldn’t
remember the dream clearly, but I felt that Juhen didn’t want us to talk
again. I don’t even like talking about it now except that… well, 1
feel I have to tell you.’
I said I believed him. He
went on to say that Juhen in the dream wasn’t the Juhen he remembered.
Something was definitely changed. ‘He seemed wiser, kinder, just the way
you hope someone would be who has crossed over. And he didn’t look old.
Yet he wasn’t exactly young either. I shall never forget that dream. It
was… absolutely real I could swear he was standing at the foot of my bed.
And I do remember one thing he said. He said that certain things were
destined but that they could be averted.’
‘What sort of things?’
I asked.
He shook his head. He would
say nothing more after that, no matter how I pressed. He did admit that he
could recall no censure from Julien on account of our conversation But the
sense of Julien’s being there again had made him feel disloyal. I could
not even get him to repeat the story when next I asked him about it.
The last time I saw him was
in late August 1959 He had obviously been ill. He had a bad tremor affecting
both his mouth and his left hand, and his speech was no longer entirely
distinct I could understand him, but it was difficult. I told him frankly that
what he had told me of Julien meant a great deal to me, that I was still
interested in the Mayfair history
At first I thought he did
not remember me or the incident in question, so vague did he seem. Then he
appeared to recognize me. He became excited
‘Come in the back with
me,’ he said, and as he struggled to rise from the desk I lent him a hand
He was unsteady on his feet We passed through a dusty curtained doorway into a
small storage room, and there he stopped just as if he were staring at
something, but I could see nothing
He gave a strange little
laugh and made a dismissive gesture with his hand. Then he took out a box, and
with trembling hands, he removed a packet of photographs. These were all of
Julien. He gave them to me. It seemed he wanted to say something but he couldn’t
find the words.
‘I cannot tell you
what this means to me,’ I said
‘I know,’ he
answered. ‘That is why I want you to have them You are the only person
who has ever understood about Julien.’
I felt sad then, dreadfully
sad. Had I understood? I suppose I had. He had caused the figure of Julien
Mayfair to come to life for me, and I had found it a seductive figure
‘My life might have
been different,’ he said, ’had I not met Julien No one ever after
seemed to measure up, you see And then the store, well, I fell back on the
store, and didn’t really accomplish very much in the long run.’
Then he appeared to shrug it
all off, and he smiled.
I put several questions to
him but he only shrugged them off too Finally one caught his attention
‘Did Julien suffer
when he died?’ I asked
He became absorbed, then he
shook his head. ‘No, not really. He didn’t much care for being
paralyzed, of course. Who would? But he loved books. I read to him all the
time. He died in the early morning. I know because I was with him till two o’clock,
and then I blew out the lamp and went downstairs.
‘Well, around six o’clock
a storm waked me. It was raining so hard it was coming in at the windowsills.
And the limbs of the maple tree outside were making quite a racket. I ran up at
once to see to Julien. His bed was right by the window.
‘And what do you
think? He had somehow managed to sit up, and open the window; and there he was,
dead, across the windowsill, his eyes closed, looking quite peaceful, as if he’d
wanted a breath of fresh air, and when he had had it he gave up, just like
that, falling dead as if he were falling asleep, with his head to one side
Would have been a very peaceful scene if it hadn’t been for the storm,
for the ram pouring in on him and even the leaves blowing into the room.
‘They said later it
was a massive stroke. They couldn’t figure how he had ever managed to
open the window I never said anything, but you know it occurred to
me…"
‘Yes?’ I prodded
him.
He gave a little shrug and
then went on, his speech extremely slurred. ‘Mary Beth went mad when I
called her. She pulled him off the windowsill and back onto the pillow. She
even slapped him. "Wake up, Julien," she said. "Julien, don’t
leave me yet!" I had a hell of a time closing that window. Then one of the
panes blew out. It was dreadful.
‘And that horrible
Carlotta came up. All the others were coming to kiss him, you know, and to pay
their respects, and Millie Dear, Remy’s daughter, you know, was helping
us with the bedcovers. But that dreadful Carlotta wouldn’t go near him,
wouldn’t even help us. She stood there on the landing, with her hands
clasped, like a little nun, just staring at the door.
‘And Belle, precious
Belle. Belle, the angel. She came in with her doll, and she started crying.
Then Stella climbed in the bed and lay beside him, with her hand over his
chest.
‘Belle said,
"Wake up, Oncle Julien." I guess she had heard her mama say it. And
Julien, poor sweet Julien. He was such a peaceful picture, finally, with his
head on the pillow, and his eyes closed.’
Llewellyn smiled and shook
his head, then he began to laugh softly under his breath as though remembering
something that aroused tenderness in him. He said something but it wasn’t
clear. Then he cleared his throat with difficulty. ‘That Stella,’
he said. ‘Everybody loved Stella. Except Carlotta. Carlotta never
did…’ His voice trailed off.
I pressed him further, once
more asking the sort of leading questions I made it a rule to avoid. I broached
the subject of a ghost. So many people said the house was haunted.
‘I should think if it
was, you would have known,’ I said.
I could not tell if he
understood me He made his way back to his desk and sat down, and just when I
was quite certain he’d forgotten me altogether, he said that there was
something in the house, but he didn’t know how to explain it.
‘There were things,’
he said, and that look of revulsion came over him again. ‘And I could have
sworn they all knew about it. Sometimes it was just a sense… a sense of
somebody always watching.’
‘Was there more to it
than that?’ I pressed, being young and ruthless and full of curiosity,
and not knowing yet what it means to be old.
‘I told Julien about
it,’ he said, ‘I said it was there in the room with us, you know,
that we weren’t alone, and that it was… watching us. But he would
just laugh it off, the way he laughed at everything. He would tell me not to be
so self-conscious. But I could swear it was there! It came when, you know,
Julien and I were together.’
‘Was it something you
saw?’
‘Only at the end,’
he said. He said something else but I couldn’t understand it. When I
pressed, he shook his head, and pressed his lips together for emphasis as he
did it. Then he dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Must have imagined it.
But I could swear in those last days when Julien was so sick, that the thing
was there, definitely there. It was in Juhen’s room, it was in the bed
with him.’
He looked up at me to gauge
my reaction. His mouth turned down at the ends and he was scowling, his eyes
glaring up at me from beneath his bushy eyebrows.
‘Awful, awful thing,’
he whispered, shaking his head. He shivered
‘Did you see it?’
He looked away. I asked him
several more questions, but I knew I had lost him. When he answered again, I
caught something about the others knowing about that thing, knowing and
pretending they didn’t.
Then he looked up at me
again and he said, ‘They didn’t want me to know that they knew.
They all knew. I told Julien. "There’s somebody else in this house,
and you know it, and you know what it likes, and what it wants, and you won’t
tell me you know," and he said, "Come now, Richard," and he’d
use all his… persuasion, so to speak, to you know, make me forget about
it. And then that last week, that awful last week, it was there, in that bed. I
know it was. I woke up in the chair and I saw it. I did, I saw it. It was the
ghost of a man, and it was making love to Julien. Oh, God, what a sight. Because
you see, I knew it wasn’t real. Wasn’t real at all. Couldn’t
be. And yet I could see it.’
He looked away, the tremor
in his mouth worsening. He tried to take out his pocket handkerchief but was
merely fumbling with it. I did not know whether or not I should help him.
I asked more questions as
gently as I could. He either didn’t hear me or didn’t care to
answer. He sat slumped in the chair, looking as if he might die of old age at
any moment.
The he shook his head and
said he couldn’t talk anymore. He did seem quite exhausted. He said he
didn’t stay in the shop all day anymore and he would soon be going
upstairs. I thanked him profusely for the pictures, and he murmured that yes,
he was glad I’d come, he’d been waiting for me to give me those
pictures.
I never saw Richard
Llewellyn again. He died about five months after our last interview, in early
1960. He was buried in the Lafayette Cemetery not far from Julien.
There are many other stories
which could be included here about Julien. There is much more that might be
discovered.
It is sufficient for the
purposes of this narrative to add nothing more at this point except that Julien
had one other male companion of whom we know, a man to whom he was very
strongly attached, and this was the man already described in this narrative as
Judge Daniel McIntyre, who later married Mary Beth Mayfair.
But we can discuss Daniel McIntyre
in connection with Mary Beth. Therefore it is appropriate to move on now to
Mary Beth herself, the last great nineteenth-century Mayfair witch, and the
only female Mayfair witch of the nineteenth century to rival her
eighteenth-century forebears in power.
It was ten minutes past two.
Michael stopped only because he had to stop. His eyes were closing, and there
was nothing to do but give in and sleep for a while.
He sat still for a long
moment, staring at the folder, which he had just closed. He was startled by the
knock on the door.
‘Come in,’ he
said.
Aaron entered quietly. He
was dressed in his pajamas and a quilted silk robe, sashed at the waist. ‘You
look tired,’ he said. ‘You should go to bed now.’
‘I have to,’
Michael said. ‘When I was young, I could just keep swilling the coffee.
But it’s not like that anymore. My eyes are shutting down on me.’
He sat back in the leather chair, fished in his pocket for a cigarette, and
lighted it. The need to sleep was suddenly so heavy, he closed his eyes and
almost let the cigarette slip from his fingers. Mary Beth, he thought, have to
get on to Mary Beth. So many questions…
Aaron settled into the wing
chair in the corner. ‘Rowan cancelled her midnight flight,’ he
said. ‘She’ll have a layover tomorrow, and won’t reach New
Orleans before afternoon.’
‘How do you find out
things like that?’ Michael asked sleepily. But that was the least of the
questions on his mind. He took another lazy drag off the cigarette and stared
at the plate of uneaten sandwiches before him. A sculpture now. He had not
wanted any supper. ‘That’s good,’ he said. ‘If I wake
up at six, and read right on through, I’ll make it by evening.’
‘And then we should
talk,’ Aaron said. ‘We should talk a great deal before you go to
see her.’
‘I know. Believe me, I
know. Aaron, why the hell am I involved in this? Why? Why have I been seeing
that man since I was a kid?’ He took another drag off the cigarette. ‘Are
you afraid of that spirit thing?’ he asked.
‘Yes, of course,’
Aaron answered without the slightest hesitation.
Michael was surprised. ‘You
believe all this then? And you yourself have seen him?’
Aaron nodded. ‘I have,’
he said.
‘Thank God. Every word
of this story has a different meaning for us than it would for someone else who
hasn’t seen! Someone who doesn’t know what it’s like to see
an apparition like that.’
‘I believed before I
saw,’ Aaron said.’ My colleagues have seen him. They have reported
what they’ve seen. And as a seasoned member of the Talamasca, I accepted
this testimony.’
‘Then you accept that
this thing can kill people.’
Aaron reflected for a
moment. ‘Look, I might as well tell you this now. And try to remember it.
This thing can do harm, but it has a devil of a time doing it.’ He
smiled. ‘No pun intended there,’ he said. ‘What I’m
trying to say is, Lasher kills largely through trickery. He can certainly cause
physical effects - move objects, cause tree limbs to fall, rocks to fly -that
sort of thing. But he wields this power awkwardly and often sluggishly.
Trickery and illusion are his strongest weapons.’
‘He forced Petyr van
Abel into a tomb,’ Michael said.
‘No, Petyr was found
trapped in a tomb. What likely happened was that he went into it himself in a
state of madness in which he could no longer distinguish illusion from reality.’
‘But why would Petyr
do that when he was terrified of…’
‘Oh, come now,
Michael, men are often irresistibly drawn to the very thing they fear.’
Michael didn’t say
anything. He drew on the cigarette again, seeing in his mind’s eye the
surf crashing on the rocks off Ocean Beach. And remembering the moment of
standing there, his scarf blowing in the wind, his fingers frozen.
‘To put it bluntly,’
Aaron said, ’never overestimate this spirit. It’s weak. If it wasn’t
it wouldn’t need the Mayfair family.’
Michael looked up. ‘Say
that again.’
‘If it wasn’t
weak, it wouldn’t need the Mayfair family,’ Aaron said. ‘It
needs their energy. And when it attacks it uses the victim’s energy.’
‘You just reminded me
of something I said to Rowan. When she asked whether or not these spirits I saw
had caused me to fall from the rock into the ocean. I told her they couldn’t
do something like that. They weren’t that strong. If they were strong
enough to knock a man into the sea and cause him to drown, they wouldn’t
need to come to people in visions. They wouldn’t need to give me a
crucial mission.’
Aaron didn’t reply.
‘You see my point?’
Michael asked.
‘Yes, I do. But I see
the point of her question also.’
‘She asked me why I
assumed that they were good, these spirits. I was shocked by that. But she
thought it was a logical question.’
‘Maybe it is.’
‘Oh, but I know they
are good.’ Michael stubbed out the cigarette. ‘I know. I know that
it was Deborah I saw. And that she wants me to oppose that spirit, Lasher. I
know that as surely as I know… who I am. Remember what Llewellyn told
you? I just finished reading it. Llewellyn told you that when Julien came to
him in a dream Julien was different. Julien was wiser than he had been when he
was alive. Well, that’s how it was with Deborah in my vision. Deborah
wants to stop this thing that she and Suzanne brought into the world and into
this family!’
‘Then comes the
question. Why has Lasher shown himself to you?’
‘Yes. We’re
going in a circle.’
Aaron switched off the light
in the corner, and then the lamp on the desk. This left only the lamp on the
bedside table. 'I'll have them call you at eight. I think you can finish the
entire file by late afternoon, perhaps a little sooner. Then we can talk, and
you can come to some sort of… well… decision.’
‘Have them call me at
seven. That’s one good thing about being this age. I get sleepy but I
sleep less. I’ll be fine if they ring me at seven. And Aaron…"
‘Yes?’
‘You never really
answered me about last night. Did you see that thing when he was standing right
in front of me on the other side of the fence! Did you or didn’t you?’
Aaron opened the door. He
seemed reluctant to speak. Then he said, ‘Yes, Michael, I saw him. I saw
him very clearly and distinctly. More clearly and distinctly than ever before.
And he was smiling at you. It even seemed he was… reaching out for you. I
would say from what I saw that he was welcoming you. Now, I must go, and you
must go to sleep. I’ll talk to you in the morning.’
‘Wait a minute.’
‘Lights out, Michael.’
The phone woke him up. The
sunlight was pouring through the windows on either side of the head of the bed.
For one moment he was completely disoriented. Rowan had just been talking to
him, saying something about how she wanted him to be there before they closed
the lid. What lid. He saw a dead white hand lying against black silk.
Then he sat up, and he saw
the desk, and the briefcase, and the folders heaped there, and he whispered: ‘The
lid of her mother’s coffin.’
Drowsily he stared at the
ringing phone. Then he picked up the receiver. It was Aaron.
‘Come down for
breakfast, Michael.’
‘Is she on the plane
yet, Aaron?’
‘She’s just left
the hospital. As I believe I told you last night, she’ll have a layover.
I doubt she’ll reach the hotel before two o’clock. The funeral
begins at three. Look, if you won’t come down we’ll send something
up, but you must eat.’
‘Yes, send it up,’
he said. ‘And Aaron. Where is this funeral?’
‘Michael, don’t
bolt on me after you’ve finished. That wouldn’t be fair to anyone.’
‘No, I’m not
going to do that, Aaron. Believe me. But I just want to know. Where is the
funeral?’
‘Lonigan and Sons.
Magazine Street.’
‘Oh, yeah, do I ever
know that place.’ Grandmother, grandfather, and his father, too, all
buried from Lonigan and Sons. ‘Don’t worry, Aaron, I’ll be
right here. Come up and keep me company if you want. But I’ve got to get
started.’
He took a quick shower, put
on fresh clothes, and came out of the bathroom to find his breakfast waiting
for him under a series of high polished silver domes on a lace-covered tray.
The old sandwiches were gone. And the bed was made. There were fresh flowers by
the window. He smiled and shook his head. He had a flash of Petyr van Abel in
some fine little chamber in the seventeenth-century Motherhouse in Amsterdam.
Was Michael a member now? Would they enfold him with all these trappings of
security and legitimacy and safety? And what would Rowan think of that? There
was so much he had to explain to Aaron about Rowan…
Drinking his first cup of
coffee absently, he opened the next folder, and began to read.
EIGHTEEN
IT WAS FIVE THIRTY in the
morning as Rowan finally headed to the airport, Slattery driving the Jaguar for
her, her eyes glassy and red as she instinctively and anxiously watched the
traffic, uncomfortable to have given over the control of the car to anyone
else. But Slattery had agreed to keep the Jag in her absence, and he ought to
get used to it, she figured. And besides, all she wanted now was to be in New
Orleans. The hell with the rest.
Her last evening at the
hospital had gone almost as planned. She had spent hours making the rounds with
Slattery, introducing him to patients, nurses, interns, and residents, doing
what she could to make the transition less painful for everyone involved. It
had not been easy. Slattery was an insecure and envious man. He made random
deprecating remarks under his breath continuously, ridiculing patients, nurses,
and other doctors in a manner that suggested Rowan was in complete sympathy
with him when she was not. There was a deep unkindness in him towards those he
believed to be inferior.
But he was far too ambitious
to be a bad doctor. He was careful, and smart.
And much as Rowan disliked
turning it all over to him, she was glad he was there. The feeling was growing
ever stronger in her that she wasn’t coming back here. She tried to
remind herself that there was no reason for such a feeling. Yet she couldn’t
shake it. The special sense told her to prepare Slattery to take over for her
indefinitely, and that was what she had done.
Then at eleven p.m., when
she was scheduled to leave for the airport, one of her patients - an aneurysm
case - began to complain of violent headaches and sudden blindness. This could
only mean the man was hemorrhaging again. The operation which had been
scheduled for the following Tuesday — to be performed by Lark — had
to be performed by Rowan and Slattery right then.
Rowan had never gone into surgery
more distracted; even as they were tying on her sterile gown, she had been
worried about her delayed flight to New Orleans, worried about the funeral,
worried that somehow she’d be trapped for hours during the layover in
Dallas, until after her mother had been lowered into the ground.
Then looking around the OR,
she had thought, This is the last time. I’m not going to be in this room
again, though why I don’t know.
At last the usual curtain
had fallen, cutting her off from past and future. For five hours, she operated
with Slattery beside her, refusing to allow him to take over though she knew he
wanted to do it.
She stayed in recovery with
her patient for an additional forty-five minutes. She didn’t like leaving
this one. Several times she placed her hands on his shoulders and did her
little mental trick of envisioning what was going on inside the brain. Was she
helping him or merely calming herself? She had no idea. Yet she worked on him
mentally, as hard as she had ever worked on anyone, even whispering aloud to
him that he must heal now, that the weakness in the wall of the artery was
repaired.
‘Long life to you, Mr
Benjamin,’ she whispered under her breath. Against her closed eyes, she
saw the brain circuitry. A vague tremor passed through her. Then, slipping her
hand over his, she knew he would be all right.
Slattery was in the doorway,
showered and shaved, and ready to take her to the airport.
‘Come on, Rowan, get
out of here, before anything else happens!’
She went to her office,
showered in the small private bathroom, put on her fresh linen suit, decided it
was much too early to call Lonigan and Sons in New Orleans, even with the time
difference, and then walked out of University Hospital, with a lump in her
throat. So many years of her life, she thought, and the tears hovered. But she
didn’t let them come.
‘You all right?’
Slattery had asked as he pulled out of the parking lot.
‘Oh, yeah,’ she
said. ‘Just tired.’ She was damned sick of crying. She’d done
more of it in the last few days than in all her life.
Now, as he made the left
turn off the highway at the airport, she found herself thinking that Slattery
was about as ambitious as any doctor she’d ever met. She knew quite
emphatically that he despised her, and that it was for all the simple, boring
reasons — that she was an extraordinary surgeon, that she had the job he
coveted, that she might soon be back.
A debilitating chill passed
over her. She knew she was picking up his thoughts. If her plane crashed, he
could take her place forever. She glanced at him, and their eyes met for a
second, and she saw the flush of embarrassment pass over him. Yes, his
thoughts.
How many times in the past
had it happened that way, and so frequently when she was tired? Maybe her guard
was down when she was sleepy, and this evil little telepathic power could
assert itself wantonly, and serve up to her this bitter knowledge whether she
wanted it or not. It hurt her. She didn’t want to be near him.
But it was a good thing that
he wanted her job, a good thing that he was there to take it so that she could
go.
It struck her very clearly
now that, much as she had loved University, it wasn’t important where she
practiced medicine. It could be any well-equipped medical center in which the
nurses and technicians could give her the backup she required.
So why not tell Slattery she
wasn’t coming back? Why not end the conflict inside him for his sake? The
reason was simple. She didn’t know why she felt so strongly that this was
a final farewell. It had to do with Michael; it had to do with her mother; but
it was as purely irrational as anything she’d ever felt.
Before Slattery even stopped
at the curb, she had the door open. She climbed out of the car and gathered up
her shoulder bag.
Then she found herself
staring at Slattery as he handed her the suitcase from the trunk. The chill
passed over her again, slowly, uncomfortably. She saw malice in his eyes. What
an ordeal the night had been for him. He was so eager. And he disliked her so
much. Nothing in her manner, either personally or professionally, evoked a
finer response in him. He simply disliked her. She could taste it as she took
the suitcase from his hand.
‘Good luck, Rowan,’
he said, with a metallic cheerfulness. I hope
you don’t come back.
‘Slat,’ she said,
‘thank you for everything. And there’s something else I should tell
you. I don’t think… Well, there’s a good possibility I may
not come back.’
He could scarcely conceal
his delight. She felt almost sorry for him, watching the tense movement of his
lips as he tried to keep his expression neutral. But then she felt a great
warm, wondrous delight herself.
‘It’s just a
feeling,’ she said. (And it’s great!) ‘Of course I’ll
have to tell Lark in my own time, and officially —’
’— Of course.’
‘But go ahead and hang
your pictures on the office walls,’ she continued. ‘And enjoy the
car. I guess I’ll send for it sooner or later, but probably later. If you
want to buy it, I’ll give you the bargain of your life.’
‘What would you say to
ten grand for it, cash, I know it’s -’
‘That will do it.
Write me a check when I send you my new address.’ With an indifferent
wave, she walked off towards the glass doors.
The sweet excitement washed
over her like sunlight. Even sore-eyed and sluggishly weary, she felt a great
sense of momentum. At the ticket desk, she specified first class, one way.
She drifted into the gift
shop long enough to buy a pair of big dark glasses, which struck her as very
glamorous, and a book to read — an absurd male fantasy of impossible
espionage and relentless jeopardy, which seemed slightly glamorous too.
The New York Times
said it was hot in New Orleans. Good that she had worn the white linen, and she
felt pretty in it. For a few moments, she lingered in the lounge, brushing her
hair, and taking care with the pale lipstick and cream rouge she hadn’t
touched in years. Then she slipped on the dark glasses.
Sitting in the plastic chair
at the gate, she felt absolutely anchorless. No job, no one in the house in
Tiburon. And Slat double-clutching Graham’s car all the way back to San
Francisco. You can have it, Doctor. No regret, no worry. Free.
Then she thought of her
mother, dead and cold on a table at Lonigan and Sons, beyond the intervention
of scalpels, and the old darkness crept over her, right amid the eerie
monotonous fluorescent lights and the shining early morning air commuters with
their briefcases and their blue all-weather suits. She thought of what Michael
had said about death. That it was the only supernatural event most of us ever
experience. And she thought that was true.
The tears came again,
silently. She was glad she had the dark glasses. Mayfairs at the funeral, lots
and lots of Mayfairs…
She fell asleep as soon as
she was settled on the plane.
NINETEEN
THE
FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES
PART
VI
The Mayfair Family from 1900 through 1929
RESEARCH
METHODS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
As MENTIONED EARLIER, in our
introduction to the family in the nineteenth century, our sources of
information about the Mayfair family became ever more numerous and illuminating
with each passing decade.
As the family moved towards
the twentieth century, the Talamasca maintained all of its traditional kinds of
investigators. But it also acquired professional detectives for the first time.
A number of such men worked for us in New Orleans and still do. They have
proved excellent not only at gathering gossip of all sorts but at investigating
specific questions through reams of records, and at interviewing scores of
persons about the Mayfair family, much as an investigative ‘true crime’
writer might do today.
These men seldom if ever
know who we are. They report to an agency in London. And though we still send
our own specially trained investigators to New Orleans on virtual ’gossip-gathering
sprees’ and carry on correspondence with numerous other watchers, as we
have all through the nineteenth century, these private detectives have greatly
improved the quality of our information.
Yet another source of
information became available to us in the late nineteenth and twentieth
century, which we - for want of a better phrase — will call family
legend. To wit, though Mayfairs are often absolutely secretive about their
contemporaries, and very leery of saying anything whatsoever about the family
legacy to outsiders, they had begun by the 1890s to repeat little stories and
anecdotes and fanciful tales about figures in the dim past.
Specifically, a descendant
of Lestan who would say absolutely nothing about his dear cousin Mary Beth when
invited by a stranger at a party to gossip about her, nevertheless repeated
several quaint stories about Great-aunt Marguerite, who used to dance with her
slaves. And later the grandson of that very cousin repeated quaint stories
about old Miss Mary Beth, whom he never knew.
Of course much of this
family legend is too vague to be of interest to us, and much concerns ‘the
grand plantation life’ which has become mythic in many Louisiana families
and does not shed light upon our obsessions. However, sometimes these family
legends tie in quite shockingly with bits of information we have been able to
gather from other sources.
And when and where they have
seemed especially illuminating, I have included them. But the reader must
understand ’family legend’ always refers to something being told to
us recently about someone or something in the ‘dim past.’
Yet another form of gossip
which came to the fore in the twentieth century is what we call legal gossip
— and that is, the gossip of legal secretaries, legal clerks, lawyers,
and judges who knew the Mayfairs or worked with them, and the friends and
families of all these various non-Mayfair persons.
Because Julien’s sons,
Barclay, Garland, and Cortland, all became distinguished lawyers, and because
Carlotta Mayfair was a lawyer, and because numerous grandchildren of Julien
also went into law, this network of legal contacts has tended to grow larger
than one might suppose. But even if this had not been the case, the financial
dealings of the Mayfairs have been so extensive that many, many lawyers have
been involved.
When the family began to
squabble in the twentieth century, when Carlotta began to fight over the
custody of Stella’s daughter; when there were arguments about the
disposition of the legacy, this legal gossip became a rich source of
interesting details.
Let me add in closing that
the twentieth century saw even greater and more detailed record keeping in
general than the nineteenth. And our paid investigators of the twentieth
century availed themselves of these numerous public records concerning the
family. Also as time went on, the family was mentioned more and more in the
press.
THE
ETHNIC CHARACTER OF THE CHANGING FAMILY
As we carry this narrative
towards the year 1900, we should note that the ethnic character of the Mayfair
family was changing.
Though the family had begun
as a Scottish-French mix, incorporating in the next generation the blood of the
Dutchman Petyr van Abel, it had become after that almost exclusively French.
In 1826, however, with the
marriage of Marguerite Mayfair to the opera singer Tyrone Clifford McNamara,
the legacy family began to intermarry fairly regularly with Anglo-Saxons.
Other branches - notably the
descendants of Lestan and Maurice -remained staunchly French, and if and when
they moved to New Orleans they preferred to live ‘downtown’ with
other French-speaking Creoles, in or around the French Quarter or on Esplanade
Avenue
The legacy family, with Katherine’s
marriage to Darcy Monahan, became firmly ensconced in the uptown ‘American’
Garden District. And though Julien Mayfair (half Irish himself) spoke French
all his life, and married a French-speaking cousin, Suzette, he gave his three
boys distinctly American or Anglo names, and saw to it that they received
American educations. His son Garland married a girl of German-Irish descent
with Julien’s blessing. Cortland also married an Anglo-Saxon girl, and
eventually Barclay did also
As we have already noted
Mary Beth was to marry an Irishman, Daniel McIntyre, in 1899.
Though Katherine's sons Clay
and Vincent spoke French all their lives, both married Irish-American girls
— Clay the daughter of a well-to-do hotel owner, and Vincent the daughter
of an Irish-German brewer. One of Clay’s daughters became a member of the
Irish Catholic Order of the Sisters of Mercy (following in the footsteps of her
father’s sister), to which the family contributes to this day. And a
great-granddaughter of Vincent entered the same order
Though the French Mayfairs
worshiped at the St Louis Cathedral in the French Quarter, the legacy family
began to attend services at their parish church, Notre Dame, on Jackson Avenue,
one of a three-church complex maintained by the Redemptorist Fathers which
sought to meet the needs of the waterfront Irish and German immigrants as well
as the old French families. When this church was closed in the 19205 a parish
chapel was established on Prytama Street in the Garden District, quite
obviously for the rich who did not want to attend either the Irish church of St
Alphonsus or the German church of St Mary’s.
The Mayfairs attended Mass
at this chapel, and indeed residents of First Street attend Mass there to this
day. But as far back as 1899, the Mayfairs began to use the Irish church of St
Alphonsus - a very large, beautiful, and impressive structure - for important
occasions.
Mary Beth was married to
Daniel McIntyre in St Alphonsus Church in 1899, and every First Street Mayfair
baptism since has been held there. Mayfair children — after their
expulsion from better private schools - went to St Alphonsus parochial school
for brief periods.
Some of our testimony about
the family comes from Irish Catholic nuns and priests stationed in this parish.
After Julien died in 1914,
Mary Beth was rarely heard to speak French, even to the French cousins, and it
may be that the language died out in the legacy family. Carlotta Mayfair has
never been known to speak French; and it is doubtful that Stella or Antha or
Deirdre knew more than a few words of any foreign language.
Our investigators observed
on numerous occasions that the speech of the twentieth Century Mayfairs —
Carlotta; her sister, Stella; Stella’s daughter, Antha; and Antha’s
daughter, Deirdre — showed distinct Irish traits. Like many New
Orleamans, they had no discernible French or southern American accent. But they
tended to call people they knew by both their names, as in ‘Well, how are
you now, Ellie Mayfair?’ and to speak with a certain lilt and certain
deliberate repetitions which struck the listeners as Irish. A typical example
would be this fragment picked up at a Mayfair funeral in 1945. ‘Now don’t
you tell me that story, now, Gloria Mayfair, you know I won’t believe
such a thing and shame on you for telling it’ And poor Nancy with all she
has on her mind, why, she’s a living saint and you know she is, if ever
there was one!’
With regard to appearance,
the Mayfairs are such a salad of genes that any combination of coloring, build,
or facial characteristics can appear at any time in any generation. There is no
characteristic look.
Yet some members of the
Talamasca aver that a study of all the existing photographs, sketches, and
reproductions of paintings in our files does reveal a series of recurring types
For example, there is a
group of tall blond Mayfairs (including Lionel Mayfair) who resemble Petyr van
Abel, all of whom have green eyes and strong jaw lines
Then there is a group of
very pale, delicately built Mayfairs who are invariably blue-eyed and short,
and this group includes not only the original Deborah but also Deirdre Mayfair,
the present beneficiary and ’witch’ and the mother of Rowan
A third group of dark-eyed,
dark-haired Mayfairs with very large bones includes Mary Beth Mayfair, and her
uncles Clay and Vincent, and also Angehque Mayfair of Saint-Domingue
Another group of small
black-eyed, black-haired Mayfairs looks distinctly French, and every one of
this group has a small round head and rather prominent eyes and overly curly
hair
Lastly, there is a group of
very pale, cold-looking Mayfairs, all blond, with grayish eyes and fairly
delicate of build, though always tall, and this group includes Charlotte of
Saint-Domingue (the daughter of Petyr van Abel), Marie Claudette, who brought
the family to Louisiana, Stella’s daughter, Antha Mayfair, and her
granddaughter -Dr Rowan Mayfair
Members of the order have
also noted some very specific resemblances For instance, Dr Rowan Mayfair of
Tiburon, California, strongly resembles her ancestor Juhen Mayfair, much more
than she does any blond members of the family
And Carlotta Mayfair in her
youth strongly resembled her ancestor Charlotte
(This investigator feels
obligated to note with regard to this entire subject of looks that he does not
see all this in these pictures’ There are similarities, but the
differences far outweigh them’ The family does not look distinctly Irish,
French, Scottish, or anything else )
In any discussion of Irish
influence and Irish traits we should remind ourselves that the history of this
family is such that one can never be certain who is the father of any child And
as the later ’legends’ repeated in the twentieth century by
descendants will show, the incestuous entanglements of each generation were not
really secret Nevertheless an Irish cultural influence is definitely
discernible.
We should also note for what
it’s worth that the family in the late 1900s began to employ more and
more Irish domestic servants, and these servants became for the Talamasca
priceless sources of information How much they contributed to our vision of the
family as Irish is not easy to determine
The hiring of these Irish
workers had nothing to do with the family’s Irish identity, per se It was
the trend in the neighborhood of the period, and many of these Irish-Americans
lived in the so-called Irish Channel or riverfront neighborhood lying between
the Mississippi wharves and Magazine Street, the southernmost boundary of the
Garden District Some of them were live-m maids and stable boys, others came to
work by the day, or only on certain occasions And as a whole, they were not as
loyal to the Mayfair family as the colored and black servants were, and they
talked much more freely about what went on at First Street than servants of
past decades.
But though the information
they made available to the Talamasca is extremely valuable, it is information
of a certain kind and must be evaluated carefully.
The Irish servants working
in and around the house tended on the whole to believe in ghosts, in the
supernatural, and in the power of the Mayfair women to make things happen They
were what we must call highly superstitious Hence their stories of what they
saw or heard sometimes border on the fantastic, and often contain vivid and
lurid passages of description
Nevertheless, this material
is for obvious reasons - extremely significant And much of what was recounted
by the Irish servants has for us - a familiar ring to it.
All things considered, it is
not unfair to say in summary that by the first decade of this century the First
Street Mayfairs thought of themselves as Irish, often making remarks to that
effect, and that they emerged in the consciousness of many who knew them -
servants and peers alike as almost stereotypically Irish in their madness and
eccentricity and penchant for the morbid Several critics of the family have
called them ’raving Irish loonies ’ And a German priest of St
Alphonsus Church once described them as existing in ’a perpetual state of
Celtic gloom ’ Several neighbors and friends referred to Mary Beth’s
son, Lionel, as a ’raving Irish drunk,’ and his father, Daniel
McIntyre, was certainly considered to be one, by just about every bartender on
Magazine Street.
Perhaps it is safe to say
that with the death of ‘Monsieur Juhen’ (who was in fact half
Irish) the house on First Street lost the very last of its French or Creole
character Julien’s sister, Katherine, and his brother, Remy, had already
preceded him to the grave, and so had his daughter, Jeannette Thereafter - in
spite of the huge family gatherings which included French-speaking cousins by
the hundreds - the core family was an Irish-American Catholic family
As the years passed, the
French-speaking branches lost their Creole identity as well, as have so many
other Louisiana Creole families The French language has all but died out in
every known branch And as we move towards the last decade of the twentieth
century, it is difficult to find a true French-speaking Mayfair descendant
anywhere
This brings us to one other
crucial observation - which is all too easily overlooked when proceeding with
this narrative
With the death of Juhen, the Mayfair family may have lost the last member who really
knew its history We cannot know But it seems more than likely And as we
converse more with descendants and gather more of their preposterous legends
about the plantation days, it seems a certainty
As a consequence, from 1914
on, any member of the Talamasca investigating the Mayfair family could not help
but be aware that he or she knew more about the family than the family appeared
to know about itself And this has led to considerable confusion and stress on
the part of our investigators.
Even before Julien’s
death, the question of whether or not to attempt contact with the family had
become a pressing one for the order.
After the death of Mary
Beth, it became agonizing.
But we must now continue our
story, backtracking to the year 1891, so that we may focus sharply upon Mary
Beth Mayfair, who will carry us into the twentieth century, and who was perhaps
the last of the truly powerful Mayfair Witches
We know more about Mary Beth
Mayfair than we know about any other Mayfair witch since Charlotte Yet when all
the information is examined, Mary Beth remains a mystery, revealing herself to
us in only occasional blinding flashes through the anecdotes of servants and
family friends Only Richard Llewellyn gave us a truly intimate portrait, and as
we have already seen, Richard knew very little about Mary Beth’s business
interests or her occult powers She seems to have fooled him, as she fooled
everyone around her, into believing that she was very simply a strong woman,
when the truth was far more complex than that.
THE
CONTINUING STORY OF MARY BETH MAYFAIR
The week after Marguerite’s
death in 1891, Julien removed Marguerite’s personal possessions from
Riverbend to the First Street house Hiring two wagons to transport the goods,
he moved numerous jars and bottles, all properly crated, several trunks of
letters and other papers, and some twenty-five cartons of books, as well as
several trunks of miscellaneous contents
We know that the jars and
bottles disappeared into the third floor of the First Street house, and we
never heard of these bottles and jars again from any contemporary witness.
Julien made his bedroom on
the third floor at this time, and this is the room in which he died as
described by Richard Llewellyn.
Many of Marguerite’s
books, including obscure texts in German and French having to do with black
magic, were put on the shelves in the ground floor library.
Mary Beth was given the old
master bedroom in the north wing, above the library, which has always since
been occupied by the beneficiary of the legacy Little Belle, too young perhaps
to be displaying signs of feeblemindedness, was given the first bedroom across
the hall, but Belle often slept with her mother in the early years
Mary Beth began to wear the
Mayfair emerald regularly And it may be said that she came into her own at this
time as an adult and as mistress of the house New Orleans society certainly
became more aware of her, and the first business transactions bearing her
signature appear in the public records at this time
She appears in numerous
photographic portraits wearing the emerald, and many people talked about it and
spoke of it with admiration And in many of these photographs she is wearing men’s
clothing In fact, scores of witnesses verify Richard Llewellyn’s
statement that Mary Beth cross-dressed, and that it was common for her to go
out, dressed as a man, with Julien Before Mary Beth’s marriage to Daniel McIntyre,
these wanderings included not only the bordellos of the French Quarter, but an
entire spectrum of social activity, Mary Beth even appearing at balls in the
handsome ’white tie and tails’ of a man.
Though society in general
was shocked by this behavior, the May-fairs continued to pave the way for it
with money and charm. They lent money freely to those who needed it during the
various postwar depressions They gave to charities almost ostentatiously, and
under the management of Clay Mayfair, River bend continued to make a fortune
with one bountiful sugar crop after another.
In these early years, Mary
Beth herself seems to have aroused little enmity in others. She is never spoken
of, even by her detractors, as vicious or cruel, though she is often much
criticized as cold, businesslike, indifferent to people’s feelings and
mannish in manner.
For all her strength and
height, however, she was not a mannish woman Numerous people describe her as
voluptuous, and occasionally she is described as beautiful. Numerous
photographs bear this out. She presented an alluring figure in male attire,
particularly in these early years. And more than one member of the Talamasca
has observed that whereas Stella, Antha, and Deirdre Mayfair - her daughter,
granddaughter, and great-granddaughter respectively - were delicate ‘southern
belle’ women, Mary Beth greatly resembled the striking and ’larger
than life’ American film stars who came after her death, particularly Ava
Gardner and Joan Crawford Mary Beth also bore a strong resemblance in
photographs to Jenny Churchill, the celebrated American mother of Winston
Churchill.
Mary Beth’s hair
remained jet black until her death at the age of fifty-four. We do not know her
exact height but we can guess that it was close to five feet eleven inches. She
was never a heavy woman, but she was big-boned, and very strong. She walked
with large steps. The cancer that killed her was not discovered until six
months before her death, and she remained an ’attractive’ woman up
until the final weeks, when she finally disappeared into the sickroom never to
leave it.
There can be no doubt,
however, that Mary Beth had scant interest in her physical beauty Though always
well groomed, and sometimes stunning in a ball gown and fur wrap, she is never
spoken of by anyone as seductive. In fact, those who called her ’unfeminine’
dwelt at length upon her straightforward and brusque manner, and her seeming
indifference to her own considerable endowments.
It is worth noting that
almost all of these traits - straightforward manner, businesslike attitude,
honesty, and coldness — are later associated with her daughter Carlotta
Mayfair, who is not and never was a designee of the legacy.
Those who liked Mary Beth
and did business successfully with her praised her as a ‘straight shooter’
and a generous person, quite incapable of pettiness. Those who did not do well
with her called her feelingless and inhuman. This is also the case with
Carlotta Mayfair
Mary Beth’s business
interests and her appetite for pleasure will be dealt with extensively below.
It is sufficient to say here that, in the early years, she set the tone for
what went on at First Street as much as Juhen. Many family dinner parties were
planned by her completely, and she persuaded Juhen to make his last trip to
Europe in 1896, at which time she and he toured the capitals from Madrid to
London
Mary Beth shared Juhen’s
love of horses from girlhood on, and frequently went riding with Juhen. They
also loved the theater and attended almost any sort of play, from the very
grand Shakespearean productions to very small and insignificant local
theatricals And both were passionate lovers of opera In later years, Mary Beth
had a Victrola of some sort in almost every room of the house, and she played
opera records continuously.
Mary Beth also seems to have
enjoyed living with a large number of people under one roof. Her interest in
the family was not limited to reunions and get-togethers. On the contrary, she
opened her doors all her life to visiting cousins.
Some casual accounts of her
hospitality suggest that she enjoyed having power over people; she enjoyed
being the center of attention. But even in those stories in which such opinions
are quite literally expressed, Mary Beth emerges as a person more interested in
others than in herself. In fact, the total absence of narcissism or vanity in
this woman continues to be astonishing to those who peruse the record.
Generosity, rather than a lust for power, seems a more appropriate explanation
for her family relationships
(Allow us to note here that
Nancy Mayfair, an illegitimate child of a descendant of Maurice Mayfair, was
adopted by Mary Beth and brought up along with Antha Mayfair as Stella’s
daughter. Nancy lived in the First Street house until 1988 It was commonly
believed even by scores of Mayfairs that she was really Stella’s daughter
)
In 1891, the First Street
household consisted of Remy Mayfair, who seemed years older than his brother
Julien, though he was not, and was rumored to be dying of consumption, which he
finally did in 1897, Julien’s sons, Barclay, Garland, and Cortland, who
were the first Mayfairs to be sent off to boarding schools on the upper East
Coast where they did well, Millie Mayfair, the only one of Remy’s
children never to marry, and finally, in addition to Julien and Mary Beth,
their daughter, little Belle, who as already mentioned was slightly
feebleminded
By the end of the century the
house included Clay Mayfair, Mary Beth’s brother, and also the unwilling
and heartbroken Katherine Mayfair after the destruction of Riverbend, and from
time to time other cousins
During all this time, Mary
Beth was the undisputed lady of the house, and it was Mary Beth who inspired
and carried out a great refurbishing of the structure before 1900, at which
time three bathrooms were added and the gaslight was expanded to the third
floor, and to the entire servants’ quarters, and to two large
outbuildings as well, one of which was a stable with living accommodations
above it.
Though Mary Beth lived until
1925, dying of cancer in September of that year, we can safely say that she
changed little over time - that her passions and priorities in the late
nineteenth century were pretty much the same as in the last year of her life
If she ever had a close
friend or confidant outside the family, we know nothing of it And her true
character is rather hard to describe She was certainly never the playful,
cheerful person that Julien was, she seemed to have no desire for great drama,
and even at the countless family reunions where she danced and supervised the
taking of photographs and the serving of food and drink, she is never described
as ‘the life of the party ’ Rather she seems to have been a quiet,
strong woman, with very definite goals And it is possible that no one was ever
really close to her except her daughter Stella But we shall get to that part of
the story by and by.
To what extent Mary Beth’s
occult powers furthered her goals is a very significant question And there is a
variety of evidence to help one make a series of educated guesses as to what
went on behind the scenes
To the Irish servants who
came and went at First Street, she was always a ’witch’ or a person
with voodoo powers But their stories of her differ from other accounts which we
possess, quite markedly, and must be taken with the proverbial grain of salt.
Nevertheless.
The servants spoke often of
Mary Beth going down to the French Quarter to consult with the voodooiennes and
of having an altar in her room at which she worshiped the devil They said that
Mary Beth knew when you told a he, and knew where you had been, and knew where
every member of the Mayfair family was, even those who had gone up north, and
knew at any moment what these people were doing They said Mary Beth made no
effort to keep such things a secret.
They also said that Mary
Beth was the person to whom the black servants turned when they were in trouble
with the local voodooiennes and Mary Beth knew what powder to use or candle to
burn in order to counteract a spell, and that she could command spirits, and
Mary Beth declared more than once that this was all that voodoo was about
Command the spirits All the rest is for show.
One Irish cook who worked in
the house off and on from 1895 to 1902 told one of our investigators casually
that Mary Beth told her there were all kinds of spirits in the world, but the
lowly spirits were the easiest to command, and anybody could call them up if such
a person had a mind to Mary Beth had spirits guarding all the rooms of the
house and all the things in them But Mary Beth warned the cook not to try to
call spirits on her own It had its dangers and was best left to people who
could see spirits and feel them the way that Mary Beth could.
‘You could feel the
spirits in that house, all right,’ said the cook, ’and if you
closed your eyes halfway, you could see them But Miss Mary Beth didn’t
have to do that She could just see them plain as day all the time, and she
talked to them and called them by name’
The cook also said Mary Beth
drank brandy straight from the bottle, but that was all right, because Mary
Beth was a real lady and a lady could do what she pleased, and Mary Beth was a
kind and generous person Same held true for old Monsieur Julien, but he would
not have thought of drinking brandy straight from the bottle, or anything else
straight from a bottle, and always liked his sherry in a crystal glass.
A laundress reported that
Mary Beth could make doors close behind her without bothering to touch them as
she made her way through the house The laundress was asked once to take a
basket of folded linen to the second floor, but she refused, she was so
frightened Then Mary Beth scolded her in a rather good-natured way for being so
foolish, and the laundress wasn’t afraid anymore.
There are at least fifteen
different accounts of Mary Beth’s voodoo altar, on which she burned
incense and candles of various colors, and to which she added plaster saints
from time to time But no account tells us precisely where this altar was (It is
interesting to note that no black servant ever questioned about this altar
would utter one word about it)
Some of the other stories we
have are very fanciful It was told to us several times, for instance, that Mary
Beth didn’t just dress like a man, she turned into a man when she went
out in her suit, with her cane and hat And she was strong enough at such times
to beat off any other man who assaulted her.
One morning early when she
was riding her horse on St Charles Avenue alone (Juhen was ill at the time, and
would very soon die), a man tried to pull her from the horse, at which time she
herself turned into a man and beat him half to death with her fist, and then
dragged him at the end of a rope behind her horse to the local police station ‘Lots
of people saw that,’ we are told That story was repeated in the Irish
Channel as late as 1935 Indeed police records of the time indicate the assault,
and the ’citizen’s arrest’ did take place in 1914 The man
died in his cell several hours later
There is another story of a
foolish maidservant who stole one of Mary Beth’s rings, and awoke that
night in her smothering little room on Chippewa Street to discover Mary Beth
bending over her, in manly form, and demanding that she give back the ring
immediately, which the woman did, only to die by three o’clock the
following afternoon from the shock of the experience
That story was told to us
once in 1898, and again in 1910 It has proved impossible to investigate.
By far the most valuable
story we have from the earlier period was told to us by a taxi driver in 1910,
who said that he once picked up Mary Beth downtown in the Rue Royale one day in
1908, and though he was certain she had gotten into his taxi alone (this was a
horse-drawn hansom), he heard her talking to someone all the way uptown When he
opened the door for her before the carriage block at First Street, he saw a
handsome man with her in the cab She seemed deep in conversation with him, but
broke off when she saw the driver, and uttered a short laugh She gave the
driver two beautiful gold coins and told him they were worth far more than the
fare, and to spend them quickly When the taxi driver looked for the man to
follow her out of the cab he saw there was no one there
There are numerous other
servant stories in our files concerning Mary Beth’s powers, but all have
a common theme — that Mary Beth was a witch and that she showed her
powers whenever she or her possessions or her family was threatened But once
more, let us emphasize that the stories of these servants differ markedly from
the other material we have.
However, if we consider the
entire scope of Mary Beth’s life, we will see that there is convincing
evidence of witchcraft from other sources.
As far as we can deduce,
Mary Beth had three overriding passions.
First but not foremost was
Mary Beth’s desire to make money, and to involve members of her own
family in the building of an immense fortune It is an understatement to say
that she was successful.
Almost from the beginning of
her life, we hear stories of treasure troves of jewels, of purses full of gold
coins which can never be emptied, and of Mary Beth tossing gold coins to the
poor at random.
She was said to have warned
many persons to ‘spend the coins fast,’ saying that whatever she
gave away from her magic purse always returned to her.
Regarding the jewels and the
coins - it could be that a thorough study of all the Mayfair finances, made
entirely from public records and analyzed by those versed in such matters,
might indicate that mysterious and unaccountable infusions of wealth have
played a role in their entire financial history But on the basis of what we
know, we cannot make this assumption.
More pertinent is the
question of Mary Beth’s use of precognition or occult knowledge in her
investments.
Even a casual examination of
Mary Beth’s financial achievements indicates that she was a financial
genius. She was far more interested in making money than Juhen had ever been,
and she possessed an obvious knack for knowing what was going to happen before
it did, and she often warned all her peers about impending crises and bank
failures, though they often did not listen to her.
In fact, Mary Beth’s
diversified investments defy conventional explanation. She was, as they say, ’into’
everything. She engaged directly in cotton brokering, real estate, shipping,
railroads, banking, merchandising, and later bootlegging She continuously
invested in highly unlikely ventures that proved astonishingly successful. She
was ’in on the ground floor’ of several chemicals and inventions
which made her incalculable amounts of money.
One can go so far as to say
that her story - on paper - doesn’t make sense. She knew too much too
often and made too much out of it.
Whereas Juhen’s
successes, great as they were, could be attributed to one man’s knowledge
and skill, it is almost impossible to explain Mary Beth’s success in this
simple a fashion. Juhen had no interest for example in modern inventions, as
far as investment was concerned. Mary Beth had a positive passion for gadgets
and technology, and never ever made a mistake in this area. The same held true
for shipping, about which Juhen knew little, and Mary Beth knew a great deal
Whereas Juhen loved to purchase buildings, including factories and hotels, he
never bought undeveloped land, but Mary Beth bought enormous tracts of it all
over the United States and sold it at unbelievable profits. In fact, her
knowledge of when and where towns and cities would develop is totally
unaccountable.
Mary Beth was also very
canny about presenting her wealth in a favorable light to other people. She
made enough of a show to suit her purposes Consequently she never inspired the
wonder or disbelief that would have inevitably followed full disclosures of her
success And she was careful all her life to avoid publicity. Her life-style at
First Street was never particularly ostentatious, except that she came to love
motor cars and had so many at one time that she had to rent garages all over
the neighborhood for them. In sum, the picture she presented to Richard
Llewellyn, quoted at length in the last chapter, is pretty much the picture she
presented to everyone. Very few people knew how much money or power she had.
In fact, there is some evidence
that Mary Beth possessed an entire business life of which other people weren’t
aware, in the sense that she had a troop of financial employees whom she met in
downtown offices, who never came near her office on First Street. There is talk
even today in New Orleans of the men who worked ‘downtown’ for Mary
Beth, and how generously they were rewarded. It was a ’plush job,’
according to one old gentleman, who recalls that his friend often went on long
trips for Mary Beth, to London and Paris and Brussels and Zurich, sometimes
carrying enormous sums of money with him. Shipboard and hotel accommodations
were always first class, said this old man. And Mary Beth handed out bonuses
regularly. Another source insists that Mary Beth herself frequently went on such
trips without the knowledge of her family, but we can make no verification of
this.
We also have five different
stories of Mary Beth’s taking revenge on those who tried to cheat her.
One story recounts how her secretary, Landing Smith, ran off with three hundred
thousand dollars of Mary Beth’s cash, taking a liner to Europe under an
assumed name, quite convinced that he’d gotten away with it Three days
out of New York, he woke up in the middle of the night to discover Mary Beth
sitting on the side of his bed. Not only did she take the money from him, she
beat him soundly with her riding crop, and left him bloody and half mad on the
cabin floor where the ship’s steward later found him His full confession
followed at once. But Mary Beth was not found on board the ship, and neither
was the money This story was recounted in the local papers, though Mary Beth
herself refused to confirm or deny that anything was ever stolen
Another story, told by two
different elderly men in the year 1955, recounts how a meeting was held by one
of Mary Beth’s companies which sought to dissociate itself from her and
cheat her by a series of entirely legal maneuvers. The meeting was half over
perhaps when all at the table realized Mary Beth was sitting there with them.
Mary Beth told them simply what she thought of them, severed her tie with the
company, and it soon met with financial rum. Descendants of those involved
despise the Mayfairs to this day for this tragedy.
One branch of the Mayfair
family — descendants of Clay Mayfair who now live in New York —
will have nothing to do with the New Orleans Mayfairs on account of such an
entanglement with Mary Beth which took place in.
It seems Mary Beth was
investing heavily in New York banking at this time But an altercation had
occurred between her and a cousin In sum, he did not believe Mary Beth’s
plan of action would work She thought it would He sought to undercut her plan
without her knowledge She appeared in New York, in his office, and tore the
pertinent papers from his hands and threw them into the air, where they caught
fire and burnt without ever touching the ground She then warned him if he ever
tried to cheat his own blood again, she’d kill him He then told this
story over and over again compulsively to anyone and everyone who would listen,
effectively ruining his reputation and destroying his professional life People
thought he was crazy He committed suicide by jumping out of the office window
three months after Mary Beth’s appearance To this day the family blames
Mary Beth for the death, and speaks of her and her descendants with hatred.
It should be noted that
these New York Mayfairs are very well off And Stella made friendly overtures to
them on numerous occasions They insist that Mary Beth used Black Magic in all
her dealings, but the more they talk to our representatives, the more we come
to understand that they really know very little of the New Orleans family from
which they came, and they have a very small concept of Mary Beth’s
dealings.
Of course it is common to
have a very small idea of Mary Beth’s dealings As mentioned before, she
was very good at keeping her immense power and influence a secret.
But to the Talamasca,
stories of Mary Beth putting a curse on a farmer who wouldn’t sell her a
horse sound perfectly absurd when we know that Mary Beth was buying up
railroads in South America and investing in Indian tea and purchasing enormous
amounts of land surrounding the city of Los Angeles, California
Some day perhaps someone
will write a book about Mary Beth Mayfair It is all there in the records But as
it stands now, it seems that the Talamasca alone is the only group of persons
outside the family who knows that Maty Beth Mayfair expanded her financial
influence and power globally that she built a financial empire so immense, so
strong, and so diversified that its gradual dismantling is still going on to
this day.
But the entire subject of
Mayfair finances deserves more attention than we can give it If those with the
knowledge of such matters were to make a thorough study of the entire Mayfair
history and we refer here to public documents available to anyone diligent
enough to search for them it is possible that we would perceive a very strong
case for occult power being used throughout the centuries for the acquisition and
expansion of wealth The jewels and the gold coins might represent the smallest
part of it.
Alas, we have no such
expertise for that kind of study And given what we do know, Mary Beth rises
head and shoulders above Julien as an entrepreneur, and it is almost certain
that no one human being could have accomplished, without supernatural aid, what
she accomplished.
To conclude, Mary Beth left
her family far richer than most of them ever knew, apparently, or ever
appreciated And the wealth exists to this day.
Mary Beth’s second
passion was the family And from the beginning of her active business life, she
involved her cousins (or brothers) Barclay, Garland, Cortland and other
Mayfairs in her dealings, she brought them into the companies she formed and
used Mayfair attorneys and Mayfair bankers for her transactions In fact, she
always used Mayfairs for business, if she possibly could, instead of strangers
And she put great pressure on other Mayfairs to do the same When her daughter
Carlotta Mayfair went to work for a non-Mayfair law firm, she was disappointed
and disapproving, but she took no restrictive or punitive action regarding
Carlotta’s decision She let it be known that Carlotta was guilty of lack
of vision.
With regard to Stella and
Lionel, Mary Beth was notoriously indulgent and allowed them to have their
friends over for days or weeks on end She sent them to Europe with tutors and
governesses when she herself was too busy to go, and she gave them birthday
parties of legendary size and extravagance, to which countless Mayfair cousins
were invited She was equally generous to her daughter Belle, her adopted
daughter Nancy, and to Millie Dear, her niece, all of whom continued to live at
First Street after Mary Beth’s death, though they were the recipients of
large trust funds which granted them indisputable financial independence.
Mary Beth stayed in contact
with Mayfairs all over the country, and fostered numerous get-togethers of the
Mayfair cousins in Louisiana Even after Julien’s death and right on until
the twilight of Mary Beth’s life, delicious food and drink were served at
these affairs, with Mary Beth supervising the menu and the wine tasting
herself, and often musicians were hired to provide entertainment.
Enormous family dinners were
very common at First Street And Mary Beth paid out fabulous salaries to hire
the best cooks for her kitchen Many reports indicate that the Mayfair cousins
loved going to First Street, that they loved the long after-dinner discussions
(described by Richard Llewellyn), and that they were personally devoted to Mary
Beth, who had an uncanny ability to remember birthdays, wedding anniversaries,
and graduation dates, and to send appropriate and very welcome cash presents.
As already indicated, when
she was young, Mary Beth loved to dance with Juhen at these family parties, and
encouraged dancing among young and old, and sometimes hired instructors to
teach the cousins the latest dances She and Juhen would amuse the children with
their spry antics And sometimes the dance bands they hired from the Quarter
shocked the more staid Mayfairs After Julien’s death, Mary Beth did not
dance so much but she loved to see other people dance, and she almost always
provided some music In her last years, these affairs were managed by her
daughter Stella, and her son, Lionel, and they were as spirited as ever.
Mayfairs were not only
invited to these get-togethers, they were expected to attend, and Mary Beth was
sometimes unpleasant to those who refused to accept her invitations And there
are two stories of her becoming extremely angry with members of the family who
discarded the name Mayfair in favor of the name of their father.
Several stories we have
gathered from friends of the family indicate that Mary Beth was both loved and
feared by the cousins, whereas Juhen, especially in his old age, was considered
sweet and charming, Mary Beth was considered slightly formidable.
There are several stories
which indicate that Mary Beth could see the future but disliked using the power
When asked to predict or to help make a decision, she frequently warned the
family members involved that ‘second sight’ wasn’t a simple
thing And that predicting the future could be ‘tricky ’ However,
she did now and then make outright predictions. For example, she told Maitland
Mayfair Clay’s son - that he would die if he took up airplane flying, and
he did Maitland’s wife, Therese, blamed Mary Beth for his death Mary Beth
shrugged it off with the simple words, ‘I warned him, didn’t I7 If
he hadn’t gone up in the damned plane, he couldn’t have crashed in
it’.
Maitland’s brothers
were distraught over Maitland’s death, and begged Mary Beth to try to
stop such events if she could, to which she replied that she could give it a
try, and would the next time something of that kind came to her attention
Again, she warned them that such things were tricky In 1921, Maitland’s
son, Maitland Junior, wanted to go on an expedition in the African jungles, of
which his mother Therese strongly disapproved, and she appealed to Mary Beth
either to stop the boy or to make some sort of prediction.
Mary Beth considered the
matter for a long time, and then explained in her simple straightforward manner
that the future wasn’t predetermined, it was merely predictable And her
prediction was that this boy would die if he went to Africa But if he stayed
here worse things might happen Maitland Junior changed his own mind about the
expedition, stayed home, and was killed in a fire six months later (The young
man was drunk and was smoking in bed ) At the funeral Therese accosted Mary
Beth and demanded to know why she didn’t prevent such horrors Mary Beth
said almost casually that she foresaw the whole thing, yes, but there wasn’t
much she could do to change it To change it, she would have had to change
Maitland Junior and that was not her job in life, and besides, she’d
tried, to no avail, to talk to Maitland countless times, but she certainly felt
dreadful about it, and she wished the cousins would stop asking her to look
into the future
‘When I look into the
future,’ she reportedly said, ’all I see is how weak most people
are, and how little they do to fight fate or fortune You can fight, you know
You really can But Maitland wasn’t going to change anything ’ Then
she shrugged, or so the story goes, and walked with her characteristic big
steps out of the Lafayette Cemetery
Therese was horrified by
these statements She never forgave Mary Beth for her ’involvement’
(7) in the death of her husband or her son And to her dying day, she maintained
that an aura of evil surrounded the First Street house, and that whatever power
the Mayfairs possessed worked only for the chosen ones.
(This story was told to us
by a friend of Therese’s sister, Emilie Blanchard, who died in 1935 An
abbreviated version was passed on to us by a nonrelative who overheard the
conversation at the cemetery and made inquiries about it Yet a third version
was repeated to us by a nun who was present at the cemetery And the agreement
among the three as to Mary Beth’s statements makes this one of our most
powerful pictures of her, albeit small The two deaths involved were reported in
the papers )
There are countless other
stories about Mary Beth’s predictions, advice, and the like They are all
very similar Mary Beth advised against certain marriages, and her advice always
turned out to be correct Or Mary Beth advised people to enter into certain
ventures and it worked out wonderfully But everything points to the fact that
Mary Beth was very cautious about the power, and disliked direct prediction We
have one other quote from her on the matter, and this was made to the parish
priest who later told it to his brother, a police officer, who apparently
remembered it because he thought it was interesting
Mary Beth is rumored to have
told the priest that any one strong individual could change the future for
countless others, that it happened all the time Given the number of human
beings alive in this world, such persons were so rare that predicting the
future was deceptively simple
‘Then we are possessed
of free will, you grant that much,’ the priest had said, to which Mary
Beth replied, ‘Indeed we are, in fact, it is absolutely crucial that we
exercise our free will Nothing is predetermined And thank God there aren’t
many strong people who upset the predictable scheme, for there are as many bad
ones who bring on war and disaster as there are visionaries who do good for
others’
(It is worth noting that
these statements are interesting in light of Richard Llewellyn’s
description of Juhen coming to him in a dream and telling him that nothing is
predetermined And it is also worth noting that two hundred years before,
Lasher, according to Petyr van Abel, made a mysterious prediction which deeply
disturbed Petyr If only we had more direct quotations regarding this and other subjects
from the powerful psychic members of the Mayfair family’ But alas we do
not, and this immediate connection between two quotes makes us painfully aware
of it).
Regarding family attitudes
towards Mary Beth, many family members - according to their talkative friends -
were aware that there was something strange about Mary Beth and Monsieur Juhen,
and whether or not to go to them in times of trouble was an ever present
question in each generation Going to them was perceived as having advantages
and definite liabilities
For example, one descendant
of Lestan Mayfair who was pregnant out of wedlock went to Mary Beth for help
and, though she received a great deal of money to assist with her child, became
convinced afterwards that Mary Beth had caused the death of the child’s
irresponsible father.
Another Mayfair, a favorite
of Mary Beth’s, who was convicted of assault and battery after a drunken
brawl in a French Quarter nightclub, was said to be more afraid of Mary Beth’s
disapproval and retribution than of any criminal court He was fatally shot
trying to escape from jail And Mary Beth refused to allow him to be buried in
the Lafayette Cemetery
Another unfortunate girl -
Louise Mayfair who was pregnant out of wedlock and gave birth at First Street
to Nancy Mayfair (whom Mary Beth adopted and accepted as one of Stella’s
children), died two days after the birth, and numerous stories were circulated
that Mary Beth, displeased by the girl’s behavior, had let her die alone
and unattended
But the stories of Mary Beth’s
occult powers, or evil doings, regarding the family are relatively few Even
when one considers the secretiveness of the family, the reluctance of most
Mayfairs to gossip in any way about the legacy family to anyone, there simply
isn’t very much evidence that Mary Beth was a witch to her own kindred,
so much as a magnate When she did use her powers, it was almost always with
reluctance And we have numerous indications that many Mayfairs did not believe
the ‘superstitious foolishness’ repeated about Mary Beth by
servants, neighbors, and occasionally by family members They considered the
story of the purse of golden coins to be laughable They blamed superstitious
servants for these tales, they considered them to be a holdover from the
romantic plantation days, and they complained against the gossips of the
neighborhood and the church parish.
We cannot emphasize enough
that the vast majority of tales about Mary Beth’s powers do come from the
servants.
All things taken into
account, the family lore indicates that Mary Beth was loved and respected by
her family, and that she did not dominate people’s lives or decisions,
except to pressure them towards some show of family loyalty, and that, in spite
of a few noteworthy mistakes, she picked excellent candidates for business
ventures from among her kindred, and that they trusted her and admired her and
liked to do business with her She kept her outlandish accomplishments secret
from those with whom she did business, and possibly she kept her occult power
secret from others, too, and she enjoyed being with the family in a simple and
ordinary fashion.
It is also worth noting that
the little children of the family loved Mary Beth She was photographed scores
of times with Stella, Lionel, Belle, Millie Dear, Nancy, and dozens of other
little children all around her And every Sunday for years the south lawn of the
First Street property was covered with children tumbling and playing ball and
tag while the grown-ups napped inside after dinner.
The third great passion or
obsession of Mary Beth’s life, as far as we can determine, was her desire
for pleasure As we have seen, she and Julien enjoyed dancing, parties, the
theater, etc She also had many lovers.
Though family members are
absolutely mute on the subject, servant gossip, often coming to us second- or third
hand through friends of the servant’s family, is the largest source of
such information Neighbors also gossiped about ’good-looking boys’
who were always hanging about, supposedly to do jobs for which they were often
utterly unqualified.
And Richard Llewellyn’s
story of the gift of the Stutz Bearcat to a young Irish coachman has been
verified through simple registration records The giving of other large gifts
sometimes bank drafts for enormous amounts also indicate that these
good-looking boys were Mary Beth’s lovers For there are no other
explanations as to why she should give five thousand dollars as a Christmas
present to a young coachman who could not in fact manage a team, or to a
handyman who could never so much as hammer in a nail without assistance
It is interesting to note
that when all the information on Mary Beth is studied as a whole, we have more
stories about her sensual appetites than any other aspect of her In other
words, stories about her lovers, her wine drinking, her love of food, and her
dancing far outnumber (seventeen to one) stories about her occult powers or her
abilities in making money.
But when all the many
descriptions of Mary Beth’s love of wine, food, music, dancing, and bed
partners are considered, one can see that she behaved more like a man of the
period than a woman in this regard, merely pleasing herself as a man might,
with little thought for convention or respectability In sum, there is nothing
too unusual about her behavior if one sees it in this light But of course
people at the time did not see it in that light, and they thought her love of
pleasure to be rather mysterious and even sinister She deepened this sense of
the mysterious by her casual attitude towards what she did, and her refusal to
attach importance to the shallow reactions of others More than one Mayfair
close cousin begged her to ’behave’ (or so the servants said), and
more than once Mary Beth shrugged off this suggestion.
As for her cross-dressing,
she did it so long and so well that just about everyone became accustomed to it
In the last years of her life she would often go out in her tweed suit, and
with her walking stick, and stroll around the Garden District for hours She did
not bother to pin up her hair any more or hide it beneath a hat She wore it in
a simple twist or bun, and people took her appearance entirely for granted She
was Miss Mary Beth to servants and neighbors for blocks around, walking with
her head slightly bowed, and with very big steps, and waving in a lackadaisical
fashion to those who greeted her.
As for her lovers, the
Talamasca has been able to find out almost nothing about them Of a young
cousin, Alain Mayfair, we know the most, and it is not even certain that he was
Mary Beth’s lover He worked for Mary Beth as a secretary or chauffeur or
both from 1911 until 1913, but was frequently in Europe for long periods He was
in his twenties at the time, and very handsome and spoke French very well, but
not to Mary Beth, who preferred English There was some disagreement between him
and Mary Beth in 1914, but no one seems to know what it was He then went to
England, joined the forces fighting in World War I, and was killed in combat
His body was never recovered Mary Beth held an immense memorial service for him
at First Street
Kelly Mayfair, another
cousin, also worked for Mary Beth in and 1913, and continued in her employ
until 1918 He was a strikingly handsome red-haired, green-eyed young man (his
mother was Irish-born), he took care of Mary Beth’s horses and, unlike
other boys whom Mary Beth kept, did know what he was doing in that capacity The
case for his having been Mary Beth’s lover rests entirely on the fact
that they did dance together at many family gatherings, and later had many
noisy quarrels which were overheard by maids, laundresses, and even chimney
sweeps
Also Mary Beth settled an
immense sum of money on Kelly so that he could try his luck as a writer He went
to Greenwich Village in New York with this money, worked for a while as a
reporter for the New York Times, and froze to death in a cold-water
flat there, while drunk, apparently quite by accident It was his first winter
in New York and he may not have understood the dangers Whatever the case, Mary
Beth was distraught over his death, and had the body brought home and buried
properly, though Kelly’s parents were so disgusted with what had happened
that they would not attend the funeral She had three words inscribed on his
tombstone ‘Fear no more ’ And this may be a reference to the famous
lines of Shakespeare in Cymbelme, ‘Fear no more the heat of the
sun, nor the furious winter’s rages ’ But we do not know She
refused to explain it even to the undertaker or the tombstone workers
The other ’good-looking
boys’ who caused so much talk are unknown to us We have only gossip
descriptions which indicate they were all very handsome and what one might call
’rough trade ’ Fulltime maids and cooks were highly suspicious of
them and resentful towards them And most accounts of these young men say
nothing per se about their being Mary Beth’s lovers They run something
like this, ‘And then there was one of those boys of hers about, you know,
one of those good-looking ones she always had around, and don’t ask me
for what, and he was sitting on the kitchen steps doing nothing but whittling
you know and I asked him to carry the laundry basket down but he was too good
for that, you can well imagine, but of course he did it, because she came into
the kitchen then, and he wouldn’t dare do nothing to run against her, you
can be sure, and she give him one of her smiles, you know and said, "Hello
there, Benjy "’
Who knows’ Maybe Mary
Beth only liked to look at them.
What we do know for certain
is that from the day she met him she loved and cared for Daniel McIntyre,
though he certainly began his role in the Mayfair history as Juhen’s
lover.
Richard Llewellyn’s
story notwithstanding, we know that Juhen met Daniel McIntyre sometime around
1896, and that he began to place a great deal of important business with Daniel
McIntyre, who was an up-and-coming attorney in a Camp Street firm founded by
Daniel’s uncle some ten years before.
When Garland Mayfair
finished law school at Harvard he went to work in this same firm, and later
Cortland joined him, and both worked with Daniel McIntyre until the latter was
appointed a judge in.
Daniel’s photographs
of the period show him to be pale, slender, with reddish-blond hair He was
almost pretty — not unlike Juhen’s later lover, Richard Llewellyn,
and not unlike the darker Victor who died from the fall beneath the carriage
wheels The facial bone structure of all three men was exceptionally beautiful
and dramatic, and Daniel had the added advantage of remarkably brilliant green
eyes.
Even in the last years of
his life, when he was quite heavy and continually red-faced from drink, Daniel McIntyre
elicited compliments on his green eyes.
What we know of Daniel McIntyre’s
early life is fairly cut and dry He was descended from ’old Irish,’
that is, the immigrants who came to America long before the great potato
famines of the 18405, and it is doubtful that any of his ancestors were ever
poor.
His grandfather, a self-made
millionaire commission agent, built a magnificent house on Julia Street in the
18308, where Daniel’s father, Sean McIntyre, the youngest of four sons,
grew up Sean McIntyre was a distinguished medical doctor until he died abruptly
of a heart attack at the age of forty-eight.
By then Daniel was already a
practicing lawyer, and had moved with his mother and unmarried sister to an
uptown St Charles Avenue mansion where Daniel lived until his mother died
Neither McIntyre home is still standing.
Daniel was by all accounts a
brilliant business lawyer, and numerous records attest to his having advised
Juhen well in a variety of business ventures He also represented Juhen
successfully in several crucial civil suits And we have one very interesting
little anecdote told to us years later by a clerk in the firm to the effect
that, about one of these civil suits, Juhen and Daniel had a terrible argument
in which Daniel repeatedly said, ‘Now Juhen, let me handle this legally1’
to which Juhen repeatedly replied, ‘All right, if you are so damned set
on doing it, then do it But I tell you I could very easily make this man wish
he had never been born’.
Public records also indicate
that Daniel was highly imaginative in finding ways for Juhen to do things he
wanted to do, and for helping him discover information about people who opposed
him in business.
On February n, 1897, when
Daniel’s mother died, he moved out of their uptown St Charles Avenue
home, leaving his sister in the care of nurses and maids, and took up residence
in an ostentatious and lavish four-room suite at the old St Louis Hotel There
he began to live ’like a king,’ according to bellhops and waiters
and taxi drivers who received enormous tips from Daniel and served him
expensive meals in his parlor which fronted on the street.
Juhen Mayfair was Daniel’s
most frequent visitor, and he often stayed the night in Daniel’s suite.
If this arrangement aroused
any enmity or disapproval in Garland or Cortland, we know nothing of it They
became partners in the firm of McIntyre, Murphy, Murphy, and Mayfair, and after
the retirement of the two Murphy brothers, and the appointment of Daniel to the
bench, Garland and Cortland became the firm of Mayfair and May-fair In later
decades, they devoted their entire energies to the management of Mayfair money,
and they were almost partners with Mary Beth in numerous ventures, though there
were other ventures in which Mary Beth was involved of which Garland and
Cortland apparently knew nothing.
Daniel was already by this
time a heavy drinker, and there are numerous accounts of hotel staff members
having to help him to his suite Cortland also kept an eye on him continuously,
and in later years when Daniel bought a motor car, it was Cortland who was
always offering to drive Daniel home so that he wouldn’t kill himself or
someone else Cortland seems to have liked Daniel very much He was the defender
of Daniel to the rest of the family, which became -over the years an
ever more demanding role.
We have no evidence that
Mary Beth ever met Daniel during this early period She had already become very
active in business, but the family had numerous lawyers and connections, and we
have no testimony to indicate that Daniel ever came to the First Street house
It may have been that he was embarrassed by his relationship with Julien, and a
bit more puritanical about such things in general than Juhen’s other
lovers had been.
He was certainly the only
one of Juhen’s lovers of whom we know who had a professional career of
his own.
Whatever the explanation, he
met Mary Beth Mayfair in late 1897, and Richard Llewellyn’s version of
the meeting - in Storyville is the only one we have We do not know whether or
not they fell in love as Llewellyn insisted, but we do know that Mary Beth and
Daniel began to appear together at numerous social affairs.
Mary Beth was by that time
about twenty-five years old and extremely independent And it was no secret that
little Belle the child of the mysterious Scottish Lord Mayfair was not right in
the head Though very sweet and amiable, Belle was obviously unable to learn
even simple things, and reacted emotionally to life forever as though she were
about four years old, or so the cousins later described it People hesitated to
use the word feeble-minded.
Everyone knew of course that
Belle was not an appropriate designee for the legacy as she might never marry
And the cousins discussed this fairly openly at the time.
Another Mayfair tragedy was
also a topic of conversation and that was the destruction, by the river, of the
plantation of Riverbend.
The house, built by Marie
Claudette before the beginning of the century, was built on a thumb of land
jutting into the river, and sometime around 1896 it became clear that
the river was determined to take this thumb of land Everything was tried, but
nothing could be done The levee had to be built behind the house and finally
the house had to be abandoned, the ground around the house was slowly flooded,
then one night the house itself collapsed into the marsh, and within a week it
was gone altogether, as if it had never been there.
That Mary Beth and Julien
regarded this as a tragedy was obvious There was much talk in New Orleans of
the engineers they consulted, in attempting to avert the tragedy And no small
part of it was Katherine, Mary Beth’s aging mother, who did not want to
move to New Orleans to the house Darcy Monahan had built for her decades ago.
At last, Katherine had to be
sedated for the move to the city, and as stated earlier, she never recovered
from the shock, and soon went insane, wandering around the First Street
gardens, talking all the time to Darcy, and searching also for her mother,
Marguerite, and endlessly turning out the contents of drawers to find things
which she claimed to have lost
Mary Beth tolerated her, and
was heard to say once, much to the shock of the doctor in attendance, that she
was happy to do what she could for her mother, but she did not find the woman
or her plight ’particularly interesting,’ and she wished there was
some drug they could give the woman to quiet her down
Julien was present at the
time, and naturally found this very funny and went into one of his
disconcerting riffs of laughter He was understanding of the doctor’s
shock, however, and explained to him that the great virtue of Mary Beth was
that she always told the truth, no matter what the consequences
If they did give Katherine
‘some drug,’ we know nothing of it She began to wander the streets
around 1898, and a young mulatto servant was hired simply to follow her around
She died in bed at First Street, in a rear bedroom, in 1905, on the night of
January 2, to be exact, and to the best of our knowledge there was no storm to
mark her death, and no unusual event of any kind She had been in a coma for
days, according to the servants, and Mary Beth and Julien were at her side when
she died
On January 15, 1899, in an
enormous wedding held at St Alphonsus Church, Mary Beth married Daniel McIntyre
It is interesting to note that up until this time the family had worshiped at
the Notre Dame church (the French church of the tn-church parish), but for the
wedding it chose the Irish church, and thereafter went to all services at St
Alphonsus
Daniel seems to have been on
very friendly terms with the Irish-American priests of the parish, and to have
been lavish in his support of the parish He also had a cousin in the
Irish-American Sisters of Mercy who taught at the local school
It seems safe therefore to
assume that the change to the Irish church was Daniel’s idea And it is
also safe to assume that Mary Beth was almost indifferent to the matter, though
she did go to church often with her children and great-nieces and nephews,
though what she believed about it one cannot say Juhen never went to church,
except for the customary weddings, funerals, and christenings He also seems to
have preferred St Alphonsus to the humbler French church of Notre Dame
The wedding of Daniel and
Mary Beth was, as already mentioned, an enormous affair A reception of dazzling
proportions was held at the First Street house, with cousins coming from as far
away as New York Daniel’s family, though much much smaller than the
Mayfair family, was also in attendance, and by all reports the couple were
deeply in love and deeply happy, and the dancing and singing went on late into
the night
The couple went to New York
for a honeymoon trip, and from there to Europe, where they remained for four
months, cutting short their journey in May because Mary Beth was already
expecting a child
Indeed, Carlotta Mayfair was
born seven and one-half months after her parents’ marriage, on September 1,
1899.
On November 2 of the
following year, 1900, Mary Beth gave birth to Lionel, her only son And finally,
on October 10 of the year 1901, she gave birth to her last child. Stella.
These children were of
course all the legal offspring of Daniel McIntyre, but one can legitimately ask
for the purposes of this history, who was their real father7
There is overwhelming
evidence, both from medical records and from pictures, to indicate that Daniel McIntyre
was Carlotta Mayfair’s father Not only did Carlotta inherit Daniel’s
green eyes, she also inherited his beautiful reddish-blond curly hair
As for Lionel, he was also
of the same blood type as Daniel McIntyre, and also tended to resemble him
though he bore a strong resemblance to his mother as well, having her dark eyes
and her ’expression,’ especially as he grew older
As for Stella, her blood
type, as recorded in her superficial postmortem examination in 1929, indicates
that she could not have been Daniel McIntyre’s daughter We know that this
information came to the notice of her sister Carlotta at the time In fact, talk
about Carlotta’s request for blood typing is what brought it to the
attention of the Talamasca.
It is perhaps superfluous to
add that Stella bore no resemblance to Daniel On the contrary, she resembled
Julien with her delicate bones, black curling hair, and very brilliant, if not
twinkling dark eyes.
As we have no blood type for
Julien, and do not know that any was ever recorded, we cannot add that scrap of
evidence to the case.
Stella might have been
fathered by any of Mary Beth’s lovers, though we do not know that she had
a lover in the year before Stella was born Indeed, the gossip concerning Mary
Beth’s lovers came after, but that may only mean that she grew careless
about her lovers as the years passed.
One other definite
possibility is Cortland Mayfair, Julien’s second son, who was, at the
time of Stella’s birth, twenty-two years old and an extremely appealing
young man (His blood type was finally obtained in 1959 and is compatible ) He
was in residence off and on at First Street, as he was studying law at Harvard
and did not finish until 1903 That he was very fond of Mary Beth was well-known
to everyone, and that he took an interest all his life in the legacy family is
also well-known
Unfortunately for the
Talamasca, Cortland was throughout most of his life a very secretive and
guarded man He was known even to his brothers and his children as a reclusive
individual who disliked any sort of gossip outside the family He loved reading,
and was something of a genius at investment To our knowledge, he confided in no
one Even those closest to him give contradictory versions of what Cortland did,
and when, and why.
The one aspect of the man of
which everyone is certain is that he was devoted to the management of the
legacy and to making money for himself, his brothers and their children, and
Mary Beth His descendants are among the richest among the Mayfair clan to this
day.
When Mary Beth died, it was
Cortland who prevented Carlotta Mayfair from virtually dismantling her mother’s
financial empire by taking over its complete management on behalf of Stella,
who was in fact the designee, and did not care what happened to it as long as
she could do as she pleased.
Stella never ’cared a
thing about money’ by her own admission And over Carlotta’s wishes,
she placed her interests entirely in Cortland’s hands Cortland and his
son Sheffield continued to manage the bulk of the fortune on behalf of Antha
after Stella’s death.
We should stress here,
however, that after Mary Beth died her empire began to fall apart No one
individual could take her place And though Cortland did a marvelous job of
consolidating and investing and preserving, the dizzying expansion which had
gone on under Mary Beth essentially came to an end.
But to return to our
principal concern here, there are other indications that Cortland was Stella’s
father Cortland’s wife, Amanda Grady Mayfair, had a deep aversion to Mary
Beth and to the entire Mayfair family, and she would never accompany Cortland
to the First Street house This did not stop Cortland from visiting there all
the time, and he took all of his five children there, so that they grew up
knowing his family quite well.
Amanda eventually left
Cortland when their youngest son, Pierce Mayfair, finished Harvard in 1935,
leaving New Orleans forever and going to live with her younger sister, Mary
Margaret Grady Harris, in New York.
In 1936 Amanda told one of
our investigators at a cocktail party (a casual chance meeting had been
arranged) that her husband’s family was evil, that if she were to tell
the truth about it people would think she was crazy, and that she would never
go south again to be among those people, no matter how much her sons begged her
to do so A little later during the evening, when she was quite intoxicated, she
asked our investigator, whose name she did not know, whether or not he believed
people could sell their souls to the devil She said that her husband had done
it, and he was ’richer than Rockefeller’ and so was she and so were
her sons ‘They will all burn in hell some day,’ she told him ‘Of
that you can be sure’
When our investigator asked
if the lady really believed this sort of thing, she replied that there were
witches alive in the modern world who could throw spells.
‘They can make you
believe you are some place you aren’t, that you’re seeing things
when there’s nothing there They did that to my husband And you know why’
Because my husband is a witch, a powerful witch Don’t quibble over words
like warlock It doesn’t matter The man is a witch I myself saw what he
could do’
Asked point-blank if her
husband had ever done any evil to her, Cortland’s wife said (to this
apparent stranger) that no, she had to confess he hadn’t It was what he
condoned in others, what he went along with, and what he believed She then
began to cry and to say that she missed her husband, and she didn’t want
to talk about it anymore
‘I’ll tell you
this much,’ she said when she had recovered herself slightly ‘If I
wanted my husband to come to me tonight, he’d do it How he’d do it
I couldn’t tell you, but he could make himself material in this very room
All his family can do things like that They could drive you out of your mind
with it But he’d be here in this very room Sometimes he’s in the
room with me when I don’t want him to be And I can’t make him go
away’
At this point the lady was
rescued by a Grady niece, and no further contact was ever accomplished until
some years later
One further circumstance
argues for a close bond between Cortland and Stella, and that is that after
Julien’s death, Cortland took Stella and her brother Lionel to England and
to Asia, for well over a year Cortland already had five children at this time,
all of which he left behind with his wife Yet he seems to have been the
instigator of this trip, and was completely in charge of the arrangements and
greatly prolonged the venture so that the party did not actually return to New
Orleans for some eighteen months.
After the Great War,
Cortland left his wife and children again to travel for a year with Stella And
he seems always to have been on Stella’s side in family disputes.
In sum, this evidence is
certainly not conclusive, but it does indicate Cortland might have been Stella’s
father But then again, Julien, in spite of his great age, may have been her
father We don’t know
Whatever the case, Stella
was pretty much ‘the favorite child’ from the time of her birth
Daniel McIntyre certainly seems to have loved her as if she were his own
daughter, and it is entirely possible that he never knew she was not
Of the early childhood of
all three children, we know little that is specific, and Richard Llewellyn’s
portrait is the most intimate we possess
As the children grew older,
there was more and more talk about dissension, however, and when Carlotta went
to board at the Sacred Heart at the age of fourteen, everyone knew it was
against Mary Beth’s wishes, and that Daniel, too, was heartbroken, and
wanted his daughter to come home more often than she did Carlotta is never
described as a happy child by anyone But it is difficult to this day to gather
information about her, because she is still living, and even people who knew
her fifty years ago are extremely afraid of her, and of her influence, and very
reluctant to say anything about her at all.
The people who are willing
to talk are those who most dislike her Possibly if the others were not so
afraid, we might hear something to balance the picture.
Whatever the case, Carlotta
was admired for her brilliance from the time she was a little girl She was even
called a genius by the nuns who taught her She boarded at Sacred Heart through
high school, and went on to Loyola law school when she was very young.
Meantime, Lionel began
attending day school when he was eight years old He seems to have been a quiet,
well-behaved boy who never gave anyone very much trouble, and to have been
liked He had a full-time tutor to assist him with his homework, and as time
passed, he became something of an exceptional student But he never made friends
outside the family His cousins were his only companions when he wasn’t at
school.
The history of Stella was
markedly different from the start By all accounts Stella was a particularly
beguiling and seductive child She had soft black rippling hair and enormous
black eyes When one considers the numerous photographs of her from 1901 to her
death in 1929, it seems impossible to imagine her living in any other era, so
suited to the times was she with her slender boyish hips, pouty little red
mouth, and bobbed hair.
In her earliest pictures she
is the image of the luscious child in the Pears Soap advertisements, a
white-skinned little temptress, gazing soulfully yet playfully at the spectator
By the time she was eighteen, she was Clara Bow
On the night of her death,
she was, according to numerous eyewitnesses, a femme fatale of unforgettable
power, dancing the Charleston wildly in her short fringed skirt and glittering
stockings, flashing her enormous jewelike eyes on everyone and no one as she
commanded the attention of every man in the room.
When Lionel was sent off to
school, Stella begged to be allowed to go to school also, or so she told the
nuns at Sacred Heart herself. But within three months of her admission as a day
student she was privately and unofficially expelled The talk was that she
frightened the other students She could read their minds, and she enjoyed
demonstrating the power, and also she could fling people about without touching
them, and she had an unpredictable sense of humor and would laugh at things the
nuns said which she considered to be blatant lies Her conduct was mortifying to
Carlotta, who was powerless to control her, though by all accounts Carlotta
also loved Stella, and did make every effort to persuade Stella to fit the mold
It may be surprising to
learn in light of all this that the nuns and the children at Sacred Heart
actually liked Stella Numerous classmates remember her fondly, and even with
delight.
When she wasn’t up to
her tricks she was ‘charming’, ‘sweet,’ absolutely ‘lovable’,
‘a darling little girl ’
But nobody could stand being
around her very long.
Stella next attended the
Ursuline Academy long enough to make her First Communion with the class, but
was expelled immediately after in the same private and unofficial manner and
more or less for the same complaints This time, apparently, she was crushed at
being sent home, because she regarded school as great fun, and she did not like
to be about the house all day with her mother and Uncle Julien telling her they
were busy She wanted to play with other children Her governesses annoyed her
She wanted to go out.
Stella then attended four
different private schools, spending no more than three or four months in each
before ending up at the St Alphonsus parochial school, where she was the only
one, among an Irish-American proletarian student body, to be driven to school
each day in a chauffeured Packard limousine.
Sister Bridget Marie - an
Irish-born nun who lived at Mercy Hospital in New Orleans until she was ninety
- remembered Stella vividly, even fifty years afterwards, and told this
investigator in 1969 that Stella Mayfair was undoubtedly some sort of witch.
Once again, Stella was
accused of reading minds, of laughing when people lied to her, of flinging
things about by the power of the mind, and talking to an invisible friend, ’a
familiar’ according to Sister Bridget Marie, who did Stella’s bidding,
which included finding lost objects and making things fly through the air
But Stella’s
manifestation of these powers was by no means continuous She often tried to
behave herself for long periods, she enjoyed reading and history and English,
she liked to play with the other girls in the school yard on St Andrew Street,
and she liked the nuns very much.
The nuns found themselves
seduced by Stella They let her into the convent garden to cut flowers with
them, or took her into the parlor after school to teach her embroidery, for
which she had a knack.
‘You know what she was
up to7 I’ll tell you Every sister in that convent felt that Stella was
her special little friend She led you to believe that She told you little
secrets about herself, just as if she’d never told them to another soul
And she knew all about you, she did She knew things you’d never told
anyone, and she’d talk to you about your secrets and your fears and the
things you always wanted to tell someone, and she’d make you feel better
about it And later, hours later, or maybe even days later, you’d think
about it, think about what it had been like to be sitting there in the garden
whispering with her, and you’d know she was a witch’ She was from
the devil And she was up to no good.
‘But she wasn’t
mean, I’ll say this much for her She wasn’t mean If she had been,
she’d have been a monster, that one God knows the evil she might have
done I don’t think she really wanted to make trouble But she took a
secret pleasure in her powers, if you know what I mean She liked knowing your
secrets She liked seeing the look of amazement when she told you what you
dreamed the night before.
‘And oh, how she
pitched herself into things She would draw pictures all day long for weeks on
end, then throw out the pencils and never draw another thing Then it was
embroidery with her, she had to learn it, and she’d make the most
beautiful thing, fussing at herself for the least little mistake, then throw
down the needles and be done with that forevermore I never saw a child so
changeable It was as though she was looking for something, something to which
she could give herself, and she never found it Least ways not while she was a
little girl.
‘I’ll tell you
one thing she loved to do, and she never tired of it, and that was to tell
stories to the other girls They’d gather around her at big recess, and she’d
keep them hanging on her every word until the bell rang And such stories they
were that she told them ghost stories of old plantation houses full of horrible
secrets, and people foully murdered, and of voodoo in the islands long years
ago She knew stories of pirates, oh, they were the worst, the things she would
tell about the pirates It was positively shocking And all this had the ring of
truth to it, to hear her tell it But you knew she had to be making it up What
did she know of the thoughts and feelings of some group of poor souls on a
captured galleon in the hours before a brute of a pirate made them walk the
plank?
‘But I’ll tell
you, some of the things she said were most interesting, and I always wanted to
ask someone else about them, you know, someone who read the history books and
really knew.
‘But the girls had
nightmares from the things she told them and wouldn’t you know it, the
parents were coming and asking us, "Now, Sister, where did my little girl
ever hear such a thing!"
‘We were always
calling Miss Mary Beth "Keep her home for a few days," we’d ask
For that was the thing about Stella You couldn’t take it day in and day
out Nobody could take it.
‘And thank the Lord she’d
get tired of school and disappear on her own for months at a time.
‘Sometimes it went on
so long we thought she was never coming back We heard she was running wild over
there on First and Chestnut, playing with the servants’ children and
making a voodoo altar with the cook’s son, him black as coal, you can be
sure of it, and we’d think, well, somebody ought to go round and talk to
Miss Mary Beth about it.
‘Then lo and behold,
one morning, perhaps ten o’clock it would be the child never did care what
time she came to school the limousine would appear on the corner of Constance
and Saint Andrew and out would step Stella in her little uniform, a perfect
doll, if you can imagine, but with a great big ribbon in her hair And what
would she have with her, but a sack of gaily wrapped presents for each of the
sisters she knew by name, and hugs for all of us, too, you can be sure of it
"Sister Bridget Marie," she’d whisper in my ear, "I missed
you " And sure enough, I’d open the box, and I can tell you this happened
more than once, and there’d be some little thing I so wanted with all my
heart Why, one time it was a tiny Infant Jesus of Prague she gave me, all
dressed in silk and satin, and another time, the most beautiful rosary of
crystal and silver Ah, what a child What a strange child.
‘But it was God’s
will, she stopped coming as the years went on She had a governess all the time
teaching her, and I think she was bored with St Alphonsus, and they said she
could get the chauffeur to drive her anywhere that she pleased Lionel didn’t
go to high school either as I recollect He started just running around with
Stella, and seems it was about that time or maybe a little after that old Mr
Juhen died.
‘Oh, how that child
cried at his funeral We didn’t go to the cemetery of course, none of the
sisters did in those days, but we went to the Mass, and there was Stella,
slumped over in the pew, just sobbing, and Carlotta holding her You know, after
Stella died they said Carlotta never liked her But Carlotta was never mean to
that child Never And I remember at Juhen’s Mass, the way Carlotta held
her sister, and Stella just cried and cried and cried.
‘Miss Mary Beth, she
was in a trance of sorts It was deep grief I saw in her eyes as she came down
the aisle after the coffin She had the children with her, but it was a faraway
look I saw in her eye ‘Course her husband wasn’t with her, no, not
him Judge McIntyre never was with her when she needed him, or at least that’s
how I heard it He was dead drunk when old Mr Juhen passed, they couldn’t
even wake him up, though they shook him and threw cold water on him and stood
him up out of the bed And on the day of the funeral, the man was nowhere to be
seen at all Heard later they’d carried him home from a tavern on Magazine
Street It’s a wonder that man lived as long as he did’
Sister Bridget Marie’s
view of Carlotta’s affection for her sister has been corroborated by many
witnesses, though of course Richard Llewellyn would not have agreed There are
several accounts of Juhen’s funeral, and in all of them, Carlotta is
mentioned as holding on to her sister, and even wiping her tears
In the months following Juhen’s
death, Lionel left school altogether and he and Stella went to Europe, with
Cortland and Barclay, making the Atlantic crossing on a great luxury liner only
months before the outbreak of the Great War
As travel in continental
Europe was all but impossible, the party spent several weeks in Scotland,
visiting Donnelaith Castle, and then set out for more exotic climes At
considerable risk, they made their way to Africa, spent some time in Cairo and
Alexandria, and then went on to India, sending home countless crates of
carpets, statuary, and other relics as they went along
In 1915, Barclay, sorely
missing his family, and very weary of traveling, left the party and made the
dangerous crossing back to New York The Lusitama had only just been
sunk by a German U-boat, and the family held its breath for Barclay’s
safety, but he soon turned up at the house on First Street with fabulous
stories to tell
Conditions were no better
six months later when Cortland, Stella, and Lionel decided to come home
However, luxury liners were making the crossing in spite of all dangers, and
the trio managed to make the journey without mishap, arriving in New Orleans
just before Christmas of
Stella was then fifteen
years old.
In a photograph taken that
year, Stella is wearing the Mayfair emerald It was common knowledge that she
was the designee of the legacy Mary Beth seems to have been exceptionally proud
of her, called her ‘the intrepid’ on account of her wanderings, and
though she was disappointed that Lionel did not want to go back to school with
a view to going on to Harvard, she seemed to have been accepting of all her
children Carlotta had her own apartment in one of the outbuildings, and went to
Loyola University every day in a chauffeur-driven car
Anyone passing on Chestnut
Street in the evening could see the family, through the windows, seated at
dinner, an enormous gathering, waited on by numerous servants, and always
lasting until quite late.
Family loyalty always has
made it very difficult for us to determine what the cousins actually thought of
Stella, or what they actually knew of her troubles at school.
But by this time, there are
numerous mentions on record of Mary Beth telling the servants almost casually
that Stella was the heiress, or that ‘Stella was the one who would
inherit everything,’ and even the remarkable comment - one of the most
remarkable in our entire record quoted twice and without context ‘Stella
has seen the man ’.
We have no record of Mary
Beth’s ever explaining this strange statement We are told only that she
made it to a laundress named Mildred Collins, and to an Irish maid named
Patricia Devlin, and we received the stories third-hand We were further given
to understand that there was no agreement among the descendants of these two
women as to what the famous Miss Mary Beth meant by this comment One person
believed ‘the man’ to be the devil, and another that he was ’a
ghost’ who had haunted the family for hundreds of years.
Whatever the case, it seems
clear that Mary Beth made remarks like this offhandedly at intimate moments
with her servants, and we get the impression that she was confiding something
to them, in a moment perhaps of understanding with them, which she could not or
would not confide in people of her own rank.
And it is very possible that
Mary Beth made similar remarks to other people, for by the 19203 old people in
the Irish Channel knew about ‘the man ’ They talked about ‘the
man ’ Two sources are simply not enough to explain the extent of this
supposed ‘superstition’ about the Mayfair women that they had a
mysterious ’male spirit or ally’ who helped them work their voodoo
or witchcraft or tricks.
Certainly, we see this as an
unmistakable reference to Lasher, and its implications are troubling, and it
reminds us of how little we really understand about the Mayfair Witches and
what went on among them, so to speak.
Is it possible, for
instance, that the heiress in each generation has to manifest her power by
independently seeing the man7 That is, did she have to see the man when she was
alone, and away from the older witch who could act as a channel, and was it
required of her that of her own free will she mention what she had seen?
Once more, we must confess
that we cannot know.
What we do know is that
people who knew of ‘the
man’ and spoke of him did not apparently connect him with any dark-haired
anthropomorphic which they had personally seen They did not even connect
‘the man’ with the mysterious being once seen with Mary Beth in her
taxi, for the stories come from entirely different sources and were never put
together by anyone, so far as we know, except us.
And so it is with so much of
the Mayfair material The references which come later to the mysterious
dark-haired man at First Street are not connected with this earlier talk of
‘the man ’ Indeed even people who knew of ‘the man’ and
who later saw an anonymous dark-haired man about the place did not make the
connection, believing that the man they’d seen was simply some stranger
or relative they did not know.
Witness Sister Bridget Marie’s
statement in 1969 when I asked her specifically about ‘the man’
‘Ah, that That was the
invisible companion who hovered near that child night and day The selfsame
demon, I might add, who later hovered about her daughter Antha, ever ready to
do the child’s bidding And later around poor little Deirdre, the sweetest
and most innocent of them all Don’t ask me if I ever actually saw the creature
For as God is my witness, I don’t know if I ever saw him, but I tell you,
and I’ve told the priest myself many a time, I knew when he was there!’
But it is very likely that
at this time Lasher was not eager to be seen by people outside the family And
certainly we have not a single account of his ever showing himself deliberately
to anyone, and as I have already mentioned, we get quite a few later on.
To return to the chronology
After Julien’s death, Mary Beth was at the very height of her financial
influence and accomplishments It was as if the loss of Juhen left her a driven
woman, and for a time gossip and rumor speak of her as ’unhappy ’
But this did not last Her characteristic calm seems to have returned to her
well before the children came home from abroad.
We know that she had a brief
and bitter fight with Carlotta before Carlotta entered the law firm of Byrnes,
Brown and Blake, in which she works to this very day But Mary Beth finally
accepted Carlotta’s decision to work ’outside the family,’
and Carlotta’s small apartment over the stables was completely renovated
for her, and she lived there for many years, coming and going without having to
enter the house.
We also know that Carlotta
took her meals every day with her mother breakfast in the morning on the back
terrace when the weather allowed it, and supper in the dining room at seven o’clock.
When asked why she did not
go into the firm of Mayfair and Mayfair with Julien’s sons, her reply was
usually stiff and brief and to the effect that she wanted to be on her own.
From the beginning of her
career, she was known as a brilliant lawyer, but she had no desire ever to
enter a courtroom, and to this day, she works in the shadow of the men of the
firm.
Her detractors have
described her as no more than a glorified legal clerk But kinder evidence seems
to indicate she became ‘the backbone’ of Byrnes, Brown and Blake,
she is the one who knows every-thing, and that with her demise, the firm will
be hard put to find anyone to take her place.
Many lawyers in New Orleans
have credited Carlotta with teaching them more than they ever learned in law
school In sum one might say that she started out and has continued to be an
efficient and brilliant civil lawyer, with a tremendous and completely reliable
knowledge of business law.
Other than the skirmish with
Carlotta, Mary Beth’s life continued upon a predictable course almost to
the very end Even Daniel McIntyre’s drinking does not seem to have
weighed heavily on her.
Family legend avers that
Mary Beth was extremely kind to Daniel in the last years of their lives.
From this point on the story
of the Mayfair Witches is really Stella’s story, and we will deal with
Mary Beth’s final illness and death at the proper time.
THE
CONTINUING STORY OF STELLA AND MARY BETH
Mary Beth continued to enjoy
her three mam pursuits in life, and also to derive a great deal of pleasure
from the antics of her daughter Stella, who at sixteen became something of a
scandal in New Orleans society, driving her automobile at breakneck speed, drinking
in speakeasies, and dancing till dawn
For eight years Stella lived
the life of a flapper, or a young reckless southern belle, utterly unperturbed
by business concerns or thoughts of marriage or any future And whereas Mary
Beth was the most quiet and mysterious witch ever produced by the family,
Stella seems the most carefree, the most flamboyant, the most daring, and the
only Mayfair witch ever bent entirely upon ’having fun’
Family legend holds that
Stella was arrested all the time for speeding, or for disturbing the peace with
her singing and dancing in the streets, and that ‘Miss Carlotta always
took care of it,’ going to get Stella and bring her home There is some
gossip to the effect that Cortland sometimes became impatient with his ’niece,’
demanding that she straighten up and pay more attention to her ‘responsibilities,’
but Stella had not the slightest interest in money or business.
A secretary for Mayfair and
Mayfair describes in vivid detail one of Stella’s visits to the office,
when she appeared in a dashing fur coat and very high heels, with a bottle of
bootleg whiskey in a brown paper bag from which she drank all during the
meeting, erupting into wild laughter at all the funny legal phrases read out to
her regarding the transaction involved
Cortland seemed to have been
charmed, but also a little weary Finally, in a good-natured way, he told Stella
to go on to her luncheon, and he would take care of the whole thing.
If there was ever anyone who
did not find Stella ’bewitching’ and ’attractive’
during this period, other than Carlotta Mayfair, we have not heard of such a
person.
In 1921 Stella apparently ’got
pregnant,’ but by whom no one was ever to know It might have been Lionel,
and certainly family legend indicates that everyone suspected it at the time.
Whatever the case, Stella
announced that she didn’t need a husband, wasn’t interested in
marriage in general, and would have her baby with all appropriate pomp and
ceremony, as she was utterly delighted at the prospect of being a mother, and
would name the baby Julien if it was a boy or Antha if it was a girl.
Antha was born in November
of 1921, a healthy, eight-pound baby girl Blood tests indicate that Lionel
could have been the father But Antha in no way resembled Lionel, for what that
is worth, and there is simply something wrong with the picture of Lionel being
the father But more on that as we go on.
In 1922 the Great War was
over, and Stella declared that she would make the Grand Tour of Europe which
she had been denied before With a nurse for the baby, and Lionel in tow quite
reluctantly (he had been reading law with Cortland and he did not want to go),
and Cortland happy to take off from the firm though his wife disliked his doing
it, the party went to Europe first class, and spent a full year wandering about.
Stella was now an
exceptionally beautiful young girl with a reputation for doing anything that
she pleased Cortland, as he grew older, more and more resembled his father
Julien, except that his hair remained black until the end of his long life In
his photographs.
Cortland is lean and
handsome at this period The resemblance between him and Stella was frequently
remarked upon
According to the gossip of
Cortland’s descendants, the Grand Tour was a drunken bash from start to
finish, with Stella and Lionel gambling at Monte Carlo for weeks on end In and
out of luxury hotels all over Europe they went, and in and out of museums and
ancient rums, often carrying their bottles of bourbon with them in paper sacks
To this day the grandchildren of Cortland talk about his letters home, full of
humorous descriptions of their antics And countless presents arrived for
Cortland’s wife, Amanda, and his sons
Family legend also maintains
that the party suffered one tragedy while abroad The nurse who went along to
take care of baby Antha experienced some sort of ’breakdown’ while
they were in Italy, and took a severe fall on the Spanish Steps in Rome She
died in the hospital within hours of the fall.
Only recently have our
investigators been able to shed some light on this incident, uncovering a
simple written record (in Italian) of the incident in the Holy Family Hospital
in Rome.
The woman’s name was
Bertha Mane Becker And we have verified that she was half Irish and half
German, born in New Orleans in the Irish Channel in 1905 She was admitted with
severe head wounds and went into a coma about two hours afterwards from which
she never revived.
But before that time she did
a considerable amount of talking to the English-speaking doctor who was called
to assist her and to the English-speaking priest who arrived later on.
She told the doctors that
Stella, Lionel, and Cortland were ’witches’ and ’evil’
and that they had cast a spell on her and that ’a ghost’ traveled
with the party, a dark evil man who appeared by baby Antha’s cradle at
all hours of the night and day She said the baby could make the man appear, and
would laugh with delight when he stood over her, and that the man did not want
Bertha to see him, and he had driven Bertha to her death, stalking her through
the crowds at the Spanish Steps
The doctor and the priest
concurred that Bertha, an illiterate servant girl, was insane Indeed the record
ends with the doctor noting that the girl’s employers, very gracious,
well-to-do people who spared no expense to make her comfortable, were
heartbroken at her deterioration, and arranged for her body to be shipped home.
To our knowledge no one in
New Orleans ever heard this story Only Bertha’s mother was living at the
time of the girl’s death, and she apparently suspected nothing when she
heard that her daughter had died from a fall She was given an enormous sum of
money by Stella in compensation for her lost daughter, and descendants of the
Becker family were talking about that as late as.
What interests us about the
story is that the dark man is obviously Lasher And except for the one mention
of a mysterious man in a taxi with Mary Beth, we have no other mention of him
in the twentieth century before this time.
The truly remarkable thing
about this story is that the nurse said the baby could make the man appear One
wonders if Stella had any control over the situation And what would have been
Mary Beth’s thoughts on the subject? Again, we shall never know Poor
Bertha Marie Becker faced it entirely alone, or so the record appears to show.
In spite of the tragedy the
party did not return home Cortland wrote a ‘ sad letter’ about the whole affair to
his wife and sons, and explained that they had hired a ’lovely Italian
woman’ who took better care of Antha than Bertha, poor child, had ever
managed to do
This Italian woman, who was
in her thirties at the time, was named Maria Magdalene Gabnelli, and she
returned with the family and was Antha’s nurse until the girl was nine
years old.
If she ever saw Lasher we don’t
know anything about it She lived at First Street until she died, and never
spoke to anyone outside the family as far as we know Family legend holds she
was highly educated, could read and write both English and French as well as
Italian, and had ‘a scandal in her past’
Cortland finally left the
party in 1923, when the trio had arrived in New York, and there Stella and
Lionel, along with Antha and her nurse, remained in Greenwich Village, where
Stella took up with numerous intellectuals and artists, and even did some
painting of her own, which she always called ‘quite atrocious’ and
some writing, ‘hideous,’ and some sculpture, ‘absolute trash ’
At last she settled down to simply enjoying the company of truly creative
individuals.
Every source of gossip in
New York avers that Stella was extremely generous She gave huge ’handouts’
to various painters and poets She bought one penniless friend a typewriter and
another an easel, and for one old gentleman poet she even bought a car.
During this time Lionel
resumed his studies, reading constitutional law with one of the New York
Vfayfairs (a descendant of Clay Mayfair, who had joined descendants of Lestan
Mayfair in a New York firm) Lionel also spent considerable time in the museums
of New York City, and he frequently dragged Stella to the opera, which had
begun to bore her, and to the symphony, which she liked only a little better,
and to the ballet, which she did genuinely enjoy.
Family legend among the New
York Mayfairs (available to us only now, as no one would talk at the time)
depicts Lionel and Stella as absolutely devil-may-care and charming, people of
tireless energy who entertained continuously, and often woke up other members
of the family with early morning knocks on the door.
Two photographs taken in New
York show Stella and Lionel as a happy, smiling duo Lionel was all his life a
slender man, and as indicated he inherited Judge McIntyre’s remarkable
green eyes and strawberry blond hair He did not in any way resemble Stella and
it was remarked more than once by those who knew them that sometimes newcomers
into the crowd were shocked to discover that Lionel and Stella were brother and
sister, they had presumed them to be something else
If Stella had any particular
lover, we know nothing of it In fact, Stella’s name was never coupled
with that of anyone else (up till this point) except Lionel, though Stella was
believed to be absolutely careless with her favors where young men were
concerned We have accounts of two different young artists falling passionately
in love with her, but Stella ‘refused to be tied down’
What we know of Lionel
reinforces over and over again that he was quiet and somewhat withdrawn He
seems to have delighted in watching Stella dance, and laugh, and carry on with
her friends He enjoyed dancing with her himself, which he did all the time and
rather well, but he was definitely in Stella’s shadow He seemed to get
his vitality from Stella And when Stella wasn’t around, he was ’like
an empty mirror ’ You hardly knew he was there
There are several rumors
that he was writing a novel while they were in New York, and that he was quite
vulnerable with regard to the matter, and that an older novelist destroyed his
confidence by telling him his pages were ’pure rot.’
But from most sources, we
hear only that Lionel enjoyed the arts, that he was a contented human being,
and that as long as no one came between him and Stella he was ’just fine.’
Finally, in 1924, Stella,
Lionel, little Antha and her nurse, Maria, came home. Mary Beth threw a huge
family party at First Street, and descendants still mention sadly that it was
the last affair before Mary Beth took sick.
At this time a very strange
incident occurred.
As mentioned, the Talamasca
had a team of trained investigators working in New Orleans, private eyes who
never asked why they were being asked to gather information on a certain family
or a certain house. One of these investigators, a man who specialized in
divorce cases, had long let it out among the fashionable photographers of New
Orleans that he would pay well for any discarded pictures of the Mayfair
family, particularly those who lived in the First Street house.
One of these photographers,
Nathan Brand, who had a fashionable studio on St Charles Avenue, was called to
the First Street house for this big homecoming party, and there took a whole
series of pictures of Mary Beth, Stella, and Antha, as well as pictures of
other Mayfairs throughout the afternoon as a wedding photographer might do.
A week later when he brought
the pictures to the house for Mary Beth and Stella to choose what it was they
wanted, the women picked out a fair number and laid the discards aside.
But then Stella retrieved
one of the discards — a group shot of her with her mother and her
daughter in which Mary Beth was holding a big emerald necklace around little
Antha’s neck. On the back of it, Stella wrote:
‘To the Talamasca,
with love, Stella! P.S. There are others who watch, too,’ and then,
giving it back to the photographer, she went into peels of laughter, explaining
that his investigator friend would know what the writing meant.
The photographer was
embarrassed; he claimed innocence, then made excuses for his arrangement with
the investigator, but no matter what he said, Stella only laughed. Then Stella
said to him in a very charming and reassuring manner, ‘Mr Brand, you’re
working yourself into a fit. Just give the picture to the investigator.’
And that is what Mr Brand did.
It reached us about a month
later. And was to have a decisive effect upon our approach to the Mayfair family.
At this time the Talamasca
had no specific member assigned to the Mayfair investigation, and information
was being added to the file by several archivists as it came in. Arthur Langtry
- an outstanding scholar and a brilliant student of witchcraft — was
familiar with the entire record, but he had been busy all of his adult life
with three other cases, which were to obsess him till the day he died.
Nevertheless, the whole
family history had been discussed numerous times by the grand council, but the
judgment not to make contact had never been lifted. And indeed, it is doubtful
that anyone among us at that time knew the full story.
This photograph, with its
obvious message, caused quite a stir. A young member of the order, an American
from Texas named Stuart Townsend (who had been Anglicized by years of living in
London), asked to make a study of the Mayfair Witches with a view to direct
investigation, and after careful consideration the entire file was placed in
his hands.
Arthur Langtry agreed to
reread all the material, but pressing matters kept him from ever doing it,
though he was responsible for increasing the number of investigators in New
Orleans from three professional private eyes to four and of discovering another
excellent contact — a man named Irwin Dandrich, the penniless son of a
fabulously rich family, who moved in the highest circles while selling
information secretly to anyone who wanted it including detectives, divorce
lawyers, insurance investigators, and even scandal sheets.
Allow me to remind the
reader that the file did not then include this narrative, as no such collation
of materials had yet been done. It contained Petyr van Abel’s letters and
diary and a giant compendium of witness testimony, as well as photographs,
articles from newspapers, and the like. There was a running chronology, updated
periodically by the archivists, but it was very sketchy, to say the least.
Stuart was at that time
engaged in several other significant investigations, and it took him some three
years to complete his examination of the Mayfair material. We shall return to
him and to Arthur Langtry at the appropriate time.
After Stella’s return,
she began to live very much as she had before she ever went to Europe, that is,
she frequented speakeasies, once again gave parties for her friends, was
invited to numerous Mardi Gras balls where she created something of a
sensation, and in general behaved as the ne’er-do-well femme fatale she
had been before.
Our investigators had no
trouble at all gathering information about her, because she was highly visible
and the subject of gossip all over town. Indeed, Irwin Dandrich wrote to our
detective agency connection in London (he never knew to whom his information
was going or for what purpose) that all he had to do was step into a ballroom
and he heard all about what Stella was up to A few phone calls made on Saturday
morning also provided reams of information.
(It is worth noting here
that Dandrich, by all accounts, was not a malicious man. His information has
proved to be ninety-nine percent accurate. He was our most voluminous and
intimate witness regarding Stella, and though he never said so, one can easily
infer from his reports that he went to bed with her numerous times. But he didn’t
really know her; and she remains at a distance even at the most dramatic and
tragic moments described in his reports ).
Thanks to Dandrich and
others, the picture of Stella after her return from Europe took on greater and
greater detail.
Family legend says that
Carlotta severely disapproved of Stella during this period, and argued with
Mary Beth about it, and demanded repeatedly and in vain that Stella settle down
Servant gossip (and Dandrich’s gossip) corroborated this, but said that
Mary Beth paid very little attention to the matter, and thought Stella was a
refreshingly carefree individual and should not be tied down.
Mary Beth is even quoted as
saying to one society friend (who promptly passed it on to Dandrich), ‘Stella
is what I would be if I had my life to live over again I’ve worked too
hard for too little. Let her have her fun’
We must note that Mary Beth
was already gravely ill and possibly very tired when she said this Also she was
far too clever a woman not to appreciate the various cultural revolutions of
the 19205, which may be hard for readers of this narrative to appreciate as the
twentieth century draws to a close.
The true sexual revolution
of the twentieth century began in its tumultuous third decade, with one of the
most dramatic changes in female costume the world has ever witnessed But not
only did women abandon their corsets and long skirts; they threw out
old-fashioned mores with them, drinking and dancing in speakeasies in a manner
which would have been unthinkable only ten years before The universal adoption
of the closed automobile gave everyone unprecedented privacy, as well as
freedom of movement Radio reached into private homes throughout rural as well
as urban America Motion pictures made images of ’glamour and wickedness’
available to people worldwide. Magazines, literature, drama were all radically
transformed by a new frankness, freedom, tolerance, and self-expression.
Surely Mary Beth perceived
all this on some level We have absolutely no reports of her disapproval of the ’changing
times ’ Though she never cut her long hair or gave up long skirts (when
she wasn’t cross-dressing), she begrudged Stella nothing And Stella was,
more than any other member of the family, the absolute embodiment of her times.
In 1925 Mary Beth was
diagnosed as having incurable cancer, after which she lived only five months,
and most of them in such severe pain that she no longer went out of the house.
Retiring to the north
bedroom over the library, she spent her last comfortable days reading the
novels she had never got around to reading when she was a girl Indeed, numerous
Mayfair cousins called upon her, bringing her various copies of the classics
And Mary Beth expressed a special interest in the Bronte sisters, in Dickens,
which Juhen used to read to her when she was little, and in random other
English classics, which she seemed determined to read before she died.
Daniel McIntyre was
terrified at the prospect of his wife’s leaving him When he was made to
understand that Mary Beth wasn’t going to recover, he commenced his final
binge, and according to the gossips and the later legends was never seen to be
sober again.
Others have told the same
story that Llewellyn told, of Daniel waking Mary Beth constantly in her final
days, frantic to know whether or not she was still alive Family legend confirms
that Mary Beth was endlessly patient with him, inviting him to lie down beside
her, and comforting him for hours on end.
During this time, Carlotta
moved back into the house so that she could be close to her mother and, indeed,
sat with her through many a long night. When Mary Beth was in too much pain to
read, she asked Carlotta to read to her, and family legend says that Carlotta
read all of Wuthering Heights to her, and some of Jane Eyre.
Stella was also in constant
attendance. She stopped her carousing altogether, and spent her time preparing
meals for her mother — who was frequently too sick to eat anything
— and consulting doctors all over the world, by letter and phone, about
cures.
A perusal of the scant
medical records that exist on Mary Beth indicate her cancer had metastasized
before it was ever discovered. She did not suffer until the last three months
and then she suffered a great deal.
Finally on the afternoon of
September u, 1925, Mary Beth lost consciousness. The attending priest noted
that there was an enormous clap of thunder. ‘Rain began to pour.’
Stella left the room, went down to the library, and began to call the Mayfairs
all over Louisiana, and even the relatives in New York.
According to the priest, the
servant witnesses, and numerous neighbors, the Mayfairs started to arrive at
four o’clock and continued to arrive for the next twelve hours. Cars
lined First Street all the way to St Charles Avenue, and Chestnut Street from
Jackson to Washington.
The ’cloudburst’
continued, slacking off for a few hours to a drizzle and then resuming as a
regular rain. Indeed it was raining all over the Garden District, though it was
not raining in any other part of the city; however, no one took particular
notice of that fact.
On the other hand, the
majority of the New Orleans Mayfairs came equipped with umbrellas and
raincoats, as though they fully expected some sort of storm.
Servants scurried about
serving coffee and contraband European wine to the cousins, who filled the
parlors, the library, the hallway, the dining room, and even sat on the stairs.
At midnight the wind began
to howl. The enormous sentinel oaks before the house began to thrash so wildly
some feared the branches would break loose. Leaves came down as thick as rain.
Mary Beth’s bedroom
was apparently crowded to overflowing with her children and her nieces and
nephews, yet a respectful silence was maintained. Carlotta and Stella sat on
the far side of her bed, away from the door, as the cousins came and went on
tiptoe.
Daniel McIntyre was nowhere
to be seen, and family legend holds that he had ’passed out"
earlier, and was in bed in Carlotta’s apartment over the stables outside.
By one o’clock, there
were solemn-faced Mayfairs standing on the front galleries, and even in the
wind and rain, under their unsteady umbrellas, on the front walk. Many friends
of the family had come merely to hover under the oak trees, with newspapers
over their heads and their collars turned up against the wind. Others remained
in their cars double-parked along Chestnut and First.
At one thirty-five, the
attending physician, Dr Lyndon Hart, experienced some sort of disorientation.
He confessed later to several of his colleagues that ‘something strange’
happened in the room.
To Irwin Dandrich, he
confided in 1929 the following account:
‘I knew she was almost
gone. I had stopped taking her pulse. It seemed so undignified, to get up over
and over, only to nod to the others that she was still alive. And each time I
made a move towards the bed, naturally the cousins noticed it, and you would
hear the anxious whispers in the hall.
‘So for the last hour
or so I did nothing. I merely waited and watched. Only the immediate family was
at the bedside, except for Cortland and his son Pierce. She lay there with her
eyes half open, her head turned towards Stella and Carlotta. Carlotta was
holding her hand. She was breathing very irregularly. I had given her as much
morphine as I dared.
‘And then it happened.
Perhaps I’d fallen asleep and was dreaming, but it seemed so real at the
time — that a whole group of entirely different persons was there, an old
woman, for example, whom I knew but didn’t know was bending over Mary
Beth, and there was a very tall old gentleman in the room, who looked
distinctly familiar. There were all sorts of persons, really. And then a young
man, a pale young man who was very primly dressed in beautiful old-fashioned
clothes, was bending over her. He kissed her lips, and then he closed her eyes.
‘I was on my feet with
a start. The cousins were crying in the hallway. Someone was sobbing. Cortland
Mayfair was crying. And the rain had started to really pour again. Indeed the
thunder was deafening. And in a sudden flash of lightning I saw Stella staring
at me with the most listless and miserable expression. And Carlotta was crying.
And I knew my patient was dead, without doubt, and indeed her eyes were closed.
‘I have never
explained it really. I examined Mary Beth at once, and confirmed that it was
over. But they already knew. All of them knew I looked about, trying
desperately to conceal my momentary confusion, and I saw little Antha in the
corner, a few feet behind her mother, and that tall young gentleman was with
her, and then, quite suddenly, he was gone In fact, he was gone so suddenly
that I’m not sure I saw him at all.
‘But I’ll tell
you why I think he was really there Someone else also saw him It was Pierce
Mayfair, Cortland’s son. I turned around right after the young man
vanished, and I realized Pierce was staring at that very spot. He was staring
at little Antha, and then he looked at me. At once he tried to appear natural,
as if nothing was the matter, but I know he saw that man.
‘As to the rest of
what I saw, there certainly wasn’t any old lady about, and the tall old
gentleman was nowhere to be seen. But do you know who he was? I believe he was
Julien Mayfair. I never knew Julien, but I saw a portrait of him later that
very morning on the wall of the hallway, opposite the library door.
‘To tell you the
truth, I don’t think any of those in the sickroom paid me the slightest
notice. The maids started to wipe Mary Beth’s face, and to get her ready
for the cousins to come in and see her for the last time. Someone was lighting
fresh candles. And the rain, the rain was dreadful It was just flooding down
the windows.
‘The next thing I
remember, I was pushing through a long line of the cousins, to get to the
bottom of the stairs. Then I was in the library with Father McKenzie, and I was
filling out the death certificate, and Father McKenzie was sitting on the
leather couch with Belle and trying to comfort her, telling her all the usual
things, that her mother had gone to heaven and she would see her mother again.
Poor Belle. She kept saying, "I don’t want her to go away to heaven
I want to see her again right now." How do people like that ever come to
understand?
‘It was only when I
was leaving that I saw the portrait of Julien Mayfair and realized with a shock
that I had seen that man. In fact a rather curious thing happened I was so
startled when I saw the portrait that I blurted it aloud. "That’s
the man."
‘And there was someone
standing in the hallway, having a cigarette, I believe, and that person looked
up, saw me, and saw the portrait to his left, on the wall, and then said with a
little laugh, "Oh, no, that’s not the man That’s Julien"
‘Of course I didn’t
bother to argue I can’t imagine what the person thought I meant And I
certainly don’t know what he meant by what he said, and I just left it at
that I don’t even know who the person was A Mayfair, you can be sure of
it, but other than that, I wouldn’t make a guess.
‘I told Cortland about
it all afterwards, when I thought an appropriate amount of time had passed. He
wasn’t at all distressed He listened to everything I said, and told me he
was glad I’d told him But he said he hadn’t seen anything
particular in that room.
‘Now, you mustn’t
go telling everyone this story Ghosts are fairly common in New Orleans, but
doctors who see them are not! And I don’t think Cortland would appreciate
me telling that story And of course, I’ve never mentioned it to Pierce As
for Stella, well, frankly I doubt Stella cares about such things at all If
Stella cares about anything, I’d like to know what it is’
These apparitions
undoubtedly included another appearance of Lasher, but we cannot leave this
vivid and noteworthy story without discussing the strange exchange of words at
the library door. What did the Mayfair cousin mean when he said, ‘Oh, no,
that’s not the man’? Did he mistakenly think that the doctor was
referring to Lasher7 And did the little comment slip out before he realized
that the doctor was a stranger? And if so, does this mean that members of the
Mayfair family knew all about ‘the man’ and were used to talking
about him? Perhaps so.
Mary Beth’s funeral
was enormous, just as her wedding had been some twenty-six years before. For a
full account of it we are indebted to the undertaker, David O‘Brien, who
retired a year later, leaving his business to his nephew Red Lonigan, whose
family has given us much testimony since.
We also have some family
legends regarding the event, and considerable gossip from parish ladies who
attended the funeral and had no compunction about discussing the Mayfairs
critically at all.
All agree that Daniel McIntyre
did not make it through the ceremony He was taken home from the Requiem Mass by
Carlotta, who then rejoined the party before it left the church.
Before the interment in
Lafayette Cemetery several short speeches were made Pierce Mayfair spoke of
Mary Beth as a great mentor; Cortland praised her for her love of her family
and her generosity to everyone And Barclay Mayfair said that Mary Beth was
irreplaceable; and she would never be forgotten by those who knew her and loved
her. Lionel had his hands full consoling the stricken Belle and the crying
Millie Dear
Little Antha was not there,
and neither was little Nancy (an adopted Mayfair mentioned earlier whom Mary
Beth introduced to everyone as Stella’s child).
Stella was despondent, yet
not so much that she failed to shock scores of the cousins, and the undertaker,
and numerous friends of the family, by sitting on a nearby grave during the
final speeches, with her legs dangling and swilling liquor from her famous
bottle in the brown bag. When Barclay was concluding his speech, she said to
him quite loudly, ‘Barclay, get on with it! She hated this sort of thing
She’s going to rise from the dead and tell you to shut up if you don’t
stop.’
The undertaker noted that
many of the cousins laughed at these remarks, and others tried to stop themselves
from laughing. Barclay also laughed, and Cortland and Pierce merely smiled.
Indeed, the family may have been divided with regard to this response entirely
on ethnic lines. One account holds that the French cousins were mortified by
Stella’s conduct but that all the Irish Mayfairs laughed.
But then Barclay wiped his
nose, and said, ‘Good-bye my beloved,’ and kissed the coffin, and
then backed up, into the arms of Cortland and Garland, and began to sob.
Stella then hopped down off
the grave, went to the coffin and kissed it, and said to the priest. ‘Well,
Father, carry on.’
During the final Latin
words, Stella pulled a rose off one of the funeral arrangements, broke the stem
to a manageable length, and stuck the rose in her hair.
Then the closest of the km
retired to the First Street house, and before midnight the piano music and
singing was coming so loud from the patlor that the neighbors were shocked.
When Judge McIntyre died,
the funeral was a lot smaller but extremely sad. He had been much loved by many
Mayfairs, and tears were shed.
Before continuing, let us
note once more that, to our knowledge, Mary Beth was the last really strong
witch the family produced One can only speculate as to what she might have done
with her powers if she had not been so family oriented, so thoroughly
practical, and so utterly indifferent to vanity or notoriety of any kind As it
was, everything that she did eventually served her family Even her pursuit of
pleasure expressed itself in the reunions which helped the family to identify
itself and to maintain a strong image of itself in changing times.
Stella did not have this
love of family, nor was she practical, she did not mind notoriety, and she
loved pleasure But the keynote to understanding Stella is that she wasn’t
ambitious either She seemed to have few real goals at all.
‘Live’ might
have been the motto of Stella.
The history from this point
until 1929 belongs to her and little Antha, her pale-faced, sweet-voiced little
girl.
STELLA‘S
STORY CONTINUES
Family legend, neighborhood
gossip, and parish gossip all seem to agree that Stella went wild after her
parents’ death
While Cortland and Carlotta
battled over the legacy fortune and how it should be managed, Stella began to
throw scandalous parties for her friends at First Street; and the few she held
for the family in 1926 were equally shocking, what with the bootleg beer and
bourbon, and Dixieland bands and people dancing the Charleston until dawn Many
of the older cousins left these last parties early, and some never returned to
the First Street house.
Many of them were never
invited again Between 1926 and 1929, Stella slowly dismantled the extended
family created by her mother Or rather, she refused to guide it further, and it
slowly fell apart Large numbers of cousins lost contact altogether with the
house on First Street, rearing children who knew little or nothing about it,
and these descendants have been for us the richest source of legend and other
lore.
Other cousins were alienated
but remained involved All of Juhen’s descendants, for example, remained
close to the legacy family, if for no other reason than because they were
legally and financially connected, and because Carlotta could never effectively
drive them away.
‘It was the beginning
of the end,’ according to one cousin ‘Stella just didn’t want
to be bothered,’ said another And yet another, ‘We knew too much
about her, and she knew it She didn’t want to see us around’
The image of Stella we have
during this period is of a very active, very happy person who cared less about
the family than her mother had, but who nevertheless cared passionately about
many things Young writers and artists in particular interested Stella, and
scores of ’interesting’ people came to First Street, including
writers and painters whom Stella had known in New York Several friends
mentioned that she encouraged Lionel to take up his writing again, and even had
an office refurbished for him in one of the outbuildings, but it is not known
if Lionel ever wrote anything more
A great many intellectuals
attended Stella’s parties Indeed, she became fashionable with those who
were not afraid to take social risks Old guard society of the sort in which
Julien moved was essentially closed to her, or so Irwin Dandrich maintained But
it is doubtful Stella ever knew or cared.
The French Quarter of New
Orleans had been undergoing something of a revival since the early 19205
Indeed, William Faulkner, Sherwood Anderson, Edmund Wilson, and other famous
writers lived there at various times
We have no evidence to
connect any individual person with Stella, but she was very familiar with the
Bohemian life of the Quarter, she frequented the coffee houses and the art
galleries, and she brought the musicians home to First Street to play for her
and threw open her doors to penniless poets and painters very much as she had
done in New York
To the servants this meant
chaos To the neighbors it meant scandal and noise But Stella was no dissolute
drunk, as her legal father had been On the contrary, for all her drinking, she
is never described as being intoxicated, and there seems to have been
considerable taste and thought at work in her during these years.
At the same time, she
undertook a refurbishing of the house, spending a fortune on new paint,
plaster, draperies, and delicate expensive furniture in the art deco style The
double parlor was crowded with potted palms as Richard Llewellyn has described
A Bozendorfer grand piano was purchased, an elevator was eventually installed
(1927), and before that an immense swimming pool was built to the rear of the
lawn, and a cabana was built to the south side of the pool so that guests could
shower and dress without bothering to go into the house.
All of this the new friends,
the partying, and the refurbishing shocked the more staid cousins, but what
really turned them against Stella, thereby creating numerous legends for us to
gather later, was that, within a year after Mary Beth’s death, Stella
abandoned the large family gatherings altogether.
Try as he might, Cortland
could not persuade Stella to give any family parties after 1926 And though
Cortland frequently attended her soirees or balls or whatever they were called,
and his son Pierce was often there with him, other cousins who were invited
refused to go.
In the Mardi Gras season of
1927, Stella gave a masked ball which caused talk in New Orleans for six months
People from all ranks of society attended, the First Street house was
splendidly lighted, contraband champagne was served by the case A jazz band
played on the side porch (This porch was not screened in until later for
Deirdre Mayfair when she became an invalid ) Dozens of guests went swimming in
the nude, and by morning a full-scale orgy was in progress, or so the bedazzled
neighbors were heard to say Cousins who had been excluded were furious Indeed, Irwin
Dandrich says they appealed to Carlotta Mayfair for explanations, but everyone
knew the explana tion Stella didn’t want a bunch of dreary cousins
hanging about.
Servants reported Carlotta
Mayfair was outraged by the noise and duration of this party, not to mention
the expense Some time before midnight she left the house, taking little Antha
and little Nancy (the adopted one) with her, and she did not return until the
afternoon of the following day.
This was the very first
public quarrel between Stella and Carlotta, but cousins and friends soon
learned that they had made it up Lionel had made peace between the sisters, and
Stella had agreed to stay home more with Antha, and not to spend so much money,
or make so much noise The money seems to have been a matter of particular
concern to Carlotta, who thought filling an entire swimming pool with champagne
was ‘a sin’.
(It is interesting to note
that Stella was worth hundreds of millions of dollars at this time Carlotta had
four different fabulous trust funds in her own right It is possible that
Carlotta was offended by excess In fact, numerous people have indicated that
that was the case).
Late that year, the first of
a series of mysterious social events occurred What the family legends have told
us is that Stella sought out certain Mayfair cousins and brought them together
for ’an interesting evening’ in which they were to discuss family
history, and the family’s unique ’psychic gifts ’ Some said a
seance was held at First Street, others that voodoo was involved
(Servant gossip was rife
with stories of Stella’s involvement with voodoo Stella told several of
her friends that she knew all about voodoo She had colored relations in the
Quarter who told her all about it).
That many cousins did not
understand the reason for this get-together, that they did not take the talk of
voodoo seriously and resented being snubbed, was plainly obvious.
Indeed, the meeting sent
veritable shock waves through the family Why was Stella bothering to dig into
genealogies and to call this and that cousin whom nobody had seen of late, when
she did not even have the courtesy to call those who had known and loved Mary
Beth so much7 The doors at First Street had always been open to everyone, now
Stella was picking and choosing, Stella who didn’t bother to attend
school graduations, or to send presents to christenings and weddings, Stella
who behaved like ’a perfect you know what’
It was argued that Lionel
agreed with the cousins, that he thought Stella was going too far Holding
family get-togethers was extremely important, and one descendant told us later
that Lionel had complained bitterly to his Uncle Barclay that things were never
going to be the same, now that his mother was gone.
But for all the gossip, we
have been unable to find out who attended this strange evening affair, except
that we know Lionel was in attendance, and that Cortland and his son Pierce
were also there (Pierce was only seventeen at the time and a student at the
Jesuits He had already been accepted to Harvard )
We know also from family
gossip that the gathering lasted all night, and that some time before it was
over Lionel ’left in disgust ’ Cousins who attended and would say
nothing of what happened were much criticized by the others Society gossip,
filtered through Dandrich, thought it was Stella playing on her ’black
magic past’ and that it was all a big game.
Several gatherings like it
followed, but these were deliberately shrouded in secrecy with all parties
being sworn to divulge nothing of what went on.
Legal gossip spoke of
Carlotta Mayfair arguing with Cortland about these affairs, and about wanting
to get little Antha and little Nancy out of the house Stella wouldn’t
agree to a boarding school for Antha and ’everybody knew it’
Lionel meantime was having
fights with Stella An anonymous person called one of our private eyes who had
let it be known that he was interested in gossip pertaining to the family, and
told him that Stella and Lionel had had a row in a downtown restaurant and that
Lionel had walked out.
Dandrich quickly reported
similar stones Lionel and Stella were fighting Was there at last another man?
When the investigator began
to ask about the matter, he discovered it was well-known about town that the
family was in the midst of a battle over little Antha Stella was threatening to
go away to Europe again with her daughter, and was begging Lionel to go with
her, while Carlotta was ordering Lionel not to go.
Meantime Lionel began to
appear at Mass at the St Louis Cathedral with one of the downtown cousins, a
great-niece of Suzette Mayfair named Claire Mayfair, whose family lived in a
beautiful old house on Esplanade Avenue owned by descendants to this day
Dandrich insists this caused considerable talk
Servant gossip told of
countless family quarrels Doors were being slammed People were screaming.
Carlotta forbid further ’voodoo
gatherings ’ Stella told Carlotta to get out of the house.
‘Nothing’s the
same without Mother,’ said Lionel ‘It started to fall apart when
Julien died, but without Mother it’s impossible Carlotta and Stella are
oil and water in that house’
It does seem to have been
entirely Carlotta’s doing that Antha and Nancy ever went to any school
Indeed, the few school records we have been able to examine with regard to
Antha indicate that Carlotta enrolled her and attended the subsequent meetings
at which she was asked to take Antha out of the school.
Antha was by all accounts
completely unsuited for school.
By 1938, Antha had already
been sent home from St Alphonsus.
Sister Bridget Mane, who
remembers Antha perhaps as well as she remembers Stella, tells very much the
same stones about her as she told about her mother But her testimony regarding
this entire period and its various developments is worth quoting in full This
is what she told me in
‘The invisible friend
was always with Antha She would turn and talk to him in a whisper as if no one
else were there Of course he told her the answers when she didn’t know
them All the sisters knew it was going on
‘And if you want to
hear the worst part of it, some of the children saw him with their very eyes I
wouldn’t have believed it if it hadn’t been so many, but when four
children all tell you the same story, and each of them is afraid, and worried,
and the parents are worried, well, then what can you do but believe?
‘It was in the school
yard that they would see him Now, I told you the girl was shy Well, she’d
go over to the far brick wall at the back, and there she’d sit and read
her book in a little patch of sun coming through the trees And soon he would be
there with her A man, they said he was, can you imagine7 And you ask me do I
know the meaning of the words, "the man"7
‘Ah, you see, it was a
shock to everyone when it came out that he was a full-grown man For they
thought he was a little child before that, or some sort of child spirit, if you
follow me now But then it was a man, a tall dark-haired man And that really set
everyone talking That it was a man.
‘No, I never did see
him None of the sisters saw him But the children saw him And the children told
Father Lafferty I told Father Lafferty And he was the one that called Carlotta
Mayfair and said, "You have to take her out of school"
‘Now I don’t
criticize the priests, no, never But I will say this Father Lafferty wasn’t
a man you could buy with a big donation to the church, and and he said,
"Miss Carlotta, you’ve got to take her out of school"
‘No use calling up
Stella by that time Everyone knew Stella was practicing witchcraft She went
down to the French Quarter and bought the black candles for her voodoo, and do
you know, she was bringing the other Mayfairs into it7 Yes, she was doing it I
heard it a long time after, that she had gone to look for the other cousins who
were witches and she had told them all to come up to the house.
‘It was a seance they
had in that house They lighted black candles and they burned incense and they
sang songs to the devil, and they asked that their ancestors appear That’s
what I heard happened I can’t tell you where I heard it But I heard it
And I believe it, too’
In the summer of 1928,
Pierce Mayfair, Cortland’s son, canceled his plans to go to Harvard, and
decided to go to Tulane University, though his father and his uncles were dead
against it Pierce had been to all of Stella’s secret parties, reported Dandrich,
and the two were beginning to be linked by the gossips, and Pierce was not yet
eighteen
By the end of 1928, legal
gossip indicated that Carlotta had declared that Stella was an unfit mother,
and somebody ought to take her child away from her ’in court ’
Cortland denied such rumors to his friends But everybody knew it was ’coming
to that,’ said Dandrich Legal gossip told of family meetings at which
Carlotta demanded that the Mayfair brothers stand by her.
Meantime, Stella and Pierce
were running around day and night together, with little Antha often in tow
Stella bought dolls for little Antha incessantly She took her to breakfast
every morning at a different hotel in the French Quarter Pierce went with
Stella to purchase a building on Decatur Street which Stella meant to turn into
a studio where she could be alone.
‘Let Millie Dear and
Belle have that house and Carlotta,’ Stella told the real estate agent
Pierce laughed at everything Stella said Antha, a thin seven-year-old with
porcelain skin and soft blue eyes, stood about clutching a giant teddy bear
They all went to lunch together, including the real estate agent, who told Dandrich
later, ‘She is charming, absolutely charming I think those people up on
First Street are merely too gloomy for her’
As for Nancy Mayfair, the
dumpy little girl adopted at birth by Mary Beth and introduced to everyone as
Antha’s sister, Stella paid no attention to her at all One Mayfair
descendant says bitterly that Nancy was no more than ’a pet’ to
Stella But there is no evidence of Stella’s ever being mean to Nancy
Indeed, she charged truckloads of clothes and toys for Nancy. But Nancy seems
to have been a generally unresponsive and sullen little girl.
Meantime Carlotta alone took
Antha and Nancy to Mass on Sundays, and it was Carlotta who saw that Nancy went
to the Academy of the Sacred Heart.
In 1928, gossip had it that
Carlotta Mayfair had taken the shocking legal step of trying to gain custody of
Antha, with a view, apparently, to sending her away to school. Certain papers
had been signed and filed.
Cortland was horrified that
Carlotta would take things so far. At last Cortland, who had been on friendly
terms with Carlotta until this juncture, threatened to oppose her legally if
she did not drop the matter out of hand. Barclay, Garland, and young Sheffield
and other members of the family agreed to go along with Cortland. Nobody was
going to take Stella to court and take her child away from her while Cortland
was alive.
Lionel too agreed to stand behind
Cortland. He is described as being tortured by the whole incident. He even
suggested that he and Stella go away to Europe together for a while and leave
Antha in Carlotta’s hands.
Finally Carlotta withdrew
her petition for custody.
But between her and Julien’s
descendants, things were never the same. They began to fight over money, and
they have continued that fight to this day.
Sometime in 1927, Carlotta
had persuaded Stella to sign a power of attorney so that Carlotta could handle
certain matters for her about which Stella didn’t want to be concerned.
Carlotta attempted now to
use this power of attorney to make sweeping decisions regarding the enormous
Mayfair legacy which had since Mary Beth’s death been entirely in Cortland’s
hands.
Family legend and
contemporary legal gossip, as well as society gossip, all concur that the
Mayfair brothers - Cortland, Garland, and Barclay, and later Pierce, Sheffield,
and others - refused to honor this piece of paper. They refused to follow
Carlotta’s orders to liquidate the hugely profitable and daring
investments which they had been making with tremendous success on behalf of the
legacy for years. They rushed Stella to their offices so that she might revoke
the power of attorney and reaffirm that everything was to be handled by them.
Nevertheless endless
squabbles resulted between the brothers and Carlotta, which have gone on into
the present time. Carlotta seems never to have trusted Julien’s sons
after the custody battle, and not even to have liked them. She made endless
demands upon them for information, full disclosures, detailed accounts and
explanations of what they were doing, constantly implying that if they did not
give a good account of themselves she would take them to court on behalf of
Stella (and later on behalf of Antha, and later on behalf of Deirdre unto the
present time).
They were hurt and baffled
by her distrust. By 1928 they had made near incalculable amounts of money on
behalf of Stella, whose affairs of course were completely entangled with their
own. They could not understand Carlotta’s attitude, and they seemed to
have persisted in taking it literally over the years.
That is, they patiently
answered all her questions, and again and again attempted to explain what they
were doing, when of course Carlotta only asked them more questions and demanded
more answers and brought up new topics for examination, and called for more
meetings, and made more phone calls, and made more veiled threats.
It is interesting to note
that almost every legal secretary or clerk who ever worked for Mayfair and
Mayfair seemed to understand this ’game.’ But Julien’s sons
continued to be hurt and bitter about it always, as if they did not see through
it to the core.
Only reluctantly did they
allow themselves to be forced away from the house on First Street where all of
them had been born.
By 1928, they were already
being forced away but they didn’t know it. Twenty-five years later, when
Pierce and Cortland Mayfair asked to examine some of Julien’s belongings
in the attic, they were not allowed past the front door. But in 1928 such a
thing would have been unimaginable.
Cortland Mayfair probably
never guessed that the battle over Antha was the last personal battle with
Carlotta that he would ever win.
Meantime, Pierce practically
lived at First Street in the fall of 1928. Indeed by the spring of 1929, he was
going everywhere with Stella, and had styled himself her ’personal
secretary, chauffeur, punching bag and crying pillow.’ Cortland put up
with it, but he didn’t like it.
He told friends and family
that Pierce was a fine boy, and he would tire of the whole thing and go east to
school just as all the other boys had done. As it turned out, Pierce never
really had a chance to tire of Stella. But we have now come to the year 1929,
and we should interrupt this story to include the strange case of Stuart
Townsend, our brother in the Talamasca, who wanted so badly to make contact
with Stella in the summer of that year.
TWENTY
THE
FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES
PART
VII
The Disappearance of Stuart Townsend
IN 1929, Stuart Townsend,
who had been studying the Mayfair materials for years, petitioned the council
in London to allow him to attempt contact with the Mayfair family.
He felt strongly that Stella’s
cryptic message to us on the back of the photograph meant that she wanted such
contact.
And Stuart was also
convinced that the last three Mayfair Witches — Juhen, Mary Beth, and
Stella — were not murderers or evildoers in any sense; that it would be
entirely safe to contact them, and that, indeed, ’wonderful things’
might result.
This forced the council to
take a hard look at the entire question, and also to reexamme, as it does
constantly, the aims and standards of the Talamasca.
Though an immense body of
written material exists in our archives as to our aims and standards, as to
what we find acceptable and unacceptable, and though this is a constant topic
of conversation at our council meetings worldwide, let me summarize for the
purposes of this narrative the issues which are relevant here, all of
which were raised by Stuart Townsend in 1929.
First and foremost: We had
created in the File on the Mayfair Witches an impressive and valuable history
of a psychic family. We had proved to ourselves beyond a doubt that the
Mayfairs had contact with the realm of the invisible, and that they could
manipulate unseen forces to their advantage But there were still many things
about what they did that we did not know
What if they could be
persuaded to talk to us, to share their secrets? What might we then learn?
Stella was not the secretive
or guarded person that Mary Beth had been. Maybe, if she could be convinced of
our discretion and our scholarly purpose, she would reveal things to us.
Possibly Cortland Mayfair would talk to us too.
Second and perhaps less
important- Certainly we had over the years violated the privacy of the Mayfair
family with our vigilance We had, according to Stuart, ‘snooped’
into every aspect of their lives. Indeed we had studied these people as
specimens, and again and again, we justify the lengths to which we go by
arguing that we will, and do, make our records available to those we study.
Well, we had not done that
with the Mayfairs ever. And perhaps there was no excuse for not trying now.
Third: We existed in an
absolutely unique relationship to the Mayfairs because the blood of Petyr van
Abel, our brother, ran in their veins. They were ‘related’ to us,
one might say. Should we not seek to make contact merely to tell them about
this ancestor? And who knows what would follow from there?
Fourth: Could we do some
real good by making contact? And here of course we come to one of our highest
purposes Could the reckless Stella benefit from knowing about other people like
herself? Would she not enjoy knowing there were people who studied such
persons, with a view to understanding the realm of the invisible? In other
words, would Stella not like to talk to us, and not like to know what we knew
about the psychic world at large?
Stuart argued vociferously
that we were obligated to make contact He also raised the pertinent question:
what did Stella already know? He also insisted that Stella needed us, that the
entire Mayfair clan needed us, that little Antha in particular needed us, and
it was time that we introduced ourselves and offered what we knew.
The council considered
everything that Stuart had to say; it considered what it knew of the Mayfair
Witches, and it concluded that the good reasons for making contact far
outweighed any bad reasons. It dismissed
out of hand the idea of danger. And it told Stuart that he might go to
America and he might make contact with Stella.
In a welter of excitement,
Stuart sailed for New York the very next day The Talamasca received two letters
from him postmarked New York He wrote again when he reached New Orleans, on
stationery from the St Charles Hotel, saying that he had contacted Stella and
indeed had found her extremely receptive, and that he was going to meet her for
lunch the next day
Stuart Townsend was never
seen or heard from again We do not know where or when or even if his life ended
We simply know that sometime in June of 1929 he vanished without a trace.
When one looks back upon
these council meetings, when one reads over the transcript, it is very easy to
see that the Talamasca made a tragic mistake Stuart was not really prepared for
this mission A narrative should have been written embracing all the materials,
so that the Mayfair history could be seen as a whole Also the question of
danger should have been more carefully evaluated Throughout the anecdotal
history of the Mayfairs there are references to violence being done to the
enemies of the Mayfair Witches.
But in all fairness, it must
be admitted that there were no such stories associated with Stella or her
generation And certainly no such stories in relationship to other contemporary
residents of the First Street house (The exceptions, of course, are the
playground stories concerning Stella and Antha They were accused of using their
invisible friend to hurt other little children But there is nothing comparable
about Stella as an adult)
Also the full story of Antha’s
nurse who died of a fall in Rome was not then known to the Talamasca And it is
possible that Stuart knew nothing about this incident at all
Nevertheless Stuart was not
fully prepared for such a mission And when one reviews his comments to the
council and to other members it becomes obvious that Stuart had fallen in love
with Stella Mayfair He had fallen in love with her under the very worst
circumstances that is, he had fallen in love with her image in her photographs,
and with the Stella who emerged from people’s descriptions of her She had
become a myth to him And so, full of zeal and romance, he went to meet her,
dazzled not only by her powers but by her proverbial charms.
It is also obvious to anyone
who considers this case dispassionately that Stuart was not the best person for
this mission, for a number of reasons.
And before we go with Stuart
to New Orleans, allow us to explain briefly who Stuart was A full file on Stuart
exists in the archives, and it is certainly worth reading in its own right For
some twenty-five years, he was a devoted and conscientious member of the order
and his investigations of cases of possession cover some one hundred and
fourteen different files.
THE
LIFE OF STUART TOWNSEND
How much of Stuart’s
life is relevant to what happened to him, or to the story of the Mayfair
Witches, I cannot say I know that I am including more of it here than I need to
include And especially in view of what little I say of Arthur Langtry, I must
explain.
I think I have included this
material here as some sort of memorial to Stuart, and as some sort of warning
Be that as it may
Stuart came to the attention
of the order when he was twenty-two years old Our offices in London received
from one of its many investigators in America a small newspaper article about
Stuart Townsend, or ‘The Boy Who Had Been Somebody Else for Ten Years’
Stuart had been born in a
small town in Texas in the year 1895 His father was the local doctor, a deeply
intellectual and widely respected man Stuart’s mother was from a
well-to-do family, and engaged in charity work of the fashionable sort for a
lady of her position, having two nurses for her seven children, of which Stuart
was the firstborn They lived in a large white Victorian house with a widow’s
walk, on the town’s one and only fashionable street.
Stuart went to boarding
school in New England when he was six years old He was from the beginning an
exceptional student, and during his summer vacation home, he was something of a
recluse, reading in his attic bedroom until late in the night He did have a
number of friends, however, among the town’s small but vigorous aristocracy
sons and daughters of city officials, lawyers, and well-to-do ranchers, and he
seems to have been well liked.
When he was ten years old
Stuart came down with a serious fever which could not be diagnosed His father
concluded finally that it was of infectious origin, but no real explanation was
ever found Stuart went into a crisis during which he was delirious for two days.
When he recovered, he wasn’t
Stuart He was somebody else This somebody else claimed to be a young woman
named Antoinette Fielding who spoke with a French accent and played the piano
beautifully, and seemed generally confused about how old she was, where she
lived, or what she was doing in Stuart’s house.
Stuart himself did know some
French, but he did not know how to play the piano And when he sat down at the
dusty grand in the parlor and began to play Chopin the family thought they were
losing their minds.
As for his believing he was
a girl, and crying miserably when he saw his reflection in a mirror, his mother
could not endure this and actually ran from the room After about a week of
hysterical and melancholic behavior, Stuart-Antoinette was persuaded to stop
asking for dresses, to accept the fact that she had a boy’s body now, and
to believe that she was Stuart Townsend, and get back to doing what Stuart was
expected to do.
However, any return to
school was out of the question And Stuart-Antoinette, who became known to the
family as Tony for the sake of simplicity, spent his or her days playing the
piano endlessly and scribbling out memories in a huge diary as she-he tried to
solve the mystery of who she was.
As Dr Townsend perused these
scribbled recollections he perceived that the French in which they were written
was far beyond the level of expertise which ten-year-old Stuart had attained He
also began to realize that the child’s memories were all of Paris, and of
Paris in the 18405, as direct references to operas and plays and modes of
transportation clearly showed
It emerged from these
written documents that Antoinette Fielding had been of English-French
parentage, that her Frenchman father had not married her English mother Louisa
Fielding and that she had lived a strange and reclusive life in Paris, the
pampered daughter of a high-class prostitute who sought to protect her only
child from the filth of the streets Her great gift and consolation was her music.
Dr Townsend, enthralled, and
reassuring his wife that they would get to the bottom of this mystery, began an
investigation by mail with a view to discovering whether or not this person
Antoinette Fielding had ever existed in Paris
This occupied him for some
five years.
During that time, ‘Antoinette’
remained in Stuart’s body, playing the piano obsessively, venturing out
only to get lost or into some dreadful scrape with the local toughs At last
Antoinette never left the house, and became something of a hysterical invalid,
demanding that meals be left at her door, and going down to play the piano only
at night
Finally, through a private
detective in Paris, Dr Townsend ascertained that a certain Louisa Fielding had
been murdered in Pans in 1865 She was indeed a prostitute, but there was no
record whatsoever of her having a child And at last Dr Townsend came to a dead
end He was by this time weary of trying to solve the mystery And he came to
terms with the situation as best he could.
His handsome young son Stuart
was gone forever, and in his place was a wasted, warped invalid, a white faced
boy with burning eyes and a strange sexless voice, who lived now entirely
behind closed blinds The doctor and his wife grew used to hearing the nocturnal
concerts Every now and then the doctor went up to speak to the pale faced ’feminine’
creature who lived in the attic He could not help but note a mental
deterioration The creature could no longer remember much of ’her past ’
Nevertheless they conversed pleasantly in French or in English for a little
while, then the emaciated and distracted young person would turn to his books
as if the father weren’t there, and the father would go away.
It is interesting to note
that no one even discussed the possibility that Stuart was ’possessed ’
The doctor was an atheist, the children were taken to the Methodist church The
family knew nothing of Catholics or Catholic rites of exorcism, or the Catholic
belief in demons or possession And as far as we know the local minister, whom
the family did not like, was never personally consulted as to the case.
This situation continued
until Stuart was twenty years old. Then one night he fell down the stairs,
suffering a severe concussion The doctor, half awake and waiting for the
inevitable music to rise from the parlor, discovered his son unconscious in the
hallway and rushed him to the local hospital, where Stuart lay in a coma for
two weeks.
When he woke up, he was
Stuart He had absolutely no recollection of ever having been anyone else
Indeed, he believed he was ten years old, and when he heard a manly voice
issuing from his own throat, he was horrified When he discovered he had a grown
man’s body, he was speechless with shock
Dumbfounded he sat in his
hospital bed listening to stories of what had been happening to him for the
last ten years Of course he did not understand French He’d had a terrible
time with it in school And of course he couldn’t play the piano Why,
everybody knew he had no musical ability He could not even carry a tune
In the next few weeks, he
sat staring at the dinner table at his ’enormous’ brothers and
sisters, at his now gray-haired father, and at his mother, who could not look
at him without bursting into tears Telephones and automobiles which hardly
existed in 1905 when he had ceased to be Stuart startled him endlessly Electric
lights filled him with insecurity But the keenest source of agony was his own
adult body And the ever deepening realization that his childhood and
adolescence were now gone without a trace
Then he began to confront
the inevitable problems He was twenty with the emotions and education of a
ten-year-old boy He began to gain weight, his color improved, he went riding on
the nearby ranches with his old friends Tutors were hired to educate him, he
read the newspapers and the national magazines by the hour He took long walks
during which he practiced moving and thinking like an adult
But he lived in a perpetual
state of anxiety He was passionately attracted to women, but did not know how
to deal with this attraction His feelings were easily hurt As a man he felt
hopelessly inadequate At last he began to quarrel with everyone, and
discovering that he could drink with impunity, he began to ’hit the bottle’
in the local saloons
Soon the whole town knew the
story Some people remembered the first ’go round’ when Antoinette
had been born Others only heard the whole tale in retrospect Whatever the case,
there was ceaseless talk And though the local paper never, out of deference to the
doctor, made mention of this bizarre story, a reporter from Dallas, Texas, got
wind of it from several sources, and without the family’s cooperation,
wrote a long article on it which appeared in the Sunday edition of a Dallas
paper in 1915 Other papers picked up this story It was eventually forwarded to
us in London about two months after it appeared
Meantime curiosity seekers
descended upon Stuart A local author wanted to write a novel about him
Representatives from national magazines rang the front door bell The family was
up in arms Stuart was once again driven indoors, and sat brooding in the attic
room, staring at the treasured possessions of this strange person Antoinette,
and feeling that ten years of his life had been stolen from him, and he was now
a hopeless misfit, driven to antagonizing everyone he knew
No doubt the family received
a great deal of unwelcome mail On the other hand, communication in that day and
age was not what it is now Whatever the case, a package from the Talamasca
reached Stuart in late 1916, containing two well-known books about such cases
of ’possession,’ along with a letter from us informing him that we
had a good deal of knowledge about such things and would be very glad to talk
to him about it, and about others who had experienced the same thing
Stuart at once fired off a
reply He met with our representative Louis Daly in Dallas in the summer of
1917, and gratefully agreed to go with us to London Dr Townsend, at first
deeply concerned, was finally won over by Louis, who assured him that our
approach to such things was entirely scholarly, and at last Stuart came to us
on September 1,
He was received into the
order as a novice the following year, and he remained with us from then on
His first project of course
was a thorough study of his own case, and a study of every other known case of
possession on record His conclusion finally, and that of the other Talamasca
scholars assigned to this area of research, was that he indeed had been
possessed by the spirit of a dead woman
He believed then and ever
after that the spirit of Antoinette Fielding could have been driven out of him,
if anyone knowledgeable had been consulted, even a Catholic priest For though
the Catholic Church holds that such cases are purely demonic which we do not there
is no doubt that their techniques for exorcising such alien presences do work
For the next five years
Stuart did nothing but investigate past cases of possession the world over He
interviewed victims by the dozens, taking voluminous notes
He came to the conclusion
long held by the Talamasca that there are a great variety of entities who
engage in possession Some may be ghosts, some may be entities who were never
human, some may be ’other personalities’ within the host But he
remained convinced that Antoinette Fielding had been a real human being, and
that like many such ghosts, she had not known or understood that she was dead
In 1920 he went to Paris to
find evidence of Antoinette Fielding He was unable to discover anything at all
But the few bits of information about the dead Louisa Fielding did fit with
what Antoinette had written about her mother Time, however, had long ago erased
any real trace of these persons And Stuart remained forever dissatisfied on
this account
In late 1920 he resigned
himself to the fact that he might never know who Antoinette was, and then he
turned to active fieldwork on behalf of the Talamasca He went out with Louis
Daly to intervene in cases of possession, carrying out with Daly a form of
exorcism which Daly used very effectively to drive such alien presences out of
the victim-host
Daly was very impressed with
Stuart Townsend He became Stuart’s mentor, and Stuart was throughout
these years noted for his compassion, patience, and effectiveness in this field
Not even Daly could comfort the victims afterwards the way Stuart could do it
After all, Stuart had been there Stuart knew
Stuart worked in this field
tirelessly until 1929, reading the File on the Mayfair Witches only when a busy
schedule allowed Then he made his plea to the council and won
At that point in time,
Stuart was thirty-five He stood six feet tall, had ash-blond hair and dark gray
eyes He was lean of build and had a light complexion He tended to dress
elegantly, and was one of those Americans who deeply admires English manners
and ways of doing things, and aspires to imitate them He was an attractive
young man But his greatest appeal to friends and acquaintances was a sort of boyish
spontaneity and innocence Stuart was really missing ten years of his life, and
he never got them back
He was capable at times of
impetuousness, and of flying off the handle, of getting furious when he
encountered even small obstacles to his plans But he controlled this very well
when he was in the field, and when he threw a tantrum in the Motherhouse he
could always be brought round.
He was also capable of
falling deeply and passionately in love, which he did with Helen Kreis, a
member of the Talamasca who died in an auto accident in 1924 He grieved
excessively and even dangerously for Helen for two years after her death
What happened between him
and Stella Mayfair we may never know But it is possible to conjecture that she
was the only other love of his life.
I should like to add my
personal opinion here that Stuart Townsend never should have been sent to New
Orleans It was not only that he was too emotionally involved with Stella, it
was that he lacked experience in this particular field.
In his novitiate, he had
dealt with various kinds of psychic phenomena, and undoubtedly he read widely
in the occult all his life He discussed a great variety of cases with other
members of the order And he did spend some time with Arthur Langtry
But he did not really know
anything about witches, per se And like so many of our members who have dealt
only with hauntings, possessions, or reincarnation, he simply did not know what
witches can do.
He did not understand that
the strongest manifestations of dis-carnate entities come through mortal
witches There are even some suggestions that he thought the Talamasca was being
archaic and silly in calling these women witches And it is very likely that
though he accepted the seventeenth-century descriptions of Deborah Mayfair and
her daughter Charlotte, he could not ‘relate’ this material to a
clever, fashionable twentieth-century ’jazz baby’ like Stella, who
seemed to be beckoning to him across the Atlantic with a smile and a wink.
Of course the Talamasca
encounters a certain amount of incredulity in all new workers in the witchcraft
field The same holds true for the investigation of vampires More than one
member of the order has had to see these creatures in action before he or she
could believe in them. But the solution to that problem is to introduce our
members to fieldwork under the guidance of experienced persons, and in cases
which do not involve direct contact.
To send an inexperienced man
like Townsend to make contact with the Mayfair Witches is like sending a child
directly to hell to interview the devil
In sum Stuart Townsend went
off to New Orleans unprepared and unwarned And with all due respect to those
who governed the order in 1929,1 do not believe that such a thing would happen
today.
Lastly, let me add that
Stuart Townsend, to the best of our knowledge, possessed no extraordinary
powers. He wasn’t ’psychic,’ as they say. So he had no
extrasensory weapons at his command when he confronted the foe, whom he did not
even perceive to be a foe.
Stuart’s disappearance
was reported to the New Orleans police on July 25, 1929. This was a full month
after his arrival in New Orleans The Talamasca had tried to reach him by
telegram and by phone. Irwin Dandrich had tried to find him but in vain. The St
Charles Hotel, from which Stuart claimed to have written his only letter from
New Orleans, denied ever having such a person registered. No one remembered
such a person ever having been there.
Our private investigators
could discover nothing to prove Town-send had ever reached New Orleans. And the
police soon came to doubt that he had.
On July 28, the authorities
told our local investigators that there was nothing further that they could do.
But under severe pressure both from Dandrich and from the Talamasca the police
finally agreed to go to the Mayfair house and ask Stella if she had ever seen
or spoken to the young man The Talamasca held out no hope at this point, but
Stella surprised everyone by recalling Stuart at once.
Yes indeed, she had met
Stuart, she said, the tall Texan from England, how could she ever forget such
an interesting person? They had had lunch together and later dinner, and spent
an entire night in talk
No, she couldn’t
imagine what had happened to him. In fact, she became quite instantly and
visibly distressed at the possibility that he had met with foul play.
Yes, he was staying at the
St Charles Hotel, he mentioned that to her, and why on earth would he he about
such a thing? She began to cry Oh, she hoped nothing had happened to him In
fact, she became so upset that the police almost terminated the interview. But
she held them there asking questions Had they talked to the people at the Court
of Two Sisters7 She’d taken Stuart there, and he’d liked it Maybe
he had been back. And there was a speakeasy on Bourbon Street where they had
talked early the following morning, after some more respectable place -
dreadful hole1 — had kicked them out.
The police covered these
establishments Everyone knew Stella. Yes, Stella could have been there with a
man Stella was always there with a man But nobody had any particular
recollection of Stuart Townsend.
Other hotels in town were
canvassed No belongings of Stuart Townsend were found. Cabbies were questioned
but with the same dismal lack of result
At last the Talamasca
decided to take the investigation into its own hands. Arthur Langtry sailed
from London to discover what had happened to Stuart. He was conscience-stricken
that he had ever agreed to let Stuart undertake this assignment alone.
THE
STORY OF STELLA CONTINUES
Arthur
Langtry’s Report
Arthur Langtry was certainly
one of the most able investigators whom the Talamasca ever produced The study
of several great ’witch families’ was his lifelong work. The story
of his fifty-year career with the Talamasca is one of the most interesting and
amazing histories contained in our archives, and his detailed studies of the
witch families with whom he became involved are some of the most valuable
documents we possess.
It is a great sadness to
those of us who have been obsessed all our lives with the Mayfair Witches that
Langtry was never able to devote his time to their history. And in the years
before Stuart Townsend became involved, Langtry expressed his own regrets
regarding the whole affair.
But Langtry owed no one an
apology for not having time or life enough for every witch family in our files.
Nevertheless, when Stuart
Townsend disappeared, Langtry felt responsible, and nothing could have kept him
from sailing to Louisiana in August of 1929 As already mentioned, he blamed
himself for Stuart’s disappearance, because he had not opposed Stuart’s
assignment, and he had known in his heart that Stuart should not go.
‘I was so eager for
someone to go there,’ he confessed before he left London ‘I was so
eager for something to happen And of course I felt I couldn’t go And so I
thought, well, maybe that strange young Texan will crack through that wall’
Langtry was nearing
seventy-four years of age at this time, a tall, gaunt man with iron gray hair,
a rectangular face, and sunken eyes He had an extremely pleasant speaking voice
and meticulous manners He had the usual minor infirmities of old age, but, all things
considered, he was in good health.
He had seen ’everything’
during his years of service He was a powerful psychic or medium, and he was
absolutely fearless when it came to any manifestation of the supernatural But
he was never rash or careless He never underestimated any sort of phenomena He
was, as his own investigations show, extremely confident and extremely strong.
As soon as he heard of Stuart’s
disappearance, he became convinced that Stuart was dead Quickly rereading the
Mayfair material, he saw the error which the order had made.
He arrived in New Orleans on
August 28, 1929, at once registering at the St Charles Hotel and dispatching a
letter home as Stuart had done He gave his name, address, and London phone
number to several people at the hotel desk so that there could be no question
later that he had been there He made a long distance call to the Motherhouse
from his room, reporting the room number and several other particulars about
his arrival.
Then he met with one of our
investigators the most competent of the private detectives in the hotel bar,
charging all of the drinks to the room.
He confirmed for himself
everything that the order had already been told He was also informed that
Stella was no longer cooperating with the investigation, such as it was
Insisting that she didn’t know anything and couldn’t help anyone,
she had at last become impatient and refused to talk to the investigators
anymore.
‘As I said good-bye to
this gentleman,’ he wrote in his report, ‘I knew for certain that I
was being watched It was no more than a feeling, yet it was a profound one And
I sensed that it was connected to Stuart’s disappearance, though I myself
had made no inquiry regarding Stuart of any person at the hotel.
‘At this point I was
sorely tempted to roam the premises, seeking to detect some latent indication
of Stuart’s having been in this or that room But I was also deeply
convinced that Stuart had not met with foul play in this hotel On the contrary,
the people who were watching me, indeed, taking note of my movements and what I
did, were doing so only because someone had paid them to do it I decided to
contact Stella Mayfair at once’
Langtry rang Stella from his
room Though it was past four o’clock, she had obviously only just
awakened when she answered her private phone Only reluctantly did she allow the
subject to be reopened And it soon became obvious that she was genuinely upset.
‘Look, I don’t
know what happened to him1’ she said, and again began to cry ‘I
liked him I really did He was such a strange man We went to bed, you know’
Langtry couldn’t think
of a thing to say to such a frank admission Even her disembodied voice proved
somewhat charming And he was convinced that her tears were real.
‘Well, we did,"
she continued, undaunted ‘I took him to some awful little place in the
Quarter I told the police about it Anyway, I liked him, very very much! I told
him not to come around this family I told him! He had the most peculiar ideas
about things He didn’t know anything I told him to go away. Maybe he did
go away That is what I thought happened, you know, that he simply took my
advice and went away’
Langtry implored her to help
him discover what had happened He explained that he was a colleague of Townsend’s,
that they had known each other very well.
‘Colleague? You mean
you’re part of that group’
‘Yes, if you mean the
Talamasca’
‘Shhh, listen to me
Whoever you are, you can come on up here if you like But do it tomorrow night I’m
giving a party, you see. You can just well, sort of blend in If anyone asks you
who you are, which they probably won’t, just say Stella invited you Ask
to speak to me But for God’s sakes don’t say anything about
Townsend and don’t say the name of your whatever you call it’
‘Talamasca’
‘Yes1 Now please
listen to what I’m saying There’ll be hundreds of people there,
white tie to rags, you know, and do be discreet Just come up to me, and when
you kiss me, whisper your name in my ear What is it again?’
‘Langtry Arthur’
‘Hmmmm Unhuh Right That’s
simple enough to remember, isn’t it? Now, do be careful I can’t
stay on any longer You will come, won’t you? Look, you must come!’
Langtry averred that nothing
could keep him away He asked her if she remembered the photograph on which she’d
written ‘To the Talamasca, with love, Stella! P S There are others who
watch, too’
‘Of course I remember
it. Look, I can’t talk to you about this right now It was years and years
ago, when I wrote that note My mother was alive then Look, you can’t
imagine how bad things are for me now I’ve never been in a worse jam And
I don’t know what happened to Stuart, really I don’t Look, will you
please come tomorrow night?’
‘Yes, I shall,’
said Langtry, struggling silently to determine whether or not he was being
lured into some sort of trap ‘But why must we be so circumspect about the
whole arrangement, I don’t’
‘Darling, look,’
she said, dropping her voice, ’it’s all very nice about your
organization, and your library and all your marvelous psychic investigations
But don’t be a perfect fool Ours is not a world of seances and mediums
and dead relatives telling you to look between the pages of the Bible for the
deed to the property on Eighth Street or whatever As for the voodoo nonsense,
that was a perfect scream And by the way, we do not have any Scottish ancestors
We were all French My Uncle Juhen made up something about a Scottish castle he
bought when we went to Europe So do forget about all that, if you please But
there are things I can tell you1 That’s just the point Look, come around
eight o’clock, will you7 But whatever you do, don’t be the first
one to arrive Now, I’ve got to get off, you really cannot imagine how
dreadful everything is just now I’ll tell you frankly I never asked to be
born into this mad family! Really! There are three hundred people invited tomorrow
night, and I haven’t a single friend in the world’
She rang off.
Langtry, who had taken down
the entire conversation in shorthand, immediately copied it out in longhand,
with a carbon, and posted one copy to London, going directly to the post office
to do it, for he no longer trusted the situation at the hotel
Then he went to rent a
tailcoat and boded shirt for the party the following night
‘I am thoroughly
confused,’ he had written in his letter ‘I had been certain she had
a hand in getting rid of poor Stuart Now I don’t know what to think She
wasn’t lying to me, I am sure of it But why is she frightened7 Of course
I cannot make an intelligent appraisal of her until I see her’
Late that afternoon, he
called Irwin Dandrich, the socialite spy for hire, and asked him to have dinner
at a fashionable French Quarter restaurant blocks from the hotel.
Though Dandrich had nothing
to say about Townsend’s disappearance, he appeared to enjoy the meal
thoroughly, gossiping nonstop about Stella People said Stella was burning out.
‘You can’t drink
a fifth of French brandy every day of your life and live forever,’ said Dandrich
with weary, mocking gestures, as if to suggest the subject bored him, when in
fact, he loved it ‘And the affair with Pierce is outrageous Why, the boy
is scarcely eighteen It really is so perfectly stupid of Stella to do this Why,
Cortland was her chief ally against Carlotta, and now she’s gone and
seduced Cortland’s favorite son1 I don’t think Barclay or Garland
much approves of the situation either And God only knows how Lionel stands it
Lionel is a monomaniac and the name of his monomania is Stella, of course’
Was Dandrich going to the
party?
‘Wouldn’t miss
it for anything in this world Bound to be some interesting pyrotechnics Stella’s
forbidden Carlotta to take Antha out of the house during these affairs Carlotta
is simmering Threatening to call the police if the rowdies get out of hand’
‘What is Carlotta like?’
asked Langtry.
‘She’s Mary Beth
with vinegar in her veins instead of vintage wine She’s brilliant but she
has no imagination She’s rich but there’s nothing she wants She’s
endlessly practical and meticulous and hardworking, and an absolutely
insufferable bore Of course she does take care of absolutely everything Millie
Dear, Belle, little Nancy, and Antha And they have a couple of old servants up
there who don’t know who they are or what they’re doing anymore,
and she takes care of them, right along with everyone else Stella has herself
to blame for all this, really She always did let Carlotta do the hiring and the
firing, the check writing, and the shouting And what with Lionel and Cortland
turning against her, well, what can she do7 No, I wouldn’t miss this
party, if I were you It may be the last one for quite some time’
Langtry spent the following
day exploring the speakeasies and the small French Quarter hotel (a dump) where
Stella had taken Stuart He was plagued continuously with the strong feeling
that Stuart had been in these places, that Stella’s account of their
wanderings had been the complete truth.
At seven o’clock,
dressed and ready for the evening, he wrote another very short letter to the
Motherhouse, which he mailed on the way to the party from the post office at
Lafayette Square.
‘The more I think
about our phone conversation, the more I’m troubled Of what is this lady
so afraid7 I find it hard to believe that her sister Carlotta can really
inflict harm upon her Why can’t someone hire a nurse for the troubled
child7 I tell you, I find myself being drawn into this head over heels Surely
that is how Stuart felt’
Langtry had the cab drop him
at Jackson and Chestnut so that he might walk the remaining two blocks to the
house, approaching it from the rear.
‘The streets were
completely blocked with automobiles People were piling in through the back
garden gate, and every window in the place was lighted I could hear the shrill
screams of the saxophone long before I reached the front steps
‘There was no one on
the front door, as far as I ever saw, and I simply went in, pushing through a
regular jam of young persons in the hallway, who were all smoking and laughing
and greeting each other, and took no notice of me at all’
The party did include every
manner of dress, exactly as Stella had promised There were even quite a few
elderly people there And Langtry found himself comfortably anonymous as he made
his way to the bar in the living room where he was served a glass of extremely
good champagne
‘There were more and
more people streaming in every minute A crowd was dancing in the front portion
of the room In fact, there were so many persons everywhere I looked, all
chattering and laughing and drinking amid a thick bluish cloud of cigarette
smoke, that I could hardly gain a fair impression of the furnishings of the
room Rather lavish, I suppose, and rather like the salon of a great liner,
actually, with the potted palms, and the tortured art deco lamps, and the
delicate, vaguely Grecian chairs.
‘The band, stationed
on the side porch just behind a pair of floor-length windows, was deafening How
people managed to talk over it, I cannot imagine I could not sustain a coherent
train of thought.
‘I was about to make
my way out of all this when my eyes fastened on the dancers before the front
windows, and I soon realized I was gazing directly at Stella far more dramatic
than any picture of her could possibly be She was clad in gold silk a skimpy
little dress, no more than a remnant of a chemise layered with fringe, it
seemed, and barely covering her shapely knees Tiny gold sequins covered her
gossamer stockings, and indeed the dress itself, and there was a gold satin
band of yellow flowers in her short wavy black hair Around her wrists were
delicate glittering gold bracelets, and at her throat the Mayfair emerald,
looking quite absurdly old-fashioned, yet stunning in its old filigree, as it
rested against her naked flesh.
‘A child-woman, she
appeared, slim, breastless, yet entirely feminine, her lips brazenly rouged,
and her enormous black eyes literally flashing like gems as she took in the
crowd gazing at her in adoration, without ever missing a beat of dance Her
little feet in their flimsy high-heel shoes came down mercilessly on the
polished floor, and throwing back her head, she laughed delightedly as she made
a little circle, swishing her tiny hips, her arms flung out.
‘"That’s
it, Stella!" someone roared, and yet another, "Yeeeah, Stella‘"
and all of this with the rhythm, if you can imagine, and Stella managing
somehow to be lovingly responsive to her worshipers, while at the same time
giving herself over, limply and exquisitely, to the dance.
‘If I have ever seen a
person enjoy music and attention with such innocent abandon, I did not recall
it then and I do not recall now. There was nothing cynical or vain in her
exhibition On the contrary, she seemed to have soared past all self-conscious
nonsense, and to belong both to those who admired her, and to herself.
‘As for her partner, I
only came to see him by and by, though in any other setting I’m sure I
would have noticed him immediately, given that he was very young and indeed
resembled her remarkably, having the same fair skin, black eyes, and black hair
But he was scarcely more than a boy And his face still had a porcelain purity
to it, and his height seemed to have gotten the better of his weight.
‘He was bursting with
the same careless vitality as Stella And as the dance came to a finish, she
threw up her hands, and let herself fall, with perfect trust, straight
backwards into his waiting arms He embraced her with shameless intimacy,
letting his hands run over her boyish little torso and then kissing her
tenderly on the mouth But this was done without a particle of theatricality
Indeed, I don’t think he saw anyone in the room save for her.
The crowd closed about them
Someone was pouring champagne into Stella’s mouth, and she was draping
herself over the boy, as it were, and the music was starting up again Other
couples - all quite modern and very gay began to dance
‘This was no time to
approach her, I reasoned It was only ten past eight, and I wanted to take a few
moments to look about Also I was for the moment entirely disarmed by her
appearance A great blank had been filled in I felt certain she had not harmed
Stuart And so, hearing her laughter ringing over the fresh onslaught of the
band, I resumed my journey towards the hall doors.
‘Now let me say here
that this house is possessed of an exceptionally long hallway and a
particularly long and straight stairs I would say, offhand, there were some
thirty steps to it (There are in fact twenty-seven ) The second floor appeared
to be completely dark and the staircase was deserted, but dozens of people were
squeezing past this stairway towards a brightly lighted room at the end of the
first floor hall.
‘I meant to follow
suit, and thereby make a little exploration of the place, but as I placed my
hand on the newel post I saw someone at the top of the stairs Quite suddenly I
realized it was Stuart My shock was so great I almost called out to him But
then I realized that something was very wrong.
‘He appeared
absolutely real, you must understand Indeed the way that the light struck him
from below was altogether realistic But his expression alerted me at once to
the fact that I was seeing something that couldn’t be real For though he
was looking at me and obviously knew me, there was no urgency in his face, only
a profound sadness, a great and weary distress
‘It seemed he took his
time even acknowledging that I had seen him, and then he gave a very weary and
forbidding shake of his head I continued to stare at him, pushed and shoved by
God knows how many individuals, the noise a perfect dm around me, and once
again, he shook his head in this forbidding way Then he lifted his right hand
and made a definite gesture for me to go away
‘I didn’t dare
move I remained absolutely calm as I always do at such moments, resisting the
inevitable delirium, concentrating upon the noise, the press of the crowd, even
the thin scream of the music And very carefully I memorized what I saw His
clothes were dirty and disheveled The right side of his face was bruised or at
least discolored
‘Finally I came round
to the foot of the steps and started up Only then did the phantom wake from its
seeming languor Once again, he shook his head and gestured for me to go away
‘"Stuart!" I
whispered "Talk to me, man, if you can!"’
‘I continued upwards,
my eyes fixed upon him, as his expression grew ever more fearful, and I saw
that he was covered with dust, that his body, even as he stared back at me,
showed the first signs of decay Nay, I could smell it1 Then the inevitable
happened, the image begin to fade "Stuart1" I appealed to him
desperately But the figure darkened, and through it, quite unconscious of it,
stepped a flesh and blood woman of extraordinary beauty, who hurried down the
stairs towards me and then past me, in a flurry of peach-colored silk and
clattering jewelry, carrying with her a cloud of sweet perfume
‘Stuart was gone The
smell of human decay was gone The woman murmured an apology as she brushed by
me Seems she was shouting to any number of people in the lower hall.
‘Then she turned, and
as I stood staring upwards still, quite oblivious to her, and gazing
at nothing but empty shadows, I felt her hand grip my arm.
‘"Oh, but the
party’s down here," she said And gave me a little tug.
‘"I’m
looking for the lavatory," I said, for at that moment, I could think of
nothing else.
‘"Down here,
ducky," she said "It’s off the library I’ll show you,
right around in back of the stairs"
‘Clumsily, I followed
her down around the staircase and into a very large but dimly lighted northside
room The library, yes, most certainly, with bookshelves to the ceiling and dark
leather furnishings, and only one lamp lighted, in a far corner, beside a blood
red drape A great dark mirror hung over the marble fireplace, reflecting the
one lamp as if it were a sanctuary light
‘"There you
go," she said, pointing to a closed door, and quickly made her exit I was
suddenly conscious of a man and woman huddled together on the leather couch who
rose and hurried away It seemed the party with its continued merriment bypassed
this room Everything here was dust and silence One could smell moldermg leather
and paper And I was immensely relieved to be alone
‘I sank down into the
wing chair facing the fireplace, with my back to the crowd passing in the
hallway, glancing up at the reflection of it in the mirror, and feeling quite
safe from it for the moment, and praying that no other loving couple would seek
this shadowy retreat
‘I took out my
handkerchief and wiped my face I was sweating miserably, and I struggled to
remember every detail of what I’d seen
‘Now, you know we all
have our theories regarding apparitions as to why they appear in this or that
guise, or why they do what they do And my theories probably don’t agree
with those of anyone else But I was certain of one thing as I sat there Stuart
had chosen to show himself to me in decayed and disheveled form for one very
good reason his remains were in this house1 Yet he was imploring me to leave
here1 He was warning me to get out
‘Was this warning
intended for the entire Talamasca’ Or merely for Arthur Langtry’ I
sat brooding, feeling my pulse return to normal, and feeling as I always do in
the aftermath of such experiences, a rush of adrenaline, a zeal to discover all
that lies behind the faint shimmer of the supernatural which I had only just
glimpsed
‘I was also enraged,
deeply and bitterly, at whoever or whatever had brought Stuart’s life to
a close
‘How to proceed, that
was the vital question Of course I should speak to Stella But how much of the
house might I explore before I made myself known to her? And what of Stuart’s
warning? Precisely what was the danger for which I must be prepared?
‘I was considering all
this, aware of no perceptible change in the racket from the hallway behind me,
when there suddenly came over me the realization that something in my immediate
environment had undergone a radical and significant change Slowly I looked up
There was someone reflected in the mirror a lone figure, it seemed With a start
I looked over my shoulder No one there And then back again to the dim and
shadowy glass
‘A man was gazing out
from the immaterial realm beyond it, and as I studied him, the adrenaline
pumping and my senses sharpening, his image grew brighter and clearer, until he
was vividly and undeniably a young man of pale complexion and dark brown eyes,
staring angrily and malevolently and unmistakably down at me
‘At last the image
reached its fullest potency And so vital was it, that it seemed a mortal man
had secreted himself in a chamber behind the mirror, and having removed the
glass was peering at me from the empty frame
‘Never in all my years
with the Talamasca had I seen an apparition so exquisitely realized The man
appeared to be perhaps thirty years of age, his skin was deliberately flawless,
yet carefully colored, with a blush to the cheeks and a faint paling beneath
the eyes His clothing was extremely old-fashioned, with an upturned white
collar and a rich silk tie As for the hair, it was wavy and ever so slightly
unkempt, as if he had only just run his fingers through it The mouth appeared
soft, youthful and slightly ruddy I could see the fine lines in the lips Indeed
I could see the barest shadow of a shaven beard on his chin
‘But the effect was
horrible, for it was not a human being, or a painting, or a reflection But
something infinitely more brilliant than any of these, and yet silently alive
‘The brown eyes were
full of hatred, and as I looked at the creature, his mouth quivered ever so
slightly with anger, and finally rage
‘Quite slowly and
deliberately, I raised my handkerchief to my lips "Did you kill my friend,
spirit7" I whispered Seldom have I felt so enlivened, so heated for
adversity "Well, spirit‘" I whispered again
‘I saw it weakening I
saw it lose its solidity, indeed, its very animation The face, so beautifully
modelled and expressive of negative emotion, was slowly going blank
‘"I’m not
so easily dispatched, spirit," I said under my breath "Now we have
two accounts to settle, do we not’ Petyr van Abel and Stuart Townsend,
are we agreed on that much7"
‘The illusion seemed
powerless to answer me And quite suddenly the entire mirror shivered, becoming
merely a dark glass again as the door to the hallway was slammed shut
‘Footsteps sounded on
the bare floor beyond the edge of the Chinese carpet The mirror was definitely
empty, reflecting no more than woodwork and books
T turned and saw a young
woman advancing across the carpet, her eyes fixed on the mirror, her whole
demeanor one of anger, confusion, distress It was Stella She stood before the
mirror, with her back to me, gazing into it, and then turned round
‘"Well, you can
describe that to your friends in London, can’t you7" she said She
seemed on the edge of hysteria "You can tell them you saw that1"
‘I realized she was
shaking all over The flimsy gold dress with its layers of fringe was shivering
And anxiously she clutched the monstrous emerald at her throat
‘I struggled to rise,
but she told me to sit down, and immediately took a place on the couch to my
left, her hand laid firmly on my knee She leant over very close to me, so close
that I could see the mascara on her long lashes, and the powder on her cheeks
She was like a great kewpie doll looking at me, a cinema goddess, naked in her
gossamer silk
‘"Listen, can you
take me with you?" she said "Back to England, to these people, this
Talamasca? Stuart said you could’"
‘"You tell me
what happened to Stuart and I’ll take you anywhere you like"
‘"I don’t
know‘" she said, and at once her eyes watered "Listen, I have
to get out of here I didn’t hurt him I don’t do things like that to
people I never have’ God, don’t you believe me7 Can’t you
tell that I’m speaking the truth?"
‘"All right What
do you want me to do?"
‘"Just help me1
Take me with you, back to England Look, I’ve got my passport, I’ve
got plenty of money " At this point she broke off, and pulled open a
drawer in the couchside table and took out of it a veritable sheaf of
twenty-dollar bills "Here, you can buy the tickets I can meet you. Tonight"
‘Before I could
answer, she looked up with a start The door had opened, and in came the young
boy with whom she’d been dancing earlier, quite flushed, and full of
concern
‘"Stella, I’ve
been looking for you"
‘"Oh, sweetheart,
I’m coming," she said, rising at once, and glancing at me
meaningfully over her shoulder "Now, go back out and get me a drink, will
you, sweetheart?" She straightened his tie as she spoke to him, and then
turned him around with quick little gestures and actually shoved him towards the
door.
‘He was highly
suspicious, but very obviously well bred He did as he was told As soon as she
had shut the door, she came back to me She was flushed, and almost feverish,
and absolutely convincing In fact, my impression of her was that she was a somewhat
innocent person, that she believed all the optimism and rebellion of the
"jazz babies " She seemed authentic, if you know what I mean
‘"Go to the
station," she implored me "Get the tickets I’ll meet you at the
train"’
‘"But which
train, what time"
‘"I don’t
know what tram‘" She wrung her hands "I don’t know what
time1 I have to get out of here Look, I’ll come with you"
‘"That certainly
seems to be a better plan You could wait for me in the taxi while I get my
things from the hotel"
‘"Yes, that’s
a fine idea‘" she whispered "And we’ll get out of here on
any train that’s leaving, we can always change our destination further
on"
‘"And what about
him‘"
‘"Who! Him’
she demanded crossly "You mean Pierce? Pierce isn’t going to be any
trouble’ Pierce is a perfect darling I can handle Pierce"
‘"You know I don’t
mean Pierce," I said "I mean the man I saw a moment ago in that
mirror, the man you forced to disappear"
‘She looked absolutely
desperate She was the cornered animal, but I don’t believe I was the one
cornering her I couldn’t figure it out.
‘"Look, I didn’t
make him disappear," she said under her breath "You did‘"
She made a conscious effort to calm herself, her hand resting for a moment on
her heaving breast "He won’t stop us," she said "Please
trust me that he won’t"
‘At this moment,
Pierce returned, pushing open the door once more and letting in the great
cacophony from outside She took the glass of champagne from him gratefully and
drank down half of it
‘"I’ll talk
to you in a few minutes," she said to me with deliberate sweetness
"In just a few minutes You’ll be right here, won’t you? No, as
a matter of fact, why don’t you get some air’ Go out on the front
porch, ducky, and I’ll come talk to you there"
‘Pierce knew she was
up to something He looked from her to me, but obviously he felt quite helpless
She took him by the arm and led him out with her ahead of me I glanced down at
the carpet The twenty-dollar bills had fallen and were scattered everywhere
Hastily, I gathered them up, put them back into the drawer, and went into the
hall
‘Just opposite the
library door, I caught a glimpse of a portrait of Juhen Mayfair, a very
well-done canvas in heavy dark Rembrandt-style oils I wished I had time to
examine it.
‘But I hurried around
the back of the staircase and started pushing and shoving as gently as I could
towards the front door
‘Three minutes must
have passed, and I had made it only so far as the newel post, when I saw him again, or thought I did for one
terrible instant the brown-haired man I had seen in the mirror This time he was
gazing at me over someone’s shoulder, as he stood in the front corner of
the hall.
‘I tried to pick him
out again But I couldn’t People crushed against me as if they were
deliberately trying to block me, but of course they weren’t.
‘Then I realized
someone ahead of me was pointing to the stairs I was now past it, and within
only a few feet of the door I turned round, and saw a child on the stairway, a
very pretty little blond-haired girl No doubt it was Antha, though she looked
rather small for eight years She was dressed in a flannel nightgown and
barefoot, and she was crying, and looking over the railing into the doors of
the front room.
T too turned and looked into
the front room, at which point someone gasped aloud, and the crowd parted,
people falling to the left and the right of the door, in apparent fear A
red-haired man stood in the doorway, slightly to my left, facing into the room And
as I watched with sickening horror, he lifted a pistol with his right hand and
fired it The deafening report shook the house Panic ensued The air was filled
with screams Someone had fallen by the front door, and the others simply ran
over the poor devil People were struggling to escape back through the hall.
‘I saw Stella lying on
the floor in the middle of the front room She was on her back, with her head
turned to the side, staring towards the hall I raced forward, but not in time
to stop the red-haired man from standing over her and firing the pistol again
Her body convulsed as blood exploded from the side of her head.
‘I grabbed for the
bastard’s arm, and he fired again as my hand tightened on his wrist But
this bullet missed her and went through the floor It seemed the screams were
redoubled Glass was breaking Indeed, the windows were shattering Someone
attempted to grab the man from behind, and I managed somehow to get the gun
away from him, though I was accidentally stepping on Stella, indeed, tripping
over her feet.
‘I fell on my knees
with the gun, and then pushed it quite deliberately away across the floor The
murderer was struggling vainly against a half-dozen men now Glass from the
windows blew inward all over us, I saw it ram down upon Stella Blood was
running down her neck, and over the Mayfair emerald which lay askew on her breast.
‘Next thing I knew a
monstrous clap of thunder obliterated the deafening screams and shrieks still
coming from all quarters And I felt the ram gusting in, then I heard it coming
down on the porches all around, and then the lights went out.
‘In repeated flashes
of lightning I saw the men dragging the murderer from the room A woman knelt at
Stella’s side, and lifted her lifeless wrist, and then let out an
agonizing scream.
‘As for the child, she
had come into the room, and stood barefoot staring at her mother And then she
too began to scream Her voice rose high and piercing over the others
"Mama, Mama, Mama," as though with each new burst her realization of
what had happened deepened helplessly.
‘"Someone take
her out‘" I cried And indeed, others had gathered around her, and
were attempting to draw her away I moved out of their path, only climbing to my
feet when I reached the side porch window In another crackle of white light, I
saw someone pick up the gun It was then handed to another person, and then to another,
who held it as if it were alive Fingerprints were no longer of consequence, if
ever they were, and there had been countless witnesses There was no reason for
me not to get out while I could And turning, I made my way out onto the side
porch and into the downpour, as I stepped onto the lawn.
‘Dozens of people were
huddled there, the women crying, the men doing what they could to cover the
women’s heads with their jackets, everyone soaked and shivering and quite
at a loss The lights flickered on for a second, but another violent slash of
lightning signaled their final failure When an upstairs window suddenly burst
in a shower of glittering shards, panic broke out once more.
‘I hurried towards the
back of the property, thinking to leave unobserved through a back way This
meant a short rush along a flagstone path, a climb of two steps to the patio
around the swimming pool, and then I spied the side alley to the gate
‘Even through the
dense rain I could see that it was open, and see beyond it the wet gleaming
cobblestones of the street The thunder rolled over the rooftops, and the
lightning laid bare the whole garden hideously in an instant, with its
balustrades and towering camellias, and beach towels draped over so many
skeletal black iron chairs Everything was helplessly thrashing in the wind.
‘I heard sirens
suddenly And as I rushed towards the waiting sidewalk, I glimpsed a man
standing motionless and stiff, as it were, in a great clump of banana trees to
the right of the gate.
‘As I drew closer, I
glanced to the right, and into the man’s face It was the spirit, visible
to me once more, though for what reason under God I had no idea My heart raced
dangerously, and I felt a momentary dizziness and tightening in my temples as
if the circulation of my blood were being choked off.
‘He presented the same
figure he had before, I saw the unmistakable glint of brown hair and brown
eyes, and dim unremarkable clothing save for its primness and a certain
vagueness about the whole Yet the raindrops glistened as they struck his
shoulders and his lapels They glistened in his hair.
‘But it was the face
of the being which held me enthralled It was monstrously transfigured by
anguish, and his cheeks were wet with soundless crying as he looked into my
eyes.
‘"God in heaven,
speak if you can," I said, almost the same words I’d spoken to the
poor desperate spirit of Stuart And so crazed was I by all I had seen that I
lunged at him, seeking to grab hold of him by the shoulders and make him answer
if I could.
‘He vanished Only this
time I felt him vanish I felt the warmth and the sudden movement in the air It
was as if something had been sucked away, and the bananas swayed violently But
then the wind and the ram were knocking them about And suddenly I did not know
what I had seen, or what I had felt My heart was skipping dangerously I felt
another wave of dizziness Time to get out.
‘I hurried up Chestnut
Street past scores of wandering, weeping, dazed individuals and then down
Jackson Avenue out of the wind and the rain, into a fairly clear and mild
stretch where the traffic swept by without the slightest knowledge, apparently,
of what had happened only blocks away Within a matter of seconds, I caught a
taxi for the hotel.
‘As soon as I reached
it, I gathered up my belongings, lugging them downstairs myself without the aid
of a bellboy, and immediately checked out I had the cab take me to the train
station, where I caught the midnight tram for New York, and I am in my sleeping
car now.
‘I shall post this as
soon as I possibly can And until such time, I shall carry the letter with me,
on my person, hoping for what it’s worth that if anything happens to me
the letter will be found.
‘But as I write this I
do not think anything will happen to me1 It is over, this chapter’ It has
come to a ghastly and bloody end Stuart was part of it And God only knows what
role the spirit played in it But I shall not tempt the demon further by turning
back Every impulse in my being tells me to get away from here And if I forget
this for a moment, I have the haunting memory of Stuart to guide me, Stuart
gesturing to me from the top of the stairs to go away
‘If we never talk in
London, please pay heed to the advice I give you now Send no one else to this
place At least not now Watch, wait, as is our motto Consider the evidence Try
to draw some lesson from what has taken place And above all, study the Mayfair
record Study it deeply and put its various materials in order.
‘My belief, for what
it is worth at such a moment, is that neither Lasher nor Stella had a hand in
the death of Stuart. Yet his remains are under that roof.
‘But the council may
consider the evidence at its leisure. Send no one here again.
‘We cannot hope for
public justice with regard to Stuart. We cannot hope for legal resolutions.
Even in the investigation that will inevitably follow tonight’s horrors,
there will be no search of the Mayfair house and its grounds. And how could we
ever demand such a step be taken?
‘But Stuart will never
be forgotten. And I am man enough, even in my twilight years, to believe that
there must be a reckoning - both for Stuart, and for Petyr — though with
whom or with what that reckoning will be I do not know.
‘I do not speak of
retribution. I do not speak of revenge. I speak of illumination, understanding,
and above all, resolution. I speak of the final light of truth.
‘These people, the
Mayfairs, do not know who they are anymore. I tell you the young woman was an
innocent. I’m convinced of it. But we know. We know; and Lasher knows.
And who is Lasher? Who is the spirit who chose to reveal his pain to me; who
chose to show to me his very tears?’
Arthur posted this letter
from St Louis, Missouri. A bad carbon was sent two days later from New York,
with a brief postscript, explaining that Arthur had booked passage home, and
would be sailing at the end of the week.
After two days at sea,
Arthur rang the ship’s doctor, complaining of chest pains and asking for
a standard remedy for indigestion. A half hour later, the doctor discovered
Arthur dead of an apparent heart attack. The time was half past six on the
evening of September 7, 1929.
Arthur had written one more
brief letter on shipboard the day before his death. It was in his robe pocket
when he was found.
In it, he said that he was
not well, and suffering from violent seasickness, which he hadn’t
experienced in years. There were times when he feared he was really ill, and
might not see the Motherhouse again.
‘There are so many things
I want to discuss with you about the Mayfairs, so many ideas going through my
head. What if we were to draw off that spirit? That is, what if we were to
invite it to come to us?
‘Whatever you do, do
not send another investigator to New Orleans - not now, not while that woman,
Carlotta Mayfair, lives.’
TWENTY-ONE
HE WAS kissing her as his
fingers stroked her breasts. The pleasure was so keen. Paralyzing. She tried to
lift her head. But she couldn’t move. The constant roar of the jet
engines lulled her. Yes, this is a dream. Yet it seemed so real, and she was
slipping back into it. Only forty-five minutes until they landed at New Orleans
International. She ought to try to wake up. But then he kissed her again,
forcing his tongue very gently between her lips, so gently yet forcefully and
his fingers touched her nipples, pinching them as if she were naked under the
small woolen blanket. Oh, he knew how to do it, pinch them slowly but hard. She
turned more fully towards the window, sighing, drawing up her knees against the
side of the cabin. No one noticing her. First class half empty. Almost there.
Again, he pinched her
nipples, just a little more cruely, ah, so delicious. You cannot be too rough,
really. Press your lips harder against mine. Fill me with your tongue. She
opened her mouth against his, and then his fingers touched her hair, sending
another, unexpected sensation through her, a light tingling. That was the
miracle of it, that it was such a blending of sensations, like soft and bright
colors mingling, the chills moving down her naked back and arms, and yet the
heat pounding between her legs. Come inside
me! I want to be filled up, yes, with your tongue, and with you, come in harder.
It was enormous, yet smooth, bathed as it was in her fluids.
She came silently,
shuddering beneath the blanket, her hair fallen down over her face, only dimly
aware that she wasn’t naked, that no one could be touching her, no one
could be creating this pleasure. Yet it went on and on, her heart stopping, the
blood pounding in her face, the shocks moving down through her thighs and her
calves.
You are going to die if it
doesn’t stop, Rowan. His hand brushed her cheek. He kissed her eyelids. Love
you…
Suddenly, she opened her
eyes. For a moment nothing registered. Then she saw the cabin. The little blind
was drawn, and everything about her seemed a pale luminous gray, drenched in
the sound of the engines. The shocks were still passing through her. She lay
back in the large soft airline seat and yielded to them, rather like dim,
beautifully modulated jolts of electricity, her eyes drifting sluggishly over
the ceiling as she struggled to keep them open, to wake up.
God, how did she look after
this little orgy? Her face must be flushed.
Very slowly, she sat up,
smoothing back her hair with both hands. She tried to reinvoke the dream, not
for the sensuality but for information, tried to travel back to the center of
it, to know who he had been. Not Michael. No. That was the bad part.
Christ, she thought. I’ve
been unfaithful to him with nobody. How strange. She pressed her hands to her
cheeks. Very warm. She was still feeling the low, vibrant, debilitating
pleasure even now.
‘How long before we
land in New Orleans?’ she asked the stewardess who was passing.
‘Thirty minutes. Seat
belt buckled?’
She sat back, feeling for
the buckled seat belt, and then letting herself go deliciously limp. But how
could a dream do that, she thought. How could a dream carry it so far?
When she was thirteen, she
used to have those dreams, before she knew they were natural or what to do
about them. But she’d always wake before the finish. She couldn’t
help it. This time, it had just taken its own course. And the odd thing was,
she felt violated, as if the dream lover had assaulted her. Now, that was
really absurd. But it wasn’t a good feeling, and it was extremely strong.
Violated…
She raised her hands to her
breasts under the blanket, covering them protectively. But that was nonsense,
wasn’t it? Besides, it wasn’t rape at all.
‘You want a drink
before we land?’
‘No. Coffee.’
She closed her eyes. Who had he been, her dream lover? No face, no name. Only
the sense of someone more delicate than Michael, someone almost ethereal, or at
least that was the word that came to her mind. The man had spoken to her,
however, she was sure of it, but everything except the memory of the pleasure
was gone.
Only as she sat up to drink
the coffee did she realize there was a faint soreness between her legs.
Possibly an aftereffect of the powerful muscular contractions. Thank God there
was no one else near at hand, no one beside her or across the aisle from her. But
then she never would have let it go so far if she hadn’t been concealed,
under the blanket. That is, if she could have forced herself awake. If she had
had a choice.
She felt so sleepy!
Slowly she took a sip of the
coffee and raised the white plastic shade.
Green swampland down there
in the deepening afternoon sun. And the dark brown serpentine river curving
around the distant city. She felt a sudden elation. Almost there. The sound of
the engines grew harsher, louder with the plane’s descent.
She didn’t want to
think about the dream anymore. She honestly wished it hadn’t happened. In
fact, it was dreadfully distasteful to her suddenly, and she felt soiled and
tired and angry. Even a little revolted. She wanted to think about her mother,
and about seeing Michael.
She had called Jerry Lonigan
from Dallas. The parlor was open. And the cousins were already arriving. They
had been calling all morning. The Mass was set for three p.m. and she wasn’t
to worry. She should just come on over from the Pontchartrain as soon as she
arrived.
‘Where are you,
Michael?’ she whispered, as she sat back again, and closed her eyes.
TWENTY-TWO
THE
FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES
PART
VIII
The Family from 1929 to 1956
THE
IMMEDIATE AFTERMATH OF STELLAS DEATH
IN OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER OF
1929, the stock market crashed and the world entered the Great Depression. The
Roaring Twenties came to an end. Wealthy people everywhere lost their fortunes.
Multimillionaires jumped out of windows And in a time of new and unwelcome
austerity, there came an inevitable cultural reaction to the excesses of the
twenties Short skirts, booze-swilling socialites, and sexually sophisticated
motion pictures and books went out of style
At the Mayfair house on
First and Chestnut Streets in New Orleans, the lights went dim with Stella’s
death and were never turned up again. Candles lighted Stella’s
open-casket funeral in the double parlor. And when Lionel, her brother, who had
shot her dead with two bullets in front of scores of witnesses, was buried a
short time after, it was not from the house but from a sterile funeral parlor
on Magazine Street blocks away
Within six months of Lionel’s
death, Stella’s art deco furniture, her numerous contemporary paintings,
her countless records of jazz and ragtime and blues singers, all disappeared
from the rooms of First Street. What did not go into the immense attics of the
house went out on the street.
Countless staid Victorian
pieces, stored since the loss of Riverbend, came out of storage to fill the
rooms. Shutters were bolted on the Chestnut Street windows never to be opened
again.
But these changes had little
to do with the death of the Roaring Twenties, or the crash of the stock market,
or the Great Depression.
The family firm of Mayfair
and Mayfair had long ago shifted its enormous resources out of the railroads,
and out of the dangerously inflated stock market. As early as 1924, it had
liquidated its immense land holdings in Florida for boom profits. It continued
to hold its California property for the western land boom yet to come. With
millions invested in gold, Swiss francs, South African diamond mines, and
countless other profitable ventures, the family was once again in a position to
lend money to friends and distant cousins who had lost all they had
And lend money right and
left the family did, pumping new blood into its incalculably large body of
political and social contacts, and further protecting itself from interference
of any sort as it had always done.
Lionel Mayfair was never
questioned by a single police officer as to why he shot Stella. Two hours after
her death, he was a patient in a private sanitarium, where in the days that
followed weary doctors nodded off listening to Lionel rave about the devil
walking the hallways of the house at First Street, about little Antha taking
the devil into her bed.
‘And there he was with
Antha and I knew it. It was happening all over again. And Mother wasn’t
there, you see, no one was there Just Carlotta fighting endlessly with Stella.
Oh, you can’t imagine the door slamming and the screaming. We were a
household of children without Mother. There was my big sister Belle clinging to
her doll, and crying. And Millie Dear, poor Millie Dear, saying her rosary on
the side porch in the dark, shaking her head. And Carlotta struggling to take
Mother’s place, and unable to do it. She’s a tin soldier compared
to Mother! Stella threw things at her. "You think you’re going to
lock me up!" Stella was hysterical.
‘Children, I tell you,
that’s what we were. I’d knock on her door and Pierce was in there
with her! I knew it and all this in broad daylight. She was lying to me, and him with
Antha, I saw him All the time I saw him! I saw him! I saw them together in the
garden. But she knew, she knew all along that he was with Antha. She let it happen.
‘"Are you going
to let him have her?" That’s what Carlotta said How the hell was I
supposed to stop it? She couldn’t stop it. Antha was under the trees out
there singing with him, tossing the flowers in the air, and he was making them
float there. I saw that! I saw that so many times! I could hear her laughing.
That’s how Stella used to laugh! And what did Mother ever do, for Christ’s
sake! Oh, God, you don’t understand. A household of children And why were
we children? Because we didn’t know how to be evil Did Mother know how?
Did Julien know how?
‘Do you know why Belle’s
an idiot? It
was inbreeding! And Millie Dear’s no better! Good God, do you know that
Millie Dear is Julien’s daughter! Oh, yes, she is! As God is my witness,
yes, she is. And she sees him and she lies about it! I know she sees him.
‘"Leave her
alone," Stella says to me, "It doesn’t matter " I know
Millie can see him. I know she can. They were carrying cases of champagne for
her party. Cases and cases, and there was Stella up there dancing to her
phonograph records. "Just try to be decent for the party, will you,
Lionel?" For the love of heaven Didn’t anybody know what was going
on?
‘And Carl talking
about sending Stella to Europe! How could anyone get Stella to do anything1 And
what did it matter if Stella was in Europe? I tried to tell Pierce. I grabbed
that young man by the throat and I said, "I’m going to make you
listen." I would have shot him too if I could have done it. I would have,
oh God in heaven, why did they stop me! "Don’t you see, it’s
Antha he’s got now! Are you blind?" That’s what I said. You
tell me! Are they all blind!’
On and on it went, we are
told, for days on end. Yet the above is the only fragment noted verbatim in the
doctor’s file, after which we are informed that ‘the patient
continues on about she and her and him and he, and one of these persons is
supposed to be the devil.’ Or, ‘Raving again, incoherent, implying
someone put him up to it, but it is not clear who this person is.’
On the eve of Stella’s
funeral, three days after the murder, Lionel tried to escape Thereafter he was
kept permanently in restraints
‘How they managed to
patch up Stella, I’ll never know,’ one of the cousins said long
after ‘But she looked lovely.
‘That was Stella’s
last party, really. She’d left detailed instructions as to how it was to
be handled, and do you know what I heard later? That she’d written all
that out when she was thirteen’ Imagine, the romantic notions of a girl
of thirteen!’
Legal gossip indicated
otherwise. Stella’s funeral instructions (which were in no way legally
binding) had been included with the will she made in 1925 after Mary Beth’s
death. And for all their romantic effect they were extremely simple. Stella was
to be buried from home. Florists were to be informed that the ’preferred
flower’ was the calla or some other white lily, and only candles would be
used to light the main floor. Wine should be served. The wake should continue
from the time of laying out until
the body was removed to the church for the Requiem Mass.
But romantic it was, by
anyone’s standards, with Stella dressed in white in an open coffin at the
front end of the long parlor, and dozens of wax candles giving off a rather
spectacular light
‘I’ll tell you
what it was like,’ said one of the cousins long after ‘The May
processions! Exactly, with all those lilies, all that fragrance, and Stella
like the May Queen in white’
Cortland, Barclay, and
Garland greeted the cousins who came by the hundreds. Pierce was allowed to pay
his respects, though he was immediately thereafter packed off to his mother’s
family in New York Mirrors were draped in the old Irish fashion, though by
whose order no one seemed to know
The Requiem Mass was even
more crowded, for cousins whom Stella had not invited to First Street while she
was alive went directly to the church The crowd in the cemetery was as big as
it had been for Miss Mary Beth.
‘Oh, but you must
realize that it was a scandal!’ said Irwin Dandrich ‘It was the
murder of 1929! And Stella was Stella, you see It couldn’t have been more
interesting to certain types of people Did you know that the very night of her
murder, two different young men of my acquaintance fell in love with her! Can
you imagine? Neither of them had ever met her before and there they were quarreling
over her, one demanding that the other let him have his chance with her, and
the other saying that he had spoken to her first My dear man, the party only
started at seven. And by eight-thirty, she was dead1’
The night after Stella’s
funeral, Lionel woke up screaming in the asylum, ‘He’s there, he won’t
leave me alone’
He was in a straitjacket by
the end of the week, and finally on the fourth of November, he was placed in a
padded cell As the doctors debated whether to try electric shock, or merely to keep
him sedated, Lionel sat crouched in the corner, unable to free his arms from
the straitjacket, whimpering and trying to turn his head away from his
invisible tormentor
The nurses told Irwin
Dandrich that he screamed for Stella to help him. ‘He’s driving me
mad. Oh, why in the name of God doesn’t he kill me? Stella, help me.
Stella, tell him to kill me.’
The corridors rang with his
screams. ‘I didn’t want to give him any more injections,’ one
of the nurses told Dandrich. ‘He never really went to sleep He’d
wrestle with his demons, mumbling and cursing It was worse for him that way, I
think.’
‘He is judged to be
completely and incurably insane,’ wrote one of our private detectives. ‘Of
course, if he were cured he might have to stand trial for the murder. God knows
what Carlotta has told the authorities Possibly she hasn’t told them
anything Possibly no one has asked.’
On the morning of the sixth
of November, alone and unattended, Lionel apparently went into a convulsion and
died of suffocation, having swallowed his tongue. No wake was held in the
funeral parlor on Magazine Street. Cousins were turned away the morning of the
funeral, and told to go directly to the Mass at St Alphonsus Church. There they
were told by hired funeral directors not to continue on to the cemetery, that
Miss Carlotta wanted things quiet.
Nevertheless they gathered
at the Prytama Street gates of Lafayette No. i, watching from a distance as
Lionel’s coffin was placed beside Stella’s.
Family legend:
‘It was all over,
everyone knew it. Poor Pierce eventually managed to get over it. He studied at
Columbia for a while, then entered Harvard the following year. But to the day
he died no one ever mentioned Stella in his presence. And how he hated Carlotta
The only time I ever heard him speak of it, he said she was responsible. She
ought to have pulled the trigger herself’
Not only did Pierce recover,
he became a highly capable lawyer, and played a major role in guiding and
expanding the Mayfair fortune over the decades He died in 1986. His son, Ryan
Mayfair, born in 1936, is the backbone of Mayfair and Mayfair today. Young
Pierce, Ryan’s son, is at present the most promising young man in the
firm
But those cousins who said ‘It
was all over’ were right.
With the death of Stella,
the power of the Mayfair Witches was effectively broken. Stella was the first
of Deborah’s gifted descendants to die young She was the first one to die
by violence. And never after would a Mayfair Witch ’rule’ at First
Street, or assume direct management of the legacy. Indeed, the present designee
is a mute catatonic and her daughter — Rowan Mayfair — is a young
neurosurgeon living over two thousand miles from First Street who knows nothing
of her mother, her heritage, her inheritance, or her home.
How did it all come to this?
And can any one person be blamed? These are questions over which one could
agonize eternally But before we consider them in greater detail, let us draw
back and consider the position of the Talamasca after Arthur Langtry’s
death.
THE
STATUS OF THE INVESTIGATION
IN
1929
No autopsy was ever
performed on Arthur Langtry. His remains were buried in England in the
Talamasca cemetery, as he had long ago arranged for them to be. There is no
evidence that he died by violence; indeed, his last letter, describing Stella’s
murder, indicates that he was already suffering from heart trouble. But one can
say with some justification that the stress of what he saw in New Orleans took
its toll. Arthur might have lived longer had he never gone there On the other
hand, he was not retired and he might have met his death in the field on some
other case
To the ruling council of the
Talamasca, however, Arthur Langtry was another casualty of the Mayfair Witches.
And Arthur’s glimpse of Stuart’s spirit was fully accepted by these
experienced investigators as proof that Stuart had died within the Mayfair
house.
But how exactly did Stuart
die, the Talamasca wanted to know Had Carlotta done it? And if so, why?
The outstanding argument
against Carlotta as the murderer is perhaps obvious already and will become
even more obvious as this narrative continues. Carlotta has been throughout her
life a practicing Catholic, a scrupulously honest lawyer, and a law-abiding
citizen. Her strenuous criticisms of Stella were apparently founded upon her
own moral convictions, or so family, friends, and even casual observers have
assumed.
On the other hand, Carlotta
is credited by scores of persons with driving Lionel to shoot Stella, for doing
everything but putting the gun in his hand.
Even if Carlotta did put the
gun in Lionel’s hands, such an emotional and public act as Stella’s
murder is a very different thing from the secret and cold-blooded killing of a
stranger one hardly knows.
Was Lionel perhaps the
murderer of Stuart Townsend? What about Stella herself? And how can we rule out
Lasher? If one considers this being to have a personality, a history, indeed a
profile as we say in the modern world, does not the killing of Townsend more
logically fit the modus operandi of the spirit than anyone else in the house?
Unfortunately none of these
theories can provide for the cover-up, and certainly there was a cover-up with
employees of the St Charles Hotel being paid to say that Stuart Townsend was
never there
Perhaps an acceptable
scenario is one which accommodates all of the suspects involved. For instance,
what if Stella did invite Townsend to First Street, where he met his death
through some violent intervention of Lasher And what if a panic-stricken Stella
then turned to Carlotta or Lionel or even Pierce to help her conceal the body
and make sure no one at the hotel said a word?
Unfortunately this scenario,
and others like it, leaves too many unanswered questions. Why, for instance,
would Carlotta have participated in such treachery? Mightn’t she have
used the death of Townsend to get rid of her baby sister once and for all7 As
for Pierce, it is highly unlikely that such an innocent young man could have
become involved in such a thing. (Pierce went on to live a very respectable
life ) And when we consider Lionel we must ask: if he did have knowledge of
Stuart’s death or disappearance, what prevented him from saying something
about it when he went ‘stark raving mad’? He certainly said enough
about everything else that happened at First Street, or so the records show.
And lastly, we should ask
— if one of these unlikely people did help Stella bury the body in the
backyard, why bother to remove Townsend’s belongings from the hotel and
bribe the employees to say he was never there?
Perhaps the Talamasca was wrong,
in retrospect, for not pursuing the matter of Stuart further, for not demanding
a full-scale investigation, for not badgering the police into doing something
more. The fact is, we did push And so did Stuart’s family when they were
informed of his disappearance But as one distinguished law firm in New Orleans
informed Dr Townsend’ ‘We have absolutely nothing to go on. You
cannot prove the young man was ever here!’
In the days that followed
Stella’s murder, no one was willing to’disturb’ the Mayfairs
with further questions about a mysterious Texan from England. And our
investigators, including some of the best in the business, could never crack
the silence of the hotel employees, nor get so much as a clue as to who might
have paid them off. It is foolish to think the police could have done any
better
But there is one very
interesting bit of contemporary ’opinion’ to consider before we
leave this crime unsolved; and that is the final work on the subject by Irwin Dandrich,
gossiping with one of our private detectives in a French Quarter bar during the
Christmas season of 1929.
‘I’ll tell you
the secret of understanding that family,’ said Dandrich, ’and I’ve
watched them for years Not just for your queer birds in London, mind you. I’ve
watched them the way everybody watches them - forever wondering what goes on
behind those drawn blinds The secret is realizing that Carlotta Mayfair isn’t
the clean-living, righteous Catholic woman she has always pretended to be There’s
something mysterious and evil about that woman. She’s destructive, and
vengeful too. She’d rather see little Antha go mad than grow up to be
like Stella. She’d rather see the place dark and deserted than see other
people having fun.’
On the surface, these
remarks seem simplistic, but there may be more truth to them than anyone
realized at the time To the world Carlotta Mayfair certainly did represent
clean living, sanity, righteousness, and the like. From 1929, she attended Mass
daily at Our Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel on Prytama, gave generously to the
church and all its organizations, and though she carried on a private war with
Mayfair and Mayfair over the administration of Antha’s money, she was
always extremely generous with her own She lent money freely to any and all
Mayfairs who had need of it, sent modest gifts for birthdays, weddings,
christenings, and graduations, attended funerals, and now and then met with
cousins outside the house for lunch or tea.
To those who had been so
grievously offended by Stella, Carlotta was a good woman, the backbone of the
house on First Street, the able and endlessly self-sacrificing caretaker of
Stella’s insane daughter, Antha, and the other dependents, Millie Dear,
Nancy, and Belle.
She was never criticized for
her failure to open the house to the family or her refusal to reinstate
reunions and get-togethers of any kind. On the contrary, it was understood that
‘she had her hands full ’ No one wanted to make any demands on her.
Indeed, she became a sort of sour saint to the family as the years passed.
My opinion — for what
it’s worth — after forty years of studying the family, is that
there is a great deal of truth to Irwin Dandrich’s estimation of her. It
is my personal conviction that she presents a mystery as great as that of Mary
Beth or Juhen. And we have only scratched the surface of what goes on in that
house.
THE
POSITION OF THE ORDER FURTHER CLARIFIED
With regard to the future,
it was decided by the Talamasca in 1929 that no further attempt at personal
contact would be made.
Our director, Evan Neville,
believed that first and foremost we should abide by Arthur Langtry’s
advice, and that second, the warning from the specter of Stuart Townsend should
be taken seriously. We should stay away from the Mayfairs for the time being.
Several younger members of
the council believed, however, that we must attempt to make contact with
Carlotta Mayfair by mail. What harm could result from doing this, they argued,
and what right had vie to withhold our information from her? To what
purpose had we acquired this information? We must prepare some sort of discreet
digest for her of the information we had acquired Certainly our very earliest
records — Petyr van Abel’s letters — should be made available
to her, along with the genealogical tables we had made.
This precipitated a furious
and acrimonious debate. Older members of the order reminded the younger ones
that Carlotta Mayfair was in all probability responsible for the death of
Stuart Townsend, and more than likely responsible for the death of her sister,
Stella. What obligation could we possibly have to such a person? Antha was the
person to whom we should make our disclosure, and such a thing could not even
be considered until Antha reached the age of twenty-one.
Besides, in the absence of
any guiding personal contact, how was information to be given to Carlotta
Mayfair and what information could we possibly give?
The history of the Mayfair
family as it existed in 1929 was in no way ready for ’outside eyes.’
A discreet digest would have to be prepared, with the names of witnesses and
investigators thoroughly expunged from the record, and once again, what would
be the purpose of giving this to Carlotta? What would she do with it? How might
she use it in regard to Antha? What would be her overall reaction7 And if we were
going to give this history to Carlotta, why not give it also to Cortland and
his brothers7 Indeed, why not give it to every member of the Mayfair family?
And if we did do such a thing, what would be the effects of such information
upon these people? What right had we to contemplate such a spectacular
intervention in their lives?
Indeed, the nature of our
history was so special, it included such bizarre and seemingly mysterious
material, that no disclosure of it could be arbitrarily contemplated.
. . And so on and on the
debate raged
As always at such times, the
rules, the goals, and the ethics of the Talamasca were completely reevaluated.
We were forced to reaffirm for ourselves that the history of the Mayfair family
— due to its length and its detail — was invaluable to us as
scholars of the occult, and that we were going to continue to gather
information on the Mayfairs, no matter what the younger members of the council
said about ethics and the like. But our attempt at ’contact’ had
been an abysmal failure We would wait until Antha Mayfair was twenty-one, and
then a careful approach would be considered, depending upon who was available
within the order for such an assignment at that time.
It also became clear as the
council continued its wrangling that almost no one there — Evan Neville
included — really knew the full story of the Mayfair Witches In fact
there was considerable arguing not only about what to do and how it should be
done, but about what had happened and when in the Mayfair family For the file
had simply become too big and too complicated for anyone to examine effectively
within a reasonable period of time.
Obviously the Talamasca must
find a member willing to take on the Mayfair Witches as a full-time assignment
- someone able to study the file in detail and then make intelligent and
responsible decisions about what to do in the field. And considering the tragic
death of Stuart Townsend, it was determined that such a person must have
first-rate scholarly credentials, as well as great field experience; indeed, he
must prove his knowledge of the file by putting all of its materials into one
long coherent and readable narrative Then, and only then, would such a person
be allowed to broaden his study of the Mayfair Witches by more direct investigation
with a view to a contact eventually being made.
In sum, the enormous task of
translating the file into a narrative was seen as a necessary preparation for
field involvement And there was great wisdom to this approach.
The one sad flaw in the
whole plan was that such a person was not found by the order until 1953. And by
that time Antha Mayfair’s tragic life had come to a close. The designee
of the legacy was a wan-faced twelve-year-old girl who had already been
expelled from school for’talking with her invisible friend,’ and
making flowers fly through the air, or finding lost objects, and reading minds.
‘Her name is Deirdre,’
said Evan Neville, his face creased with worry and sadness, ’and she is
growing up in that gloomy old house just the way her mother did, alone with
those old women, and God only knows what they know or believe about their
history, and about her powers, and about this spirit who has already been seen
at the child’s side.’
The young member, greatly
inflamed by this and by earlier conversations, and much random reading of the
Mayfair papers, decided he had better act fast.
As I myself, obviously, am
that member, I shall now pause before relating the brief and sad story of Antha
Mayfair, to introduce myself.
THE
AUTHOR OF THIS NARRATIVE,
AARON
LIGHTNER
ENTERS
THE PICTURE
A complete biography of me
is available under the heading Aaron Lightner. For the purposes of this
narrative the following is more than sufficient.
I was born in London in
1921. I became a full member of the order in 1943, after I had finished my
studies at Oxford But I had been working with the Talamasca since the age of
seven, and living in the Motherhouse since the age of fifteen.
Indeed, I had been brought
to the attention of the order in 1928 by my English father (a Latin scholar and
translator) and my American mother (a piano teacher) when I was six years old.
It was a frightening telekinetic ability that precipitated their search for
outside help. I could move objects just by concentrating upon them or telling
them to move. And though this power was never very strong, it proved very
disturbing to those who saw examples of it.
My concerned parents
suspected that this power went along with other psychic traits, of which they
had indeed seen an occasional glimpse. I was taken to several psychiatrists, on
account of my strange abilities, and finally one of these said, ‘Take him
to the Talamasca. His powers are genuine, and they are the only ones who can
work with someone like this.’
The Talamasca was more than
willing to discuss the question with my parents, who were greatly relieved. ‘If
you try to crush this power in your son,’ Evan Neville said, ’you
will get nowhere with him Indeed you place his well-being at risk. Let us work
with him. Let us teach him how to control and use his psychic abilities.’
Reluctantly my parents agreed.
I began to spend every
Saturday at the Motherhouse outside of London, and by the age of ten I was
spending weekends and summers there as well My father and mother were frequent
visitors. Indeed my father began doing translations for the Talamasca from its
old crumbling Latin records in 1935, and worked with the order until his death
in 1972, at which time he was a widower living in the Mother-house. Both my
parents loved the General Reference Library at the Motherhouse, and though they
never sought official membership in the order, they were in a very real sense a
part of it all their lives. They did not object when they saw me drawn into it,
only insisting that I complete my education, and not allow my ‘special
powers’ to draw me prematurely away from ‘the normal world’
My telekinetic power never
became very strong, but with the aid of my friends in the order, I became
keenly aware that - under certain circumstances — I could read
people’s thoughts. I also learned to veil my thoughts and feelings from
others I learned also how to introduce my powers to people when and where it
was appropriate, and how to reserve them primarily for constructive use.
I have never been what
anyone would call a powerful psychic. Indeed my limited mind-reading ability
serves me best in my capacity as a field investigator for the Talamasca,
particularly in situations which involve jeopardy. And my telekinetic ability
is seldom called upon for anything of a practical nature.
By the time I was eighteen,
I was devoted to the order’s way of life and its goals I could not easily
conceive of a world without the Talamasca My interests were the interests of
the order, and I was completely compatible with its spirit. No matter where I
went to school, no matter how much I traveled with my parents or with school
friends, the order had become my true home.
When I completed my studies
at Oxford, I was received into full membership, but I was really a member long
before then. The great witch families had always been my chosen field. I had
read extensively in the history of the witchcraft persecutions. And those
persons fitting our particular definition of witch were of great fascination to
me.
My first fieldwork was done
in connection with a witch family in Italy, under the guidance of Elaine
Barrett, who was at that time, and for many years later, the most able witch
investigator in the order.
It was she who first
introduced me to the Mayfair Witches, in a casual conversation over dinner,
telling me firsthand of what had happened to Petyr van Abel, Stuart Townsend,
and Arthur Langtry, and inviting me to begin my reading of the Mayfair
materials in my spare time. Many a night during the summer and winter of 1945 I
fell asleep with the Mayfair papers all over the floor of my bedroom. I was
already jotting down notes for a narrative in.
The year 1947, however, took
me completely away from the Motherhouse and the File on the Mayfair Witches for
work in the field with Elaine. I did not realize until later that these years
provided me with precisely the field record I would need for the romance with
the Mayfair Witches which would become my life’s work.
I was given the assignment
formally in 1953’ begin the narrative, and when it is complete in
acceptable form, we will discuss sending you to New Orleans to see the
inhabitants of the First Street house for yourself.
Again and again, I was
reminded that whatever my aspirations I would only be allowed to proceed with
caution. Antha Mayfair had died violently. So had the father of her daughter,
Deirdre. So had a Mayfair cousin from New York — Dr Cornell Mayfair
— who had come to New Orleans in 1945 expressly to see little
eight-year-old.
Deirdre and investigate
Carlotta’s claim that Antha had been congenitally insane.
I accepted the terms of the
assignment I set to work translating the diary of Petyr van Abel. In the
meantime, I was given an unlimited budget to amplify the research in any and
all directions So I also commenced a ’long distance’ investigation
into the present state of things with twelve-year-old Deirdre Mayfair, Antha’s
only child
I should like to add in
conclusion that two factors apparently play a large role in any investigation
which I undertake The first of these seems to be that my personal manner and
appearance put people at ease, almost unaccountably They talk to me more freely
perhaps than they might talk to someone else How much I control this by any
sort of ‘telepathic persuasion’ is quite difficult or impossible to
determine. In retrospect, I would say it has more to do with the fact that I
appear to be ’an Old World gentleman,’ and that people assume that
I am basically good. I also empathize strongly with those I interview. I am in
no way an antagonistic listener
I hope and pray that in
spite of the deceptions I have maintained in connection with my work that I
have never really betrayed anyone’s trust. To do good with what I know is
my life’s imperative
The second factor which
influences my interviews and fieldwork is my mild mind-reading ability. I
frequently pick up names and details from people’s thoughts In general I
do not include this information in my reports It’s too unreliable But my
telepathic discoveries have certainly provided me with significant ’leads’
over the years. And this trait is definitely connected with my keen ability to
sense danger, as the following narrative will eventually reveal
It is time now to return to
the narrative, and to reconstruct the tragic tale of Antha’s life and
Deirdre’s birth.
THE
MAYFAIR WITCHES FROM 1929
TO
THE PRESENT TIME
Antha
Mayfair
With the death of Stella, an
era ended for the Mayfairs. And the tragic history of Stella’s daughter
Antha, and her only child, Deirdre, remains shrouded in mystery to this day.
As the years passed the
household staff at First Street dwindled to a couple of silent, unreachable,
and completely loyal servants; the outbuildings, no longer needed for
housemaids and coachmen and stable boys, fell slowly into disrepair.
The women of First Street
maintained a reclusive existence, Belle and Millie Dear becoming ‘sweet
old ladies’ of the Garden District as they walked to daily Mass at the
Prytania Street chapel, or stopped in their ceaseless and ineffectual gardening
to chat with neighbors passing the iron fence.
Only six months after her
mother’s death, Antha was expelled from a Canadian boarding school, which
was the last public institution she was ever to attend. It was a surprisingly
simple matter for a private investigator to learn from teacher gossip that
Antha had frightened people with her mind reading, her talking to an invisible
friend, and threats against those who ridiculed her or talked behind her back.
She was described as a nervous girl, always crying, complaining of the cold in
all kinds of weather, and subject to long unexplained fevers and chills.
Carlotta Mayfair took Antha
home by train from Canada, and to the best of our knowledge, Antha never spent
another night out of the First Street house until she was seventeen.
Nancy, a sullen, dumpy young
woman, only two years older than Antha, continued to go to school every day
until she was eighteen. At that point she went to work as a file clerk in
Carlotta’s law offices, where she worked for four years. Every morning,
without fail, she and Carlotta walked from First and Chestnut to St Charles
Avenue, where they caught the St Charles car for downtown.
By this time the First
Street house had taken on an air of perpetual gloom. Its shutters were never
opened. Its violet-gray paint began to peel, and its garden grew wild along the
iron fences, with cherry laurels and rain trees sprouting among the old
camellias and gardenias, which had been so carefully tended years before. When
the old unoccupied stable burned to the ground in 1938, weeds soon filled up
the open space at the back of the property. Another dilapidated building was
razed shortly after, and nothing remained but the old garconniere, and one
great and beautiful oak, its branches poignantly outstretched above the wild
grass towards the distant main house.
In 1934, we started to
receive the first reports from workmen who found it impossible to complete
repairs or other jobs on the house. The Molloy brothers told everyone in Corona’s
Bar on Magazine Street that they couldn’t paint that place because every
time they turned around their ladders were on the ground, or their paint was
spilled, or their brushes somehow got knocked in the dirt. ‘It must have
happened six times,’ said Davey Molloy, ‘that my paint just went
right over, off the ladder, and poured out on the ground. Now, I know I never
knocked over a full paint can! And that’s what she said to me, Miss
Carlotta, she said, "You knocked it over yourself." Well, when that
ladder went over with me on it, I tell you, that was it. I quit.’
Davey’s brother,
Thomson Molloy, had a theory as to who was responsible. ‘It’s that
brown-haired fella, the one who was always watching us. I told Miss Carlotta,
"Don’t you think he could be doing it? That fella that’s
always over there under the tree?" She acted like she didn’t know
what I was talking about. But he was always watching us. We were trying to
patch the wall on Chestnut Street and I seen him looking at us through the
library shutters. Gave me the creeps, it did. Who is he? Is he one of them
cousins? I’m not working there. I don’t care how bad times are. I’m
not working on that house again.’
Another workman, hired only
to paint the black cast-iron railings, reported the same ’goings-on.’
He gave up after half a day during which time debris fell on him from the roof
and leaves constantly fell into his paint.
By 1935, it was common
knowledge in the Irish Channel that nothing could be done ’on that old
house.’ When a couple of young men were hired to clean out the pool that
same year, one of them was knocked into the stagnant water and almost drowned.
The other had a hell of a time getting him out. ‘It was like I couldn’t
see anything. I had a hold of him, and I was hollering for somebody to help me,
and we were going down in all that muck and then thank God he had a hold of the
side and he was saving me. That old colored woman, Aunt Easter, come out there
with a towel for us and she hollered, "Just get away from that swimming
pool. Never mind cleaning it. Just get away.‘"
Even Irwin Dandrich heard
the gossip. ‘They’re saying it’s haunted, that Stella’s
spirit won’t let anyone touch anything. It’s as if the whole place
is in mourning for Stella.’ Had Dandrich heard of a mysterious
brown-haired man? ‘I hear all kinds of things Some say it’s Juhen’s
ghost. That he’s keeping an eye on Antha Well, if he is, he isn’t
doing a very good job.’
Shortly thereafter a vague
story appeared in the Times-Picayune describing a ’mysterious
uptown mansion’ where no work could be done. Dandrich clipped it and sent
it to London with the note ‘My Big Mouth’ in the margin.
One of our investigators
took the reporter to lunch. She was happy to talk about it, and yes indeed it
was the Mayfair house. Everyone knew it. A plumber said he was trapped under
that house for hours when he tried to fix a pipe He actually lost consciousness
When he finally came to himself and got out of there, he had to be taken to the
hospital. Then there was the telephone man who was called to fix a phone in the
library. He said he would never set foot in that house again One of the
portraits on the wall had actually looked at him And he thought sure he saw a
ghost in that very room
‘I could have written
a great deal more," said the young woman, ’but the people at the
paper don’t want any trouble with Carlotta Mayfair Did I tell you about
the gardener? He goes in there regularly to cut the grass, you know, and he
said the weirdest thing when 1 called him He said, "Oh, he never
bothers me. He and I get along just fine He and I are just real regular
friends." Now, who do you suppose this man was referring to? When I asked
him he said, "You just go up there. You’ll see him He’s been
there forever My grandfather used to see him. He’s all right. He can’t
move or talk to you. He just stands there looking at you from the shadows One
minute you see him Then he’s gone. He don’t bother me. He’s
all right by me I get paid plenty to work there. I’ve always worked there
He don’t frighten me."’
Family gossip of the period
dismissed the ’ghost stories ’ So did uptown society, according to
Dandrich, though he implied he thought that people were naive
‘I think Carlotta
herself started all those silly ghost stories,’ said one of the cousins
years after ‘She wanted to keep people away We just laughed when we heard
it.’
‘Ghosts at First
Street? Carlotta was responsible for that house becoming a ruin. She always was
penny-wise and pound-foolish. That’s the difference between her and her
mother’
But whatever the attitudes
of the cousins and the local society, the priests at the Redemptonst rectory
heard countless stories of ghosts and mysterious mischief at First Street.
Father Lafferty called regularly at First Street, and rumor had it that he
would not allow himself to be turned away
His sister told one of our
investigators, ‘My brother knew plenty about what was going on, but he
never gossiped about it I asked him how Antha was doing, and he wouldn’t
answer me But I know he saw Antha. He got into that house After Antha died, he
came over here one Sunday, and he just put his head on his arms on the dining
table and he cried. That’s the only time I ever saw my brother, Father
Thomas Lafferty, break down and cry.’
The family remained
concerned about Antha throughout this period. The official story was that Antha
was ’insane,’ and that Carlotta was always taking her to
psychiatrists, but that ‘it didn’t do any good.’ The child
had been irreparably shocked by the shooting of her mother She lived in a
fantasy world of ghosts and invisible companions. She could not be left
unattended; she could not visit outside the house
Legal gossip indicates that
the cousins frequently called Cortland Mayfair to beg him to look in on Antha,
but that Cortland was no longer welcome at First Street. Neighbors report
seeing him turned away several times.
‘He used to go up
there every Christmas Eve,’ said one of the neighbors much later. ‘His
car would pull up at the front gate, and his driver would hop out and open the
door, and then take all the presents out of the trunk Lots and lots of
presents. Then Carlotta would come out and shake hands with him on the steps.
He never got inside that house.’
The Talamasca has never
found any record of doctors who saw Antha. It is doubtful Antha was ever taken
outside the house except to go to Sunday Mass. Neighbors reported seeing her
frequently in the garden at First Street.
She read her books under the
big oak at the rear of the property; she sat for hours on the side gallery, her
elbows on her knees
A maid who worked across the
street reported seeing her talking to ’that man all the time, you know
that browned-haired man, he is always up there to see her, must be one of the
cousins, and he sure do dress nice.’
By the time Antha reached
the age of fifteen, she sometimes went out the gate by herself. A mail carrier
mentioned seeing her often, a thin girl with a dreamy expression walking alone
and sometimes with a ’good-looking young fella’ through the
streets. ‘The good-looking fella’ had brown hair and brown eyes,
and was always dressed in a suitcoat and tie.
‘They liked to scare
the hell out of me,’ said a local milkman. ‘One time I was just
whistling to myself, coming out of the gate of Dr Milton’s house on
Second Street, and there they were just right in front of me, under the
magnolia tree, in the shadows, and she was real still, and he was standing
beside her I nearly ran into them I think they were just sort of whispering
together, and maybe I scared her as bad as she scared me.’
There are no photographs in
our files from this period. But all these witnesses and others describe Antha
as pretty.
‘She had a remote look
to her,’ said a woman who used to see her at the chapel. ‘She wasn’t
vibrant like Stella; she always seemed wrapped in her dreams, and to tell you
the truth, I felt sorry for her all alone in that house with those women. Don’t
quote me on this but that Carlotta is a mean person. She really is My maid and
my cook knew all about her. They said she would grab that girl by the wrist and
dig her nails into her flesh.’
Irwin Dandrich reported that
old friends of Stella’s tried to call on the girl from time to time, only
to be turned away ‘No one gets past Nancy or the colored maid, Aunt
Easter,’ Dandrich wrote to the London investigators. ‘And the talk
is that Antha is a veritable prisoner in that house.’
Other than these few
glimpses, we know virtually nothing of Antha during the years 1930 to 1938, and
it seems nobody in the family knew much of her either. But we can safely
conclude that all the references to the ’brown-haired man’ apply to
Lasher; and if this is the case, we have more sightings of Lasher during this period than for all the decades
before.
Indeed, the sightings of
Lasher are so numerous that our investigators got in the habit of merely
jotting down notes such as ‘Maid working on Third Street says she saw
Antha and the man walking together ’ Or ‘Woman on First and Prytama
saw Antha standing under the oak tree talking to the man.’
The First Street house had
now taken on an air of sinister mystery even for the descendants of Remy
Mayfair and of Suzette’s brothers and sisters, who had once been quite
close
Then, in April of 1938,
neighbors witnessed a violent family quarrel at First Street. Windows were
broken, people heard screaming, and finally a distraught young woman, clutching
only a shoulder bag or a purse, was seen running out the front gate and towards
St Charles Avenue. Without question it was Antha. Even the neighbors knew that
much, and they watched from behind lace curtains as a police car pulled up only
moments after and Carlotta went to the curb to confer with the two officers who
drove off at once, siren screaming, apparently to catch the errant girl.
That night Mayfairs in New
York received telephone calls from Carlotta, informing them that Antha had run
away from home and was headed for Manhattan Would they help with the search? It
was these New York cousins who told the family in New Orleans Cousins called
cousins. Within days Irwin Dandrich wrote to London that ’poor little
Antha’ had made her bid for freedom She had run off to New York City. But
how far would she ever get?
As it turned out, Antha got
quite far.
For months no one knew the
whereabouts of Antha Mayfair. Police, private investigators, and family members
failed to find a clue to Antha’s whereabouts Carlotta made three separate
tram trips to New York during this period, and offered substantial rewards to
anyone in the New York police department who could offer help in the search.
She called on Amanda Grady Mayfair, who had only recently left her husband,
Cortland, and actually threatened Amanda.
As Amanda told our ’undercover’
society investigator later, ‘It was simply dreadful. She asked me to meet
her for lunch at the Waldorf. Well, of course I didn’t want to do it.
Rather like going into a cage at the zoo to have lunch with a lion. But I knew
she was all upset about Antha, and I suppose I wanted to give her a piece of my
mind. I wanted to tell her that she had driven Antha away, that she never
should have isolated that poor little girl from her uncles and cousins who
loved her.
‘But, as soon as I sat
down at the table, she started to threaten me. "Let me tell you, Amanda,
if you are harboring Antha I can make trouble for you that you won’t
believe." I wanted to throw my drink in her face. I was furious. I said,
"Carlotta Mayfair, don’t you ever talk to me again, don’t you
ever call me, or write to me, or come to my home. I had enough of you in New
Orleans. I had enough of what your family did to Pierce and to Cortland. Don’t
you ever ever come near me again." I tell you the smoke was coming out of
my ears when I left the Waldorf. But you know, it is a regular technique with
Carlotta. She makes an accusation as soon as she sees you. She’s been
doing it for years, really. That way, you don’t have a chance to make an
accusation against her.’
In the winter of 1939, our
investigators located Antha in a very simple way. Elaine Barrett, our
witchcraft scholar, in a routine meeting with Evan Neville suggested that Antha
must have financed her escape with the famous Mayfair jewels and gold coins.
Why not try the shops in New York where such items could be sold for quick
money? Antha was located within the month.
Indeed, she had been selling
rare and exquisite gold coins steadily to support herself since her arrival in
1938 Every coin dealer in New York knew her — the beautiful young woman
with the fine manners and the cheerful smile who always brought in the rarest
of merchandise, taken from a family collection in Virginia, she said.
‘At first I thought
her stuff was stolen,’ said one com dealer. ‘I mean these were
three of the finest French coins I’ve ever seen. I gave her a fraction of
what they were worth and just waited. But absolutely nothing happened When I
made the sale, I saved her a percentage. And when she brought me some marvelous
Roman coins, I paid her what they were worth. Now she’s a regular. I’d
rather deal with her than some of the other people who come in here, I’ll
tell you that much.’
It was a simple thing to
follow Antha from one of these shops to a large apartment on Christopher Street
in Greenwich Village where she had been living with Sean Lacy, a handsome young
Irish-American painter who showed considerable promise and had already
exhibited with some critical approval several pieces of his work. Antha herself
had become a writer Everyone in the building and on the block knew the young
couple. Our investigators collected reams of information almost overnight.
Antha was the sole support
of Sean Lacy, friends said openly. She bought him anything he wanted, and he
treated her like a queen. ‘He calls her his Southern Belle, actually,
does everything for her. But then why shouldn’t he?’ The apartment
was ’a wonderful place,’ full of bookshelves to the ceiling, and
big old comfortable overstuffed chairs
‘Sean has never
painted so well. He’s done three portraits of her, all of them very
interesting. And you can hear Antha’s typewriter going constantly. She
sold one story, I heard, to some little literary magazine in Ohio. They threw a
party over that one. She was so happy She really is a little on the naive side
But she’s a swell kid.’
‘She’d be a good
writer if she’d write about what she knows,’ said one young woman
in a bar who claimed to have once been Sean’s lover. ‘But she
writes these morbid fantasies about an old violet-colored house in New Orleans
and a ghost who lives there - all very high-pitched, and hardly what will sell.
She really ought to get away from all that rot and write about her experiences
here in New York.’
Neighbors were fond of the
young couple. ‘She can’t cook or do anything practical,’
reported a female painter who lived above them, ’but then why should she?
She pays all the bills as it is. I asked Sean one time wherever does she get
her money? He said she had a bottomless purse. All she ever had to do was reach
in it Then he laughed.’
Finally in the winter of
1940, Elaine Barrett, writing from London, urged our most responsible private
investigator in New York to attempt to interview Antha. Elaine wanted
desperately to go to New York herself, but it was out of the question. So she
talked directly by phone to Allan Carver, a suave and sophisticated man who had
worked for us for many years. Carver was a well-dressed and well-mannered
gentleman of fifty. He found it a simple matter to make contact A pleasure, in
fact.
‘I followed her to the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, then happened upon her as she was sitting in front
of one of the Rembrandts, just staring at it, rather lost in her thoughts. She
is pretty, quite pretty, but very Bohemian. She was all wrapped up in wool that
day, with her hair loose. I sat down beside her, flashed a copy of Hemingway’s
short stories, and engaged her in conversation about him. Yes, she’d read
Hemingway and she loved him. Did she love Rembrandt? Yes, she did. How about
New York in general? Oh, she loved living here She never wanted to be anyplace
else. The city of New York was a person to her She had never been so happy as
she was now.
‘There wasn’t a
chance of getting her out of there with me. She was too guarded, too proper. So
I made the most of it as quickly as I could.
‘I got her talking
about herself, her Me, her husband, and her writing. Yes, she wanted to be a
writer. And Sean wanted her to be Sean wouldn’t be happy unless she was
successful too. "You know, the only thing I can be is a writer," she
said. "I’m absolutely unprepared for anything else. When you’ve
lived the kind of life I have, you are good for nothing. Only writing can save
you." It was all very touching actually, the way she spoke about it. She
seemed altogether defenseless and absolutely genuine. I think, had I been
thirty years younger, I would have fallen in love with her.
‘"But what kind
of life did you have?" I pressed her "I can’t place your accent
But I know you’re not from New York."
‘"Down
south," she said "It’s another world." She grew sad
instantly, even agitated "I want to forget all that," she said,
"I don’t mean to be rude, but I’ve made this rule for myself. I’ll
write about my past but I won’t talk about it. I’ll turn it into
art if I can, but I won’t talk about it I won’t give it life here,
outside of art, if you follow what I mean."
‘I found this rather
clever and interesting. I liked her I cannot tell you how much I liked her And
you know, in my line of work, one gets so accustomed to just using people!
‘"Well, then tell
me about what you write," I begged "Just tell me about one of your
stories for instance, assuming you write stories, or tell me about your
poems."
‘"If they’re
any good, you’ll read them some day," she said, and then she gave me
a parting smile and left I think she’d become suspicious. I don’t
know really She was glancing around in a rather defensive way the whole time we
talked. I even asked her at one point is she was expecting someone. She said
not really, but "You never know " She acted as if she thought someone
was watching her. And of course my people were watching her all the time I felt
pretty uncomfortable about it at that moment, I can tell you’
Reports continued to pour in
for months that Antha and Sean were happy. Sean, a big burly individual with an
endearing sense of humor, had a one-man show in the Village which was quite a
success. Antha had a short poem (seven lines) in The New Yorker. The
couple were ecstatic. Only in April of 1941 did the gossip change.
‘Well, she’s
pregnant,’ said the upstairs painter, ’and he doesn’t want
the baby, you know, and of course she wants it and God knows what’s going
to happen. He knows a doctor who can take care of it, you see, but she won’t
hear of it. I hate to see her going through this, really. She’s much too
fragile. I hear her crying down there in the night.’
On July i, Sean Lacy died in
a single car accident (mechanical failure) coming back from a visit to his
ailing mother in upstate New York A hysterical Antha had to be hospitalized at
Bellevue ‘We just didn’t know what to do with her,’ said the
upstairs painter ‘For eight hours straight she screamed. Finally we
called Bellevue. I’ll never know if we did the right thing.’
Records at Bellevue indicate
Antha stopped screaming or indeed making any sound or movement as soon as she
was admitted. She remained catatonic for over a week Then she wrote the name ‘Cort-land
Mayfair’ on a slip of paper, along with the words ‘Attorney, New
Orleans ’ Cortland’s firm was contacted at ten thirty the following
morning. At once Cortland called his estranged wife, Amanda Grady Mayfair, in
New York and begged her to go to Bellevue and see to Antha until he could get
there himself.
A horrid battle then began
between Cortland and Carlotta, Cortland insisting that he should take care of
Antha because Antha had sent for him. Contemporary gossip tells us Carlotta and
Cortland took the train together to New York to get Antha and bring her home
At an emotional drunken
lunch, Amanda Grady Mayfair poured out the whole story to her friend (and our
informant) Allan Carver, who made it a point to inquire about her old southern
family and its gothic goings-on. Amanda told him all about the poor little
niece in Bellevue:
‘… It was simply
awful Antha couldn’t talk She couldn’t. She’d tried to say
something and she’d simply stammer. She was so fragile. The death of Sean
had destroyed her utterly. It was twenty-four hours before she wrote down the
address of the apartment in Greenwich Village. I went there immediately with Ollie
Mayfair, you know, one of Remy’s grandchildren, and we got Antha’s
things. Oh, it was so sad. Of course all Sean’s paintings belonged to
Antha, as she was his wife, I supposed; but then the neighbors came in and they
told us Antha had never married Sean. Sean’s mother and brother had
already been there. They were coming back with a truck to take everything away.
Seems that Sean’s mother despised Antha because she believed Antha had
led her son into this Greenwich Village artist life.
‘I told Ollie, well,
they can have everything else but they aren’t taking the portraits of
Antha. I took those and all her clothes and things, and this old velvet purse
filled with gold coins. Now, I’d heard of that purse, and don’t
tell me you haven’t if you know the Mayfairs. And her writings, oh, yes,
her writings. I packed up all of that - her stories, and chapters of a novel,
and some poems she’d written. And do you know later on I found out she’d
published a poem in The Neif Yorker. The New Yorker. But I
didn’t find out about that until my son, Pierce, told me. And he went to
the library and looked it up. It was very brief, something about snow falling
and the museum in the park. Not what I would call a poem, actually. Rather a
little bit of life, so to speak. But she was published in The New Yorker. That is the point. It was so sad
taking everything out of that apartment. You know, dismantling a life.
‘When I got back to
the hospital, Carlotta and Cortland were already there. They were fighting with
each other in the hallway. But you had to see and hear a fight between Carl and
Cort to believe it, it was all whispers, and little gestures, and tight lips.
It was really something. But there they stood, talking to each other like that
and I knew they were ready to kill each other.
‘"That girl’s
pregnant you know," I said. "Did the doctors tell you?"’
‘"She ought to
get rid of it," Carl said. I thought Cortland was going to die. I was so
shocked myself I didn’t know what to say.
‘I absolutely hate
Carlotta. I don’t care who knows it. I hate her. I have hated her all my
life. It gives me nightmares to think of her being alone with Antha. I told
Cortland right there in front of her. "That girl needs care."
‘But Cortland had
tried to get custody of Antha, he had tried it in the very beginning, and
Carlotta had threatened to fight him, to expose all kinds of things about us,
she said. Oh, she is dreadful. And Cortland had given up. And I think he knew
he wasn’t going to get control of Antha now. "Look, Antha’s a
woman now," I said. "Ask her where she wants to go. If she wants to
stay in New York she can stay with me. She can stay with Ollie." Not a
chance!
‘Carlotta went in to
talk to those doctors. She did her routine. She managed some sort of official
transfer of Antha to a mental hospital in New Orleans. She ignored Cortland as
if he wasn’t even there. I got on the phone to all the cousins in New
Orleans. I called everyone. I even called young Beatrice Mayfair on Esplanade
Avenue — Remy’s granddaughter. I told them that child was sick, and
she was pregnant and she needed loving care.
‘Then the most sad
thing happened. They were taking Antha to the train station, and she gestured
for me to come over to her, and she whispered in my ear. "Save my things
for me, please, Aunt Mandy. She’ll throw them all away if you don’t,"
and to think I had already shipped all her things back home. I called my son
Sheffield and told him about it. I said, "Sheff, do what you can for her
when she gets back.‘"
Antha traveled back to
Louisiana by train with her uncle and her aunt, and was immediately committed
to St Ann’s Asylum, where she remained for six weeks. Numerous Mayfair
cousins came to see her. Family gossip indicated she was pale and at times
incoherent but that she was coming along just fine.
In New York, our
investigator Allan Carver arranged another chance meeting with Amanda Grady
Mayfair. ‘How is the little niece coming along?’
‘Oh, I could tell you
the worst story!’ said Amanda Grady Mayfair. ‘You cannot imagine.
Do you know that girl’s aunt told the doctors in the asylum she wanted
them to abort the girl’s baby? That she was congenitally insane and must
never be allowed to have a child? Have you ever heard anything worse? When my
husband told me that I told him if you don’t do something now, I’ll
never forgive you. Of course he said no one was going to hurt that baby. The
doctors weren’t going to do such a thing, not for Carlotta, not for
anyone. Then when I called Beatrice Mayfair on Esplanade Avenue and told her
all about it, Cortland was furious. "Don’t get everybody up in arms,"
he said. But that is exactly what I meant to do. I told Bea, "Go see her.
Don’t let anyone keep you out."’
The Talamasca has never been
able to corroborate the story about the proposed abortion. But nurses at St Ann’s
later told our investigators that scores of Mayfair cousins came to see Antha
at the asylum.
‘They are not taking
no for an answer,’ Irwin Dandrich wrote. ‘They insist upon seeing
her, and by all reports she is doing well. She is excited about her baby, and
of course they have deluged her with presents. Her young cousin, Beatrice,
brought her some antique lace baby clothes that had once belonged to somebody’s
Great-aunt Suzette. Of course, it is common knowledge here that Antha never
married the New York artist; but then what does it matter when your name is
Mayfair, and Mayfair it will always be.’
The cousins proved just as
aggressive after Antha was released from St Ann’s and came home to First
Street to convalesce in Stella’s old bedroom on the north side of the
house. She had nurses with her round the clock, and obtaining information from
them proved very simple for our investigators.
The place was described as ’insufferably
dreary.’ But Millie Dear and Belle took excellent care of Antha. In fact,
they didn’t leave the nurses much to do at all. Millie Dear sat with
Antha all the time on the little upstairs porch outside her bedroom. And Belle
knitted beautiful clothes for the baby.
Cortland stopped by every
evening after work. ‘The lady of the house didn’t want him there, I
don’t believe,’ said one of the nurses. ‘But he came. Without
fail he came. He and another young gentleman, I believe his name was Sheffield.
They sat with the patient every night for a little while and talked.’
Family gossip said that
Sheffield had read some of Antha’s writings from the New York days, and
that Antha was’very good.’ The nurses talked about the boxes from
New York - crates of books and papers, which Antha examined but was too weak in
general to truly unpack.
‘I don’t really
see anything mentally wrong with her,’ said one of the nurses. ‘The
aunt takes us out in the hallway and asks us the strangest questions. She
implies the girl is congenitally insane, and may harm someone. But the doctors
didn’t say anything to us about it. She’s a quiet, melancholy girl.
She looks and sounds much younger than she is. But she’s not what I would
call insane.’
Deirdre Mayfair was born on
October 4, 1941, at the old Mercy Hospital on the river, which was later torn
down. Apparently the birth presented no particular difficulty, and Antha was
heavily anesthetized as was the custom in those days. Mayfairs packed the
corridors of the hospital during visiting hours for the entire five days that
Antha was there. Her room was full of flowers. The baby was a beautiful healthy
little girl.
But the flow of information,
so dramatically increased with the involvement of Amanda Grady Mayfair, came to
an abrupt halt two weeks after Antha returned home. The cousins found
themselves turned away by the black maid, Aunt Easter, or by Nancy when they
came for their second and third visits. Indeed, Nancy had quit her job as a
file clerk to take care of the baby (‘Or to lock us out!’ said
Beatrice to Amanda long distance) and she was adamant that the mother and the
baby not be disturbed.
When Beatrice called to
inquire about the christening, she was told the baby had already been baptized
at St Alphonsus. Outraged, she called Amanda in New York. Some twenty of the
cousins ’crashed’ the house on a Sunday afternoon.
‘Antha was overjoyed
to see them!’ said Amanda to Allan Carver. ‘She was simply
thrilled. She had no idea they’d been calling and dropping by. No one
even told her. She didn’t know people gave parties for a christening.
Carlotta had arranged everything. She was hurt when she realized what had
happened, and everyone changed the subject at once. But Beatrice was furious
with Nancy. But Nancy is just doing what Carlotta told her to do.’
On October 30 of that year,
Antha was officially declared the recipient and full manager of the Mayfair
legacy. She signed a power of attorney naming Cortland and Sheffield Mayfair as
her legal representatives in all matters concerning the money; and she
requested that they immediately establish a large trust for the management of
the’restoration’ of the First Street house. She expressed concern
about the condition of the entire property.
Legal gossip says that Antha
was stunned to discover that she owned the place. She had never had the
slightest idea. She wanted to redecorate, paint, restore everything.
Carlotta was not at Antha’s
meeting with her uncles. Carlotta had demanded of the law firm of Mayfair and
Mayfair that they provide her with a complete audit on behalf of Antha of
everything that had been done since Stella’s death, saying that the
present records were inadequate, and she refused to participate in any sort of
legal discussion until she received this audit ’for review.’
Sheffield told his mother,
Amanda, later, that Antha had been deliberately misled with regard to the
legacy. She seemed hurt and even a little shocked as things were explained to
her. And it was Carlotta who had hurt her But all she would say was that
Carlotta had probably had her good in mind all along.
The party went for a late
lunch at Galatoire’s to celebrate Antha was nervous about leaving the
baby, but she seemed to have a good time. As they were leaving, Sheffield heard
her ask his father the following question: ‘Then you mean she couldn’t
have thrown me out of the house if she had wanted to? She couldn’t have
put me on the street?’
‘It’s your
house, ma cherie,’ Cortland told her. ‘She has permission
to live there, but that is subject entirely to your approval’
Antha looked so sad. ‘She
used to threaten me,’ she said under her breath. ‘She used to say
she’d put me in the street if I didn’t do what she said.’
Cortland then took Antha
away from the party and drove her home alone.
Antha and the baby went to
lunch a few days later with Beatrice Mayfair at another fashionable French
Quarter restaurant. A nurse was, on hand to take the baby walking in its
beautiful white wicker buggy while the two women enjoyed their wine and fish.
When Beatrice described it all to Amanda later she told her Antha had really
become a young woman. Antha was writing again. She was working on a novel, and
she was going to have the First Street house completely fixed up.
She wanted to repair the
swimming pool. She talked about her mother a little, how her mother had loved
to give parties. She seemed full of life
Indeed, several contractors
were approached to give estimates for ’a complete restoration, including
painting, carpentry repairs and some masonry work.’ Neighbors were
delighted to hear this from the servants. Dandrich wrote that a distinguished
architectural firm had been consulted about rebuilding the carriage house
Antha wrote a brief letter
to Amanda Grady Mayfair in mid-November, thanking her for her help in New York
She thanked her for forwarding the mail from Greenwich Village. She said that
she was writing short stories, and working on her novel again
When Mr Bordreaux, the
mailman, passed on his regular rounds at nine a.m. on December 10, Antha was
waiting for him at the gate. She had several large manila envelopes ready to go
to New York Could she buy the postage from him? They made a guess at the weight
- she said she couldn’t leave the baby to go to the post office —
and he took the packages with him. Antha also gave him a bundle of regular mail
for various New York addresses
‘She was all
excited," he said. ‘She was going to be a writer Such a sweet girl
And I’ll never forget. I made some remark about the bombing of Pearl
Harbor, that my son had enlisted the day before, and now we were in the war at
last. And do you know? She’d never heard a thing about it She didn’t
even know about the bombing, or the war. Just like she was living in a dream.’
The ‘sweet girl’
died that very afternoon When the same postman came around with the afternoon
mail at three thirty, there was a cloudburst over that area of the Garden District.
It was raining ’cats and dogs ’ Yet a crowd was assembled in the
Mayfair garden, and the undertaker’s wagon was in the middle of the
street The wind was blowing’something fierce.’ Mr Bordreaux hung
around in spite of the weather.
‘Miss Belle was on the
porch sobbing And Miss Millie tried to tell me what was happening but she couldn’t
say a word Then Miss Nancy came to the edge of the porch and shouted at me
"You go on, Mr Bordreaux We’ve had a death here. You go on and get
out of the rain."’
Mr Bordreaux crossed the
street and sought shelter on the porch of a neighboring house. The housekeeper
told him through the screen door that it was Antha Mayfair who was dead. She’d
apparently fallen from the third-floor porch roof
The storm was terrible, said
the mailman, a regular hurricane Yet he remained to watch as a body was put
into the undertaker’s wagon Red Lonigan was there, with his cousin Leroy
Lonigan. Then the
PART TWO
wagon drove away Finally Mr
Bordreaux went back to delivering the mail, and very soon, about the time he
reached Prytania Street, the weather had cleared up When he passed the next day
the sidewalk was littered with leaves
Over the years, the
Talamasca has collected numerous stories connected with Antha’s death,
but what actually happened on the afternoon of December 10, 1941, may never be
known Mr Bordreaux was the last ’outsider’ ever to see or speak
with Antha The baby’s nurse, an elderly woman named Alice Flanagan, had
called in sick that day
What is known from the
police records and from the guarded talk emanating from the Lonigan family and
the priests of the parish is that Antha jumped or fell from the porch roof
outside the attic window of Juhen’s old room some time before three p. m.
Carlotta’s story,
gleaned from these same sources, was as follows
She had been arguing with
the girl about the baby, because Antha had deteriorated to such a point that
she was not even feeding the child.
‘She was in no way
prepared to be a mother,’ said Miss Carlotta to the police officer Antha
spent hours typing letters and stories and poetry, and Nancy and the others had
to beat on the door of the room to make her realize that Deirdre was crying in
the cradle and needed to be given a bottle or nursed
Antha became ’hysterical’
during this last argument She ran up the two flights of steps to the attic,
screaming to be left alone Carlotta, fearing that Antha would hurt herself
which she often did, according to Carlotta persuaded her into Juhen’s old
room There Carlotta discovered that Antha had tried to scratch her own eyes
out, and indeed had succeeded in drawing considerable blood
When Carlotta tried to
control her, Antha broke away, falling backwards through the window, and on to
the roof of the cast-iron porch She apparently crawled to the edge of it, and
then lost her balance or deliberately jumped She died instantly when her head
struck the flagstones three stories below
Cortland was beside himself
when he learned of his niece’s death He went immediately to First Street
What he told his wife in New York later was that Carlotta was absolutely
distraught The priest was with her, a Father Kevin, from the Redemptonst Parish
Carlotta said over and over that nobody understood how fragile Antha had been ‘I
tried to stop her1’ Carlotta said ‘What in the name of God was I
expected to do1’ Millie Dear and Belle were too upset to talk about it
Belle seemed to be confusing it all with the death of Stella Only Nancy had
frankly disagreeable things to say, complaining that Antha had been spoiled and
sheltered all her life, that her head was full of silly dreams
When Alice Flanagan, the
nurse, was contacted by Cortland, she seemed afraid She was elderly, and
partially blind She said she didn’t know anything about Antha’s
ever hurting herself or becoming hysterical or anything like that She took her
orders from Miss Carlotta Miss Carlotta had been good to her family Miss
Flanagan didn’t want to lose her job ‘I just want to take care of
that darling baby,’ she told the police ‘That darling baby needs me
now’
Indeed she took care of
Deirdre Mayfair until the girl was five years old.
Finally, Cortland told
Beatrice and Amanda to leave Carlotta in peace Carlotta was the only witness to
what had happened And whatever had gone on that afternoon, surely Antha’s
death had been a terrible accident What could anyone do?
No true investigation
followed the death of Antha There had been no autopsy When the undertaker
became suspicious after examining the corpse and concluding that Antha’s
facial scratches were not self-inflicted, he contacted the family doctor and
was advised or told to let the matter drop Antha was insane, that was the
unofficial verdict All her life she had been unstable She had been committed to
Bellevue and St Ann’s Asylum She had depended upon others to care for her
and her child.
After Stella’s death,
the Mayfair emerald was never mentioned in connection with Antha No relative or
friend ever reported seeing it Sean Lacy never painted Antha with it No one in
New York had ever heard of it.
But when Antha died she had
the emerald around her neck.
The question is obvious Why
was Antha wearing the emerald on that day of all days7 Was it the wearing of
the emerald that precipitated the fatal argument? And if the scratch marks on
Antha’s face were not self-inflicted, did Carlotta try to scratch out
Antha’s eyes, and if so why?
Whatever the case, the house
on First Street was once again shrouded in secrecy. Antha’s plans for a
restoration were never carried out. After furious arguments in the offices of
Mayfair and Mayfair — Carlotta stormed out once, actually breaking the
glass on the door - Cortland went so far as to petition the court for custody
of baby Deirdre. Clay Mayfair’s grandson Alexander also came forward. He
and his wife, Eileen, had a lovely mansion in Metaine. They could officially
adopt the child or just take her informally, whatever Carlotta would allow.
Amanda Grady Mayfair told
our undercover society man, Allan Carver, ‘Cortland wants me to go home
to take care of the baby I tell you I feel so sorry for that baby. But I can’t
go back to New Orleans after all these years.’
Carlotta all but laughed in
the face of these ‘do-gooders,’ as she called them. She told the
judge and indeed anyone in the family who asked her that Antha had been gravely
ill It was a congenital insanity, without question, and might well surface in
Antha’s little girl. She had no intention of allowing anyone to take
Deirdre out of her mother’s house, or away from darling Miss Flanagan, or
from dear sweet Belle, or darling Millie, all of whom adored the child, and had
time on their hands to care for her day in and day out as no one else could.
When Cortland refused to
back down, Carlotta threatened him directly. His wife had left him, hadn’t
she? Wouldn’t the family like to know after all these years just what
sort of a man Cortland was? Cousins pondered her slurs and innuendoes. The
judge in the case became ’impatient.’ To his mind, Carlotta Mayfair
was a woman of impeccable virtue and excellent judgment Why couldn’t this
family accept the situation? Good Lord, if every orphan baby had aunts as sweet
as Millie and Belle and Carlotta, this would be a better world.
The legacy was left in the
hands of Mayfair and Mayfair, and the child was left in the hands of Carlotta.
And the matter was abruptly closed.
Only one other assault on
Carlotta’s authority was ever attempted It was in 1945.
Cornell Mayfair, one of the
New York cousins and a descendant of Lestan, had just finished his residency at
Massachusetts General. He was training to be a psychiatrist. He had heard ‘incredible
stories’ about the First Street house from his cousin (by marriage)
Amanda Grady Mayfair. And also from Louisa Ann Mayfair, Garland’s eldest
granddaughter who went to Radchffe and had an affair with Cornell while she was
there. What was all this talk of congenital insanity? Cornell was fascinated.
Also he was still in love with Louisa Ann, who had gone back to New Orleans
rather than marry him and live in Massachusetts, and he could not understand
the girl’s devotion to her home. He wanted to visit New Orleans and the
family at First Street, and the New York cousins thought it was a good idea
‘Who knows?’ he
told Amanda over lunch at the Waldorf ‘Maybe I’ll like the city,
and maybe Louisa Ann and I can somehow work things out’
On February n, Cornell came
to New Orleans, checking into a downtown hotel. He begged Carlotta to talk to
him and she agreed to let him come uptown
As he later told Amanda by
long distance, he remained at the house for perhaps two hours, visiting with little
four-year-old Deirdre alone for some of that time ‘I can’t tell you
what I’ve found out,’ he said ‘But that child has to be
removed from this environment And frankly I don’t want Louisa Ann
involved I’ll tell you the whole thing when I get back to New York’
Amanda insisted that he call
Cortland, that he tell Cortland all about his concerns. Cornell confessed that
Louisa Ann had suggested the same thing
‘I don’t want to
do this just now,’ said Cornell. ‘I’ve just had a bellyful of
Carlotta I don’t want to meet any more of these people this afternoon’
Trusting that Cortland could
be of help, Amanda called him and told him what was going on Cortland
appreciated Dr Mayfair’s interest. He called Amanda later that afternoon
to tell her he had made an appointment with Cornell for dinner at Kolb’s
downtown He’d call her after they had talked together, but as things
stood now, he liked the young doctor He was eager to hear what he had to say.
Cornell never kept the
appointment for dinner Cortland waited for an hour at Kolb’s Restaurant
and then rang Cornell’s room No answer The following morning, the hotel
maid found Cornell’s dead body He lay fully dressed on a rumpled bed,
eyes half open, a half full glass of bourbon on the table at his side No
immediate cause of death could be found.
When an autopsy was
performed, at the behest of Cornell’s mother as well as the New Orleans
coroner, Cornell was found to have a small amount of a strong narcotic, mixed
with alcohol, in his veins It was ruled an accidental overdose and never
investigated further Amanda Grady Mayfair never forgave herself for sending
young Dr Cornell Mayfair to New Orleans Louisa Ann ’never recovered’
and is to this day unmarried A distraught Cortland accompanied the coffin back
to New York
Was Cornell a casualty of
the Mayfair Witches7 Once more we are forced to say that we do not know One
detail, however, gives us some indication that Cornell did not die from the
small amount of narcotic and alcohol in his blood The coroner who examined
Cornell’s body before it was removed from the hotel room noted that
Cornell’s eyes were full of hemorrhaged blood vessels We now know that
this is a symptom of asphyxiation It is possible that someone severely disabled
Cornell by slipping a drug into his drink (bourbon was found in the glass on
the table), and then smothered him with a pillow when he could not defend
himself.
By the time the Talamasca
attempted to investigate this case (through a reputable private detective), the
trail was cold No one at the hotel could remember if Cornell Mayfair had had
any callers that afternoon Had he ordered his bourbon from room service7 No one
had ever asked these questions before Fingerprints7 None had been taken After
all, this wasn’t a murder
But it is now time to turn
to Deirdre Mayfair, the present heiress of the Mayfair legacy, orphaned at the
age of two months and left in the hands of her ageing aunts.
Deirdre
Mayfair
The First Street house
continued to deteriorate after Antha’s death The swimming pool had by
this time become a rank swamp pond of duckweed and wild irises, its rusty
fountain jets spewing green water into the muck Shutters were once again bolted
on the windows of the northside master bedroom The paint continued to peel from
the violet-gray masonry walls.
Elderly Miss Flanagan,
almost completely blind in her last year, cared for little Deirdre until just
before the child’s fifth birthday Now and then she took the baby walking
around the block in a wicker buggy, but she never crossed the street.
Cortland came on Christmas
He drank sherry in the long front parlor with Millie Dear and Belle and Nancy.
‘I told them I wasn’t
going to be turned away this time,’ he explained to his son Pierce, who
later told his mother ‘No, sir I was going to see that child with my own
eyes on her birthday and on Christmas I was going to hold her in my arms ’
He made similar statements to his secretaries at Mayfair and Mayfair, who often
bought the presents which Cortland took uptown.
Years later, Cortland’s
grandson Ryan Mayfair talked about it to a sympathetic ’acquaintance’
at a wedding reception.
‘My grandfather hated
to go up there Our place in Metaine was always so cheerful My father said that
Grandfather would come home crying When Deirdre was three years old,
Grandfather made them get their first Christmas tree in all those years He took
a package of ornaments up there for it He bought the lights at Katz and Bestoff
and put them on himself It’s so hard to imagine people living in that
sort of gloom I wish I had really known my grandfather He was born in that
house Think of it And his father, Julien, had been born before the Civil War’
Cortland, by this point in
time, had become the image of his father, Julien Pictures of him even as late
as the mid-1950s show him as a tall, slender man with black hair, and gray only
at the temples His heavily lined face was remarkably like that of his father,
except for the fact that his eyes were much larger, reminiscent of Stella’s
eyes, though he had Juhen’s agreeable expression, and frequently cheerful
smile.
By all accounts Cortland’s
family loved him, his employees veritably worshiped him, and though Amanda
Grady Mayfair had left him years before, even she seems to have always loved
him, or so she told Allan Carver in New York the year she died Amanda cried on
Allan’s shoulder about the fact that her sons never understood why she
had left their father, and she had no intention of telling them, either.
Ryan Mayfair, who knew his
grandfather Cortland only briefly, was absolutely devoted to him To him and his
father, Cortland was a hero. He could never understand how his grandmother could’defect’
to New York.
What was Deirdre like during
this early period7 We are unable to discover a single account of her in the
first five years, except the legend in Cortland’s family that she was a
very pretty little girl.
Her black hair was fine and
wavy, like that of Stella Her blue eyes were large and dark.
But the First Street house
was once more closed to the outside world A generation of passersby had become
accustomed to its hopelessly forbidding and neglected facade Once again, the
workmen couldn’t complete repairs on the premises A roofer fell off his
ladder twice and then refused to come back Only the old gardener and his son
came willingly to now and then cut the weed-infested grass.
As people in the parish
died, certain legends concerning the May-fairs died with them Other stories
became so miserably transformed by time as to be unrecognizable New
investigators replaced old investigators Soon no one questioned about the
Mayfairs mentioned the names of Julien or {Catherine or Remy or Suzette.
Julien’s son Barclay
died in 1949, his brother Garland in 1951 Cortland’s son Grady died the
same year as Garland, after a fall from a horse in Audubon Park His mother,
Amanda Grady Mayfair, died only shortly after, as if the death of her beloved
Grady was more than she could take of Pierce’s two sons, only Ryan
Mayfair ’knows the family history’ and regales the younger cousins
many of whom know nothing — with strange tales
Irwin Dandrich died in 1952
However, his role had been already filled by another ‘society
investigator,’ a woman named Juliette Milton, who collected numerous
stories over the years from Beatrice Mayfair and the other downtown cousins,
many of whom lunched with Juliette regularly and did not seem to mind that she
was a gossip who told them everything about everybody and told everybody
everything about them Like Dandrich, Juliette was not a particularly vicious
person Indeed, she doesn’t even seem to have been unkind She loved
melodrama, however, and wrote incredibly long letters to our lawyers in London,
who paid her an annual amount equal to the annuity which had once been her sole
support.
As was the case with Dandrich,
Juliette never knew to whom she was supplying all this information about the
Mayfairs And though she broached the subject at least once a year, she never
pressed.
In 1953, as I began my
full-time translation of Petyr van Abel’s letters, I read the
contemporary reports regarding twelve-year-old Deirdre as they poured in I sent
the investigators after every scrap of information ‘Dig,’ I said ‘Tell
me all about her from the very beginning There is nothing I do not want to know
’ I called Juliette Milton personally I told her I would pay well for
anything extra she could turn up.
During the early years at
least Deirdre had followed in the footsteps of her mother, being expelled from
one school after another for her ’antics’ and ‘strange
behavior,’ her disruption of the classes, and strange crymg fits for
which nothing could be done.
Once more Sister Bridget
Marie, then in her sixties, saw the ’invisible friend’ in action in
the St Alphonsus school yard, finding things for little Deirdre and making
flowers fly through the air Sacred Heart, Ursulmes, St Joseph’s, Our Lady
of the Angels — they all expelled little Deirdre within a couple of weeks
For months at a time, the child stayed home Neighbors saw her ’running
wild’ in the garden, or climbing the big oak tree on the back of the lot.
There was no real staff
anymore at First Street Aunt Easter’s daughter Irene did all the cooking
and the cleaning thoroughly but steadily Every morning she swept the pavements
or the banquettes as they were called Three o’clock saw her ringing out
her mop at the tap by the rear garden gate.
Nancy Mayfair was the actual
housekeeper, managing things in a brusque and offensive manner, or so said
dehverymen and priests who now and then came to call.
Millie Dear and Belle, both
picturesque if not beautiful old women, tended the few roses growing by the
side porch which had been saved from the wilderness that now covered the
property from the front fence to the back wall
All the family appeared for
nine o’clock Mass on Sundays at the chapel, little Deirdre a picture in
her navy blue sailor dress and straw hat with its ribbons, Carlotta in her dark
business suit and high-necked blouse, and the old ladies, Millie Dear and
Belle, exquisitely attired in their black high string shoes, gabardine dresses
with lace, and dark gloves Miss Millie and Miss Belle often went shopping
together on iondays, taking a taxi from First Street to Gus Mayer or Godchaux’s,
the finest stores in New Orleans, where they bought their pearl gray dresses
and flowered hats with veils, and other genteel accoutrements. The ladies at
the cosmetic counters knew them by name. They sold them face powder and cream
rouge and Christmas Night perfume. The two old women had lunch at the D. H.
Holmes lunch counter before taking the taxi home And they, and they alone,
represented the First Street family at funerals, and even now and then at
christenings, and even once in a while at a wedding, though they seldom went to
the reception after the Nuptial Mass.
Millie and Belle even
attended funerals of other persons in the parish, and would go to the wake if
it was held at Lonigan and Sons, nearby. They went to the Tuesday night Novena
service at the chapel, and sometimes on summer nights they brought little
Deirdre with them, clucking over her proudly and feeding her little bits of
chocolate during the service so that she would be quiet.
No one remembered anymore
that anything had ever been ’wrong’ with sweet Miss Belle.
Indeed, the two old ladies
easily won the goodwill and respect of the Garden District, especially among families
who knew nothing of the Mayfair tragedies or secrets. The First Street house
was not the only moldering mansion behind a rusted fence
Nancy Mayfair, on the other
hand, seemed to have been born and reared in an entirely different class. Her
clothes were always dowdy, her brown hair unwashed and only superficially
combed It would have been easy to mistake her for a hired servant. But nobody
ever questioned the story that she was Stella’s sister, which of course
she was not She began to wear black string shoes when she was only thirty.
Grumpily she paid the delivery boys from a worn pocketbook, or called down from
the upstairs gallery to tell the peddler at the gate to go away.
It was with these women that
little Deirdre spent her days when she was not struggling to pay attention in a
crowded classroom, which always ended in failure and disgrace.
Over and over the parish
gossips compared her to her mother. The cousins said maybe it was ’congenital
insanity,’ though honestly no one knew But to those who observed the
family more closely — even from a distance of many miles — certain
differences between mother and daughter were apparent very early on
Whereas Antha was always
slender and shrinking by nature, there was something rebellious and
unmistakably sensuous in Deirdre from the start Neighbors frequently saw her
running ’like a tomboy’ through the garden. At the age of five she
could climb the great oak tree to the top. Sometimes she concealed herself in
the shrubbery along the fence so she could deliberately startle those who
passed by.
At nine years old she ran
away for the first time. Carlotta rang Cortland in panic; then the police were
called in. Finally a cold and shivering Deirdre showed up on the front porch of
St Elizabeth’s Orphanage on Napoleon Avenue, telling the sisters that she
was ’cursed’ and ’possessed of the devil.’ They had to
call a priest for her. Cortland came with Carlotta to take her home..
‘Overactive
imagination,’ said Carlotta It was to become a stock phrase.
A year later, police found
Deirdre wandering in a rainstorm along the Bayou St John, shivering and crying,
and saying she was afraid to go home. For two hours she told the police lies
about her name and background. She was a gypsy who had come to town with a
circus Her mother had been murdered by the animal trainer She had tried to ’commit
suicide with rare poison’ but had been taken to a hospital in Europe
where they drew all the blood out of her veins.
‘There was something
so sad about that child and so crazy,’ said the officer afterwards to our
investigator ‘She was absolutely in earnest and the wildest look would
come into her blue eyes. She didn’t even look up when her uncle and her
aunt came to get her She pretended she didn’t know them Then she said
they kept her chained in an upstairs room.’
At ten years of age, Deirdre
was packed off to Ireland, to a boarding school recommended by an Irish-born
priest at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Father Jason Power. Family gossip said
it was Cortland’s idea.
‘Grandfather wanted to
get her away from there,’ Ryan Mayfair gossiped later.
But the sisters in County
Cork sent Deirdre home within the month.
For two years Deirdre
studied with a governess named Miss Lamp-ton, an old friend of Carlotta’s
from the Sacred Heart. Miss Lampton told Beatrice Mayfair (on Esplanade Avenue
downtown) that Deirdre was a charming girl, and very bright indeed ‘She
has too much imagination, that is all that’s wrong with her, and she
spends much too much time alone ’ When Miss Lampton moved north to marry
a widower she’d met during his summer vacation, Deirdre cried for days.
Even during these years
there were quarrels at First Street, however People heard shouting Deirdre
frequently ran out of the house crying She would climb the oak tree until she
was well out of the reach of Irene or Miss Lampton Sometimes she stayed up
there until after dark.
But with adolescence a
change came over Deirdre She became withdrawn, secretive, no longer the tomboy
At thirteen she was far more voluptuous than Antha had been as a grown woman
She wore her black wavy hair long and parted in the middle, and held back by a
bit of lavender ribbon Her large blue eyes looked perpetually distrustful and
faintly bitter Indeed, the child had a bruised look to her, said the parish
gossips who saw her at Sunday Mass.
‘She was already a
beautiful woman,’ said one of the matrons who went to the chapel
regularly ‘And those old ladies didn’t know it They dressed her as
if she were still a child’
Legal gossip revealed other
problems One afternoon Deirdre rushed into the waiting room outside Cortland’s
office.
‘She was hysterical,’
said the secretary later ‘For an hour she screamed and cried in there
with her uncle And I’ll tell you something else, something I didn’t
even notice till she was leaving She wasn’t wearing matching shoes’
She had on one brown loafer and one black flat shoe I don’t think she
ever realized it Cortland took her home I don’t know that he noticed it
either I never saw her after that’
In the summer before Deirdre’s
fourteenth birthday, she was rushed to the new Mercy Hospital She had tried to
slash her wrists Beatrice went to see her.
‘That girl has a
spirit that Antha simply didn’t have,’ she told Juliette Milton ‘But
she needs womanly advice on things She wanted me to buy her cosmetics She said
she’s only been in a drugstore once in her entire life’
Beatrice brought the
cosmetics to the hospital, only to be told that Carlotta had put a stop to all
visits When Beatrice called Cortland, he confessed he didn’t know why
Deirdre had slit her wrists ‘Maybe she just wanted to get out of that
house’
That very week, Cortland
arranged for Deirdre to go to California She flew to Los Angeles to stay with
Garland’s daughter, Andrea Mayfair, who had married a doctor on the staff
of Cedars of Lebanon Hospital But Deirdre was home again at the end of two
weeks.
The Los Angeles Mayfairs
said nothing to anyone about what happened, but years afterwards their only
son, Elton, told investigators that his poor cousin from New Orleans was crazy
That she had believed herself to be cursed by some sort of legacy, that she had
talked of suicide to him, horrifying his parents That they had taken her to see
doctors who said she would never be normal.
‘My parents wanted to
help her, especially my mother But the entire family was disrupted I think what
really finished it however was that they saw her out in the backyard one night
with a man, and she wouldn’t admit to it She kept denying it And they
were afraid something would happen She was thirteen, I believe, and very pretty
They sent her home’
Beatrice recounted pretty
much the same story to Juliette Milton ‘I think Deirdre looks too mature,’
she said But she wouldn’t believe Deirdre had lied about male companions ‘She’s
confused ’ And Beatrice was adamant that there was no congenital insanity
That was just a family legend that Carlotta had started, and one which really
ought to be stopped
Beatrice went up to First
Street to see Deirdre and take her some presents Nancy wouldn’t let her
in.
The same mysterious male companion
was responsible for Deirdre’s most traumatic expulsion from St Rose de
Lima boarding school when she was sixteen Deirdre had attended the school for a
full semester without mishap, and was in the middle of the spring term when the
incident occurred Family gossip said Deirdre had been blissfully happy at St Ro’s,
that she had told Cortland she never wanted to go home Even over Christmas,
Deirdre had remained at the boarding school, only going out with Cortland for
an early supper on Christmas Eve.
Yet she loved the swings in
the back play yard, which were big enough for the older children, and at
twilight she would sing songs there with another girl, Rita Mae Dwyer (later
Lonigan), who remembered Deirdre as a rare and special person, elegant and
innocent; romantic and sweet.
As recently as 1988, more
data was obtained about this expulsion directly from Rita Mae Dwyer Lonigan in
a conversation with this investigator.
Deirdre’s ’mysterious
friend’ met her in the nuns’ garden in the moonlight, and spoke softly
but audibly enough for Rita Mae to hear. ‘He called her "my
beloved," ’ Rita Mae told me. She had never heard such romantic
words spoken except in a movie.
Defenseless and sobbing
bitterly, Deirdre did not utter a word when the nuns accused her of ’bringing
a man on to the school grounds.’ They had spied upon Deirdre and her male
companion, peering through the slats in the convent kitchen into the garden
where the two met in the dark. ‘This was no boy,’ said one of the
nuns in a rage afterwards to the assembled boarders. ‘This was a man! A
grown man!’
The record from the period
is almost vicious in its condemnations. ‘The girl is deceitful. She
allowed the man to touch her indecently Her innocence is a complete facade’
There can be no doubt that
this mysterious companion was Lasher. He is described by the nuns, and later by
Mrs Lonigan, as having brown hair and brown eyes, and beautiful old-fashioned
clothes.
But the remarkable point is
that Rita Mae Lonigan, unless she is exaggerating, actually heard Lasher speak.
Other startling information
given us by Mrs Lonigan is that Deirdre had the Mayfair emerald in her
possession at the boarding school, that she showed it to Rita Mae, and showed
her a word engraved on the back of it ‘Lasher ’ If Rita Mae’s
story is true, Deirdre knew little about her mother or her grandmother. She
understood that the emerald had come to her from these women, but she did not
even know how Stella or Antha had died.
It was common knowledge in
the family in 1956 that Deirdre was crushed by her expulsion from St Rose de
Lima’s She was admitted to St Ann’s Asylum for six weeks. Though
the records have proved unobtainable, nurses gossiped that Deirdre begged for
shock treatment, and was given it twice. She was at this point almost seventeen.
From what we know of medical
practice at this period, we can safely conclude that these treatments involved
a higher voltage than is common now; they were probably very dangerous,
resulting in a loss of memory for hours if not days.
Why a whole course was not
pursued as was the custom we do not know Cortland was dead set against the
shock treatment, or so he told Beatrice Mayfair. He couldn’t believe in
something so drastic for one so young.
‘What is wrong with
that girl?’ Juliette asked Beatrice finally, to which Beatrice answered, ‘Nobody
knows, darling. Nobody knows’
Carlotta brought Deirdre
home from the asylum, and there she languished for another month
Relentless canvassing by our
investigators indicated that a dark shadowy figure was often seen with Deirdre
in the garden A delivery-man from Solan’s grocery was ‘scared out
of his wits’ as he was leaving the property when he saw’that
wild-eyed girl and that man’ in the tall bamboo thicket by the old pool.
A spinster who lived on
Prytama Street saw the pair in the chapel after dark. ‘I told Miss Belle
I stopped by the gate the following morning. I didn’t think it was quite
proper. It had happened in the evening, just after dark. I went into the chapel
to light a candle and say my rosary as I always do, and there she was in a back
pew with this man. I could scarcely see them at first I was a little frightened
Then when she got up and hurried out I saw her clearly under the street lamp It
was Deirdre Mayfair I don’t know what happened to the young man.’
Several other persons
reported similar sightings. The images were always the same - Deirdre and the
mysterious young man in the shadows. Deirdre and the mysterious young man
flushed from their place, or peering out at the stranger in an unsettling
manner We have fifteen different variations on these two themes.
Some of these stories
reached Beatrice on Esplanade Avenue ‘I don’t know if anyone is
watching out for her And she is so . so well developed physically,’ she
told Juliette. Juliette went with Beatrice to First Street.
‘The girl was
wandering in the garden. Beatrice went up to the fence and called to her For a
few minutes she didn’t seem to know who Bea was. Then she went to get the
key to the gate. Of course Bea did all the talking after that. But the girl is
shockingly beautiful It has to do with the strangeness of her personality as
much as anything else She seems wild and deeply suspicious of people, and at
the same time keenly interested in things about her. She fell in love with a
cameo I was wearing. I gave it to her, and she was absolutely childlike in her
delight. I hesitate to add that she was barefoot and wearing a filthy cotton
dress.’
As fall came on, there were
more reports of fights and screaming. Neighbors went so far as to call the police
on two different occasions. Of the first occasion in September I was personally
able, two years later, to obtain a full account.
‘I didn’t like
going there,’ the officer told me ‘You know, bothering these Garden
District families just isn’t my line. And that lady really put us through
it at the front door. It was Carlotta Mayfair, the one they call Miss Carl; the
one who works for the judge.
‘"Who called you
here? What do you want? Who are you? Let me see your identification. I’ll
have to talk to Judge Byrnes about this if you come here again." Finally
my partner said that people had heard the young lady in the house screaming,
and we would like to talk to her and make certain for ourselves she was all
right. I thought Miss Carl was going to kill him on the spot. But she went and
got the young girl, Deirdre Mayfair, the one they talk about She was crying and
shaking all over. She said to my partner, C J., "You make her give me my
mother’s things. She took my mother’s things."
‘Miss Carl said she
had had enough of this "intrusion," that this was a family argument
and the police weren’t needed here If we didn’t leave, she’d
call Judge Byrnes. Then this girl, Deirdre, ran out of the house and towards
the squad car. "Take me away!" she screamed.
‘Then something
happened to Miss Carl She was looking at the girl standing at the curb by our
squad car, and she started crying. She tried to hide it. She took out her
handkerchief and covered her face But we could see, the lady was crying. The
girl really had the lady at her wit’s ends.
‘C.J. said, "Miss
Carl, what do you want us to do?" She went past him down to the sidewalk,
and she laid her hand on the girl and she said, "Deirdre, do you want to
go back to the asylum? Please, Deirdre. Please." And then she just broke down.
She couldn’t talk. The girl stared at her, all wide-eyed and crazy, and
then she broke into sobs.
And Miss Carl put her arm
around the girl and took her back up the steps and inside.’
‘Are you sure it was
Carl?’ I asked the officer.
‘Oh, yeah, everybody
knows her. Boy. I’ll never forget her. She called the captain the next
day and tried to have C J. and me fired’
A different squad car
answered the neighbor’s call a week later. All we know of this occasion
is that Deirdre was trying to leave the house when the police arrived; they
persuaded her to sit down on the porch steps and wait until her Uncle Cortland
arrived.
Deirdre ran away the
following day. Legal gossip reports of numerous phone calls back and forth, of
Cortland rushing up to First Street, and Mayfair and Mayfair calling the New
York cousins in search for Deirdre as they had when Antha disappeared years
before.
Amanda Grady Mayfair was
dead Dr Cornell Mayfair’s mother, Rosalind Mayfair, wanted nothing to do
with’the First Street crowd’ as she called them Nevertheless she
called the other New York cousins. Then the police contacted Cortland in New
Orleans Deirdre had been found wandering around barefoot and incoherent in
Greenwich Village. There was some evidence that she had been raped. Cortland
flew to New York that night. The following morning he brought Deirdre back with
him.
The repeat of history came
full circle with Deirdre’s second commitment to St Ann’s Asylum. A
week later she was released, and went to live with Cortland in his old family
home in Metairie.
Family gossip described
Carlotta as beaten down and discouraged She told Judge Byrnes and his wife that
she had failed with her niece She feared the girl would ’never be normal.’
When Beatrice Mayfair went
to call on Carlotta one Saturday, she found her sitting alone in the parlor at
First Street with all the curtains drawn Carlotta wouldn’t talk
‘I realized later she
had been staring at the very spot where they put the coffin in the old days
when the funerals were still at home. All she said to me was yes or no, or
hmmmm when I asked her questions. Finally that horrible Nancy came in and
offered me some iced tea. She acted put upon when I accepted. I told her I
would get it myself and she said, oh, no Aunt Carl wouldn’t have that’
When Beatrice had had her
fill of sadness and rudeness she left.
She went out to Metame to
visit Deirdre at Cortland’s house on Country Club Lane.
This house had been in the
Mayfair family since Cortland built it when he was a young man. A brick mansion
with white columns and French windows and every ’modern convenience,’
it later passed to Ryan Mayfair, Pierce’s son, who lives there now. For
years Sheffield and Eugenie Mayfair shared it with Cortland. Their only child,
Elbe Mayfair, the woman who later adopted Deirdre’s daughter, Rowan, was
born in this house.
At this period, Sheffield
Mayfair had already died of a heart attack; Eugenie had been gone for years.
Ellie lived in California, where she had just gotten married to a lawyer named
Graham Franklin. And Cortland lived in the Metaine mansion on his own.
By all reports, the house
was extremely cheerful, filled with bright colors, gay wallpaper, traditional
furnishings, and books Numerous French doors opened on the garden, the pool,
and the front lawn.
The entire family seems to
have thought it was the best place for Deirdre Metaine had none of the gloom of
the Garden District. Cortland assured Beatrice that Deirdre was resting, that
the girl’s problems had been compounded by a lot of secrecy and bad
judgment on the part of Carlotta.
‘But he won’t
really tell me what’s happening,’ Beatrice complained to Juliette ‘He
never does. What does he mean, secrecy?’
Beatrice queried the maid by
phone whenever she could. Deirdre was just fine, said the maid. The girl’s
color was excellent She had even had a guest, a very nice-looking young man The
maid had only seen him for a second or two - he and Deirdre had been out in the
garden - but he was a handsome, gentlemanly sort of young man.
‘Now, who could that
be?’ Beatrice wondered over lunch with Juliette Milton ‘Not that
same scoundrel who sneaked into the nuns’ garden to bother her at St Ro’s!’
‘Seems to me,’
wrote Juliette to her London contact, ‘that this family does not realize
this girl has a lover. I mean one lover — one very distinguished and
easily recognized lover, who is seen in her company over and over. All the
descriptions of this young man are the same!’
The significant thing about
this story is that Juliette Milton had never heard any rumors about ghosts, witches,
curses, or the like associated with the Mayfair family She and Beatrice truly
believed this mysterious person was a human being
Yet at the very same time,
in the Irish Channel old people gossiped over kitchen tables about ‘Deirdre
and the man ’ And by ‘the man,’ they did not mean a human
being The elderly sister of Father Lafferty knew about ‘the man.’
She tried to talk to her brother about it; but he would not confide in her. She
gossiped with an elderly friend named Dave Collins about it; she gossiped with
our investigator, who walked along with her on Constance Street as she made her
way home from Sunday Mass
Miss Rosie, who worked in
the sacristy, changing the altar cloths and seeing to the sacramental wine,
also knew the shocking facts about those Mayfairs and ‘the man.’ ‘First
it was Stella, then Antha, now Deirdre,’ she told her nephew, a college
boy at Loyola who thought she was a superstitious fool.
An old black maid who lived
in the same block knew all about’that man ’ He was the family
ghost, that’s who he was, and the only ghost she ever saw in broad
daylight, sitting with that girl in the back garden. That girl was going to
hell when she died.
It was at this point, in the
summer of 1958, that I prepared to go to New Orleans.
I had finished putting the
entire Mayfair history into an early version of the foregoing narrative, which
was substantially the same as what the reader has only just read And I was
deeply and passionately concerned about Deirdre Mayfair.
I felt that her psychic
powers, and especially her ability to see and communicate with spirits, were
driving her out of her mind.
After numerous discussions
with Scott Reynolds, our new director, and several meetings with the entire
council, it was decided that I should make the trip, and that I should use my
own judgment as to whether Deirdre Mayfair was old enough or stable enough to
be approached
Elaine Barrett, one of the
oldest and most experienced members of the Talamasca, had died the preceding
year, and I was now considered (undeservedly) the leading expert in the
Talamasca on witch families My credentials were never questioned. And indeed,
those who had been most frightened by the deaths of Stuart Townsend and Arthur Langtry
— and most likely to forbid my going to New Orleans — were no
longer alive.
TWENTY-THREE
THE
FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES
PART
IX
The Story of Deirdre Mayfair
Revised Completely 1989
I ARRIVED in New Orleans in
July of 1958, and immediately checked into a small, informal French Quarter
hotel. I then proceeded to meet with our ablest professional investigators, and
to consult some public records, and to satisfy myself upon other points.
Over the years we had
acquired the names of several people close to the Mayfair family. I attempted
contact. With Richard Llewellyn I was quite successful, as has already been
described, and this report alone occupied me for days.
I also managed ‘to run
into’ a young lay teacher from St Rose de Lima’s who had known
Deirdre during her months there, and more or less clarified the reasons for the
expulsion. Tragically this young woman believed Deirdre to have had an affair
with ’an older man’ and to have been a vile and deceitful girl.
Other girls had known of the Mayfair emerald. It was concluded that Deirdre had
stolen it from her aunt. For why else would the child have had such a valuable
jewel at school?
The more I talked with the
woman the more I realized that Deirdre’s aura of sensuality had made an
impression on those around her. ‘She was so… mature, you know. A
young girl has no business really having enormous breasts like that at the age
of sixteen.’
Poor Deirdre. I found myself
on the verge of asking whether or not the teacher thought mutilation was
appropriate in these circum stances, then terminated the interview. I went back
to the hotel, drank a stiff brandy, and lectured myself on the dangers
of becoming emotionally involved.
Unfortunately I was no less
emotional when I visited the Garden District the following day, and the day
after that, during which time I spent hours walking through the quiet streets
and observing the First Street house from all angles. After years of reading of
this place and its inhabitants, I found this extremely exciting. But if ever a
house exuded an atmosphere of evil, it was this house.
Why? I asked myself.
By this time it was
extremely neglected. The violet paint had faded from the masonry. Weeds and
tiny ferns grew in crevices on the parapets. Flowering vines covered the side
galleries so that the ornamental ironwork was scarcely visible, and the wild
cherry laurels screened the garden from view.
Nevertheless it ought to
have been romantic. Yet in the heavy summer heat, with the burnished sun
shining drowsily and dustily through the trees, the place looked damp and dark
and decidedly unpleasant. During the idle hours that I stood contemplating it,
I noted that passersby invariably crossed the street when they approached it.
And though its flagstone walk was slick with moss and cracked from the roots of
the oak trees, so were other sidewalks in the area which people did not seek to
avoid.
Something evil lived in this
house, lived and breathed as it were, and waited, and perhaps mourned.
Accusing myself again, and
with reason, of being overemotional, I defined my terms. This something was
evil because it was destructive. It ’lived and breathed’ in the
sense that it influenced the environment and its presence could be felt. As for
my belief that this ‘something’ was in mourning, I needed only to
remind myself that no workman had made any repairs on the place since Stella’s
death. Since Stella’s death the decline had been steady and unbroken. Did
not the thing want the house to rot even as Stella’s body decayed in the
grave?
Ah, so many unanswered
questions. I went to the Lafayette Cemetery and visited the Mayfair tomb. A
kindly caretaker volunteered the information that there were always fresh
flowers in the stone vases before the face of the crypt, though no one ever saw
the person who put them there.
‘Do you think it is
some old lover of Stella Mayfair’s?’ I asked.
‘Oh, no,’ said
the elderly man, with a cracking laugh. ‘Good heavens, no. It’s
him, that’s who it is, the Mayfair ghost. He’s the one that puts
those flowers there. And you want to know something? Sometimes he takes them
off the altar at the chapel. You know, the chapel, down there on Prytania and
Third? Father Morgan came here one afternoon just steaming Seems he had just
put out the gladiolus, and there they were in the vases before the Mayfair
grave He went by and rang the bell over there on First Street. I heard Miss
Carl told him to go to hell.’ The man laughed and laughed at such an
idea… somebody telling a priest to go to hell.
Renting a car, I drove down
the river road to Riverbend and explored what was left of the plantation, and
then I called our undercover society investigator, Juliette Milton, and invited
her to lunch.
She was more than happy to
provide me with an introduction to Beatrice Mayfair. Beatrice agreed to meet me
for lunch, accepting without the slightest question my superficial explanation
that I was interested in southern history and the history of the Mayfair
family.
Beatrice Mayfair was
thirty-five years old, an attractively dressed dark-haired woman with a
charming blend of southern and New Orleans (Brooklyn, Boston) accent, and
something of a ‘rebel’ as far as the family was concerned.
For three hours she talked
to me nonstop at Galatoire’s, pouring out all sorts of little stories
about the Mayfair family, and verifying what I had already suspected, that
little or nothing was known in the present time about the family’s remote
past. It was the most vague sort of legend, in which names were confused, and
scandal had become near preposterous.
Beatrice didn’t know
who built Riverbend, or when. Or even who had built First Street. She thought
Julien had built it. As for stories of ghosts and legends of purses full of
coins, she had believed all that when she was young, but not now. Her mother
had been born at First Street (this woman, Alice Mayfair, was the second to the
last daughter of Remy Mayfair; Millie Dear, or Miss Millie as she was known,
was Remy’s youngest child, and Beatrice’s aunt) and she had said
some awfully strange things about that house. But she’d left it when she
was only seventeen to marry Aldrich Mayfair, a great-grandson of Maurice Mayfair,
and Aldrich didn’t like Beatrice’s mother to talk about that house.
‘Both my parents are
so secretive,’ said Beatrice ‘I don’t think my dad really
remembers anything anymore He’s past eighty, and my mother just won’t
tell me things I myself didn’t marry a Mayfair, you know. My husband
knows nothing about the family, really ’ (Note Beatrice’s husband
died of throat cancer in the seventies ) ‘I don’t remember Mary
Beth. I was only two years old when she died I have some pictures of myself at
her feet at one of the reunions, you know, with all the other little Mayfair
babies But I remember Stella Oh, I loved Stella. I loved her so
‘It kills me not to be
able to go up there. Years ago I stopped visiting Aunt Millie Dear She’s
sweet, but she doesn’t really know who I am. Every time I have to say, I’m
Alice’s daughter, Remy’s granddaughter She remembers for a little
while and then blanks out. And Carlotta doesn’t really want me there. She
doesn’t want anyone there She’s simply awful. She killed that
house! She drove all the life out of it. I don’t care what anyone else
says, she’s to blame’
‘Do you believe the
house is haunted, that there’s something evil perhaps .’
‘Oh’ Carlotta.
She’s evil! But you know, if it’s that sort of thing you’re
after, well, it’s too bad you couldn’t have talked to Amanda Grady
Mayfair. She was Cortland’s wife She’s been dead for years. She
believed some fantastic things! But it was interesting actually Well, in a way.
They said that was why she left Cortland She said Cortland knew the house was
haunted That he could see and talk to spirits. I was always shocked that a
grown woman would believe things like that! But she became completely convinced
of some sort of Satanic plot I think Stella caused all that, inadvertently I
was too young then to really know. But Stella was no evil person! No voodoo
queen Stella went to bed with anybody and everybody, and if that’s
witchcraft, well, half the city of New Orleans ought to be burnt at the stake’
. . And so on it went, the
gossip becoming slightly more intimate and reckless as Beatrice continued to
pick at her food and smoke Pall Mall cigarettes.
‘Deirdre’s
oversexed,’ she said, ‘that’s all that’s wrong with her
She’s been ridiculously sheltered No wonder she takes up with strange
men. I’m relying upon Cortland to take care of Deirdre. Cortland has
become the venerable elder of the family. And he is certainly the only one who
can stand up to Carlotta. Now, that’s a witch in my book. Carlotta. She
gives me the shivers. They ought to get Deirdre away from her.’
Indeed, there was already
some talk about a school in Texas, a little university where Deirdre might go
in the fall. It seemed that Rhonda Mayfair, a great-granddaughter of Suzette’s
sister Marianne (this was an aunt of Cortland’s), had married a young man
in Texas who taught at this school. It was in fact a small state school for
women, heavily endowed, and with many of the traditions and accoutrements of an
expensive private school. The whole question was, would that awful Carlotta let
Deirdre go. ‘Now, Carlotta. That is a witch!’
Once more, Beatrice became
quite worked up on the subject of Carlotta, her criticisms including Carlotta’s
style of dressing (business suits) and style of talking (businesslike), when
abruptly she leaned across the table and said:
‘And you know that
witch killed Irwin Dandrich, don’t you?’
Not only did I not know
this, I had never heard the faintest whisper of such a thing. It had been
reported to us in 1952 that Dandrich died of a heart attack in his apartment
some time after four in the afternoon It had been well-known that he had a
heart condition.
‘I talked to him,’
Beatrice said, her manner one of great self-importance and thinly concealed
drama. ‘I talked to him the day he died. He said Carlotta had called
Carlotta had accused him of spying on the family, and had said, "Well, if
you want to know about us, come up here to First Street. I’ll tell you
more than you’ll ever want to hear." I told him not to go. I said
"She’ll sue you. She’ll do something terrible to you She’s
out of her mind." But he wouldn’t listen to me. "I’m
going to see that house for myself," he said. "Nobody I know has been
in it since Stella died " I made him promise to call me as soon as he got
home. Well, he never did call me. He died that very afternoon. She poisoned him
I know she did She poisoned him And they said it was a heart attack when they
found him. She poisoned him but she gave it to him so he could go home on his
own steam and die in his own bed.’
‘What makes you so
certain?’ I asked.
‘Because it isn’t
the first time something like that has happened. Deirdre told Cortland there
was a dead body in the attic of the house at First Street Yes, a dead body’
‘Cortland told you
this?’
She nodded gravely. ‘Poor
Deirdre She tells these doctors things like that and they give her shock
treatment1 Cortland thinks she’s seeing things‘" She shook her
head ‘That’s Cortland He believes the house is haunted, that there
are ghosts up there you can talk to! But a body in the attic? Oh, no, he won’t
believe in that!’ She laughed softly, then became extremely serious ‘But
I’ll bet it’s true I remember something about a young man who
disappeared right before Stella died. I heard about it years later. Aunt Millie
Dear said something about it to my cousin, Angela. Later on, Dandrich told me
about it. The police were looking for him Private detectives were looking. A
Texan from England, Irwin said, who had actually spent the night with Stella,
and then just disappeared
‘I’ll tell you
who else knew about it. Amanda knew about it Last time I saw her in New York we
were rehashing the whole thing, and she said, "And what about that man who
strangely disappeared1" Of course she connected it with Cornell, you know
the one who died in the hotel downtown after he called on Carlotta I tell you,
she poisons them and they go home and die afterwards It’s one of those
chemicals with a delayed effect This Texan was some sort of historian from
England. Knew about our family’s past —’
Suddenly she made a
connection I was a historian from England She laughed. ‘Mr Llghtner, you
better watch your step!’ she said. She sat back laughing softly to
herself
‘I suppose you’re
right But you don’t really believe all this, do you, Miss Mayfair?’
She thought for a moment ‘Well,
I do and I don’t.’ Again, she laughed. ‘I wouldn’t put
anything past Carlotta. But if the truth be known, the woman’s too dull
to actually poison somebody But I thought about it’ I thought about it
when Irwin Dandrich died I loved Irwin. And he did die right after he went to
see Carlotta I hope Deirdre goes to college in Texas And if Carlotta invites
you up for tea, don’t go!’
‘About the ghost
particularly . ’ I said. (Throughout this interview, it was rarely
necessary for me to complete a sentence )
‘Oh, which one! There’s
the ghost of Julien - everybody’s seen that ghost. I thought I saw it
once. And then there’s the spook that throws over people’s ladders.
That’s a regular invisible man.’
‘But isn’t there
one whom they call "the man"?’
She had never heard that
expression. But I ought to talk to Cortland. That is, if Cortland would talk to
me. Cortland didn’t like outsiders asking him questions. Cortland lived
in a family world.
We parted ways at the corner
as I helped her into her taxi. ‘If you do talk to Cortland,’ she
said,’don’t tell him you talked to me. He thinks I’m an awful
gossip. But do ask him about that Texan. You never know what he might say.’
As soon as the cab drove
away, I called Juliette Milton, our society spy.
‘Don’t ever go
near the house,’ I said. ‘Don’t ever have anything to do
personally with Carlotta Mayfair. Don’t ever go to lunch again with
Beatrice. We’ll give you a handsome check. Simply bow out.’
‘But what did I do?
What did I say? Beatrice is an impossible gossip She tells everyone those
stories. I haven’t repeated anything that wasn’t common knowledge.’
‘You’ve done a
fine ]ob. But there are dangers Definite dangers. Just do as I say.’
‘Oh, she told you that
about Carlotta killing people That’s non-sense. Carlotta’s an old
stick. To hear her tell it, Carlotta went to New York and killed Deirdre’s
father, Sean Lacy. Now, that is sheer nonsense!’
I repeated my warnings, or
orders, for what they were worth.
The following day I drove
out to Metaine, parked my car, and took a walk in the quiet streets around
Cortland’s house. Except for the large oak trees and the soft velvet
green of the grass, the neighborhood had nothing of the atmosphere of New
Orleans. It might as well have been a rich suburb near Houston, Texas, or
Oklahoma City. Very beautiful, very restful, very seemingly safe. I saw nothing
of Deirdre. I hoped she was happy in this wholesome place
I was convinced that I must
see her from afar before I attempted to speak to her. In the meantime, I tried
to make direct contact with Cortland, but he did not return my calls. Finally
his secretary told me he did not want to talk to me, that he had heard I’d
been talking to his cousins and he wished that I would leave the family alone.
I was undecided as to
whether I should press the matter with Cortland. Same old questions that always
plague us at such junctures - what were my obligations, my goals? I left the
message finally that I had a great deal of information about the Mayfair
family, going back to the i6oos, and would welcome an interview I never
received a response.
The following week, I
learned from Juliette Milton that Deirdre had just left for Texas Woman’s
University in Denton, Texas, where Rhonda Mayfair’s husband, Ellis
Clement, taught English to small classes of well-bred girls. Carlotta was
absolutely against it; it had been done without her permission, and Carlotta
was not speaking to Cortland.
Cortland had driven Deirdre
to Texas, and remained long enough to see that she was comfortable in the home
of Rhonda Mayfair and Ellis Clement, and then came home.
It was not difficult for us
to ascertain that Deirdre had been admitted as a ‘special student,’
educated at home She had been assigned a private room in the freshman
dormitory, and was registered for a full schedule of routine course work.
I arrived in Denton two days
later. Texas Woman’s University was a lovely little school situated on
low rolling green hills with vine-covered brick buildings, and neatly tended
lawns. It was quite impossible to believe that it was a state institution
At the age of thirty-six,
with prematurely gray hair and addicted to well-tailored linen suits, I found
it effortlessly easy to roam about the campus, probably passing for a faculty
member to anyone who took notice. I stopped on benches for long periods to
write in my notebook. I browsed in the small open library I wandered the halls
of the old buildings, exchanging pleasantries with a few elderly women teachers
and with fresh-faced young women in blouses and pleated skirts
I caught my first glimpse of
Deirdre unexpectedly on the second day after my arrival. She came out of the
freshman dormitory, a modest Georgian-style building, and walked for about an
hour around the campus - a lovely young woman with long loose black hair,
strolling idly up and down small winding paths beneath old trees. She wore the
usual cotton blouse and skirt.
Seeing her at last
overwhelmed me with confusion. I was glimpsing a great celebrity. And as I
followed her, at a remove, I suffered unanticipated agonies over what I was
doing. Should I leave this woman alone? Should I tell her what I knew of her
early history? What right had I to be here?
In silence, I watched her
return to her dormitory. The following morning, I followed her to the first of
her classes, and then afterwards into a large basement canteen area where she
drank coffee alone at a small table and put nickels into the jukebox over and
over to play one selection repeatedly - a mournful Gershwin tune sung by Nina
Simone.
It seemed to me she was
enjoying her freedom. She read for a while, then sat looking around her. I
found myself utterly unable to move from the chair and go towards her. I
dreaded frightening her. How terrible to discover that one is being followed. I
left before she did and went back to my little downtown hotel.
That afternoon, I again
wandered the campus, and as soon as I approached her dormitory, she appeared.
This time she wore a white cotton dress with short sleeves and a beautifully
fitted bodice, and a rather loose billowy skirt.
Once again, she appeared to
be walking aimlessly; however this time she took an unexpected turn towards the
back of the campus, so to speak, away from the groomed lawns and the traffic,
and I soon found myself following her into a large, deeply neglected botanical
garden - a place so shadowy and wild and overgrown that I became
fearful for her as she proceeded, way ahead of me, along the uneven path.
At last the large stands of
bamboo blotted out all signs of the distant dormitories, and all noise from the
even more distant streets. The air felt heavy as it feels in New Orleans, yet
slightly more dry.
I came down a small walkway
over a little bridge, and looked up to see Deirdre facing me as she stood quite
still beneath a large flowering tree. She lifted her right hand and beckoned
for me to come closer. Were my eyes deceiving me? No. She was staring straight
at me.
‘Mr Lightner,’
she said, ’what is it you want?’ Her voice was low, and faintly
tremulous. She seemed neither angry nor afraid. I was unable to answer her. I
realized suddenly she was wearing the May-fair emerald around her neck. It must
have been under her dress when she came out of the dormitory. Now it was
plainly in view.
A tiny alarm sounded inside
me. I struggled to say something simple and honest and thoughtful. Instead, I
said, ‘I’ve been following you, Deirdre.’
‘Yes,’ she said,
‘I know.’
She turned her back to me,
beckoning for me to follow, and went down a narrow overgrown set of steps to a
near secret place where cement benches formed a circle, all but hidden from the
main path. The bamboo was crackling faintly in the breeze. The smell of the
nearby pond was rank. But the spot had an undeniable beauty to it.
She settled on the bench,
her dress a shining whiteness in the shadows, the emerald flashing against her
breast.
Danger, Lightner, I said to
myself. You are in danger.
‘Mr Lightner,’
she said, looking up as I sat opposite, ’just tell me what you want!’
‘Deirdre, I know many
things,’ I said. ‘Things about you and your mother, and your mother’s
mother, and about her mother before her. History, secrets, gossip,
genealogies… all sorts of things really. In a house in Amsterdam there is
a portrait of a woman, your ancestor. Her name was Deborah. She was the one who
bought that emerald from a jeweler in Holland hundreds of years ago.’
None of this seemed to
surprise her. She was studying me, obviously scanning for lies and ill
intentions. I myself was unaccountably shaken. I was talking to Deirdre
Mayfair. I was sitting with Deirdre Mayfair at last.
‘Deirdre,’ I
said, ‘tell me if you want to know what I know. Do you want to see the
letters of a man who loved your ancestor, Deborah? Do you want to hear how she
died in France, and how her daughter came across the sea to Saint-Domingue? On
the day she died, Lasher brought a storm to the village…’
I stopped. It was as if the
words had dried up in my mouth. Her face had undergone a shocking change. For a
moment I thought it was rage that had overwhelmed her. Then I realized it was
some consuming inner struggle.
‘Mr Lightner,’
she whispered, ‘I don’t want to know. I want to forget what I do
know. I came here to get away.’
‘Ah.’ I said
nothing for a moment.
I could feel her growing
more calm. I was the one at a loss, quite completely. Then she said:
‘Mr Lightner’
— her voice very steady yet infused with emotion — ’my aunt
says that you study us because you believe we are special people. That you
would help the evil in us, out of curiosity, if you could. No, don’t
misunderstand me. She means that by talking about the evil, you would feed it.
By studying it, you would give it more life.’ Her soft blue eyes pleaded
for my understanding. How remarkably poised she seemed; how surprisingly calm.
‘I understand your aunt’s
point of view," I said. In fact, I was amazed. Amazed that Carlotta
Mayfair knew who we were, or understood even that much of our purpose. And then
I thought of Stuart. Stuart must have spoken to her. There was the proof of it.
This, and a thousand other thoughts were crowding my brain.
‘It’s like the
spiritualists, Mr Lightner,’ Deirdre said in the same polite sympathetic
manner. ‘They want to speak with the spirits of dead ancestors; and in
spite of all their good intentions, they merely strengthen demons about whom
they understand nothing…’
‘Yes, I know what you’re
saying, believe me I know. I wanted only to give you the information, to let
you know that if you…"
‘But you see, I don’t
want it. I want to put the past behind me.’ Her voice faltered slightly. ‘I
want never to go home again.’
‘Very well then,’
I said. ‘I understand perfectly. But will you do this for me? Memorize my
name. Take this card from me. Memorize the phone numbers on it. Call me if ever
you need me.’
She took the card from me.
She studied it for a length of time and then slipped it into her pocket.
I found myself looking at
her in silence, looking into her large innocent blue eyes, and trying not to
dwell upon the beauty of her young body, her exquisitely molded breasts in the
cotton dress. Her face seemed full of sadness to me in the shadows.
‘He’s the devil,
Mr Lightner,’ she whispered. ‘He really is.’
‘Then why are you
wearing the emerald, my dear?’ I asked her impulsively.
A smile came over her face.
She reached for it, closing her right hand around it, and then pulled hard on
it so the chain broke. ‘For one very definite reason, Mr Lightner. It was
the simplest way to bring it here, and I mean to give it to you.’ She
reached out and dropped it in my hand.
I looked down at it, scarce
believing that I was holding the thing.
Off the top of my head, I
said, ‘He’ll kill me, you know. He’ll kill me and he’ll
take it back.’
‘No, he can’t do
that!’ she said. She stared at me blankly, in shock.
‘Of course he can,’
I said. But I was ashamed that I’d made such a statement. ‘Deirdre,
let me tell you what I know about this spirit. Let me tell you what I know
about others who see such things. You are not alone in this. You needn’t
fight it alone.’
‘Oh God,’ she
whispered. She closed her eyes for an instant. ‘He can’t do that,’
she said again, but there was no conviction. ‘I don’t believe he
can do something like that.’
‘I’ll take my
chances with him,’ I said. ‘I’ll take the emerald. Some
people have weapons of their own, so to speak. I can help you understand your
weapons. Does your aunt do this? Tell me what you want of me.’
‘That you go away,’
she said miserably. ‘That you… that you… never speak to me
about these things again.’
‘Deirdre, can he make
you see him when you don’t want him to come?’
‘I want you to stop
it, Mr Lightner. If I don’t think of him, if I don’t speak of him’
- she raised her hands to her temples - ’if I refuse to look at him,
maybe…’
‘What do you want? For
yourself.’
‘Life, Mr Lightner.
Normal life. You can’t imagine what the words mean to me! Normal life.
Life like they have, the girls over there in the dormitory, life with teddy
bears and boyfriends and kissing in the back of cars. Just life!’
She was now so upset that I
was fast becoming upset. And all this was so unforgivably dangerous. And yet she’d
put this thing in my hand! I felt of it, rubbing my thumb across it. It was so
cold, so hard.
I’m sorry, Deirdre, I’m
so sorry I disturbed you. I’m so sorry…’
‘Mr Lightner, can’t
you make him go away! Can’t you people do that? My aunt says no, only the
priest can do it, but the priest doesn’t believe in him, Mr Lightner. And
you can’t exorcise a demon when you have no faith.’
‘He doesn’t show
himself to the priest, does he, Deirdre?’
‘No,’ she said
bitterly with a trace of a smile. ‘What good would it do if he did? He’s
no lowly spirit who can be driven off with holy water and Hail Marys. He makes
fools of them.’
She had begun to cry. She
reached for the emerald and pulled it by its chain from my fingers, and then
flung it as far as she could through the underbrush. I heard it strike water,
with a dull short sound. She was shaking violently. ‘It’ll come
back,’ she said. ‘It will come back! It always comes back.’
‘Maybe you can
exorcise him!’ I said. ‘You and only you.’
‘Oh, yes, that’s
what she says, that’s what she always said. "Don’t look at
him, don’t speak to him, don’t let him touch you!" But he
always comes back. He doesn’t ask my permission! And…’
‘Yes.’
‘When I’m
lonely, when I’m miserable…’
‘He’s there.’
‘Yes, he’s there.’
This girl was in agony. Something
had to be done!
‘And what if he does
come, Deirdre? What I am saying is, what if you do not fight him, and you let
him come, let him be visible. What then?’
Stunned and hurt she looked
at me. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’
‘I know it’s
driving you mad to fight him. What happens if you don’t fight him?’
‘I die,’ she
answered. ‘And the world dies around me, and there’s only him.’
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.
How long she has lived with
this misery, I thought. And how strong she is, and so helpless and so afraid
‘Yes, Mr Lightner, that’s
true,’ she said ‘I am afraid. But I am not going to die. I’m
going to fight him. And I’m going to win. You’re going to leave me.
You’re never going to come near me again. And I’m never going to
say his name again, or look at him, or invite him to come. And he’ll
leave me. He’ll go away. He’ll find someone else to see him.
Someone… to love.’
‘Does he love you,
Deirdre?’
‘Yes,’ she
whispered. It was growing dark. I could no longer see her features clearly.
‘What does he want,
Deirdre?’ I asked.
‘You know what he
wants!’ she answered. ‘He wants me, Mr Lightner. The same thing you
want! Because I make him come through.’
She took a little knot of
handkerchief out of her pocket and wiped at her nose. ‘He told me you
were coming,’ she said. ‘He said something strange, something I can’t
remember It was like a curse, what he said. It was "I shall eat the meat
and drink the wine and have the woman when he is moldering in the grave "’
‘I’ve heard
those words before,’ I answered
‘I want you to go away,’
she said. ‘You’re a nice man. I like you. I don’t want him to
hurt you. I’ll tell him that he mustn’t —’ She stopped,
confused.
‘Deirdre, I believe I
can help you…"
‘No!’
‘I can help you fight
him if that’s your decision. I know people in England who…’
‘No!’
I waited, then said softly, ‘If
you ever need my help, call me.’ She didn’t answer. I could feel
her utter exhaustion. Her near despair. I told her where I was staying in
Denton, that I would be there until tomorrow, and that if I didn’t hear
from her I would go. I felt an utter failure, but I could not hurt her any
more! I gazed off into the whispering bamboo. It was getting darker and darker
And there were no lights in this rank garden.
‘But your aunt is
wrong about us,’ I said, unsure of her attention. I stared up at the
little bit of sky above which was now quite white ‘We want to tell you
what we know. We want to give you what we have. It’s true we care about
you because you are a special person, but we care far more about you than we
care about him You could come to our house in London. Stay there as long as you
like. We’ll introduce you to others who’ve seen such things,
battled them. We’ll help you. And who knows, perhaps we can somehow make
him go away. And any time you want to go, we’ll help you to go.’
(She didn’t answer.) ‘You know I’m speaking the truth,"
I said. ‘And I know that you know.’
I looked at her, quite
afraid to see the pain in her face. She was staring at me exactly the way she
had been before, her eyes sad and glazed with tears, and her hands limp in her
lap. And directly behind her, he stood, not
even an inch from her, brilliantly realized, staring with his brown eyes at me.
I cried out before I could
stop myself. Like a fool, I leapt to my feet.
‘What is it!’
she cried. She was terrified. She sprang up off the bench and threw herself in
my arms. ‘Tell me! What is it?’
He was gone. A gust of
heated breeze moved the towering shoots of bamboo. Nothing but shadows there.
Nothing but the rank closeness of the garden. And a gradual drop in
temperature. As if the door to a furnace room had been swung shut.
I closed my eyes, holding
her as firmly as I could, trying not to shake right out of my shoes, and to
comfort her, while I memorized what I had seen. A malicious young man, smiling
coldly as he stood behind her, clothes prim and dark and without detail as if
the entire energy of the being were absorbed in the lustrous eyes and the white
teeth and the gleaming skin. Otherwise he had been the man whom so many others
had described.
She was now quite
hysterical. Her hand was clamped over her mouth, and she was swallowing her
sobs. She pushed away from me roughly. And ran up the small overgrown stairs to
the path.
‘Deirdre!’ I
called out. But she was already out of sight in the darkness. I glimpsed a
smear of white through the distant trees, and then I did not even hear her
footfall any longer.
I was alone in the old
botanical garden, and it was dark, and I was mortally afraid for the first time
in my life. I was so afraid that I became angry. I started to follow her, or
rather the path she had taken, and I forced myself not to run, but to take one
firm step after another until at last I saw the distant lights of the
dormitories, and the service road behind them, and heard traffic, and felt once
again that I was safe.
Entering the freshman
dormitory, I inquired of the gray-haired woman at the desk as to whether
Deirdre Mayfair had just come in. She had. Safe and sound, I thought.
‘It’s supper
now, sir. You can leave a message if you like.’
‘Yes, of course, I’ll
call her later.’ I took out a small plain envelope, wrote Deirdre’s
name on it, then wrote a note explaining once more that I was at the hotel if
she wished to contact me, and placing my card in the envelope with the note, I
sealed the envelope and gave it to the woman for delivery, and went out.
Without mishap I reached the
hotel, went to my room, and rang London. It was an hour before my call could be
put through, during which time I lay there on the bed, with the phone beside
me, and all I could think was, I’ve seen him. I’ve seen the man. I’ve
seen the man for myself. I’ve seen what Petyr saw and what Arthur saw. I’ve
seen Lasher with my own eyes.
Scott Reynolds, our
director, was calm but adamant when I finally made the connection.
‘Get the hell out of
there. Come home.’
‘Take a deep breath,
Scott. I haven’t come this far to be frightened off by a spirit we have
studied from afar for three hundred years.’
‘This is how you use
your own judgment, Aaron? You who know the history of the Mayfair Witches from
beginning to end? The thing isn’t trying to frighten you. It’s
trying to entice you. It wants you to torment the girl with your inquiries. It’s
losing her, and you’re its hope of getting her back. The aunt, whatever
else she may be, is on to the truth. You make that girl talk to you about what
she’s been through and you’ll give that spirit the energy it wants.’
‘I’m not trying
to make her do anything, Scott. But I don’t think she is winning her
battle. I’m going back to New Orleans. I want to be near at hand.’
Scott was on the verge of
ordering me to leave when I pulled rank. I was older than he was. I had
declined the appointment as director. Hence he’d received it. I was not
going to be ordered off this case.
‘Well, this is like
offering a bromide to a person who’s burning to death, but don’t
drive back to New Orleans. Take the train.’
That was a surprisingly
welcome suggestion. No dark dismal shoulderless roads through the Louisiana
swampland. But a nice cheerful, crowded train.
The following day, I left a
note for Deirdre that I would be at the Royal Court in New Orleans. I drove the
rental car to Dallas and took the train back to New Orleans from there. It was
only an eight-hour trip, and I was able to write in my diary the entire way.
At length I considered what
had happened. The girl had renounced her history and her psychic powers. Her
aunt had reared her to reject the spirit, Lasher. But for years she’d
been losing the battle, quite obviously. But what if we gave her our
assistance? Might the hereditary chain be broken? Might the spirit depart the
family like a spirit fleeing a burning house which it has haunted for years?
Even as I wrote out these
thoughts, I was dogged by my remembrance of the apparition. The thing was so
powerful! It was more seemingly incarnate and powerful than any such phantom I
had ever beheld. Yet it had been a fragmentary image.
In my experience only the
ghosts of people who have very recently died appear with such seeming
substance. For example, the ghost of a pilot killed in action may appear on the
very day of his death in his sister’s parlor, and she will say after, ‘Why,
he was so real. I could see the mud on his shoes!’
Ghosts of the long departed
almost never had such density or vividness.
And discarnate entities?
They could possess bodies of the living and of the dead, yes, but appear on
their own with such solidity and such intensity?
This thing liked to appear,
didn’t it? Of course it did. That was why so many people saw it. It liked
to have a body if only for a split second. So it didn’t just speak with a
soundless voice to the witch, or make an image which existed entirely in her
mind. No, it made itself somehow material so that others saw it and even heard
it. And with great effort — perhaps very great effort, it could make
itself appear to cry or smile.
So what was the agenda of
this being? To gain strength so that it might make appearances of greater and
greater duration and perfection? And above all what was the meaning of the
curse, which in Petyr’s letter had read: ‘I shall drink the wine
and eat the meat and know the warmth of the woman when you are no longer even
bones’?
Lastly, why was it not
tormenting me or enticing me now? Had it used the energy of Deirdre to make
this appearance, or my energy? (I had seen very few spirits in my life. I was
not a strong medium. In fact, at that point, I had never seen an apparition
which could not have been explained as some sort of illusion created by light
and shadow, or an overactive mind.)
Perhaps foolishly I had the
feeling that as long as I was away from Deirdre it couldn’t do me harm.
What had happened with Petyr van Abel had to do with his powers of mediumship
and how the thing manipulated them. I had very little of that sort of power.
But it would be a very bad
mistake to underestimate the being. I needed to be on guard from here on out.
I arrived in New Orleans at
eight in the evening, and strange unpleasant little things began to happen at
once. I was nearly run down by a taxi outside Union Station. Then the taxi
which took me to my hotel nearly collided with another car as we pulled up to
the curb.
In the small lobby of the
Royal Court, a drunken tourist bumped into me and then tried to start a brawl.
Fortunately, his wife diverted him, apologizing repeatedly, as the bellhops
assisted her in getting the man upstairs. But my shoulder was bruised from this
small incident. I was shaken from the close calls in the cab.
Imagination, I thought. Yet
as I climbed the stairs to my first-floor room, a weak portion of the old
wooden railing came loose in my hands. I almost lost my balance. The bellhop
was immediately apologetic. An hour later, as I was noting all these things in
my diary, a fire broke out on the third floor of the hotel.
I stood in the cramped
French Quarter street with other uncomfort’ able guests for the better
part of an hour before it was determined that the small blaze had been put out
without smoke or water damage to any other rooms. ‘What was the cause?’
I asked. An embarrassed employee murmured something about rubbish in a storage
closet, and assured me that everything was all right.
For a long time, I
considered the situation. Really, all this might have been coincidence. I was
unharmed, and so was everyone else involved in these little incidents, and what
was required of me now was a stalwart frame of mind. I resolved to move just a
little bit more slowly through the world, to look around myself with greater
care, and to try to remain conscious of all that was going on around me at all
times.
The night passed without any
further mishap, though I slept very uneasily and woke often. And the following
morning after breakfast, I called our investigative detectives in London, asked
them to hire a Texas investigator and to find out as discreetly as possible
what he could about Deirdre Mayfair.
I then sat down and wrote a
long letter to Cortland. I explained who I was, what the Talamasca was, and how
we had followed the history of the Mayfair family since the seventeenth century
during which one of our representatives had rescued Deborah Mayfair from
serious jeopardy in her native Donnelaith. I explained about the Rembrandt of
Deborah in Amsterdam. I went on to explain that we were interested in Deborah’s
descendants because they seemed to possess genuine psychic powers, manifesting
in every generation, and we were desirous of making contact with the family,
with a view to sharing our records with those who were interested, and in
offering information to Deirdre Mayfair, who seemed to be a person deeply
burdened by her ability to see a spirit who in former times was called Lasher
and might still be called Lasher to this day.
‘Our representative,
Petyr van Abel, first glimpsed this spirit in Donnelalth in the i6oos. It has
been seen countless times since in the vicinity of your home on First Street. I
have only just seen it in another location, with my own eyes.’
I then copied out the
identical letter to Carlotta Mayfair, and after much consideration, put down
the address and phone number of my hotel. After all, what was the point of
hiding behind a post office box?
I drove up to First Street,
placed Carlotta’s letter in the mailbox, and then drove out to Metaine,
where I put Cortland’s letter through the slot in his door After that, I
found I was overcome by foreboding, and though I went back to my hotel, I did
not go up to mv room. Rather I told the desk I should be in the first-floor
bar, and there I remained all evening, slowly savoring a good sample of
Kentucky sipping whiskey and writing in my diary about the whole affair.
The bar was small and quiet,
and opened onto a charming courtyard, and though I sat with my back to this
view, facing the lobby doors for reasons I cannot quite explain, I enjoyed the
little place. The feeling of foreboding was slowly melting away.
At about eight o’clock,
I looked up from my diary to realize that someone was standing very near my
table. It was Cortland.
I had only just completed my
narrative of the Mayfair file, as indicated I had studied countless photographs
of Cortland. But it was not a photograph of Cortland which came to mind as our
eyes met.
The tall, black-haired man
smiling down at me was the image of Julien Mayfair, who had died in 1914. The
differences seemed unimportant. It was Julien with larger eyes, darker hair,
and perhaps a more generous mouth. But Julien nevertheless. And quite suddenly
the smile appeared grotesque. A mask.
I made a mental note of
these odd thoughts, even as I invited the man to sit down.
He was wearing a linen suit,
much like my own, with a pale lemon-colored shirt and pale tie.
Thank God it’s not
Carlotta, I thought, at which point he said: ‘I don’t think you
will hear from my cousin Carlotta. But I think it’s time you and I had a
talk.’ Very pleasant and completely insincere voice. Deeply southern but
in a unique New Orleans way The gleam in the dark eyes was charming and faintly
awful.
This man either hated me or
regarded me as a damnable nuisance. He turned and signaled the bartender. ‘Another
drink for Mr Lightner, please, and a sherry for me.’
He sat opposite me across
the little marble table, his long legs crossed and turned to one side. ‘You
don’t mind if I smoke, do you, Mr Lightner? Thank you.’ He withdrew
a beautiful gold cigarette case from his pocket, laid it down, offered me a
cigarette, and when I refused, lit one for himself. Again his cheerful demeanor
struck me as entirely contrived. I wondered how it might appear to a normal
person.
‘I’m so glad you’ve
come, Mr Mayfair,’ I said.
‘Oh, do call me
Cortland,’ he said. ‘There are so many Mr Mayfairs, after all.’
I felt danger emanating from
him, and made a conscious effort to veil my thoughts.
‘If you will call me
Aaron,’ I said, ‘I shall call you Cortland with pleasure.’
He gave a little nod. Then
he threw an offhanded smile at the young woman who set down our drinks, and at
once he took a sip of his sherry.
He was a compellingly
attractive person. His black hair was lustrous, and there was a touch of thin
mustache, dappled with gray, above his lip. It seemed the lines in his face
were an embellishment. I thought of Llewellyn and his descriptions of Julien,
which I had heard only a few days before. But I had to put all this out of my
mind completely. I was in danger. That was the overriding intuition and the man’s
subdued charm was part of it. He thought himself very attractive and very
clever. And both of these things he was.
I stared at the fresh
bourbon and water. And was suddenly struck by the position of his hand on his
gold cigarette case only an inch from the glass. I knew, absolutely knew, this
man meant to do me harm. How unexpected. I had thought it was Carlotta all
along.
‘Oh, excuse me,’
he said with a sudden look of surprise as though he had just remembered
something. ‘A medicine I have to take, that is, if I can find it.’
He felt of his pockets, then drew something out of his coat. A small bottle of
tablets. ‘What a nuisance,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Have
you enjoyed your stay in New Orleans?’ He turned and asked for a glass of
water. ‘Of course you’ve been to Texas to see my niece, I know
that. But you’ve been touring the city as well, no doubt. What do you
think of this garden here?’ He pointed to the courtyard behind him. ‘Quite
a story about that garden. Did they tell you?’
I turned in my chair and
glanced over my shoulder at the garden. I saw the uneven flagstones, a
weathered fountain, and beyond, in the shadows, a man standing before the
fanlight door. Tall thin man, with the light behind him. Faceless. Motionless.
The chill which ran down my back was almost delicious. I continued to look at
the man, and slowly the figure melted completely away.
I waited for a draft of warm
air, but I felt nothing. Perhaps I was too far from the being. Or perhaps I was
altogether wrong about who or what it had been.
It seemed an age passed.
Then, as I turned around, Cortland said, ‘A woman committed suicide in
that little garden. They say that the fountain turns red with her blood once a
year.’
‘Charming,’ I
said under my breath. I watched him lift his glass of water and drink half the
contents. Was he swallowing his tablets? The little bottle had disappeared. I
glanced at my bourbon and water. I would not have touched it for anything in
this world. I looked absently at my pen, lying there beside my diary, and then
placed it in my pocket. I was so utterly absorbed in everything that I saw and
heard that I felt not the slightest urge to speak a word.
‘Well, then, Mr
Lightner, let’s get to the point.’ Again that smile, that radiant
smile.
‘Of course,’ I
said. What was I feeling? I was curiously excited. I was sitting here with
Julien’s son, Cortland, and he had just slipped a drug, no doubt lethal,
into my drink. He thought he was going to get away with this. The whole dark history
glittered suddenly in my mind. I was in it. I wasn’t reading about it in
England. I was here.
Perhaps I smiled at him. I
knew that a crushing misery would follow this curious peak of emotion. The
damned son of a bitch was trying to kill me.
‘I’ve looked
into this matter, the Talamasca, etcetera,’ he said in a bright,
artificial voice. ‘There’s nothing we can do about you people. We
can’t force you to disclose your information about our family because
apparently it’s entirely private, and not intended for publication or for
any malicious use. We can’t force you to stop collecting it either as
long as you break no laws.’
‘Yes, I suppose that’s
all true.’
‘However we can make
you and your representatives uncomfortable, very uncomfortable; and we can make
it legally impossible for you to come within so many feet of us and our
property. But that would be costly to us, and wouldn’t really stop you,
at least not if you are what you say you are.’
He paused, took a draw off
his thin dark cigarette, and glanced at the bourbon and water. ‘Did I
order the wrong drink for you, Mr Lightner:
‘You didn’t
order any drink,’ I said. ‘The waiter brought another of what I had
been drinking all afternoon. I should have stopped you. I’ve had quite
enough.’
His eyes hardened for a
moment as he looked at me. In fact, his mask of a smile vanished completely.
And in a moment of blankness and lack of contrivance he looked almost young.
‘You shouldn’t
have made that trip to Texas, Mr Lightner,’ he said coldly. ‘You
should never have upset my niece.’
‘I agree with you. I
shouldn’t have upset her. I was concerned about her. I wanted to offer my
help.’
‘That’s very
presumptuous of you, you and your London friends.’ Touch of anger. Or was
it simply annoyance that I wasn’t going to drink the bourbon. I looked at
him for a long moment, my mind emptying itself until there was no sound
intruding, no movement, no color — only his face there, and a small voice
in my head telling me what I wanted to know.
‘Yes, it is
presumptuous, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘But you see, it was our
representative Petyr van Abel who was the father of Charlotte May-fair, born in
France in 1664. When he later journeyed to Saint-Domingue to see his daughter,
he was imprisoned by her. And before your spirit, Lasher, drove him to his
death on a lonely road outside of Port-au-Prince, he coupled with his own
daughter Charlotte, and thereby became the father of her daughter, Jeanne
Louise. That means he was grandfather of Angelique and the great-grandfather of
Marie Claudette, who built Riverbend, and created the legacy which you
administer for Deirdre now. Do you follow my tale?’
Clearly he was utterly
incapable of a response. He sat still looking at me, the cigarette smoking in
his hand. I caught no emanation of malice or anger. Watching him keenly, I went
on:
‘Your ancestors are
the descendants of our representative, Petyr van Abel. We are linked, the
Mayfair Witches and the Talamasca. And then there are other matters which bring
us together after all these years. Stuart Townsend, our representative who
disappeared here in New Orleans after he visited Stella in 1929. Do you
remember Stuart Townsend? The case of his disappearance was never solved.’
‘You are mad, Mr
Lightner,’ he said with no perceptible change of expression. He drew on
his cigarette and crushed it out though it was not half spent.
‘That spirit of yours,
Lasher — he killed Petyr van Abel,’ I said calmly. ‘Was it
Lasher whom I saw only a moment ago? Over there?’ I gestured to the
distant garden. ‘He is driving your niece out of her mind, isn’t he?’
I asked.
A remarkable change had now
come over Cortland. His face, beautifully framed by his dark hair, looked
totally innocent in its bewilderment.
‘You’re
perfectly serious, aren’t you?’ he asked. These were the first
honest words he’d spoken since he came into the bar.
‘Of course I am,’
I said. ‘Why would I try to deceive people who can read other people’s
thoughts? That would be stupid, wouldn’t it?’ I looked at the
glass. ‘Rather like you expecting me to drink this bourbon and succumb to
the drug you put into it, the way Stuart Townsend did, or Cornell Mayfair after
that.’
He tried to shroud his shock
behind a blank, dull look. ‘You are making a very serious accusation,’
he said under his breath.
‘All this time, I
thought it was Carlotta. It was never Carlotta, was it? It was you.’
‘Who cares what you
think!’ he whispered. ‘How dare you say such things to me.’
Then he checked his anger. He shifted slightly in his chair, his eyes holding
me as he opened the cigarette case and withdrew another cigarette. His whole
demeanor changed suddenly to one of honest inquiry. ‘What the hell do you
want, Mr Lightner!’ he asked, dropping his voice earnestly. ‘Seriously
now, sir, what do you want?’
I reflected for a moment. I
had been asking myself this very question for weeks on end. What did I mean to
accomplish when I went to New Orleans? What did we, and what did I really want?
‘We want to know you!’
I said, rather surprised myself to hear it come out. ‘To know you because
we know so much about you and yet we don’t know anything at all. We want
to tell you what we know about you - all the bits and pieces of information we’ve
collected, what we know about the deep past! We want to tell you all we know
about the whole mystery of who you are and what he is. And we wish you would talk to us. We wish you would trust us and
let us in! And lastly, we want to reach out to Deirdre Mayfair and say,
"There are others like you, others who see spirits. We know you’re
suffering, and we can help you. You aren’t alone."’
He studied me, eyes
seemingly open, his face quite beyond dissembling. Then pulling back and
glancing away, he tapped off the ash of his cigarette and motioned for another
drink.
‘Why don’t you
drink the bourbon?’ I asked. T haven’t touched it.’ Again, I had
surprised myself. But I let the question stand.
He looked at me. ‘I don’t
like bourbon,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
‘What did you put in
it?’ I asked.
He shrank back into his
thoughts. He appeared just a little miserable. He watched as the boy set down
his drink. Sherry as before, in a crystal glass.
‘This is true,’
he asked, looking up at me, ’what you wrote in your letter, about the
portrait of Deborah Mayfair in Amsterdam?’
I nodded. ‘We have
portraits of Charlotte, Jeanne Louise, An-gelique, Marie Claudette, Marguerite,
Katherine, Mary Beth, Julien, Stella, Antha, and Deirdre…’
He made a sudden impatient
motion for me to stop.
‘Look, I came here
because of Deirdre,’ I said. ‘I came because she’s going mad.
The girl I spoke to in Texas is on the edge of breakdown.’
‘Do you think you
helped her?’
‘No, and I deeply
regret that I didn’t. If you don’t want contact with us, I
understand. Why the hell should you? But we can help Deirdre. We really can.’
No answer. He drank the
sherry. I tried to see this from his point of view. I couldn’t. I’d
never tried to poison someone. I didn’t have the faintest idea of who he
really was. The man I’d known in the history wasn’t this man.
‘Would your father,
Julien, have spoken to me?’ I asked.
‘Not a chance of it,’
he said, looking up as though awakening from his thoughts. For a moment he
looked deeply distressed. ‘But don’t you know from all your
observations,’ he asked, ‘that he was one of them!’
Again, he seemed completely earnest, his eyes searching my face as if to assure
himself that I was earnest too
‘And you’re not
one of them?’ I asked.
‘No,’ he said
with great quiet emphasis, slowly shaking his head. ‘Not really. Not ever!’
He looked sad suddenly, and when he did he looked old. ‘Look, spy on us
if you wish. Treat us as if we were a royal family…’
‘Exactly.’
‘You’re
historians, that’s what my contacts in London tell me. Historians,
scholars, utterly harmless, completely respectable…"
‘I’m honored.’
‘But leave my niece
alone. My niece has a chance for happiness now. And this thing must come to an
end, you see. It must. And perhaps she can see to it that it does.’
‘Is she one of them
?!’ I asked, echoing his early intonation.
‘Of course she isn’t!’
he said ‘That’s just the point! There is no one of them
now! Don’t you see that? What’s been the theme of your study of us?
Haven’t you seen the disintegration of the power? Stella wasn’t one
of them either! The last one was Mary Beth. Julien - my father, that is —
and then Mary Beth.’
‘I’ve seen it.
But what about your spectral friend? Will he allow it to come to a finish?’
‘You believe in him?’
He cocked his head with a faint smile, his dark eyes creasing at the edges with
silent laughter. ‘Really, now, Mr Lightner? Do you believe in Lasher
yourself!’
‘I saw him,’ I
said simply
‘Imagination, sir. My
niece told me it was a very dark garden.’
‘Oh, please. Have we
come this far to say such things to each other? I saw him, Cortland. He smiled
when I saw him. He made himself very substantial and vivid indeed.’
Cortland’s smile
became smaller, more ironic. He raised his eyebrows and gave a little sigh. ‘Oh,
he would like your choice of words, Mr Lightner.’
‘Can Deirdre make him
go away and leave her alone?’
‘Of course she can’t.
But she can ignore him She can live her life as if he weren’t there.
Antha couldn’t Stella didn’t want to But Deirdre’s stronger
than Antha, and stronger than Stella too. Deirdre has a lot of Mary Beth in
her. That’s what the others often don’t realize —’ He
appeared to catch himself suddenly in the act of saying more than he had ever
intended to say
He stared at me for a long
moment, and then he gathered up his cigarette case and his lighter and slowly
rose to his feet.
‘Don’t go yet,’
I said, imploringly
‘Send me your history.
Send it to me and I’ll read it. And then maybe we can talk again. But don’t
ever approach my niece again, Mr Lightner. Understand that I would do anything
to protect her from those who mean to exploit her or hurt her Anything at all!’
He turned to go.
‘What about the drink?’
I asked, rising. I gestured to the bourbon. ‘Suppose I call the police
and I offer the contaminated drink in evidence?’
‘Mr Lightner. This is
New Orleans!’ He smiled and winked at me in the most charming fashion. ‘Now
please, go home to your watchtower and your telescope and gaze at us from afar!’
I watched him leave. He
walked gracefully with very long, easy steps. He glanced back when he reached
the doorway and gave me a quick, agreeable wave of his hand.
I sat down, ignoring the
drugged bourbon, and wrote an account of the whole affair in my diary. I then
took a small bottle of aspirin out of my pocket, emptied out the tablets, and
poured some of the drugged bourbon into it, and capped it and put it away.
I was about to collect my
diary and pen and make for the stairs when I looked up and saw the bellhop
standing in the lobby just beyond the door. He came forward. ‘Your bags
are ready, Mr Lightner Your car is here ’ Bright, agreeable face. Nobody
had told him he was personally throwing me out of town.
‘Is that so?’ I
said. ‘Well, and you packed everything?’ I surveyed the two bags.
My diary I had with me, of course. I went into the lobby. I could see a large
old black limousine stopping up the narrow French Quarter street like a giant
cork. ‘That’s my car?’
‘Yes sir, Mr Cortland
said to see you made the ten o’clock flight to New York. Said he’d
have someone meet you at the airport with the ticket. You ought to have plenty
of time.’
‘Isn’t that
thoughtful?’ I fished into my pocket for a couple of bills, but the boy
refused them.
‘Mr Cortland’s
taken care of everything, sir. You’d better hurry. You don’t want
to miss your plane.’
‘That’s true.
But I have a superstition about big black cars. Get me a taxi, and do take this
for it, please.’
The taxi took me not to the
airport but to the train. I managed to get a sleeper for St Louis, and went on
to New York from there. When I spoke to Scott he was adamant. This data
required a reevalu-ation. Don’t do any more research in New York. Come
home.
Halfway across the Atlantic,
I became ill. By the time I reached London I was running a high fever. An
ambulance was waiting to take me to hospital, and Scott was there to ride with
me. I was going in and out of consciousness. ‘Look for poison,’ I
said.
Those were my last words for
eight hours. When I finally came around, I was still feverish and
uncomfortable, but much reassured to be alive and to discover Scott and two
other good friends in the room.
‘You’ve been
poisoned all right, but the worst is over. Can you remember your last drink before
you boarded the plane?’
‘That woman,’ I
said.
‘Tell me.’
‘I was in the bar at
the New York airport, had a Scotch and soda. She was stumbling alone with an
impossible bag, then asked me if I’d fetch the skycap for her. She was
coughing as if she were tubercular. Very unhealthy-looking creature. She sat at
my table while I went for the skycap. Probably a hireling, off the streets.’
‘She slipped you a
poison called ricin; it’s from the castor bean. Very powerful, and
extremely common. Same thing Cortland put in your bourbon. You’re out of
the woods, but you’re going to be sick for two more days.’
‘Good Lord.’ My
stomach was cramping again.
‘They aren’t
ever going to talk to us, Aaron,’ Scott said. ‘How could they? They
kill people. It’s over. At least for now.’
‘They always killed
people, Scott,’ I said weakly. ‘But Deirdre Mayfair doesn’t
kill people. I want my diary." The cramps became unbearable. The doctor
came in and started to prepare me for an injection. I refused.
‘Aaron, he’s the
head of toxicology here, impeccable reputation. We’ve checked out the
nurses. Our people are here in the room.’
It was the end of the week
before I could return to the Motherhouse. I could scarcely bring myself to take
any nourishment. I was convinced the entire Motherhouse might soon be poisoned.
What was to stop them from hiring people to put commonplace toxins in our food?
The food might be poisoned before it even reached our kitchen.
And though no such thing
happened, it was a year before such thoughts left me, so shaken was I by what
had occurred.
A great deal of shocking
news came to us from New Orleans during that year…
During my convalescence I
reviewed the entire Mayfair history. I revised some of it, including the
testimony of Richard Llewellyn, and a few other persons I’d seen before I
went to Texas to see Deirdre.
I concluded that Cortland
had done away with Stuart, and probably with Cornell. It all made sense. Yet so
many mysteries remained. What was Cortland protecting when he committed these
crimes? And why was he engaged in constant battle with Carlotta?
We had in the meantime heard
from Carlotta Mayfair - a barrage of threatening legal letters from her law
firm to ours in London, demanding that we ’cease and desist’ with
our ’invasion’ of her privacy, that we make ’full disclosure’
of any personal information we had obtained about her and her family,’that
we restrict ourselves to a safe distance of one hundred yards from any person
in her family, and any piece of family property, and that we make no effort
whatsoever to contact in any way shape or form, Deirdre Mayfair,’ et
cetera, and so forth and so on ad nauseam, none of these legal threats or
demands having the slightest validity.
Our legal representatives
were instructed to make no response.
We discussed the matter with
the full council.
Once again, we had tried to
make contact and we had been pushed back. We would continue to investigate, and
for this purpose I might have a carte blanche, but no one was going near the
family in the foreseeable future. ‘If ever again,’ Reynolds added
with great emphasis.
I did not argue. I could not
drink a glass of milk at the time without wondering if I was going to die from
it. And I could not get the memory of Cortland’s artificial smile out of
my mind.
I doubled the number of
investigators in New Orleans and in Texas. But I also warned these people,
personally by phone, that the objects of their surveillance were hostile and
potentially very dangerous. I gave each and every one of our investigators full
opportunity to refuse the job.
As it turned out, I lost no
investigators whatsoever. But several raised their price.
As for Juliette Milton, our
socialite undercover gossip, we retired her with an unofficial pension, over
her protests. We did everything we could to make her sensible that certain
members of this family were capable of violence. Reluctantly, she stopped
writing to us, pleading in her letter of December 10, 1958 to understand what
she had done wrong. We were to hear from her again several times over the
years, however. She is still living as of 1989, in an expensive
boarding house for elderly people in Mobile, Alabama.
DEIRDRE‘S
STORY CONTINUES
My investigators in Texas
were three highly professional detectives, two of whom had once worked for the
United States government; and all three were cautioned that Deirdre was never
to be disturbed or frightened by what we were doing in any way.
‘I am very concerned
for this girl’s happiness, and for her peace of mind. But understand, she
is telepathic. If you come within fifty feet of her, she is likely to know you
are watching her. Please take care.’
Whether they believed me or
not, they followed my instructions. They kept a safe distance, gathering
information about her through the school offices and from gossiping students,
from old women who worked the desk in her dormitory, and from teachers who
talked freely about her over coffee. If Deirdre ever knew she was being
watched, we never found out.
Deirdre did well in the fall
semester at Texas Woman’s University. She made excellent grades. The
girls liked her. Her teachers liked her.
About every six weeks or so
she signed out of the dormitory for dinner with her cousin Rhonda Mayfair and
Rhonda’s husband, Professor Ellis Clement, who was Deirdre’s
English teacher at this time. There is also a record of one date on December 10
with a boy named Joey Dawson, but it lasted one hour if the register is to be
believed.
The same register indicates
that Cortland visited Deirdre often, frequently signing her out for a Friday or
Saturday night in Dallas from which she returned before the ‘Late Check In’
time of one a.m.
We know that Deirdre went
home to Metairie to Cortland’s house for Christmas, and family gossip
declared that she would not even see Carlotta when Carlotta came to call.
Legal gossip supports the
idea that Carlotta and Cortland were still not speaking. Carlotta would not
return Cortland’s routine business calls. Acrimonious letters went back
and forth between the two over the smallest financial matters concerning Deirdre.
‘He’s trying to
get complete control of her for her own sake,’ said one secretary to a
friend, ’but that old woman won’t have it. She’s threatening
to take him to court.’
Whatever the particulars of
that struggle, we know that Deirdre began to deteriorate during the spring
term. She began to miss classes. Dorm mates said she cried all night sometimes,
but would not answer their knocks on her door. One evening she was picked up by
the campus police in a small downtown park, apparently confused as to where she
was.
Finally she was called to
the dean’s office for disciplinary action. She had missed too many
classes. She was put on Compulsory Attendance, and though she did manage to
appear in the classroom, teachers reported her as inattentive, and possibly ill.
Finally in April, Deirdre
began to suffer nausea every morning. Girls up and down the hallway could hear
her struggling with her sickness in the communal washroom. The girls went to
the dorm mother.
‘Nobody wanted to
squeal on her. We were afraid. What if she tried to hurt herself?’
When the dorm mother finally
suggested she might be pregnant, Deirdre broke down sobbing, and had to be
hospitalized until Cortland could come and get her, which he did on May I.
What happened afterwards has
remained a mystery to this day. The records at the New Mercy Hospital in New
Orleans indicate that Deirdre was probably taken there directly upon arrival
from Texas, and that she was given a private room. Gossip among the old nuns,
many of whom were retired teachers from St Alphonsus School who remembered
Deirdre, quickly verified that it was Carlotta’s attending physician, Dr
Gallagher, who visited Deirdre and ascertained that yes, she was going to have
a child.
‘Now, this girl is
going to be married,’ he told the sisters. ‘And I don’t want
anything mean being said. The father is a college professor from Denton, Texas,
and he is on his way to New Orleans now.’
By the time Deirdre was
taken by ambulance to First Street three weeks later, heavily sedated and with
a registered nurse in attendance, the gossip was all over the Redemptorist
Parish that she was pregnant and soon to be married, and that her husband, the
college professor, was ’a married man.’
Quite the scandal it was to
those who had watched the family for generations. Old ladies whispered about it
on the church steps. Deirdre Mayfair and a married man! People glanced
furtively at Miss Millie and Miss Belle as they passed. Some said that Carlotta
would have no part of it. But then Miss Belle and Miss Millie took Deirdre with
them to Gus Mayer and there they bought her a lovely blue dress and blue satin
shoes for the wedding, and a new white purse and hat.
‘She was so drugged, I
don’t think she knew where she was,’ said one of the salesgirls. ‘Miss
Millie made all the choices for her. She just sat there, white as a sheet, and
saying "Yes, Aunt Millie," in a slurred voice.’
Juliette Milton could not
resist writing to us. We received a long letter from her detailing how Beatrice
Mayfair had been to First Street to see Deirdre and brought her a whole
shopping bag of gifts. ‘Why ever did she go home to that house, instead
of Cortland’s!’ wrote Juliette.
There is some indication
that Deirdre had little choice in the matter. Medical science in those days
believed the placenta of the baby protected it from drugs injected into the
mother. And nurses said that Deirdre was so heavily drugged when she left the
hospital that she did not even know what was happening to her. Carlotta had
come in the early afternoon on a weekday and obtained her release.
‘Now, Cortland Mayfair
came looking for her that very evening,’ Sister Bridget Marie told me
later in strictest confidence. ‘And was he ever fit to be tied when he
discovered that child was gone!’
Legal gossip deepened the
mystery. Cortland and Carlotta were screaming at each other over the phone
behind the office doors. Cortland told his secretary in a rage that Carlotta
thought she could keep him out of the house where he was born. Well, she was
out of her mind, if she thought so!
Years later, Ryan Mayfair
talked about it. ‘They said my grandfather was simply locked out. He went
up to First Street and Carlotta met him at the gate and threatened him. She
said, "You come in here and I’ll call the police."’
On the first of July,
another volley of information rocked the parish gossips. Deirdre’s future
husband, the ’college professor’ who was leaving his wife to marry
her, had been killed driving to New Orleans on the river road. His car had
suffered a broken tie rod and veered to the right at great speed, striking an
oak tree, whereupon it exploded into flames. Deirdre Mayfair, unmarried and not
yet eighteen, was going to be giving up her baby. It was to be a family
adoption, and Miss Carlotta was arranging the whole thing.
‘My grandfather was
outraged when he heard about the adoption,’ said Ryan Mayfair many years
later. ‘He wanted to talk to Deirdre, hear it from her own lips that she
wanted to give up this child. But he still couldn’t get in the house on
First Street. Finally he went to Father Lafferty, the parish priest, but
Carlotta had him in her pocket. The priest was squarely on Carlotta’s
side.’
All this sounds extremely
tragic. It sounds as if Deirdre almost escaped the curse of First Street, if
only the father of her baby, driving from Texas to marry her, had not died. For
years this sad scandalous story has been repeated throughout the Redemptorist
Parish. It was repeated to me as late as 1988 by Rita Mae Lonigan.
There is every indication that Father Lafferty believed the story of the Texas
father of the baby. And countless reports indicate that the Mayfair cousins
believed it. Beatrice Mayfair believed it. Pierce May-fair believed it. Even
Rhonda Mayfair and her husband, Ellis Clement, in Denton, Texas seemed to have
believed it, or at least the vague version which they were eventually told.
But the story wasn’t
true.
Almost from the beginning,
our investigators shook their heads in puzzlement. College professor with
Deirdre Mayfair? Who? Constant surveillance ruled out completely the
possibility of Rhonda Mayfair’s husband, Ellis Clement. He scarcely knew
Deirdre.
Indeed, there never was any
such man in Denton, Texas, who dated Deirdre Mayfair, or was ever observed by
anyone in her company. And there was no college professor employed at that
university or any other school in the vicinity who died in a car crash on the
Louisiana river road. Indeed, no one died in such a crash on the river road in
1959, as far as we know.
Did an even more scandalous
and tragic story lie behind this fabrication? We were slow in putting the
pieces together. Indeed, by the time we learned of the river road car accident,
the adoption of Deirdre’s baby was already being legally arranged. By the
time we learned that there had been no river road accident, the adoption was a
fait accompli.
Later court records indicate
that some time during August, Ellie Mayfair flew to New Orleans to sign
adoption papers in the office of Carlotta Mayfair, though no one in the family
seems to have known at the time that Ellie was there.
Graham Franklin, Ellie’s
husband, told one of his business associates years later that the adoption had
been a real kettle of fish. ‘My wife stopped speaking to her grandfather
altogether. He didn’t want us to adopt Rowan. Fortunately the old bastard
died before the baby was even born.’
Father Lafferty told his
aging sister in the Irish Channel that the whole thing was a nightmare, but
that Ellie Mayfair was a good woman and she would take the child to California
where it would have a chance at a new life. All of Cortland’s
grandchildren approved of the decision. It was only Cortland who was carrying
on. ‘That girl can’t keep that baby. She’s crazy,’ said
the old priest. He sat at his sister’s kitchen table, eating his red
beans and rice and drinking his small glass of beer. ‘I mean it, she’s
crazy. It’s just got to be done.’
‘It won’t work,’
the old woman later told our representative. ‘You can’t escape a
family curse by moving away.’
Miss Millie and Miss Belle
bought beautiful bed jackets and nightgowns for Deirdre at Gus Mayer. The
salesgirls asked about ’poor Deirdre.’
‘Oh, she is doing the
best she can,’ said Miss Millie. ‘It was a terrible, terrible thing.’
Miss Belle told a woman at the chapel that Deirdre was having those ’bad
spells again.’
‘She doesn’t
even know where she is half the time!’ said a grumpy Nancy, who was
sweeping the walk when one of the Garden District matrons passed the gate.
What did happen behind the
scenes all those months at First Street? We pressed our investigators to find
out everything that they could. Only one person of whom we know saw Deirdre
during the last months of her ’confinement’ - to use the
old-fashioned term for it, which in this instance may be the correct one - but
we did not interview that person until 1988.
At the time, the attending
physician came and went in silence. So did the nurse who assisted Deirdre for
eight hours each day.
Father Lafferty said the
girl was resigned to the adoption. Beatrice Mayfair was told she couldn’t
see Deirdre when she came to call, but she had a glass of wine with Millie
Dear, who said the whole thing was heartbreaking indeed.
But by October i, Cortland
was desperate with worry over the situation. His secretaries report that he
made continuous calls to Carlotta, that he took a taxi to First Street and was
turned away over and over again. Finally on the afternoon of October 20, he
told his secretary he would get into that house and see his niece even if he
had to break down the door.
At five o’clock that
afternoon a neighbor spotted Cortland sitting on the curbstone at First and
Chestnut Streets, his clothes disheveled and blood flowing from a cut on his
head.
‘Get me an ambulance,’
he said. ‘He pushed me down the stairs!’
Though the neighbor woman
sat with him until the ambulance arrived, he would say nothing more. He was
rushed from First Street to nearby Touro Infirmary. The intern on duty quickly
ascertained that Cortland was covered with severe bruises, that his wrist was
broken, and that he was bleeding from the mouth. ‘This man has internal
injuries,’ he said. He called for immediate assistance.
Cortland then grabbed the
intern’s hand and told him to listen, that it was very important that he
help Deirdre Mayfair, who was being held prisoner in her own home. ‘They’re
taking her baby away from her against her will. Help her!’ Then Cortland
died.
A superficial postmortem
indicated massive internal bleeding and severe blows to the head. When the
young intern pressed for some sort of police investigation, Cortland’s
sons immediately quieted him. They had talked to their cousin Carlotta Mayfair.
Their father fell down the steps and then refused medical assistance, leaving
the house on his own. Carlotta had never dreamed he was so badly hurt. She had
not known he was sitting on the curb. She was beside herself with grief. The
neighbor should have rung the bell.
At Cortland’s funeral
- a huge affair out in Metairie - the family was told the same story. While
Miss Belle and Miss Millie sat quietly in the background, Cortland’s son,
Pierce, told everyone that Cortland had been confused when he made some vague
statement to the neighbor about a man pushing him down the steps. In fact there
had been no man in the First Street house who could have done such a thing.
Carlotta herself saw him fall. So did Nancy, who rushed to try to catch him,
but failed.
As for the adoption, Pierce
was firmly behind it. His niece Ellie would give the baby exactly the
environment it needed to have every chance. It was tragic that Cortland had
been against the adoption, but Cortland had been eighty years old. His judgment
had been impaired for some time.
The funeral proceeded,
grandly and without incident, though the undertaker remembered years later that
several of the cousins, older men, standing in the very rear of the room during
Pierce’s ’little speech’ had joked bitterly and sarcastically
amongst themselves. ‘Sure, there’s no man in that house,’ one
of them said. ‘Nooooo, no man at all. Just those nice ladies.’ ‘I’ve
never seen a man there, have you?’ And so on it went. ‘Nope, no man
at First Street. No sir!’
When cousins came to call on
Deirdre, they were told pretty much the same story that Pierce had told at the
funeral. Deirdre was too sick to see them. She hadn’t even wanted to see
Cortland, she was so sick. And she didn’t know and mustn’t know
that Cortland was dead.
‘And look at that dark
stairs,’ said Millie Dear to Beatrice. ‘Cortland should have used
the elevator. But he never would use the elevator. If he had just used the
elevator, he would never have taken such a fall.’
Family legend today
indicates that everyone agreed the adoption was for the best. Cortland should
have stayed out of it. As Ryan Mayfair, Cortland’s grandson, said, ‘Poor
Deirdre was no more fit to be a mother than the Madwoman of Chaillot. But I
think my grand’ father felt responsible. He had taken Deirdre to Texas. I
think he blamed himself. He wanted to be sure she wanted to give up the baby.
But maybe what Deirdre wanted wasn’t the important thing.’
At the time, I dreaded each new
piece of news from Louisiana. I lay in bed at night in the Motherhouse thinking
ceaselessly of Deirdre, wondering if there were not some way that we could
discover what she truly wanted or felt. Scott Reynolds was more adamant than
ever that we could not intervene further. Deirdre knew how to reach us. So did
Cortland. So did Carlotta Mayfair, for what that was worth. There was nothing
further that we could do.
Only in January of 1988,
nearly thirty years later, did I learn in an interview with Deirdre’s old
school friend Rita Mae Dwyer Lonigan that Deirdre had tried desperately to
reach me, and failed.
In 1959, Rita Mae had only
just married Jerry Lonigan of Lonigan and Sons funeral home, and when she heard
that Deirdre was at home, pregnant, and had already lost the father of the
baby, Rita Mae screwed up her courage and went to call. As so many others have
been, she was turned away at the door, but not before she saw Deirdre at the
top of the stairs. Deirdre called out to Rita Mae desperately:
‘Rita Mae, they’re
going to take my baby! Rita Mae, help me.’ As Miss Nancy sought to force
Deirdre back up to the second floor, Deirdre threw a small white card down to
Rita Mae. ‘Contact this man. Get him to help me. Tell him they’re
going to take my baby away.’
Carlotta Mayfair physically
attacked Rita Mae and tried to get the card away from her, but Rita, even
though her hair was being pulled and her face scratched, held it tight as she
ran through a hail of leaves out the gate.
When she got home she
discovered the card was almost unreadable. Carlotta had torn part of it; and
Rita had inadvertently clenched the little card in the moist palm of her hand.
Only the word Talamasca, and my name, handwritten on the back, could be made
out.
Only in 1988, when I encountered
Rita Mae at the funeral of Nancy Mayfair - and gave her a card identical to the
one destroyed in 1959 -did she recognize the names and call me at my hotel to
report what she remembered from that long ago day.
It was heartbreaking to this
investigator to learn of Deirdre’s vain plea for help. It was
heartbreaking to remember those nights thirty years before when I lay in bed in
London thinking, ‘I cannot help her, but I have to try to help her. But
how do I dare to do it? And how could I possibly succeed?’
The fact is I probably could
not have done anything to help Deirdre, no matter how hard I might have tried.
If Cortland couldn’t stop the adoption, it is sensible to assume that I
couldn’t have stopped it either. Yet in my dreams I see myself taking Deirdre
out of the First Street house to London. I see her a healthy normal woman
today.
The reality is utterly
different.
On November 7, 1959, Deirdre
gave birth at five o’clock in the morning to Rowan Mayfair, nine pounds,
eight ounces, a healthy, fair-haired baby girl. Hours afterwards, emerging from
the general anesthesia, Deirdre found her bed surrounded by Ellie Mayfair,
Father Lafferty, and Carlotta Mayfair, and two of the Sisters of Mercy who
later described the scene in detail to Sister Bridget Marie.
Father Lafferty held the
baby in his arms. He explained that he had just baptized it in the Mercy
Hospital chapel, naming it Rowan Mayfair. He showed her the signed baptismal
certificate.
‘Now kiss your baby,
Deirdre,’ said Father Lafferty, ’and give her to Ellie. Ellie is
ready to go.’
Parish gossip says that
Deirdre did as she was told. She had insisted that the child have the name
Mayfair and once that condition was met, she let her baby go. Crying so as she
could scarce see, she kissed the baby and let Ellie Mayfair take it from her
arms. Then she turned her head, sobbing, into the pillow. Father Lafferty said,
‘Best leave her alone.’
Over a decade later, Sister
Bridget Marie explained the meaning of Rowan’s name.
‘Carlotta stood
godmother to the child. I believe they got some doctor off the ward to be its
godfather, so determined were they to have the baptism done. And Carlotta said
to Father Lafferty, the child’s to be named Rowan, and he said to her,
"Now, you know, Carlotta Mayfair, that that is not a saint’s name.
It sounds like a pagan name to me."
‘And she to him in her
manner, you know the way she was, she says, "Father, don’t you know
what the rowan tree was and that it was used to ward off witches and all manner
of evil? There’s not a hut in Ireland where the woman of the house did
not put up the rowan branch over the door to protect her family from witches
and witchcraft, and that has been true throughout Christian times. Rowan is to
be the name of this child!" And Ellie Mayfair, the little mealymouth that
she always was, just nodded her head.’
‘Was it true?’ I
asked. ‘Did they put the rowan over the door in Ireland?’
Gravely Sister Bridget Marie
nodded. ‘Lot of good that it did!’
Who is the father of Rowan
Mayfair?
Routine blood typing done at
the hospital indicates that the baby’s blood type matched that of
Cortland Mayfair, who had died less than a month before. Allow us to repeat
here that Cortland may also have been the father of Stella Mayfair, and that
recent information obtained from Bellevue Hospital has at last confirmed that
Antha Mayfair may have been his daughter as well.
Deirdre ’went mad’
before she ever left Mercy Hospital after Rowan’s birth. The nuns said
she cried by the hour, then screamed in an empty room, ‘You killed him!’
Then wandering into the hospital chapel during Mass, she shouted once more, ‘You
killed him. You left me alone among my enemies. You betrayed me!’ She had
to be taken out by force, and was quickly committed to St Ann’s Asylum,
where she became catatonic by the end of the month.
‘It was the invisible
lover,’ Sister Bridget Marie believes to this day. ‘She was
shouting and cursing at him, don’t you know it, for he’d killed her
college professor. He’d done it, because the devil wanted her for
himself. The demon lover, that’s what he was, right here in the city of
New Orleans. Walking the streets of the Garden District by night.’
That is a very lovely and
eloquent statement, but since it is more than highly likely that the college
professor never existed, what other meaning can we attach to Deirdre’s
words? Was it Lasher who pushed Cortland down the staircase, or startled him so
badly that he fell? And if so, why?
This is the end of the life
of Deirdre Mayfair really. For seventeen years she was incarcerated in various
mental institutions, given massive doses of drugs and ruthless courses of
electric shock treatment, with only brief respites when she returned home, a
ghost of the girl she had once been.
At last in 1976, she was
brought back to First Street forever, a wide-eyed and mute invalid, in a
perpetual state of alertness, yet with no connective memory at all.
The side porch downstairs
was screened in for her. For years she has been led out every day, rain or
shine, to sit motionless in a rocking chair, her face turned ever so slightly
towards the distant street.
‘She cannot even
remember from moment to moment,’ said one physician. ‘She lives
entirely in the present, in a way we simply cannot imagine. You might say there
is no mind there at all.’ It is a condition described in some very old
people who reach the same state in advanced senility, and sit staring in
geriatric hospitals throughout the world. Regardless, she is drugged heavily,
to prevent bouts of ’agitation,’ or so her various doctors and
nurses have been told.
How did Deirdre Mayfair
become this ’mindless idiot,’ as the Irish Channel gossips call her,’this
nice bunch of carrots’ sitting in her chair? Shock treatments certainly
contributed to it, course after course of them, given by every hospital in
which she had ever stayed since 1959. Then there were the drugs — massive
doses of near paralytic tranquilizers — given to her in astonishing
combinations, or so the records, as we continue to gain access to them, reveal.
How does one justify such
treatment? Deirdre Mayfair ceased to speak coherently as early as 1962. When
not tranquilized, she screamed or cried incessantly. Now and then she broke
things. Sometimes she simply lay back, with her eyes rolling up in her head and
howled.
As the years have passed, we
have continued to collect information about Deirdre Mayfair. Every month or so
we manage to ’interview’ some doctor or nurse, or other person who
has been in the First Street house. But our record of what really happened
remains fragmentary. Hospital files are, naturally, confidential and extremely
difficult to obtain. But in at least two of the sanitariums where Deirdre was
treated, we now know that no record of her treatment exists.
One of the doctors has
clearly and by his own admission to an inquiring stranger destroyed his records
of Deirdre’s case. Another physician retired shortly after he had treated
Deirdre, leaving only a few cryptic notes in his brief file. ‘Incurable.
Tragic. Aunt demands continued medication, yet Aunt’s descriptions of behavior
not credible.’
We continue, for obvious
reasons, to rely upon anecdotal evidence, for our assessment of Deirdre’s
history.
Though Deirdre has slumbered
in a twilight induced by drugs all of her adult life, there have been countless
sightings by those around her of ’a mysterious brown-haired man.’
Nurses in St Ann’s Asylum claimed to have seen him - ’some
man going into her room! Now I know I saw that.’ At a Texas hospital
where she was incarcerated briefly, a doctor claimed to have seen ’a
mysterious visitor’ who always ‘seemed somehow to just disappear
when I wanted to question him or ask him who he was.’
At least one nurse in a
northern Louisiana sanitarium insisted to her superiors that she had seen a
ghost. Black orderlies in the various hospitals saw ‘that man all the
time.’ One woman told us, ‘He not human. I know him when I see him.
I see spirits. I call them up. I know him and he know me and he don’t
come near me at all.’
Most workmen cannot work on
the First Street house any more today than they could in the days when Deirdre
was a girl. There are the same old stories. There is even some talk of ’a
man around there" who doesn’t want things done.
Nevertheless some repairs
are completed; air-conditioning units have been installed in some rooms, and
some upgrading of the electricity has been carried out - these tasks almost
invariably being done under Carlotta Mayfair’s on-site supervision.
The old gardener still
comes, and he occasionally paints the rusted fence.
Otherwise First Street
slumbers beneath the oak branches. The frogs sing in the night around Stella’s
pool with its lily pads and wild irises. Deirdre’s wooden swing has long
ago fallen from the oak at the far end of the property. The wooden seat - a
mere slat of wood - lies bleached and warping in the high grass.
Many a person stopping to
look at Deirdre in her rocking chair on the side porch has glimpsed ’a
handsome cousin’ visiting her. Nurses have sometimes quit because of
‘that man who comes and goes like some kind a spook,’ or because
they kept seeing things out of the corner of their eye, or thought they were
being watched.
‘There’s some
kind of ghost hovering near her,’ said one young practical nurse who told
the agency she would never, never go back to that house. ‘I saw him once,
in the bright sunlight. Scariest thing I’ve ever seen.’
When I asked this nurse
about it over lunch, she had few details to add to the story. ‘Just a
man. A man with brown hair and brown eyes in a nice-looking coat and white
shirt But dear God, if I have ever seen anything more terrifying than that! He
was just standing there in the sunlight beside her looking at me. I dropped the
tray and just screamed and screamed.’
Numerous other medical
persons left the service of the family abruptly One doctor was fired off the
case in 1976. We continue to track down these people, to take their testimony
and record it. We try to tell them as little as we can of why we want to know
what they saw and when.
What emerges from this data
is a frightening possibility - that Deirdre’s mind has been destroyed to
the point where she cannot control her evocation of Lasher. That is, she
subconsciously gives him the power to appear near her in very convincing form.
Yet she is not conscious enough to control him further, or indeed to drive him
away, if on some level she does not want him there
In sum, she is a mindless
medium; a witch rendered inoperative, and at the mercy perhaps of her familiar,
who is ever at hand.
There is another very
distinct possibility. That Lasher is there to comfort her, to look out for her,
and to keep her happy in ways perhaps that we do not understand.
In 1980, over eight years
ago, I managed to obtain an article of Deirdre’s clothing, a cotton
duster, or loose-fitting garment, which had been put in the dustbin in back of
the house. I took this garment back with me to England, and placed it in the
hands of Lauren Grant, the most powerful psychometric in the order today.
Lauren knew nothing per se
about the Mayfair Witches, but one cannot rule out telepathy in such
situations. I tried to keep out of it with my own thoughts as much as I could.
‘I see happiness,’
she said. ‘This is the garment of someone who is blissfully happy. She
lives in dreams. Dreams of green gardens and twilight skies, and exquisite
sunsets. There are low-hanging branches there. There is a swing hanging from a
beautiful tree. Is this a child? No, this is a woman. There is a warm breeze.’
Lauren massaged the garment ever more tightly, pressing the fabric to her
cheek. ‘Oh, and she has the most beautiful lover. Oh, such a lover. He
looks like a picture. Steerforth out of David Copperfield, that sort
of man. He’s so gentle, and when he touches her, she yields to him
utterly. Who is this woman? All the world would like to be this woman At least
for a little while.’
Is that the subconscious
life of Deirdre Mayfair? Deirdre herself will never tell.
In closing allow me to add a
few details. Since 1976, Deirdre Mayfair, whether clothed in a white flannel
nightgown or a cotton duster, has always worn the Mayfair emerald around her
neck.
I have seen Deirdre myself
several times from a distance since 1976. By that time, I had made three visits
to New Orleans to gather information. I have returned numerous times since.
I invariably spend some time
walking in the Garden District on these return visits; I have attended the
funerals over the years of Miss Belle, Miss Millie, and Miss Nancy, as well as
Pierce, the last of Cortland’s sons, who died of a heart attack in 1984.
At each funeral, I have seen
Carlotta Mayfair. Our eyes have met. I have three times during this decade
placed my card in her hand as I passed her. She has never contacted me She has
never made any more legal threats.
She is very old now,
white-haired, painfully thin. Yet she still goes to work every day. She can no
longer climb up on the step of the St Charles car, so she is taken by a regular
taxi. Only one black servant works in the house regularly, with the exception
of Deirdre’s devoted nurse.
With each visit, I encounter
some new ’witness’ who can tell me more about ‘the
brown-haired man’ and the mysteries surrounding First Street. The stories
are all much the same. But we have indeed come to the end of Deirdre’s
history, though she herself is not yet dead.
It is time to examine in
detail her only child and heir, Rowan Mayfair, who has never set foot in her
native city since the day she was taken away from it, six hours after her
birth, on a cross-continental jet flight.
And though it is much too
soon to attempt to put the information on Rowan into a coherent narrative, we
have made some critically important notes from our random material, and there
is considerable indication that Rowan Mayfair — who knows nothing of her
family, her history, or her inheritance — may be the strongest witch the
Mayfair family has ever produced.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE AIR-CONDITIONING felt
good after the hot streets. But as she stood quietly for a moment in the foyer
of Lonigan and Sons, unobserved and therefore anonymous, she realized the heat
had already made her faintly sick. The icy stream of air was now shocking her.
She felt the kind of chill you have when you have fever. The enormous crowd
milling only a few feet away took on a curious dreamlike quality.
When she’d first left
the hotel, the humid summer afternoon had seemed manageable. But by the time she’d
reached the dark house on Chestnut and First, she was feeling weak and already
feeling the chill, though the air itself had been moist and warm and close,
full of the raw smell of earth and green things.
Yes, dreamlike all of this -
this room now with its white damask walls and small new crystal chandeliers,
and the noisy well-dressed people in ever shifting clusters. Dreamlike as the
shaded world of old houses and iron fences through which she had just walked.
From where she stood, she
could not see into the coffin. It was mounted against the far wall of the
second room. As the noisy gathering shifted here and there, she caught glimpses
of the deeply polished wood and the silver handles, and of the tufted satin
inside the open lid.
She felt an involuntary
tightening of her facial muscles. In that coffin, she thought. You have to go
through this room, and through the next room, and look. Her face felt so
curiously rigid. Her body felt rigid too. Just go up to the coffin. Isn’t
that what people do?
She could see them doing it.
She could see one person after another stepping up close to the coffin, and
looking down at the woman inside.
And sooner or later someone
would notice her anyway. Someone would ask, perhaps, who she was. ‘You
tell me. Who are all these people? Do they know? Who is Rowan
Mayfair?’
But for this moment, she was
invisible, watching the rest of them, the men in their pale suits, the women in
pretty dresses, and so many of the women wearing hats, and even gloves. It had
been years since she had seen women in gaily colored dresses with belted waists
and soft full skirts. There must have been two hundred people roaming about,
and they were people of all ages.
She saw bald, pink-scalped
old men in white linen with canes, and young boys slightly uncomfortable in
their tight collars and ties. The backs of the necks of old men and young boys
looked equally naked and vulnerable. There were even little children playing
around the adults, babies in white lace being bounced on laps, toddlers
crawling on the dark red carpet.
And there a girl, perhaps
twelve years old, staring at her, with a ribbon in her red hair. Never in all
her years in California had she seen a girl of that age - or any child, for
that matter - with a real ribbon in her hair, and this was a big bow of
peach-colored satin.
Everyone in their Sunday
best, she thought. Was that the expression? And the conversation was almost
festive. Like a wedding, it seemed suddenly, though she had never been to such
a wedding, she had to admit. Windowless this room, though there were white
damask draperies hung here and there utterly concealing what might have been
windows.
The crowd shifted, broke
again, so that she could see the coffin almost completely. A fragile little old
man in a gray seersucker suit was standing alone looking down at the dead
woman. With great effort, he lowered himself onto the velvet kneeler. What had
Ellie called such things? I want there to be a prie-dieu by my coffin.
Rowan had never seen a seersucker suit before in her life. But she knew that’s
what it was, because she’d seen it in the movies - in the old
black-and-white films in which the fans churned and the parrot clucked on its
perch and Sidney Greenstreet said something sinister to Humphrey Bogart.
And that is what this was
like. Not the sinister quality, merely the time frame. She had slipped into the
past, a world now buried beneath the earth in California. And maybe that was
why it was so unexpectedly comforting, rather like that Twilight Zone’
television episode where the harried businessman gets off the commuter train at
a town happily fixed in the leisurely nineteenth century.
Our funerals in New Orleans were the way they ought to be. Tell my friends to come.
But Ellie’s stark uncomfortable service had been nothing like this, with
her bone-thin, suntanned friends, embarrassed by death, sitting resentfully on
the edge of their folding chairs. She didn’t really want us to send
flowers, did she? And Rowan had said, ‘I think it would be terrible
if there were no flowers…’ Stainless steel cross, meaningless
words, the man speaking them a total stranger.
Oh, and look at these
flowers! Everywhere she looked she saw them, great dazzling sprays of roses,
lilies, gladiolus. She did not know the names of some of these flowers. Nestled
among the small curly-legged chairs, they stood, great wreaths on wire legs,
and behind the chairs, and thrust five and six deep into the corners. Sprinkled
with glistening droplets of water, they shivered in the chilly air, replete
with white ribbons and bows, and some of the ribbons even had the name Deirdre
printed on them in silver. Deirdre.
Suddenly, it was everywhere
she looked. Deirdre, Deirdre, Deirdre, the ribbons soundlessly crying her mother’s
name, while the ladies in the pretty dresses drank white wine from stemmed
glasses, and the little girl with the hair ribbon stared at her, and a nun,
even a nun in a dark blue dress and white veil and black stockings, sat bent
over her cane, on the edge of a chair, with a man speaking into her ear, her
head cocked, her small beak of a nose gleaming in the light, and little girls
gathered around her.
They were bringing in more
flowers now, little wire trees sprouting red and pink roses amid spikes of
shivering fern. How beautiful. A big blond beefy man with soft jowls set down a
gorgeous little bouquet very near the distant coffin.
And such an aroma rose from
all these many bouquets. Ellie used to say the flowers in California had no
scent. A lovely sweet perfume hung in this room. Now Rowan understood. It was
sweet the way the warm air outside had been warm, and the moist breeze moist.
It seemed that all the colors around her were becoming increasingly vivid.
But she felt sick again, and
the strong perfume was making it worse. The coffin was far away. The crowd
completely obscured it now. She thought about the house again, the high dark
house on the ’riverside downtown corner,’ as the clerk at the hotel
had described it. It had to be the house that Michael kept seeing. Unless there
were a thousand like it, a thousand with a rose pattern in the cast iron, and a
great dark cascade of bougainvillea pouring down the faded gray wall. Oh, such
a beautiful house.
My mother’s house. My
house? Where was Michael? There was a sudden opening in the crowd, and once
again she saw the long flank of the coffin. Was she seeing a woman’s
profile against the satin pillow from where she stood? Ellie’s coffin had
been closed. Graham had had no funeral. His friends had gathered at a downtown
bar.
You are going to have to go
up to that coffin. You are going to have to look into it and see her. This is
why you came, why you broke with Ellie and the paper in the safe, to see with
your own eyes your mother’s face. But are these things actually taking
place, or am I dreaming? Look at the young girl with her arm around the old
woman’s shoulder. The young girl’s white dress has a sash! She is
wearing white stockings.
If only Michael were here.
This was Michael’s world. If only Michael could take off his glove and
lay his hand on the dead woman’s hand. But what would he see? An
undertaker shooting embalming fluid into her veins? Or the blood being drained
into the gutter of the white embalming table? Deirdre. Deirdre was written in
silver letters on the white ribbon that hung from the nearby wreath of
chrysanthemums. Deirdre on the ribbon across the great bouquet of pink
roses…
Well, what are you waiting
for? Why don’t you move? She moved back, against the door frame, watching
an old woman with pale yellow hair open her arms to three small children. One
after another they kissed the old woman’s wobbling cheeks. She nodded her
head. Are all these people my mother’s family?
She envisioned the house
again, stripped of detail, dark and fantastically large. She understood why
Michael loved that house, loved this place. And Michael didn’t know that
that was her mother’s house. Michael didn’t know any of this was
happening. Michael was gone. And maybe that was all there would ever be, just
that one weekend, and forever this unfinished feeling…
I gotta go home, it isn’t
just the visions, it’s that I don’t belong out here anymore. I knew
it that day I went down to the ocean…
The door opened behind her.
Silently she stepped to the side. An older couple passed her as if she were not
there, a stately woman with beautiful iron gray hair swept back in a twist, in
a perfect silk shirtwaist dress, and a man in a rumpled white suit,
thick-necked and soft-voiced as he talked to the woman.
‘Beatrice!’
Someone spoke a greeting. A handsome young man came to kiss the pretty woman
with the iron gray hair. ‘Darling, come in,’ said a female voice. ‘No,
no one’s seen her, she’s due to arrive anytime.’ Voices like
Michael’s voice, yet different. A pair of men talking in whispers over
their wineglasses came between her and the couple as they moved on into the
second room. Once again, the front door was opening. Gust of heat, traffic.
She moved over into the far
corner, and now she could see the coffin clearly, see that half the lid was
closed over the lower portion of the woman’s body, and why that struck
her as grotesque she didn’t know. A crucifix was set into the tufted silk
above the woman’s head, not that she could see that head, but she knew it
was there, she could just see a dash of flesh color against the gleaming white.
Go on, Rowan, go up there.
Go up to the coffin. Is this
more difficult than going into an Operating Room? Of course they will all see
you, but they won’t know who you are. The constriction came again, the tightening
in the muscles of her face and her throat. She couldn’t move.
And then someone was
speaking to her, and she knew she ought to turn her head and answer, but she
did not. The little girl with the ribbon watched her. Why wasn’t she
answering, thought the little girl.
‘… Jerry
Lonigan, can I help you? You’re not Dr Mayfair, are you?’
She looked at him stupidly.
The beefy man with the heavy jowls and the prettiest china blue eyes. No, like
blue marbles, his eyes, just perfectly round and blue.
‘Dr Mayfair?’
She looked down at his hand.
Large, heavy, a paw. Take it. Answer that way if you can’t talk. The
tightening in her face grew worse. It was affecting her eyes. What was this all
about? - her body frozen in alarm though her mind was in this trance, this
awful trance. She made a little gesture with her head at the distant coffin. I
want to… but no words would come out. Come on, Rowan, you flew two
thousand miles for this.
The man slipped his arm
around her. Pressure against her back. ‘You want to see her, Dr Mayfair?’
See her, talk to her, know
her, love her, be loved by her… Her face felt as if it were carved of
ice. And her eyes were unnaturally wide, she knew it.
She glanced up into his
small blue eyes, and nodded. It seemed a hush had fallen over everyone. Had she
spoken that loud? But she hadn’t said anything at all. Surely they didn’t
know what she looked like, yet it seemed they were all turning to look at her
as she and this man walked into the first room, and the message traveled by
whispers. She looked closely at the red-haired girl with the ribbon as she
passed. In fact, she stopped without meaning to, stranded, on the threshold of
the second room, with this nice man, Jerry Lonigan, beside her.
Even the children had
stopped playing. The room seemed to darken as everyone moved soundlessly and
slowly, but only a few steps. Mr Lonigan said:
‘You wanna sit down,
Dr Mayfair?’
She was staring at the
carpet. The coffin was twenty feet away. Don’t look up, she thought, don’t
look up until you actually reach the coffin. Don’t see something horrible
from a distance. But what was so horrible about all this, how could this be
worse than the autopsy table, except that this was… this was her mother.
A woman stepped up behind
the little girl, placing her hand on the girl’s shoulder. ‘Rowan?
Rowan, I’m Alicia Mayfair, I was Deirdre’s fourth cousin once
removed. This is Mona, my little girl.’
‘Rowan, I’m
Pierce Mayfair,’ said the handsome young man on her right, extending his
hand suddenly. ‘I’m Cortland’s great-grandson.’
‘Darling, I’m
Beatrice, your cousin.’ Whiff of perfume. The woman with the iron gray
hair. Soft skin touching Rowan’s cheek. Enormous gray eyes.
‘— Cecilia
Mayfair, Barclay’s granddaughter, my grandfather was Julien’s
second son born at the First Street house, and here, Sister, come, this is
Sister Marie Claire. Sister, this is Rowan, this is Deirdre’s girl!’
Weren’t you supposed
to say something respectable to nuns, but this sister couldn’t have
heard. They were shouting in her ear. ‘Deirdre’s girl, Rowan!’
‘— Timothy
Mayfair, your fourth cousin, we’re glad to see you, Rowan —’
‘— glad to see
you on this sad…"
‘Peter Mayfair, we’ll
talk later on. Garland was my father. Did Ellie ever talk about Garland?’
Dear God, they were all
Mayfairs. Polly Mayfair, and Agnes Mayfair, and Philip Mayfair’s girls,
and Eugenie Mayfair, and on and on it went. How many of them could there
possibly be? Not a family but a legion. She was clasping one hand after
another, and at the same time cleaving to the beefy Mr Lonigan, who held her so
firmly. Was she trembling? No, this is what they call shaking, not trembling.
Lips brushed her cheek. ’…
Clancy Mayfair, Clay’s great-granddaughter. Clay was born at First Street
before the Civil War. My mother is Trudy Mayfair, here, Mother, come, let
Mother through…’
‘… so glad to
see you, darling. Have you seen Carlotta?’
‘Miss Carlotta’s
feeling pretty bad,’ said Mr Lonigan. ‘She’ll meet us at the
church —’
‘- ninety years old
now, you know.’
‘- do you want a glass
of water? She’s white as a sheet, Pierce, get her a glass of water.’
‘Magdalene Mayfair,
Remy’s great-granddaughter. Remy lived at First Street for years. This is
my son, Garvey, and my daughter, Lindsey. Here, Dan, Dan say hello to Dr
Mayfair. Dan is Vincent’s great-grandson. Did Ellie tell you about Clay
and Vincent and…’
No, never, about anyone. Promise me you will never go back,
that you’ll never try to find out. But why, why in the name of God?
All these people - why the paper, the secrecy?
‘- Gerald’s with
her. Pierce stopped by. He saw her. She’s fine, she’ll be at the
church.’
‘Do you want to sit
down, honey’?
‘Are you all right?’
‘Lily, darling, Lily
Mayfair, you’ll never remember all our names, don’t try.’
‘Robert, honey. We’ll
talk to you later.’
‘- here if you need
us, Rowan. Are you feeling all right?’
I am. I’m fine. I just
can’t talk. I can’t move. I…
There was tightening again
of the facial muscles. Rigid, rigid all over. She held tighter to Mr Lonigan’s
hand. He said something to them about her paying her respects now. Was he
telling them to go away? A man touched her left hand.
‘I’m Guy
Mayfair, Andrea’s son, and this is my wife, Stephanie, she’s Grady’s
daughter. She was Ellie’s first cousin.’
She wanted to respond, was
clasping each hand enough, was nodding enough? Was kissing back the old woman
who kissed her enough? Another man was talking to her but his voice was too
soft. He was old, he was saying something about Sheffield. The coffin was
twenty feet away at most. She didn’t dare look up, or look away from
them, for fear she’d see it accidentally.
But this is what you came
for, and you have to do it. And they are here, hundreds of them…
‘Rowan,’ said
someone to her left, ‘this is Fielding Mayfair, Clay’s son.’
Such a very old man, so old she could see all the bones of his skull through
his pale skin, see the lower and upper teeth and the ridges around his sunken
eyes. They were holding him up; he couldn’t stand by himself, and all
this struggle, so that he might see her? She put out her hand. ‘He wants
to kiss you, honey.’ She brushed his cheek with her lips.
His speech was low, his eyes
yellowed as he looked up at her. She tried to hear what he was saying,
something about Lestan Mayfair and Riverbend. What was Riverbend? She nodded.
He was too old to be treated badly. She had to say something! He was too old to
be struggling like this just to pay his respects to her. When she squeezed his
hand, it felt so smooth and silky and knotted and strong.
‘I think she’s
going to faint,’ someone whispered. Surely they weren’t talking
about her.
‘Do you want me to
take you up to the coffin?’ The young man again, the handsome one, with
the clean preppie face, and the brilliant eyes. ‘I’m Pierce, I met
you just a second ago.’ Flash of perfect teeth. ‘Ellie’s
first cousin.’
Yes, to the coffin. It’s
time, isn’t it? She looked towards it, and it seemed that someone stepped
back so that she might see, and then her eyes shifted instantly upwards, beyond
the face on the propped-up pillow. She saw the flowers clustered about the
raised lid, a whole jungle of flowers, and far to the right at the foot of the
coffin a white-haired man she knew. The dark-haired woman beside him was
crying, and saying her rosary, and they were both looking at her, but how in
the world could she possibly know that man, or anyone here? But she knew him!
She knew he was English, whoever he was, she knew just how his voice would
sound when he spoke to her.
Jerry Lonigan helped her
step forward. The handsome one, Pierce, was standing beside her. ‘She’s
sick, Monty,’ said the pretty old woman. ‘Get her some water.’
‘Honey, maybe you
should sit down…’
She shook her head, mouthing
the word no. She looked at that white-haired Englishman again, the one with the
woman who was praying. Ellie had wanted her rosary in the last week. Rowan had
had to go to a store in San Francisco to buy one. The woman was shaking her
head and crying, and wiping her nose, and the white-haired man was whispering
to her, but his eyes were fixed on Rowan. I know you. He looked at her as if she’d
spoken to him, and then it came to her - the cemetery in Sonoma County where
Graham and Ellie were buried, this was the man she had seen that day by the
grave. I know your family in New
Orleans. And quite unexpectedly another piece of the same puzzle fell into
place. This was the man who’d been standing outside Michael’s house
two nights ago on Liberty Street.
‘Honey, do you want a
glass of water?’ said Jerry Lonigan.
But how could that be? How
could that man have been there, and here, and what had all this to do with
Michael, who had described to her the house with the iron roses in the
railings?
Pierce said he would go get
a chair. ‘Let her just sit right here.’
She had to move. She couldn’t
just remain here staring at the white-haired Englishman, demanding of him that
he explain himself, explain what he’d been doing on Liberty Street. And
out of the corner of her eye, something she couldn’t bear to see,
something in the coffin waiting.
‘Here, Rowan, this is
nice and cold.’ Smell of wine. ‘Take a drink, darling.’
I would like to, I really
would, but I can’t move my mouth. She shook her head, tried to smile. I
don’t think I can move my hand. And you are all expecting me to move, I
really should move. She used to think the doctors who fainted at an autopsy
were fools, really. How could such a thing affect one so physically? If you hit
me with a baseball bat, I might pass out. Oh, God, what you don’t know
about life is really just beginning to reveal itself in this room. And your
mother is in that coffin.
What did you think, that she
would wait here, alive, until you came? Until you finally realized… Down
here, in this strange land! Why, this is like another country, this.
The white-haired Englishman
came towards her. Yes, who are you? Why are you here? Why are you so
dramatically and grotesquely out of place? But then again, he wasn’t. He
was just like all of them, the inhabitants of this strange land, so decorous
and so gentle, and not a touch of irony or self-consciousness or false
sentiment in his kindly face. He drew close to her, gently making the handsome
young man give way.
Remember those tortured
faces at Ellie’s funeral. Not a one under sixty yet not a gray hair, not
a sagging muscle. Nothing like this. Why, this is what they mean when they talk
about ‘the people.’
She lowered her eyes. Banks
of flowers on either side of the velvet prie-dieu. She moved forward, her nails
digging into Mr Lonigan before she could stop herself. She struggled to relax
her hand and to her utter amazement, she felt she was going to fall. The
Englishman took hold of her left arm, as Mr Lonigan held her by the right one.
‘Rowan, listen to me,’
said the Englishman softly in her ear, in that clipped yet melodious accent. ‘Michael
would be here if he could. I’m here in Michael’s place. Michael
will come tonight. Just as soon as he can.’
She looked at him, shocked,
the relief almost making her shudder. Michael was coming. Michael was somewhere
close. But how could this be?
‘Yes, very close, and
unavoidably detained,’ he said, as sincerely as if he’d invented
the words, ’and truly put out that he cannot be here…’
She saw the dim dark
featureless First Street house again, the house Michael had been talking about
all that time. And when she’d first seen him in the water, he had looked
like a tiny speck of clothes floating on the surface, that can’t be a
drowned man, not out here, miles and miles from the land…
‘What can I do for you
now?’ said the Englishman, his voice low and secretive and utterly
solicitous. ‘Do you want to step up to the coffin?’
Yes, please, take me up.
Please help me! Make my legs move. But they were moving. He had slipped his arm
around her and he was guiding her, so easily, and the conversation had started
up again, thank God, though it was a low respectful hum, from which she could
extract various threads at will. ’… she just didn’t want to
come to the funeral parlor, that’s the truth of it. She’s furious
that we’re all here.’ ‘Keep quiet, she’s ninety if she’s
a day and it’s a hundred degrees outside.’ ‘I know, I know.
Well, everyone can come to my place afterwards, I told you…"
She kept her eyes down, on
the silver handles, on the flowers, on the velvet kneeler right in front of her
now. Sick again. Sick from the heat and this motionless cool air with the scent
of the flowers hanging around her like an invisible mist. But you have to do
this. You have to do it calmly and quietly. You cannot lose it. Promise me you’ll never
go back there, you’ll never try to find out.
The Englishman was holding
her, Michael will come, his right hand comfortingly against her arm,
his left hand steadying her left wrist as she touched the velvet-covered side
of the casket.
Slowly, she forced herself
to look up from the floor, to raise her eyes until she saw the face of the dead
woman lying right there on the satin pillow. And slowly her mouth began to
open, to pull open, the rigidity shifting into a spasm. She struggled with all
her strength to keep from opening her mouth. She clenched her teeth. And the
shudder that passed through her was so violent that the Englishman tightened
his grip. He too was looking down. He had known her!
Look at her. Nothing else
matters now. It is not important to hurry, or to think of anything else, or to
worry. Just look at her, look at her face with all its secrets locked away now
forever.
And Stella’s face was so beautiful in
the coffin. She had such beautiful black hair…
‘She is going to
faint, help her! Pierce, help her.’
‘No, we have her, she’s
all right,’ said Jerry Lonigan.
So perfectly, hideously dead
she looked, and so lovely. Groomed she was for eternity — with the pink
lipstick gleaming on her shapely mouth and the rouge on the flawless girlish
cheeks, and her black hair brushed out on the satin, like girl’s hair,
free and beautiful, and the rosary beads, yes, rosary beads, threaded through
her fingers, which are like dough as they lie on her breast, not human hands at
all, but something made crudely by a sculptor.
In all these years, Rowan
had never seen such a thing. She had seen them drowned, and stabbed, and after
they had died on the wards in their sleep. She had seen them colorless and
pumped with chemicals, slit open after weeks and months and even years, for the
anatomy lesson. She had seen them at the autopsy with the blood red organs being
lifted out in the doctor’s gloved hands.
But never this. Never this
dead and pretty thing in blue silk and lace, smelling of face powder, with her
hands clasped over the rosary beads. Ageless she looked, almost like a giant
little girl with her innocent hair, her face devoid of lines, even the shiny
lipstick the color of rose petals.
Oh, if it were only possible
to open her eyes! I wish I could see my mother’s eyes! And in this room
filled with the very old, she is so young still…
She bent down. She withdrew
her hands ever so gently from the Englishman. She laid them on her pale hands,
her softly melting hands. Hard! Hard as the rosary beads. Cold and hard. She
closed her eyes, and pressed her fingers into this unyielding white flesh. So
absolutely dead, so beyond any breath of life, so firmly finished.
If Michael were here, could
he know from her hands if she had died without pain or fear? Could he know why
the secrecy? Could he touch this horrid, lifeless flesh and hear the song of
life still from it? Oh, please God, whoever she was, why ever she gave me away,
I hope it was without fear and pain that she died. In peace, in a sweetness
like her face. Look at her closed eyes, her smooth forehead.
Slowly, she raised her hand
and wiped the tears off her own cheek, and realized that her face was relaxed
now. That she could speak if she wanted to, and that others around her were
crying too, that the woman with the iron gray hair was crying, and that the
poor black-haired woman who had been crying all along was sobbing silently
against the chest of the man beside her, and that the faces of those who didn’t
cry - everywhere she looked in the glow beyond the coffin - had become
thoughtful and quiet, and rather like those faces in great Florentine paintings
where the passive, faintly sad souls regard the world beyond the frame as if
from a dream, gazing out from the corners of their eyes, languidly.
She backed away, but her
eyes remained fixed on the woman in the coffin. She let the Englishman guide
her again, away, to a small room that waited. Mr Lonigan was saying it was time
for them all to come up one by one, that the priest was here, and he was ready.
In astonishment, Rowan saw a
tall old man bend gracefully and kiss the dead woman’s forehead.
Beatrice, the pretty one with the gray hair, came next and whispered something
as she kissed the dead woman in the same manner. A child was lifted next to do
the same; and the old bald man came, heavy with his big belly making it hard,
but he bent to give the kiss, whispering hoarsely for everyone to hear, ‘Good-bye,
darlin’.’
Mr Lonigan pushed her gently
down in the chair. As he turned, the crying woman with the black hair suddenly
bent near and looked into her eyes. ‘She didn’t want to give you up,’
she said, her voice so thin and quick it was like a thought.
‘Rita Mae!’ Mr
Lonigan hissed, turning on her, taking her by the arm, and drawing her back.
‘Is that true?’
Rowan whispered. Rowan reached out to capture her retreating hand. Mr Lonigan’s
face flushed, his jowls shivering slightly. He pushed the black-haired woman
away, out of the door, down a small hallway.
The Englishman looked down
at her from the door to the big room. He gave her a little nod, his eyebrows
rising as if it filled him with sadness and wondering.
Slowly Rowan withdrew her
gaze from him. She stared at the procession, still coming one by one, each
bending as if to drink from the cool splash of a low water fountain. ‘Goodbye,
Deirdre, dear.’ Did they all know? Did they all remember, the older ones,
the ones who had come up to her at first? Had all the children heard, in one
form or another, at some time or another? The handsome one was watching her
from far away.
‘Good-bye,
sweetheart…" On and on they came, seemingly without end, the rooms
behind them dark and crowded as the line pressed in tighter.
Didn’t want to
give you up.
What must it feel like to
kiss her smooth hard skin? And they did it as if it were the most natural thing
in the world, the simplest thing in the world, the baby held aloft, the mother
bending, the man coming so quick and then another very old one with spotted
hands and thinning hair, ‘Help me up, Cecil,’ her foot on the
velvet prie-dieu. The twelve-year-old with the hair ribbon stood on tiptoe.
‘Rowan, do you want to
be alone with her again?’ Lonigan’s voice. ‘That’s your
time at the end, when they’ve all passed. The priest will wait. But you
don’t have to.’
She looked into the
Englishman’s mild, gray eyes. But he wasn’t the one who’d
spoken. It was Lonigan with his flushed and shining face, and china blue eyes.
Far down the little hallway stood his wife, Rita Mae, not daring now to come
closer.
‘Yes, alone, one more
time,’ Rowan whispered. Her eyes searched out the eyes of Rita Mae, in
the shadows at the end of the little hall. ‘True,’ Rita Mae mouthed
the word, as she nodded gravely.
Yes. To kiss her good-bye,
yes, the way they are kissing her…
TWENTY-FIVE
THE
FILE ON THE MAYFAIR
WITCHES
PART
X
Rowan Mayfair
STRICTLY
CONFIDENTIAL THIS SUMMARY AND
UPDATED
SEE
CONFIDENTIAL FILE: ROWAN MAYFAIR,
LONDON
FOR ALL RELATED MATERIALS.
COMPUTER
PASSWORD REQUIRED.
ROWAN MAYFAIR was adopted
legally by Ellen Louise Mayfair and her husband Graham Franklin, on the date of
Rowan’s birth, November 7, 1959.
At this point Rowan was
taken by plane to Los Angeles, where she lived with her adopted parents until
she was three years old. The family then moved to San Francisco, California,
where they lived in Pacific Heights for two years.
When Rowan was five, the
family made its final move to a house on the shore of Tiburon, California
— across the bay from San Francisco - which had been designed by
architects Trammel, Porter and Davis expressly for Graham and Ellie and their
daughter. The house is a marvel of glass walls, exposed redwood beams, and modern
plumbing fixtures and appliances. It includes enormous decks, its own
twenty-five-foot pier, and a boat channel, which is dredged twice yearly. It
commands a view of Sausalito across Richardson Bay and San Francisco to the
south. Rowan lives alone in this house now.
At the time of this writing,
Rowan is almost thirty years old. She is five feet ten inches tall. She has
short, softly bobbed blond hair and large pale gray eyes. She is undeniably
attractive, with remarkably beautiful skin, and dark straight eyebrows and dark
eyelashes and an extremely beautiful mouth. Yet for the sake of comparison, it
can be said that she has none of the glamour of Stella, or the sweet prettiness
of Antha, or the dark sensuality of Deirdre. Rowan is delicate yet boyish; in
some of her pictures, her expression - on account of her straight dark eyebrows
- is reminiscent of Mary Beth.
It is my belief that she
resembles Petyr van Abel, but there are definite differences. She does not have
his deep-set eyes, and her blond hair is ashen rather than gold. But her face
is narrow like that of Petyr van Abel; and there is a Nordic look to Rowan,
just as there is to Petyr in his portraits.
Rowan appears cold to
people. Yet her voice is warm, and deep and slightly husky - what is called a
whiskey voice in America. People say you have to know her, really, to like her.
This is strange because our investigation indicates that very few people know
her. But she is almost universally liked.
SUMMARY
OF MATERIALS ON ROWAN‘S
ADOPTIVE
PARENTS ELLIE MAYFAIR AND GRAHAM FRANKLIN
Ellen Louise Mayfair was the
only daughter of Sheffield, son of Cortland Mayfair. She was born in 1923, and
six years old when Stella died. Ellie lived in California almost exclusively
from the time that she entered Stanford University at eighteen years of age.
She married Graham Franklin, a Stanford law graduate, when she was thirty-one,
Graham was eight years younger than Ellie. Ellie seems to have had very little
contact with her family even before she went to California, as she went away to
a boarding school in Canada when she was only eight, six months after her mother’s
death.
Her father, Sheffield
Mayfair, seems never to have recovered from the loss of his wife, and though he
visited Ellie often, taking her on shopping sprees in New York, he kept her
away from home. He was the most quiet and reclusive of Cortland’s sons,
and possibly the most disappointing, in that he worked doggedly in the family
firm but seldom excelled or participated in important decisions. Everyone
depended upon him, Cortland said after his death.
What is relevant here is
that after the age of eight, Ellie saw very little of the Mayfairs, and her
lifelong friends in California were people she had met there, along with a few
girls from the Canadian boarding school with whom she kept in touch. We don’t
know what she knew of Antha’s life and death, or even of Deirdre’s
life.
Her husband, Graham
Franklin, knew nothing about Ellie’s family apparently, and some of the
remarks he made over the years are entirely fanciful. ‘She came from a
great plantation down there.’
‘They are the sort of
people who keep gold under the floorboards.’
‘I think they were
probably descended from the buccaneers.’
‘Oh, my wife’s
people? They were slave traders, weren’t they, honey? They all have
colored blood.’
Family gossip at the time of
the adoption said that Ellie had signed papers for Carlotta Mayfair saying she
would never let Rowan discover anything about her true background, and never
permit her to return to Louisiana.
Indeed, these papers are
part of the official adoption records, being formalized personal agreements
between the parties, and involving staggering transfers of money.
During the first year of
Rowan’s life, over five million dollars were transferred in successive
installments from the account of Carlotta Mayfair in New Orleans to the
accounts of Ellie Mayfair in California, in the Bank of America and the Wells
Fargo Bank.
Ellie, rich in her own
right, through the trust funds left to her from her father Sheffield, and later
from her grandfather Cortland (maybe Cortland would have changed this
arrangement had there been time, but the paperwork had been done decades
before), set up an immense trust fund for her adoptive daughter, Rowan, to
which half of this five million was added over the next two years.
The remaining half was
transferred, as it came in, directly to Graham Franklin, who invested the money
prudently and success-fully, largely in real estate (a gold mine in
California), and who continued to invest Ellie’s money - regular payments
from her trust -in community property and investments over the years. Though he
made a very high salary as a successful lawyer, Graham had no family money, and
his enormous estate — owned in common with his wife — at the time
of his death was the result of his skillful use of her inherited money.
There is considerable
evidence that Graham resented his wife, and resented his emotional as well as
financial dependence upon her. He could not have possibly supported his
life-style - yachts, sports cars, extravagant vacations, a palatial modern
house in Tiburon — on his salary. And he funneled enormous sums of Ellie’s
money directly out of their joint account into the hands of various mistresses
over the years.
Several of these women have
told our investigators that Graham was a vain and slightly sadistic man. Yet
they found him irresistible, giving up on him only when they realized he really
loved Ellie. It wasn’t just her money. He couldn’t live without
her. ‘He has to get back at her from time to time, and that’s the
only reason he cheats.’
Graham once explained to a
young airline stewardess whom he subsequently put through college that his wife
swallowed him, and that he had to have ‘something on the side’
(meaning a woman) or he was nothing and nobody at all.
When he discovered that
Ellie had fatal cancer, he went into a panic. Legal partners and friends have
described in detail his ‘total
inability’ to deal with Ellie’s sickness. He would not discuss the
illness with her; he would not listen to her doctors; he refused to enter her
hospital room. He moved his mistress into a Jackson Street apartment right
across from his office in San Francisco, and went over to see her as often as
three times a day.
He immediately instigated an
elaborate scheme to strip Ellie of all the family property — which now
amounted to an immense fortune — and was in the process of trying to
declare Ellie incompetent so that he could sell the Tiburon house to his
mistress when he himself died suddenly — two months before Ellie —
from a stroke. Ellie inherited his entire estate.
Graham’s last
mistress, Karen Garfield, an exquisite young fashion model from New York,
poured out her woes to one of our investigators over cocktails. She had been
left with half a million and that was just fine, but she and Graham had planned
a whole life together -’the Virgin Islands, the Riviera, the works.’
Karen herself died of a
series of massive heart attacks, the first of which occurred an hour after
Karen visited Graham’s house in Tiburon to try to ’explain things’
to his daughter Rowan. ‘That bitch! She wouldn’t even let me have
his things! All I wanted were a few keepsakes. She said, "Get out of my
mother’s house."’
Karen lived for two weeks
after the visit, long enough to say many unkind things about Rowan, but
apparently Karen never connected her sudden and inexplicable cardiac
deterioration to her visit. Why should she!
We did make this connection
as the following summary will show.
When Ellie died, Rowan told
Ellie’s closest friends that she had lost her best and only friend in
this world. This was probably true. Ellie Mayfair was all her life a very sweet
and somewhat fragile human being, beloved by her daughter and her numerous
friends. According to these friends, she always evinced something of a southern
belle charm, though she was an athletic, modern California woman in every way,
easily passing for twenty years younger than she was, which was not uncommon
with her contemporaries. Indeed, her youthful looks may have constituted her
only obsession, other than the welfare of her daughter, Rowan.
She had cosmetic surgery
twice in her fifties (facial tightening), frequented expensive beauty salons,
and dyed her hair continuously. In pictures with her husband, taken a year
before her death, she appears to be the younger person. Devoted to Graham and
completely dependent upon him, she ignored his affairs, and with reason. As she
told one friend, ‘He’s always home at six o’clock for dinner.
And he’s always there when I turn out the lights.’
Indeed, the source of Graham’s
charm for Ellie and for others, other than his looks, was apparently his great
enthusiasm for living, and the easy affection he lavished on those around him,
including his wife.
One of his lifelong friends,
an older lawyer, explained it this way to our investigator. ‘He got away
with those affairs because he was never inattentive to Ellie. Some of the other
guys around here should take a lesson from that. What women hate is when you
turn cold to them. If you treat them like queens, they’ll let you have a
concubine or two outside the palace.’
At this point, we simply do
not know how important it is to gather more information about Graham Franklin
and Ellie Mayfair. What seems relevant here is that they were normal upper-middle-class
Californians, and extremely happy in spite of Graham’s deceptions, until
the very last year of their lives. They went to the San Francisco Opera on
Tuesday nights, the symphony on Saturday, the ballet now and then. They owned a
dazzling succession of Bentleys, Rolls-Royces, Jaguars, and other fine cars.
They spent as much as ten thousand dollars a month on clothes. On the open
decks of their beautiful Tiburon home, they entertained friends lavishly and
fashionably. They flew to Europe or Asia for brief, luxurious vacations. And
they were extremely proud of ’our daughter, the doctor,’ as they
called Rowan, light-heartedly, to their many friends.
Though Ellie was supposed to
be telepathic, it was a parlor-game type of thing. She knew who it was when the
phone rang. She could tell you what playing card you were holding in your hand.
Otherwise there was nothing unusual about this woman, except perhaps that she
was very pretty, resembling many other descendants of Julien Mayfair, and had
her great-grandfather’s ingratiating manner and seductive smile.
The last time I myself saw
Ellie was at the funeral of Nancy Mayfair in New Orleans in January of 1988;
she was at that time sixty-three or four, a beautiful woman, about five feet
six inches in height, with darkly tanned skin and jet black hair. Her blue eyes
were concealed behind white-rimmed sunglasses; her fashionable cotton dress
flattered her slender figure, and indeed, she had something of the glamour of a
film actress, to wit a California patina. Within half a year, she was dead.
When Ellie died, Rowan
inherited everything, including Ellie’s family trust fund, and an
additional trust fund which had been set up — Rowan knew nothing about it
— when Rowan was born.
As Rowan was then, and is
now, an extremely hardworking physician, her inheritance has made almost no
appreciable difference in her day-to-day life. But more on that in the proper
time.
ROWAN
MAYFAIR
FROM
CHILDHOOD TO THE PRESENT TIME
Nonobtrusive surveillance of
Rowan indicated that this child was extremely precocious from the beginning,
and may have had a variety of psychic powers of which her adoptive parents
appeared unaware. There is also some evidence that Ellie Mayfair refused to
acknowledge anything ‘strange’ about her daughter. Whatever the
case, Rowan seems to have been’the pride and joy’ of both Ellie and
Graham.
THE MAYFAIR WITCHES
As already indicated, the
bond between mother and child was extremely close until the time of Ellie’s
death. However, Rowan never shared her mother’s love of parties, lunches,
shopping sprees, and other such pursuits, and was never, even in later
adolescence or young adulthood, drawn into Ellie’s wide circle of female
friends.
Rowan did share her parents’
passion for boating. She accompanied the family on boat trips from her earliest
years, learning to manage Graham’s small sailboat, The Wind Singer,
on her own when she was only fourteen. When Graham bought an ocean-going
cruiser named the Great Angela, the whole family took long trips
together several times a year.
By the time Rowan was
sixteen, Graham had bought her own sea-worthy twin-engine full displacement
hull yacht, which Rowan named the Sweet Christine. The Great
Angela was at that time retired, and the whole family used the Sweet
Christine, but Rowan was the undisputed skipper. And over everyone’s
advice and objections, Rowan frequently took the enormous boat out of the
harbor by herself.
For years it was Rowan’s
habit to come directly home from school and to go out of San Francisco Bay into
the ocean for at least two hours. Only occasionally did she invite a close
friend to go along.
‘We never see her till
eight o’clock,’ Ellie would say. ‘And I worry! Oh, how I
worry. But to take that boat away from Rowan would be to kill her. I just don’t
know what to do.’
Though an expert swimmer,
Rowan is not a daredevil sailor, so to speak. The Sweet Christine is a
heavy, slow, forty-foot Dutch-built cruiser, designed for stability in rough
seas, but not for speed.
What seems to delight Rowan
is being alone in it, out of sight of land, in all kinds of weather. Like many
people who respond to the northern California climate, she seems to enjoy fog,
wind, and cold.
All who have observed Rowan
seem to agree that she is a loner, and an extremely quiet person who would rather
work than play. In school she was a compulsive student, and in college a
compulsive researcher. Though her wardrobe was the envy of her classmates, it
was, she always said, Ellie’s doing. She herself had almost no interest
in clothes. Her characteristic off-duty attire has been for years rather
nautical - jeans, yachting shoes, oversized sweaters and watch caps, and a
sailor’s peacoat of navy blue wool.
In the world of medicine,
particularly that of neurosurgery, Rowan’s compulsive habits are less remarkable,
given the nature of the profession Yet even in this field, Rowan has been seen
as ’ob’ sessive ’ In fact, Rowan seems born to have been a
doctor, though her choice of surgery over research surprised many people who
knew her ‘When she was in the lab,’ said one of her colleagues, ’her
mother had to call her and remind her to take time out to sleep or eat’
One of Rowan’s early
elementary-school teachers noted in the record, when Rowan was eight, that’this
child thinks she is an adult She identifies with adults She becomes impatient
with other children But she is too well behaved to show it She seems terribly,
terribly alone’
TELEPATHIC
POWERS
Rowan’s psychic powers
began to surface in school from the time she was six years old Indeed, they may
have surfaced long before that, but we have not been able to find any evidence
before that time Teachers queried informally (or deviously) about Rowan tell
truly amazing stories about the child’s ability to read minds
However, nothing we have
discovered indicates that Rowan was ever considered an outcast or a failure or
maladjusted She was throughout her school years an overachiever and an
unqualified success Her school pictures reveal her to have been an extremely
pretty child, always, with tanned skin and sun-bleached blond hair She appears
secretive in these pictures, as if she does not quite like the intrusion of the
camera, but never affected, or ill at ease
Rowan’s telepathic
abilities became known to teachers rather than to other students, and they
follow a remarkable pattern
‘My mother had died,’
said a first-grade teacher ‘I couldn’t go back to Vermont for the
funeral, and I felt terrible Nobody knew about this, you understand But Rowan
came up to me at recess She sat beside me and she took my hand I almost burst
into tears at this tenderness "I’m sorry about your mother,"
she said She sat there with me in silence Later when I asked her how she knew,
she said, "It just popped into my head " I think that child knew all
kinds of things that way She knew when the other kids were envious of her How
lonely she always was!’
Another time, when a little
girl was absent from school for three days without explanation and school
authorities could not reach her, Rowan quietly told the principal there was no
reason to be alarmed The girl’s grandmother had died, said Rowan, and the
family had gone off to the funeral in another state, completely forgetting to
call the school This turned out to be true Again Rowan could not explain how
she had known except to say ‘It just came into my head’
We have some two dozen
stories similar to this one, and what characterizes almost all of them is that
they involve not only telepathy, but empathy and sympathy on the part of Rowan
- a clear desire to comfort or minister to a suffering or confused
person. That person was invariably an adult The telepathic power is never
connected with tricks, frightening people, or quarrels of any kind
In 1966, when Rowan was
eight, she used this telepathic ability of hers for the last time as far as
we know During her fourth-grade term at a private school in Pacific
Heights, she told the principal that another little girl was very sick and
ought to see a doctor, but Rowan didn’t know how to tell anyone The
little girl was going to die
The principal was horrified
She called Rowan’s mother and insisted that Rowan be taken to a
psychiatrist Only a deeply disturbed little girl would say ‘something
like that ’ Ellie promised to talk with Rowan. Rowan said nothing further
However, the little girl in
question was diagnosed within a week as having a rare form of bone cancer She
died before the end of the term
The principal has told the
story over dinner countless times She deeply regretted her censure of Rowan She
wished in particular that she had not called Mrs Mayfair, because Mrs Mayfair
became so terribly upset
It may have been concern on
Elite’s part which put an end to this sort of incident in Rowan’s
life Ellie’s friends all knew about it ‘Elite was damned near
hysterical She wanted Rowan to be normal She said she didn’t want a
daughter with strange gifts’
Graham thought the whole
thing was a coincidence, according to the principal He bawled out the woman for
calling and telling Ellie when the poor little girl died
Coincidence or not, this
entire affair seems to have put an end to Rowan’s demonstrations of her
power. It is safe to assume that she shrewdly decided to ’go underground’
as a mind reader. Or even that she deliberately suppressed her power to the
point where it became nonexistent or extremely weak. Try as we might, we find
nothing about her telepathic abilities from then on. People’s memories of
her all have to do with her quiet brilliance, her indefatigable energy, and her
love of science and medicine.
‘She was that girl in
high school who collected the bugs and the rocks, calling everything by a long
Latin name.’
‘Frightening,
absolutely frightening,’ said her high school chemistry teacher. ‘I
wouldn’t have been surprised if she had reinvented the hydrogen bomb one
weekend in her spare time.’
It has been speculated
within the Talamasca that Rowan’s suppression of her telepathic power may
have something to do with the growth of her telekinetic power, that she
rechanneled her energy, so to speak, and that the two powers represent both
sides of the same coin. To put it differently, Rowan turned away from mind and
toward matter. Science and medicine became her obsessions from her junior high
school years on.
Rowan’s only real
boyfriend during her teen-age years was also brilliant and reclusive. He seems
to have been unable to take the competition. When Rowan was admitted to U.C.
Berkeley and he was not, they broke up bitterly. Friends blamed the boyfriend.
He later went east and became a research scientist in New York.
One of our investigators ’bumped
into him’ at a museum opening, and brought the conversation around to
psychics and mind readers. The man opened up about his old high school
sweetheart who had been psychic. He was still bitter about it. ‘I loved
that girl. Really loved her. Her name was Rowan Mayfair and she was very
unusual-looking. Not pretty in an ordinary way. But she was impossible. She
knew what I was thinking even before I knew it. She knew when I’d been
out with someone else. She was so damned quiet about it, it was eerie. I heard
she became a neurosurgeon. That’s scary. What will happen if the patient
thinks something negative about her before he goes under the anesthesia? Will
she slice the thought right out of his head?’
The fact is, no one
reporting on Rowan mentions pettiness in connection with her. She is described
as ’formidable,’ just as Mary.
Beth Mayfair was once
described, but never small-minded or vindictive, or unduly aggressive in any
personal way.
By the time Rowan entered
U.C. Berkeley in 1976, she knew that she wanted to be a doctor. She was a
straight A student in the premedicine program, took courses every summer
(though she still went on vacation often with Graham and Ellie), skipped an
entire year, and graduated at the top of her class in 1979. She entered medical
school when she was twenty, apparently believing that neurological research
would be her life’s work.
Her academic progress during
this period was thought to be phenomenal. Numerous teachers speak of her as’the
most brilliant student I have ever had.’
‘She isn’t just
smart. She’s intuitive! She makes astonishing connections. She doesn’t
just read a book. She swallows it, and comes up with six different implications
of the author’s basic theory of which the author never dreamed.’
‘The students have
nicknamed her Dr Frankenstein because of her talk about brain transplants and
creating whole new brains out of parts. But the thing about Rowan is, she’s
a real human being. No need to worry about brilliance without a heart.’
‘Oh, Rowan. Do I
remember Rowan? You have to be kidding! Rowan could have been teaching the
class instead of me. You want to know something funny - and don’t you
ever tell anyone this! I had to go out of town at the end of the term, and I
gave Rowan all the class papers to grade. She graded her own class! Now if that
ever gets out I’m ruined, but we struck a bargain, you see. She wanted a
key to the laboratory over the Christmas break, and I said, "Well, how
about grading these papers?" and the worst part of it was it was the first
time I didn’t get a single student complaint about a grade. Rowan, I wish
I could forget her. People like Rowan make the rest of us feel like jerks.’
‘She isn’t
brilliant. That’s what people think, but there’s more to it. She’s
some sort of mutant. No, seriously. She can study the research animals and tell
you what’s going to happen. She would lay her hands on them and say,
"This drug isn’t going to do it." I’ll tell you something
else she did too. She could cure these little creatures. She could. One of the
older doctors told me once that if she didn’t watch it, she could upset
the experiments by using her powers to cure. I believe it. I went out with her
one time, and she didn’t cure me of anything, but boy, was she ever hot.
I mean literally hot. It was like making love to somebody with a fever. And that’s
what they say about faith healers, you know, the ones who’ve been
studied. You can feel a heat coming from their hands. I believe it. I don’t
think she should have gone into surgery. She should have gone into oncology. She
could have really cured people. Surgery? Anybody can cut them up.’
(Let us add that this doctor
himself is an oncologist, and non-surgeons frequently make extremely pejorative
statements about surgeons, calling them plumbers and the like; and surgeons make
similar pejorative remarks about nonsurgeons, saying things such as ‘All
they do is get the patients ready for us.’)
ROWAN‘S
POWER TO HEAL
As soon as Rowan entered the
hospital as an intern (her third year of medical school), stories of her
healing powers and diagnostic powers became so common that our investigators
could pick and choose what they wanted to write down.
In sum, Rowan is the first
Mayfair witch to be described as a healer since Marguerite Mayfair at Riverbend
before 1835.
Just about every nurse ever
questioned about Rowan has some ’fantastic’ story to tell. Rowan
could diagnose anything; Rowan knew just what to do. Rowan patched up people
who looked like they were ready for the morgue.
‘She can stop
bleeding. I’ve seen her do it. She grabbed a hold of this boy’s
head and looked at his nose. "Stop," she whispered. I heard her. And
he just didn’t bleed any more after that.’
Her more skeptical
colleagues - including some male and female doctors - attribute her
achievements to the ’power of suggestion.’ ‘Why, she
practically uses voodoo, you know, saying to a patient, Now we’re going
to make this pain stop! Of course it stops, she’s got them hypnotized.’
Older black nurses in the
hospital know Rowan has ‘the power,’ and sometimes ask her outright
to ’lay those hands’ on them when they are suffering severe
arthritis or other such aches and pains. They swear by Rowan.
‘She looks into your
eyes. "Tell me about it, where it hurts," she says. And she rubs with
those hands, and it don’t hurt! That’s a fact.’
By all accounts, Rowan seems
to have loved working in the hospital, and to have experienced an immediate
conflict between her devotion to the laboratory and her newfound exhilaration
on the wards.
‘You could see the
research scientist being seduced!’ said one of her teachers sadly. ‘I
knew we were losing her. And once she stepped into the Operating Room it was
all over. Whatever they say about women being too emotional to be brain
surgeons, no one would ever say such a thing about Rowan. She’s got the
coolest hands in the field.’
(Note the coincidental use
of cool and hot in reference to the hands.)
There are indications that
Rowan’s decision to abandon research for surgery was a difficult, if not
traumatic one. During the fall of 1983, she apparently spent considerable time
with a Dr Karl Lemle, of the Keplinger Institute in San Francisco, who was
working on cures for Parkinson’s disease.
Rumors at the hospital
indicated that Lemle was trying to lure Rowan away from University, with an
extremely high salary and ideal working conditions, but that Rowan did not feel
she was ready to leave the Emergency Room or the Operating Room or the wards.
During Christmas of 1983,
Rowan seems to have had a violent falling out with Lemle, and thereafter would
not take his calls. Or so he told everyone at University over the next few
months.
We have never been able to
learn what happened between Rowan and Lemle. Apparently Rowan did agree to see
him for lunch in the spring of 1984. Witnesses saw them in the hospital cafeteria
where they had quite an argument. A week later Lemle entered the Keplinger
private hospital having suffered a small stroke. Another stroke followed and
then another, and he was dead within the month.
Some of Rowan’s
colleagues criticized her severely for her failure to visit Lemle. Lemle’s
assistant, who later took his place at the Institute, said to one of our
investigators that Rowan was highly competitive and jealous of his boss. This
seems unlikely.
No one to our knowledge has
ever .connected the death of Lemle with Rowan. However, we have made the
connection.
Whatever happened between
Rowan and her mentor – she frequently described him as such before their
falling out - Rowan committed herself to neurosurgery shortly after 1983, and
began operating exclusively on the brain after she completed her regular
residency in 1985. She is at the time of this writing completing her residency
in neurosurgery, and will undoubtedly be board certified, and probably hired as
the Staff Attending at University within the year.
Rowan’s record as a
neurosurgeon so far — though she is still a resident and technically
operating under the eye of the Attending — is as exemplary as one might
expect.
Stories abound of her saving
lives on the operating table, of her uncanny ability to know in the Emergency
Room whether surgery will save a patient, of her patching up ax wounds, bullet
wounds, and skull fractures resulting from falls and car collisions, of her
operating for ten hours straight without fainting, of her quiet and expert
handling of frightened interns and cranky nurses, and of disapproving
colleagues and administrators who have advised her from time to time that she
takes too many risks.
Rowan, the miracle worker,
has become a common epithet.
In spite of her success as a
surgical resident, Rowan remains extremely well liked at the hospital. She is a
doctor upon whom others can rely. Also she elicits exceptional devotion from
the nurses with whom she works. In fact, her relationship with these women
(there are a few male nurses but the profession is still predominately female)
is so exceptional as to beg for an explanation.
And the explanation seems to
be that Rowan goes out of her way to establish personal contact with nurses,
and that indeed, she displays the same extraordinary empathy regarding their
personal problems that she displayed with her teachers years ago. Though none
of these nurses report telepathic incidents, they say repeatedly that Rowan
seems to know when they are feeling bad, to be sympathetic with their family
difficulties, and that Rowan finds some way to express her gratitude to them
for special services, and this from an uncompromising doctor who expects the
highest standards of those on the staff.
Rowan’s conquest of
the Operating Room nurses, including those famous for being uncooperative with
women surgeons, is something of a legend in the hospital. Whereas other female
surgeons are criticized as ’having a chip on their shoulder,’ or
being ‘too superior’ or ’just plain bitchy’ —
remarks which seem to reflect considerable prejudice, all things considered -
the same nurses speak of Rowan as if she were a saint.
‘She never screams or
throws a tantrum like the men do, she’s too good for that’
‘She’s as
straight as a man.’
‘I’d rather be
in there with her than some of these men doctors, I tell you.’
‘She’s beautiful
to work with. She’s the best I love just to watch her work. She’s
like an artist.’
‘She’s the only
doctor who’s ever going to open my head, I can tell you that.’
To put this more clearly into
perspective, we are still living in a world in which Operating Room nurses
sometimes refuse to hand instruments to women surgeons, and patients in
Emergency Rooms refuse to be treated by women doctors and insist that young
male interns treat them while older, wiser, and more competent women doctors
are forced to stand back and watch.
Rowan appears to have
transcended this sort of prejudice entirely If there is any complaint against
her among members of her profession it is that she is too quiet She doesn’t
talk enough about what she’s doing to the young doctors who must learn
from her". It’s hard for her But she does the best she can.
As of 1984, she seemed to
have escaped completely the curse of the Mayfairs, the ghastly experiences that
plagued her mother and her grandmother, and to be on the way to a brilliant
career.
An exhaustive investigation
of her life had turned up no evidence of Lasher’s presence, or indeed any
connection between Rowan and ghosts or spirits or apparitions.
And her strong telepathic
powers and healing powers seemed to have been put to extraordinarily productive
use in her career as a surgeon.
Though everyone around her
admired her for her exceptional accomplishments, no one thought of her as ’weird’
or ‘strange’ or in any way connected with the supernatural.
As one doctor put it when
asked to explain Rowan’s reputation, ‘She’s a genius. What
else can I say?’
LATER
DISCOVERIES
However, there is more to
the story of Rowan which has surfaced only in the last few years One part of that
story is entirely personal and no concern of the Talamasca The other part of it
has us alarmed beyond our wildest expectations as to what may happen to Rowan
in the years that lie ahead
Allow us to deal with the
insignificant part first
In 1985, the complete lack
of any social life on the part of Rowan aroused our curiosity We asked our
investigators to engage in closer surveillance
Within weeks, they
discovered that Rowan, far from having no social life, has a very special kind
of social life including very virile working-class men whom she picks up from
time to time in any one of four different San Francisco bars
These men are predominately
fire fighters or uniformed policemen They are invariably single, they are
always extremely good-looking and extremely well built Rowan sees them only on
the Sweet Christine, in
which they sometimes go out to sea and other times remain in the harbor, and
she rarely sees any one of them more than three times
Though Rowan is very
discreet and unobtrusive, she has become the subject of some gossip in the bars
she frequents At least two men have been embittered by their inevitable
rejection by her and they talked freely to our investigators, but it became
apparent that they knew almost nothing about Rowan They thought she was ’a
rich girl from Tiburon’ who had snubbed them, or used them They had no
idea she was a doctor One of them repeatedly described the Sweet Christine
as ‘Daddy’s fancy boat’
Other men who have known
Rowan are more objective ‘She’s a loner, that’s all I liked
it, actually She didn’t want any string attached and neither did I. I
would have liked it once or twice more maybe, but it’s got to be mutual I
understand her She’s an educated girl who likes old-fashioned men’
A superficial investigation
of twelve different men seen leaving Rowan’s house between 1986 and 1987
indicated that all were highly regarded fire fighters or policemen, some with
sterling records and decorations, and all considered by their peers and later
girlfriends to be ’nice guys’
Further digging also
confirmed that Rowan’s parents knew about her preference for this sort of
man as early as her undergraduate years Graham told his secretary that Rowan
wouldn’t even speak to a guy with a college degree That she only went out
with ’hairy-chested galoots,’ and one of these days she was going
to discover that these non-compos-mentis apes were dangerous
Ellie also expressed her
concern to her friends ‘She says they’re all cops and firemen and
that those kind of men only save lives I don’t think she knows what she’s
doing But as long as she doesn’t marry one of those men I suppose it’s
all right You should see the one she brought home last night I got a glimpse of
him on the side deck Beautiful red hair and freckles Just the cutest Irish cop
you ever saw’
As things stand now, I have
put a halt to this investigation I feel we had no grounds to pursue this aspect
of Rowan’s life further And indeed, the bars in which Rowan picks up her
cops and firemen are so few that asking questions about Rowan truly violates
her privacy by drawing attention to her, and in some instances our questions
have encouraged rather degrading talk on the part of crude men, who actually
knew nothing about "Rowan, but claimed to have heard this or that vulgar
detail from someone else.
I do not think that this
aspect of Rowan’s life is any concern of ours, except to note that her
taste seemed similar to that of Mary Beth Mayfair, and that such a pattern of
random and limited contacts reinforces the idea that Rowan is a loner, and a mystery
to everyone who knows her That she does not talk about herself to these bed
partners is obvious Perhaps she cannot talk about herself to anyone, and this
may be one key to understanding her compulsions and ambitions.
ROWAN‘S
TELEKINETIC POWER
The other aspect of Rowan’s
life, only lately discovered, is far more significant, and represents one of
the most disturbing chapters in the entire history of the Mayfair family We
have only begun to document this second secret aspect of Rowan, and we feel compelled
to continue our investigations, and to consider the possibility of contact with
Rowan in the very near future, though we are deeply troubled about disturbing
her ignorance regarding her family background, and we cannot in conscience make
contact without disturbing her ignorance. The responsibilities involved are
immense.
In 1988, when Graham
Franklin died of a cerebral hemorrhage, our investigator in the area wrote us a
brief description of the event, adding only a few details, namely that the man
had died in Rowan’s arms.
As we knew of the deep
division between Graham Franklin and his dying wife, Ellie, we read this report
with some care. Could Rowan have somehow caused Graham’s death? We were
curious to know.
As our investigators sought
more information about Graham’s plan to divorce his wife, they came in
contact with Graham’s mistress, Karen Garfield, and reported in due time
that Karen had suffered several severe heart attacks. Then they reported her
death, two months following that of Graham.
Attaching no significance to
it whatsoever, they had also reported a meeting between Rowan and Karen the day
that Karen was rushed to the hospital with her first major attack. Karen had
spoken to our investigator - ‘You’re a cute guy, I like you’
- only hours after seeing Rowan. She was, in fact, talking to the man when she
broke off because she wasn’t feeling well.
The investigations did not
make the connections, but we did. Karen Garfield was only twenty-seven. Her
autopsy records, which we obtained fairly easily, indicated that she had had an
apparent congenital weakness of the heart muscle, and a congenital weakness of
the artery wall. She sustained a hemorrhage in the artery and then major heart
failure, and after the initial damage to the heart muscle, she simply could not
recover. The subsequent bouts of heart failure weakened her progressively until
she finally died.
Only a heart transplant
could have saved her, and as she had a very rare blood type, that was out of
the question. And besides, there wasn’t time
The case struck us as very
unusual, especially since Karen’s condition had never given her any
trouble before. When we studied Graham’s autopsy we discovered that he
too had died of an aneurysm, or weakness of the artery wall. A massive
hemorrhage had killed him almost instantly.
We ordered our investigators
to go back through Rowan’s life as best they could, and look for any
sudden deaths through heart failure, cerebrovascular accident, or any such
internal traumatic cause. In sum, this meant making casual and unobtrusive
inquiries of teachers who might remember Rowan and her classmates, and
inquiries of students who might remember such things at U.C. Berkeley, or
University Hospital. Not such an easy thing to accomplish, but easier than one
unfamiliar with our methods might suppose.
In truth, I expected the
investigation to turn up nothing.
People with this kind of
telekinetic power — the power to inflict severe internal damage - are
almost unheard of, even in the annals of the Talamasca. And certainly we had
never seen anyone in the Mayfair family who could bring death with that kind of
force.
Many Mayfairs moved objects,
slammed doors, caused windows to rattle. But in almost every incidence it could
have been pure witchcraft — to wit, the manipulation of Lasher or other
lowly spirits, rather than telekinesis. And if it was telekinesis it was the
garden variety and nothing more.
Indeed, the history of the
Mayfairs was the history of witchcraft, with only mild touches of telepathy or
healing power or other psychic abilities mixed in.
In the meantime, I studied
all the information we had on Rowan. I could not help but believe that Deirdre
Mayfair would be happy if she could read such a history, if she could know that
her daughter was so deeply admired and so uniformly successful, and I vowed to
myself that I would never do anything to disturb the happiness or the peace of
mind of Rowan Mayfair - that if the Mayfair history, as we knew it and
understood it, was coming to an end in the liberated figure of Rowan, then we
could only be glad for Rowan, and could do nothing to affect that history in
any way.
After all, only a tiny bit
of information about the past might change the course of Rowan’s life. We
could not risk such intervention. In fact, I felt we had to be prepared to
close the file on Rowan, and on the Mayfair Witches, as soon as Deirdre was
released in death. On the other hand we had to be prepared to do something if,
when Ellie died, Rowan went back to New Orleans to find out about her past.
Within two weeks of Ellie’s
funeral, we knew that Rowan was not going back. She had just commenced her
final year as senior resident in neurosurgery and could not possibly take the
time. Also our investigators had discovered that Rowan had been asked by Ellie to
sign a paper swearing officially that she would never go to New Orleans or seek
to know who her real parents were. Rowan had signed this paper. There was no
indication that she did not mean to honor it.
Perhaps she would never set
eyes on the First Street house. Perhaps somehow ‘the curse’ would
be broken. And Carlotta Mayfair would be victorious in the end.
On the other hand, it was
too soon to know. And what was to stop Lasher from revealing himself to this
highly psychic young woman who could read people’s minds more strongly
perhaps than her mother or grandmother, and whose enormous ambition and
strength echoed that of ancestors like Marie Claudette, or Julien, or Mary
Beth, about whom she knew nothing, but about whom she might soon find out a
lot.
As I pondered all these
things, I also found myself thinking often of Petyr van Abel - Petyr whose
father had been a great surgeon and anatomist in Leiden, a name in the history
books to this day. I longed to tell Rowan Mayfair: ‘See that name, that
Dutch doctor who was famous for his study of anatomy. That is your ancestor.
His blood and his skill perhaps have come down to you through all the
generations and the years.’
These were my thoughts when
in the fall of 1988 our investigators began to report some amazing findings
regarding traumatic deaths in Rowan’s past. It seems that a little girl
fighting with Rowan on the playground in San Francisco had suffered a violent
cerebral hemorrhage and died within a few feet of the hysterical Rowan before
an ambulance could even be called.
Then in 1974, when Rowan was
a teenager, she was saved from assault at the hands of a convicted rapist when
the man suffered a fatal heart attack as Rowan struggled to fight him off.
In 1984, on the afternoon
that he first complained of a severe headache, Dr Karl Lemle of the Keplinger
Institute told his secretary, Berentce, that he had just seen Rowan
unexpectedly and that he could not understand the animosity she felt for him.
She had become so angry when he tried to speak to her that she had cut him in
front of the other doctors at University. In fact, she’d given him a bad
headache. He needed some aspirin. He was hospitalized for the first of his
successive hemorrhages that night, and died within a matter of weeks.
That made five deaths from
cerebrovascular or cardiovascular accident among Rowan’s close
associates. Three of these people had died while Rowan was present. Two had
seen her within hours of taking ill.
I told my investigators to
run an exhaustive check on every single one of Rowan’s classmates or
colleagues, and to check each and every name with the death records in San
Francisco and in the city of the person’s birth. Of course this would
take months.
But within weeks, they had
found yet another death. It was Owen Gander who called me, a man who has worked
directly for the Talamasca for twenty years. He is not a member of the order,
but he has visited the Motherhouse and he is one of our most trusted
confidants, and one of the best investigators we have.
This was his report. At U.C.
Berkeley in 1978, Rowan had had a terrible argument with another student over
some laboratory work. Rowan felt that the girl-had deliberately meddled with
her equipment. Rowan had lost her temper - an extremely rare occurrence - and
thrown a piece of equipment to the ground, breaking it, and then turned her
back on the girl. The girl then ridiculed Rowan until other students came
between them insisting that the girl stop.
The girl went home that
night to Palo Alto, California, as the spring break began the following day. By
the end of spring break she had died of a cerebrovascular hemorrhage. There was
no indication from the record that Rowan ever knew.
When I read this, I called
Gander immediately from London. ‘What makes you think Rowan didn’t
know?’ I asked.
‘None of her friends
knew. After I found the girl’s death in the Palo Alto records, I
researched her with Rowan’s friends. They all remembered the fight, but
they didn’t know what happened to the girl afterwards. Not a single one
knew. I asked them pointedly. "Never saw her again."
"Guess she dropped out
of school."
"Never knew her very
well. Don’t know what happened to her. Maybe she went back to
Stanford." That’s it. U.C. Berkeley is an enormous university. It
could have happened like that.’
I then advised the
investigator to proceed with the utmost discretion to discover whether Rowan
knew what had happened to Graham’s mistress, Karen Garfield. ‘Call
her some time in the evening. Ask for Graham Franklin. When she tells you
Graham is dead, explain that you are trying to find Karen Garfield. But try to
upset her as little as possible, and don’t stay on the line very long.’
The investigator called back
the following evening.
‘You’re right.’
‘About what?’ I
asked.
‘She doesn’t
know she’s doing it! She doesn’t have any idea that Karen Garfield
is dead. She told me Karen lived somewhere on Jackson Street in San Francisco.
She suggested I try Graham’s old secretary. Aaron, she doesn’t know.’
‘How did she
sound?"
‘Weary, faintly
annoyed, but polite. She has a beautiful voice, really. Rather exceptional
voice. I asked her if she’d seen Karen. I was really pushing it. She said
that she didn’t actually know Karen, that Karen had been a friend of her
father’s. I believe she was perfectly sincere!’
‘Well, she had to know
about her stepfather, and about the little girl on the playground. And she had
to know about the rapist.’
‘Yes, but Aaron,
probably none of them was deliberate. Don’t you see? She was hysterical
when that little girl died; she was hysterical after the rape attempt. As for
the stepfather, she was doing everything she could to resuscitate him when the
ambulance arrived. She doesn’t know. Or if she does know, she can’t
control it. It might be scaring her half to death.’
I told Gander to reconsider
the matter of the young lovers in greater detail. Look for any relevant deaths
among policemen or fire fighters in San Francisco or Marin County. Go back to
the bars Rowan frequented; start a conversation with one of her former lovers;
say you’re looking for Rowan Mayfair. Has anybody seen her? Does anybody
know her? Be as discreet and nondisruptive as possible. But dig.
Gander called four days
later. There had been no such suspicious deaths among any young men in the
departments who could conceivably be connected to Rowan. But one thing had
emerged from the investigator’s talks in the bar. One young fireman, who
admitted to knowing Rowan and liking her, said she was no mystery to him,
rather she was an open book. ‘She’s a doctor; she likes saving
people’s lives and she hangs around with us because we do the same thing.’
‘Did Rowan actually
say that to the young man?’
‘Yes, she told him
that. He made a joke about it. "Imagine, I went to bed with a brain
surgeon. She fell in love with my medals. It was great while it lasted. You
think if I pull somebody out of a burning building, she’ll give me
another chance?"’ Gander laughed. ‘She doesn’t know,
Aaron. She’s hooked on saving people, and maybe she doesn’t even
know why.’
‘She has to know. She’s
too good a doctor not to know,’ I said. ‘Remember, this girl is a
diagnostic genius. She must have known with the stepfather. Unless of course we’re
wrong about the whole thing.’
‘We’re not wrong,’
said Gander. ‘What you’ve got here, Aaron, is a brilliant
neurosurgeon descended from a family of witches, who can kill people just by
looking at them; and on some level she knows it, she has to, and she spends
every day of her life making up for it in the Operating Room, and when she goes
out on the town it’s with some hero who’s just saved a kid from a
burning attic, or a cop who’s stopped a drunk from stabbing his wife. She’s
sort of mad, this lady. Maybe as mad as all the rest.’
In December of 1988, I went
to California. I had been to the States in January to attend the funeral of
Nancy Mayfair, and I deeply regretted not having gone on to the coast at that
time to try to get a glimpse of Rowan. But no one had an inkling, then, that
both Ellie and Graham would be dead within six months.
Rowan was now all alone in
the house in Tiburon. I wanted to have a look at her, even if it was from a
distance. I wanted to make some appraisal which depended upon my seeing her in
the flesh.
By that time, we had not
— thank God — turned up any more deaths in Rowan’s past. As
the senior resident in neurosurgery, she was working a hectic if not inhuman
schedule at the hospital, and I found it far more difficult to get a glimpse of
her than I ever imagined. She left the hospital from a covered parking lot and
drove into a covered garage at home. The Sweet Christine, moored at
her very doorstep, was concealed entirely by a high redwood fence.
At last I entered University
Hospital, sought out the doctors’ cafeteria, and hovered near it in a
small visitors’ area for seven hours. To my knowledge Rowan never passed.
I resolved to follow her
from the hospital only to discover that there was no way to discover when she
might be leaving. When she arrived was also a mystery There was no discreet way
to press anyone for details. I could not risk hanging about in the area
adjacent to the Operating Rooms. It wasn’t open to the public. The
waiting room for the family members of those having surgery was strictly
monitored And the rest of the hospital was like a labyrinth. I didn’t
know finally what to do.
I was thrown into
consternation. I wanted to see Rowan, but I dreaded disturbing her I could not
bear the thought of bringing darkness into her life, of clouding the isolation
from the past which seemed, on the surface, to have served her so well. On the
other hand, if she was actually responsible for the deaths of six human beings!
Well, I had to see her before I could make a decision. I had to see her.
Unable to come to any
decision, I invited Gander for a drink at the hotel. Gander felt Rowan was
deeply troubled. He had watched her off and on for over fifteen years. She had
had the wind knocked out of her by the death of her parents, he said. And we
could now pretty fairly well confirm that her random contact with the ’boys
in blue,’ as he called her lovers, had dropped off in the last few
months.
I told Gander I would not
leave California without a glimpse of her, if I had to hover in the underground
parking lot near her car - the absolutely worst way possible to achieve a
sighting — until she appeared
‘I wouldn’t try
that, old man,’ said Gander. ‘Underground parking lots are the
spookiest places. Her little psyche antennae will pick you up instantly. Then
she’ll misinterpret the intensity of your interest in her, and you’ll
get a sudden stabbing pain in the side of your head Next you’ll
suddenly…’
‘I follow the drift,
Owen,’ I said dismally. ‘But I must get a good look at her in some
public place where she isn’t aware of me.’
‘Well, make it happen,’
said Gander. ‘Do a little witchcraft yourself. Synchromcity? Isn’t
that what they call it?’
The following day I decided
to do some routine work. I went to the cemetery where Graham and Elhe were
buried, to photograph the inscriptions on the stones. I had twice asked Gander
to do this, but somehow he had never gotten around to it. I think he enjoyed
the other aspects of the investigation much more.
While I was there, the most
remarkable thing happened. Rowan Mayfair appeared.
I was down on my knees in
the sun, making a few notes on the inscriptions, having already taken the
photographs, when I became aware of this tall young woman in a sailor’s
coat and faded dungarees coming up the hill. She seemed all legs and blowing
hair for a moment, a very fresh-faced and lovely young creature. Quite
impossible to believe she was thirty years old.
On the contrary, her face
had almost no lines in it at all. She looked exactly like the photographs taken
of her years ago, yet she looked very much like someone else, and for one
moment the resemblance so distracted me that I could not think who it was. Then
it came to me. It was Petyr van Abel. She had the same blond, pale-eyed look.
It was very nearly Scandinavian, and she appeared extremely independent and
extremely strong.
She approached the grave,
and stopped only a few feet away from where I knelt, clearly taking notes from
her stepmother’s headstone.
At once I began to talk to
her. I cannot remember precisely what I said. I was so flustered that I didn’t
know what I should say to explain my appearance there, and very slowly I sensed
danger just as surely as I had sensed it with Cortland years ago I sensed
enormous danger. In fact, her smooth pale face with its large gray eyes seemed
suddenly filled with pure malice. Then a wall went up behind her expression.
She closed down, rather like a giant receiver which is suddenly and soundlessly
turned off.
I realized with horror that
I had been talking about her family. I had told her that I knew the Mayfairs of
New Orleans. It was my feeble excuse for what I was doing there. Did she want
to have a drink, talk about old family matters. Dear God! What if she said yes!
But she said nothing.
Absolutely nothing, at least not in words. I could have sworn, however, that
the closed receiver suddenly became a highly focused speaker and she
communicated to me quite deliberately that she couldn’t avail herself of
my offer, something dark and terrible and painful prevented her from doing it,
and then she seemed lost in confusion; lost in misery. In fact, I have seldom
if ever in my life felt such pure pain.
It came to me in a silent
flash that she knew she had killed people. She knew she was different in a
horrible and mortal way. She knew it and the knowledge sealed her up as if she
were buried alive inside herself.
Perhaps it had not been
malice which I felt only moments before. But whatever had taken place was now
concluded. I was losing her. She was turning away. Why she had come, what she
meant to do, I would never know.
At once I offered her my
card. I put it in her hand. She gave it back to me. She wasn’t rude when
she did it. She simply did it. She put it right back in my hand. The malice
leapt out of her like a flash of light from a keyhole. Then she went dim. Her
body tensed and she turned and walked off.
I was so badly shaken that
for a long moment I could not move. I stood in the cemetery watching her walk
down the hill. I saw her get into a green Jaguar sedan. Off she drove without
glancing back.
Was I ill? Had I suffered a
severe pain somewhere? Was I about to die? Of course not. Nothing like that had
happened. Yet I knew what she could do. I knew and she knew and she had told
me! But why?
By the time I reached the
Campton Place Hotel in San Francisco, I was thoroughly confused. I decided I
would do nothing further for the present.
When I met with Gander, I
said’ ‘Keep up the surveillance. Get as close as you dare. Watch
for anything that indicates she is using the power. Report to me at once.’
‘Then you’re not
going to make contact.’
‘Not now. I can’t
justify it. Not until something else happens and that could be either of two
things: she kills someone else, deliberately or accidentally. Or her mother
dies in New Orleans and she decides to go home."
‘Aaron, that’s
madness.’ You have to make contact. You can’t wait until she goes
back to New Orleans. Look, old man, you have pretty much told me the whole
story over the years. And I don’t claim to know what you people know
about it. But from everything you’ve told me, this is the most powerful
psychic the family has ever produced. Who’s to say she’s not a
powerful witch as well? When her mother finally goes, why would this spook
Lasher miss an opportunity like this?’
I couldn’t answer,
except to say what Owen already knew. There were absolutely no sightings of
Lasher in Rowan’s history.
‘So he’s biding
his time. The other woman’s still alive. She has the necklace. But when
she dies, they have to give it to Rowan. From what you’ve told me, it’s
the law.’
I called Scott Reynolds in
London. Scott is no longer our director, but he is the most knowledgeable person
in the order on the subject of the Mayfair Witches, next to me.
‘I agree with Owen.
You have to make contact. You have to. What you said to her in the cemetery was
exactly what you should have said, and on some level you know it. That’s
why you told her you knew her family. That’s why you offered her the
card. Talk to her. You have to.’
‘No, I disagree with
you. It isn’t justified.’
‘Aaron, this woman is
a conscientious physician, yet she’s killing people! Do you think she
wants to do that sort of thing? On the other hand…’
’… what?’
‘If she does know,
this contact could be dangerous. I have to confess, I don’t know how I
would feel about all this if I were there, if I were you.’
I thought it over. I decided
that I would not do it. Everything that Owen and Scott had said was true. But
it was all conjecture. We did not know whether Rowan had ever deliberately
killed anyone. Possibly she was not responsible for the six deaths.
We could not know whether
she would ever lay her hands on the emerald necklace. We did not know if she
would ever go to New Orleans. We did not know whether or not Rowan’s
power included the ability to see a spirit, or to help Lasher to
materialize… ah, but of course we could pretty well conjecture that Rowan
could do all that… But that was just it, it was conjecture. Conjecture
and nothing more.
And here was this
hard-working doctor saving lives daily in a big city Operating Room. A woman
untouched by the darkness that shrouded the First Street house. True, she had a
ghastly power, and she might again use it, either deliberately or
inadvertently. And if that happened, then I would make contact.
‘Ah, I see, you want
another body on the slab,’ said Owen.
‘I don’t believe
there is going to be another,’ I said angrily. ‘Besides, if she doesn’t
know she’s doing it, why should she believe us?’
‘Conjecture,’ said Owen. ‘Like
everything else.’
SUMMATION
As of January 1989, Rowan
has not been connected with any other suspicious deaths. On the contrary, she
has worked tirelessly at University Hospital at ’working miracles,’
and will very likely be appointed Attending Physician in neurosurgery before
the end of the year.
In New Orleans, Deirdre
Mayfair continues to sit in her rocking chair, staring out over the ruined
garden. The last sighting of Lasher -’a nice young man standing beside her’
- was reported two weeks ago.
Carlotta Mayfair is nearing
ninety years of age. Her hair is entirely white, though the style of it has not
changed in fifty years. Her skin is milky and her ankles are perpetually
swollen over the tops of her plain black leather shoes. But her voice remains
quite steady. And she still goes to the office every morning for four hours.
Sometimes she has lunch with the younger lawyers before she takes her regular
taxi home.
On Sundays she walks to
Mother of Perpetual Help Chapel to go to Mass. People in the parish have
offered to drive her to Mass, and indeed, anyplace else that she would like to
go. But she says that she likes walking. She needs the fresh air. It keeps her
in good health.
When Sister Bridget Marie
died in the fall of 1987, Carlotta attended the funeral with her nephew
(cousin, actually) Gerald Mayfair, a great-grandson of Clay Mayfair. She is
said to like Gerald. She is said to be afraid she may not live long enough to
see Deirdre at peace. Maybe Gerald will have to take care of Deirdre after
Carlotta is gone.
To the best of our knowledge
Rowan Mayfair knows none of these people. She knows no more today of her family
history than she did when she was a little girl.
‘Ellie was so afraid
Rowan would try to find out about her real parents,’ said a friend
recently to Gander. ‘I got the feeling it was an awful story. But Ellie
would never talk about it, except to say that Rowan must be protected, at all
costs, from the past.’
I am content to watch and to
wait.
I feel, irrationally
perhaps, that I owe this much to Deirdre. That she did not want to give up
Rowan is quite obvious to me. That she would have wanted Rowan to have a normal
life is beyond doubt. There are times when I am tempted to destroy our file on
the Mayfair Witches. Has any other history involved us in so much violence and
so much pain? Of course such a thing is unthinkable. The Talamasca would never
allow it. And never forgive it, if I did it on my own.
Last night after I completed
my final draft of the above summary, I dreamed of Stuart Townsend, whom I had
met only once when I was a small boy. In the dream, he was in my room and had
been talking to me for hours. Yet when I awoke, I could recall only his last
words. ‘You see what I am saying? It’s all planned!"
He was dreadfully upset with
me.
‘I don’t see!’
I said out loud when I woke up. In fact, it was my own voice which awakened me.
I was amazed to discover that the room was empty, that I had been dreaming,
that Stuart wasn’t really there.
I don’t see. That is
the truth. I don’t know why Cortland tried to kill me. I don’t know
why such a man would go to such a ghastly extreme. I don’t know what
really happened to Stuart. I don’t even really know why Stella was so
desperate that Arthur Langtry take her away.-1 don’t know what Carlotta
did to Antha, or whether or not Cortland fathered Stella, Antha, and Deirdre’s
baby. I don’t see!
But there is one thing of
which I am certain. Some day, regardless of whatever she promised Ellie
Mayfair, Rowan Mayfair may go back ’ to New Orleans and if she does, she
will want answers. Dozens upon dozens of answers. And I fear I am the only one
now — we in the Talamasca are the only ones — who can possibly hope
to reconstruct for her this sad tale.
Aaron
Lightner,
The
Talamasca
LONDON
January
15,1989
TWENTY-SIX
ON AND ON it went, exotic
and dreamlike still in its strangeness, a ritual from another country, quaint
and darkly beautiful, as the whole party spilled out into the warm air and then
into a fleet of limousines which drove them silently through narrow, crowded,
treeless little streets.
Before a high brick church
— St Mary’s Assumption — the long lumbering shiny cars
stopped, one after another, oblivious to the derelict school buildings with
their broken windows, and the weeds rising triumphant from every fissure and
crack.
Carlotta stood on the church
steps, tall, stiff, her thin spotted hand locked on the curve of her gleaming
wooden cane. Beside her an attractive man, white-haired and blue-eyed, and not
much older than Michael perhaps, whom the old woman dismissed with a brittle
gesture beckoning for Rowan to follow her.
The older man stepped back
with young Pierce, after quickly clasping Rowan’s hand. There was something
furtive in the way he whispered his name, ‘Ryan Mayfair,’ glancing
anxiously at the old woman. Rowan understood he was young Pierce’s
father.
And into the immense nave
they all moved, the entire assemblage following the coffin on its rolling bier.
Footfalls echoed softly and loudly under the graceful Gothic arches, light
striking brilliantly the magnificent stained-glass windows and the exquisitely
painted statues of the saints.
Seldom even in Europe had
she seen such elegance and grandeur. Faintly Michael’s words came back to
her about the old parish of his childhood, about the jam-packed churches which
had been as big as cathedrals. Could this have been the very place?
There must have been a
thousand people gathered here now, children crying shrilly before their mothers
shushed them, and the words of the priest ringing out in the vast emptiness as
if they were a song.
The straight-backed old
woman beside her said nothing to her. In her wasted, fragile-looking hands, she
held with marvelous capability a heavy book, full of bright and lurid pictures
of the saints. Her white hair, drawn back into a bun, lay thick and heavy
against her small head, beneath her brimless black felt hat. Aaron Lightner
remained back in the shadows, by the front doors, though Rowan would have had
him stay beside her. Beatrice Mayfair wept softly in the second pew. Pierce sat
on the other side of Rowan, arms folded, staring dreamily at the statues of the
altar, at the painted angels high above. His father seemed to have lapsed into
the same trance, though once he turned and his sharp blue eyes fixed
deliberately and unself-consciously on Rowan.
By the hundreds they rose to
take Holy Communion, the old, the young, the little children. Carlotta refused
assistance as she made her way to the front and then back again, her
rubber-tipped cane thumping dully, then sank down into the pew, with her head
bowed, as she said her prayers. So thin was she that her dark gabardine suit
seemed empty, like a garment on a hanger, with no contour of a body at all
within it, her legs like sticks plunging to her thick string shoes.
The smell of incense rose
from the silver censer as the priest circled the coffin. At last the procession
moved out to the waiting fleet in the treeless street. Dozens of small black
children - some barefoot, some shirtless - watched from the cracked pavements
before a shabby, neglected gymnasium. Black women stood with bare arms folded,
scowling in the sun.
Can this really be America?
And then through the dense
shade of the Garden District the caravan plunged, bumper to bumper, with scores
of people walking on either side of it, children skipping ahead, all advancing
through the deep green light.
The walled cemetery was a
veritable city of peaked-roof graves, some with their own tiny gardens, paths
running hither and thither past this tumbling down crypt or this great monument
to fire fighters of another era, or the orphans of this or that asylum, or to
the rich who had had the time and money to etch these stones with poetry, words
now filled with dust and wearing slowly away.
The Mayfair crypt itself was
enormous, and surrounded by flowers. A small iron fence encircled the little
building, marble urns at the four corners of its gently sloping peristyle roof.
Its three bays contained twelve coffin-sized vaults, and from one of these the
smooth marble stone had been removed, so that it gaped, dark and empty, for the
coffin of Deirdre Mayfair to be placed inside like a long pan of bread.
Urged politely to the front
ranks, Rowan stood beside the old woman. The sun flashed in the old woman’s
small round silver-rimmed glasses, as grimly she stared at the word ‘May-fair’
carved in giant letters within the low triangle of the peristyle.
And Rowan too looked at it,
her eyes once again dazzled by the flowers and the faces surrounding her, as in
a hushed and respectful voice young Pierce explained to her that though there
were only twelve slots, numerous Mayfairs had been buried in these graves, as
the stones on the front revealed. The old coffins were broken up in time to
make way for new burials, and the pieces, along with the bones, were slipped
into a vault beneath the grave.
Rowan gasped faintly. ‘So
they’re all down there,’ she whispered, half in wonder, ‘Higgledy-piggledy,
underneath.’
‘No, they are in hell
or heaven,’ said Carlotta Mayfair, her voice crisp and ageless as her
eyes. She had not even turned her head.
Pierce backed away, as if he
were frightened of Carlotta, a quick flash of an uncomfortable smile
illuminating his face. Ryan was staring at the old woman.
But the coffin was now being
brought forward, the pallbearers actually supporting it on their shoulders,
their faces red from the exertion, sweat dripping from their foreheads as they
set down the heavy weight upon its wheeled stand.
It was time for the last
prayers. The priest was here again with his acolyte. The heat seemed motionless
and impossible suddenly. Beatrice was blotting her flushed cheeks with a folded
handkerchief. The elderly, save for Carlotta, were sit’ ting down where
they could on the ledges surrounding the smaller graves.
Rowan let her eyes drift to
the top of the tomb, to the ornamented peristyle with the words ‘Mayfair’
in it, and above the name, in bas-relief, a long open door. Or was it a large
open keyhole? She wasn’t sure.
When a faint, damp breeze
came, stirring the stiff leaves of the trees along the pathway, it seemed a
miracle. Far away, by the front gates, the traffic moving in sudden vivid
flashes behind him, Aaron Lightner stood with Rita Mae Lonigan, who had cried
herself out and looked merely bereft like those who have waited on hospital
wards with the dying all through a long night.
Even the final note struck
Rowan as a bit of picturesque madness. For as they drifted back out the main
entrance, it became clear that a small party of them would now move into the
elegant restaurant directly across the street!
Mr Lightner whispered his
farewell to her, promising that Michael would come. She wanted to press him,
but the old woman was staring at him coldly, angrily, and he had seen this,
obviously, and was eager to withdraw. Bewildered Rowan waved good-bye, the heat
once again making her sick. Rita Mae Lonigan murmured a sad farewell to her.
Hundreds said their good-byes as they passed quickly; hundreds came to embrace
the old woman; it seemed to go on forever, the heat bearing down and then
lifting, the giant trees giving a dappled shade. ‘We’ll talk to you
again, Rowan.’ ‘Are you staying, Rowan?’ ‘Good-bye,
Aunt Carl. You took care of her.’ ‘We’ll see you soon, Aunt
Carl. You have to come out to Metairie.’ ‘Aunt Carl. I’ll
telephone you next week.’ ‘Aunt Carl, are you all right?’
At last the street stood
empty except for the steady stream of bright noisy indifferent traffic and a
few well-dressed people wandering out of the obviously fancy restaurant and
squinting in the sudden bright light.
‘I don’t want to
go in,’ said the old woman. She gazed coldly at the blue and white
awnings.
‘Oh, come on, Aunt
Carl, please, just for a little while,’ said Beatrice Mayfair. Another
slender young man, Gerald was his name, held the old woman’s arm. ‘Why
don’t we go for a few minutes?’ he said to Carlotta. ‘Then I’ll
take you home.’
‘I want to be alone
now,’ said the old woman. ‘I want to walk home alone.’ Her
eyes fixed on Rowan. Unearthly their ageless intelligence flashing out of the
worn and sunken face. ‘Stay with them as long as you wish,’ she
said as if it were an order, ’and then come to me. I’ll be waiting.
At the First Street house.’
‘When would you like
for me to come?’ Rowan asked care-fully.
A cold, ironic smile touched
the lips of the old woman, ageless like the eyes and the voice. ‘When you
want to come. That will be soon enough. I have things to say to you. I’ll
be there.’
‘Go with her, Gerald,’
‘I’m taking her,
Aunt Bea.’
‘You may drive along
beside me, if you wish,’ Carlotta said as she bowed her head and placed
her cane before her, ’but I am walking alone.’
Once the glass doors of the
restaurant called Commander’s Palace had shut behind them, and Rowan had
realized they were now in a faintly familiar world of uniformed waiters and
white tablecloths, she glanced back through the glass at the whitewashed wall
of the graveyard, and at the little peaked roofs of the tombs visible over the
top of the wall.
The dead are so close they
can hear us, she thought.
‘Ah, but you see,’
said the tall white-haired Ryan, as if he’d read her mind, ’in New
Orleans, we never really leave them out.’
TWENTY-SEVEN
AN ASHEN TWILIGHT was
deepening over Oak Haven. The sky was scarcely visible anymore. The oaks had
become black and dense, the shadows beneath them broadening to eat the last of
the warm summer light that clung to the dim gravel road.
Michael sat on the deep
front gallery, chair tipped back, foot on the wooden railing, cigarette on his
lip. He had finished the Mayfair history, and he felt raw and exhilarated and
filled with quiet excitement. He knew that he and Rowan were now the new
chapter yet unwritten, he and Rowan who had been characters in this narrative
for some time.
For a long moment, he clung
almost desperately to the enjoyment of the cigarette, and watched the changes
in the dusky sky. The darkness gathered itself everywhere now on the far-flung
landscape, the distant levee vanishing so that he could no longer make out the
cars as they passed on the road, but only see the yellow twinkle of their
lights. Each sound, scent, and shift of color aroused in him a deluge of sweet
memories, some without place or mark of any kind. It was simply the certainty
of familiarity, that this was home, that this was where the cicadas sang like
no place else.
But it was an agony, this
silence, this waiting, this many thoughts crowding his brain.
The lighted lamps in the
room behind him grew brighter as the day died around him. Now it was their soft
illumination falling on the manila folders in his lap.
Why hadn’t Aaron
called him? Surely the funeral of Deirdre Mayfair was over. Aaron had to be on
his way back, and maybe Rowan was with him, maybe Rowan had instantly forgiven
Michael for not being there — he hadn’t forgiven himself yet - and
was coming here to be with him, and they would talk together tonight, talk over
everything in this safe and wholesome place.
But there was one more
folder to read, one more sheaf of notes, obviously intended for his eyes.
Better get to it now quickly. He crushed out the cigarette in the ashtray on
the little camp table beside him, and lifting the folder into the yellow light,
he opened it now.
Loose papers some
handwritten, some typed, some printed. He began to read.
Copy mail gram sent to
Talamasca Motherhouse London from Aaron Lightner:
August 1989:
Parker Meridien
Hotel New York.
Just completed ’casual
meeting’ interview with Deirdre Mayfair’s doctor (from 1983) here
in New York, as assigned. Several surprises.
Will send full handwritten
transcript of interview (tape was lost; doctor requested it from me and I gave
it to him) which I will complete on the plane to California.
But want to communicate an
extremely interesting development, and ask for a file search and study.
This doctor claims to have
seen Lasher not only near Deirdre but some distance away from the First Street
house, on two occasions, and on at least one of these occasions - in a Magazine
Street bar -Lasher clearly materialized. (Note the heat, the movement of the
air, all fully described by the man.)
Also the doctor became
convinced that Lasher was trying to stop him from giving Deirdre her
tranquilizing medication. And that when Lasher later appeared to him, he was
trying to get this doctor to come back to First Street and intervene in some
way with Deirdre.
The doctor only came to this
interpretation at a later time. When the appearances were happening he was
frightened. He heard no words from Lasher; he received no clear telepathic
message. On the contrary, he felt the spirit was trying desperately to
communicate and could only do it through his mute appearances.
This doctor shows no
evidence at all of being any sort of natural medium.
Appropriate Action: Pull
every sighting of Lasher since 1958 and study each carefully. Look for any such
sighting when Deirdre was not in the vicinity. Make a list of all sightings and
give approximate distance from Deirdre.
As it stands now,
preliminary to such an investigation, I can only conclude that Lasher may have
gained considerable strength in the last twenty years, or has always had more
strength than we realize; and can in fact materialize where he chooses.
I don’t want to be
hasty in drawing such a conclusion. But this seems more than likely. And Lasher’s
failure to implant any clear words or suggestions in the doctor’s mind
only reinforces my opinion that the doctor himself was not a natural medium and
could not have been assisting these materializations.
As we well know, with Petyr
van Abel, Lasher was working with the energy and imagination of a powerful
psyche with profound moral guilts and conflicts. With Arthur Langtry, Lasher
was dealing with a trained medium, and those appearances and/or
materializations happened only on the First Street property, in proximity to
Antha and Stella.
Can Lasher materialize when
and where he wants to? Or does he merely have the strength to do it at greater
distances from the witch?
This is what we have to
discover.
Yours
in the Talamasca,
Aaron
P.S. Will not attempt
sighting of Rowan Mayfair while in San Francisco. Attempted contact with
Michael Curry takes precedence this trip. Phone call earlier today from Gander
before I left New York indicated Curry is now a semi-invalid in his house.
However please notify me at the Saint Francis Hotel if there are any new
developments in the Mayfair case. Will remain in San Francisco as long as
required to make contact and offer assistance to Curry.
Notes to File, August 1989
(Handwritten, neatly, black
ink on lined paper)
I’m aboard a 747
heading for the Coast. Have just reread the transcript. It’s my firm
opinion that there is something very unusual in this doctor’s story. As I
review the Mayfair file hastily, what hits me is this:
Rita Mae Dwyer Lonigan heard
Lasher’s voice in 1955-56.
This doctor claims to have
seen Lasher a great distance from the First Street house.
Maybe a casual meeting
between Gander and Rowan should be attempted so that Gander can try to
determine whether or not Rowan has seen Lasher. But it seems so unlikely…
Can’t attempt this
myself. Absolutely cannot do it now. Curry situation too important.
Feelings about Curry…
I continue to believe that there is something very special about this man,
apart from his harrowing experience.
He needs us, there’s
no question of that, Gander is right about that. But my feeling has to do with
him and us. I think he might want to become one of us.
How can I justify such a
feeling?
(1) I have read over all the
articles pertaining to his experience several times, and there is something
unsaid here, something to do with his life being at a point of stasis when he
was drowned. I have a strong impression of a man who was waiting for
something.
(2) The man’s
background is remarkable, especially his formal education. Gander confirms
background in history, especially European history. We need that kind of
person, desperately.
He is weak in languages, but
everyone today is weak in languages.
(3) But the main question
regarding Curry is this: How do I get to see him? I wish the entire Mayfair
family would go away for a while. I don’t want to think of Rowan while I
am on Curry…
Michael quickly leafed
through the rest of the last folder. All articles on him, and articles he had
read before. Two large glossy United Press International photographs of him. A
typewritten biography of him, compiled mostly from the attached materials.
Well, he knew the file on
Michael Curry. He put all this aside, lighted a fresh cigarette, and returned
to the handwritten account of Aaron’s meeting in the Parker Meridien with
the doctor.
It was very easy to read
Aaron’s fine script. The descriptions of Lasher’s appearances were
neatly underlined. He finished the account, agreeing with Aaron’s
remarks.
Then he got up from the
porch chair, taking the folder with him, and went inside, to the desk. His
leather-covered notebook lay there where he’d left it. He sat down,
staring blindly at the room for a moment, not really seeing that the river
breeze was blowing the curtains, or that the night was utter blackness outside.
Or that the supper tray lay on the ottoman before the wing chair, just as it
had since it arrived, with the food beneath its several silver-domed covers
untouched.
He lifted his pen and began
to write:
‘I was six years old
when I saw Lasher in the Church at Christmas behind the crib. That would have
been 1947. Deirdre would have been the same age, and she might have been in the
church. But I have the strongest feeling that she wasn’t there.
‘When Lasher showed
himself to me in the Municipal Auditorium, she might have been there too. But
again — we can’t know, to
quote Aaron’s favorite clause.
‘Nevertheless the
appearances per se have nothing to do with Deirdre. I have never seen Deirdre
in the garden of First Street, nor anywhere, to my knowledge.
‘Undoubtedly Aaron has
already written up what I’ve told him. And the same suggestion is
relevant: Lasher appeared to me when he was not in the vicinity of the witch.
He can probably materialize where he wants to.
‘The question is still
why. Why me? And other connections are even more tantalizing and nerve-racking.
‘For example - this
may not matter much - but I know Rita Mae Dwyer Lonigan. I was with her and
Marie Louise on the riverboat the night she got drunk with her boyfriend, Terry
O‘Neill. For that she was sent to St Ro’s, where she met Deirdre
Mayfair. I remember Rita Mae going to St Ro’s.
‘Does this mean
nothing?
‘And something else
too. What if my ancestors worked in the Garden District? I don’t know
that they did or didn’t. I know my father’s mother was an orphan,
reared at St Margaret’s. I don’t think she had a legal father. What
if her mother had been a maid in the First Street house… but my mind is
just going crazy.
‘After all, look what
these people have done in terms of breeding. When you do this with horses and
dogs, it’s called inbreeding or line breeding.
‘Over and over again,
the finest male specimens have inbred with the witches, so that the genetic mix
is strengthened in terms of certain traits, undoubtedly including psychic traits,
but what about others? If I read this damn thing properly, Cortland wasn’t
just the father of Stella and Rowan. He could have been the father of Antha
too, though everybody thought it was Lionel.
‘Now if Julien was
Mary Beth’s father, ah, but they ought to do some kind of computer thing
just on that aspect of it, the inbreeding. Make a chart. And if they have the
photographs, they can get into more genetic science. But I have to tell all
this to Rowan. Rowan will understand all this. When we were talking Rowan said
something about genetic research being so unpopular. People don’t want to
admit what they can determine about human beings genetically. Which brings me
to free will, and my belief in free will is part of why I’m going crazy.
‘Anyway, Rowan is the
genetic beneficiary of all this - tall, slim, sexy, extremely healthy,
brilliant, strong, and successful. A medical genius with a telekinetic power to
take life who chooses instead to save life. And there it is, free will, again.
Free will.
‘But how the hell do I
fit in with my free will intact, that is? I mean what is "all
planned" to use Townsend’s words in the dream. Christ!
‘Am I perhaps related
somehow to these people through the Irish servants that worked for them? Or is
it simply that they outcross when they need stamina? But any of Rowan’s
police/ fire fighter heroes would have done the job. Why me? Why did I have to
drown, if indeed, they accomplished the drowning, which I still don’t
believe they did — but then Lasher was revealing himself alone to me all
the way back to my earliest years.
‘God, there is no one
way to interpret any of this. Maybe I was destined for Rowan all along, and my
drowning wasn’t meant, and that’s why the rescue happened. If the
drowning was meant, I can’t accept it! Because if that was meant, then
too much else could be meant. It’s too awful.
‘I cannot read this
history and conclude that the terrible tragedies here were inevitable —
Deirdre to die like that.
‘I could write on like
this for the next three days, rambling, discussing this point or that. But I’m
going crazy. I still haven’t a clue to the meaning of the doorway. Not a
single thing in what I’ve read illuminates this single image. Don’t
see any specific number involved in this either. Unless the number thirteen is
on a doorway, and that has some meaning.
‘Now the doorway may
simply be the doorway to First Street; or the house itself could be some sort
of portal. But I’m reaching. There is no feeling of Tightness to what I
say.
‘As for the
psychometric power in my hands, I still don’t know how that is to be
used, unless I am to touch Lasher when he materializes, and thereby know what
this spirit really is, whence he comes and what he wants of the witches. But
how can I touch Lasher unless Lasher chooses to be touched?
‘Of course I will
remove the gloves and lay my hands on objects related to this history, to First
Street, if Rowan, who is now the mistress of First Street, will allow. But
somehow the prospect fills me with terror. I can’t see it as the
consummation of my purpose. I see it as intimacy with countless objects,
surfaces and images… and also… for the first time I’m afraid
of touching objects which belonged to the dead. But I must attempt it. I must
attempt everything!
‘Almost nine o’clock.
Still Aaron isn’t here. And it’s dark and creepy and quiet out
here. I don’t want to sound like Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, but the crickets make me nervous in the
country too. And I’m jumpy in this room, even with its nice brass lamps.
I don’t want to look at the pictures on the wall, or in the mirrors for
fear something’s going to scare me.
‘I hate being scared.’
‘I can’t stand
waiting here. Perhaps it’s unfair to expect Aaron to arrive the minute I
finish reading. But Deirdre’s funeral is over, and here I sit waiting for
Aaron, with Mayfairs on the brain and pressing on my heart, but I wait! I wait
because I promised I would, and Aaron hasn’t called, and I have to see
Rowan.
‘Aaron is going to
have to trust me on this, he really is. We’ll talk tonight, tomorrow, and
the next day, but tonight I am going to be with Rowan!
‘One final note: if I
sit here and close my eyes, and I think back on the visions. If I evoke the
feeling, that is, for all the facts are gone, I still find myself believing
that the people I saw were good. I was sent back for a higher purpose. And it
was my choice — free will — to accept that mission.
‘Now I cannot attach
any negative or positive feeling to the idea of the doorway or the number
thirteen. And that is distressing, deeply distressing. But I continue to feel
that my people up there were good.
‘I don’t believe
Lasher is good. Not at all. The evidence seems incontrovertible that he has
destroyed some of these women. Maybe he has destroyed everyone who ever
resisted him. And Aaron’s question, What is the agenda of this being,
is the pertinent one. This creature does things on his own. But why am I
calling him a creature? Who created him? The same person who created me? And
who is that, I wonder. Go for entity.
‘This entity is evil.
‘So why did he smile
at me in the church when I was six? Surely he can’t want me to touch him
and discover his agenda? Or can he?
‘Again the words
"meant" and "planned" are driving me mad. Everything in me
revolts against such an idea. I can believe in a mission, in a destiny, in a
great purpose. All those words have to do with courage and heroism, with free
will. But "meant" and "planned" fill me with this despair.
‘Whatever the case, I
don’t feel despair right now. I feel crazed, unable to stay in this room
much longer, desperate to reach Rowan. And desperate to put all these pieces
together, to fulfill the mission I was given out there, because I believe that
the best part of me accepted that mission.
‘Why do I hear that
guy in San Francisco, Gander or whatever his name was, saying,
"Conjecture!"
‘I wish Aaron were
here. For the record, I like him. I like them. I understand what they did here.
I understand. None of us likes to believe that we are being watched, written
about, spied upon, that sort of thing. But I understand. Rowan will understand.
She has to.
‘The resulting
document is just too nearly unique, too important. And when I think about how
deeply implicated in all this I am, how involved I’ve been from the
moment that entity looked out at me through the iron fence — well, thank
God, they’re here, that they "watch," as they say. That they
know what they know.
‘Because
otherwise… And Rowan will understand that. Rowan will understand perhaps
better than I understand, because she will see things I don’t see. And
maybe that’s what’s planned, but there I go again.
‘Aaron! Come back!’
TWENTY-EIGHT
SHE STOOD before the iron
gate as the cab crawled away, the rustling silence closing in around her.
Impossible to imagine a house that was any more desolate or forbidding. The
merciless light of the street lamp poured down like the full moon through the
branches of the trees - on the cracked flags and the marble steps banked with
dead leaves, and on the high thick fluted columns with their peeling white
paint and black patches of rot, on the crumbling boards of the porch which ran
back unevenly to the open door and the dull pale light from within wobbling
ever so faintly.
Slowly she let her eyes roam
the shuttered windows, the dense overgrown garden. A thin rain had begun to
fall even as she left the hotel, and it was so very faint now that it was
little more than a mist, giving its shine to the asphalt street, and hovering
in the gleaming leaves above the fence, and just touching her face and
shoulders.
Here my mother lived out her
life, she thought. And here her mother was born, and her mother before her.
Here in this house where Ellie sat near Stella’s coffin.
For surely it had been here,
though all the late afternoon long, over the cocktails and the salad and the highly
spiced food, they had spoken only superficially of such things. ‘Carlotta
will want to tell you…’’… after you talk to Carlotta.’
Was the door open for her
now? Had the gate been pushed back to welcome her? The great wooden frame of
the door looked like a giant keyhole, tapering as it did from a flared base to
a narrower top. Where had she seen that very same doorway shaped like a
keyhole? Carved on the tomb in the Lafayette Cemetery. How ironic, for this
house had been her mother’s tomb.
Even the sweet silent rain
had not alleviated the heat. But a breeze came now, the river breeze they had
called it when they had said their farewells only blocks away at the hotel. And
the breeze, smelling of the rain, flowed over her as deliciously as water. What
was the scent of flowers in the air, so savage and deep, so unlike the florist
scents that had surrounded her earlier?
She didn’t resist it.
She stood dreaming, feeling light and almost naked in the fragile silk garments
she had just put on, trying to see the dark house, trying to take a deep
breath, trying to slow the stream of all that had happened, all she’d
witnessed and only half understood.
My life is broken in half,
she thought; and all the past is the discarded part, drifting away, like a boat
cut loose, as if the water were time, and the horizon was the demarcation of
what would remain meaningful.
Ellie, why? Why were
we cut off! Why, when they all knew? Knew my name, knew
yours, knew I was her daughter! What was it all about, with them there by the
hundreds and speaking that name, Mayfair, over and over?
‘Come to the office
downtown after you’ve talked,’ the young Pierce had said, Pierce
with his rosy cheeks who was already a partner in the firm founded so long ago
by his greatgrandfather. ‘Ellie’s grandfather, too, you know,’
said Ryan of the white hair and the carefully chiseled features who had been
Ellie’s first cousin. She did not know. She did not know who was who or
whence they came, or what it meant, and above all why no one had ever told her.
Flash of bitterness! Cortland this, and Cortland that… and Julien and
Clay and Vincent and Mary Beth and Stella and Antha and Katherine.
Oh, what sweet southern
music, words rich and deep like the fragrance she breathed now, like the heat
clinging to her, and making even the soft silk shirt she wore feel suddenly
heavy.
Did all the answers lie
beyond the open door? Is the future beyond the open door? For after all, why
could this not become, in spite of everything, a mere chapter of her life,
marked off and seldom reread, once she had returned to the outside world where
she had been kept all these years, quite beyond the spells and enchantments
which were now claiming her? Oh, but it wasn’t going to be. Because when
you fell prey to a spell this strong, you were never the same. And each moment
in this alien world of family, South, history, kinship, proffered love, drove
her a thousand years away from who she’d been, or who she had wanted to
be.
Did they know, did they
guess for a second, how seductive it was? How raw she’d felt as they
offered their invitations, their promises of visits and conversations yet to
come, of family knowledge and family loyalty and family intimacy.
Kinship. Could they guess
how indescribably exotic that was after the barren, selfish world in which she’d
spent her life, like a potted plant that had never seen the real sun, nor the
real earth, nor heard the rain except against double-paned glass?
‘Sometimes I’d
look around,’ Michael had said of California, ’and it all seemed so
sterile here.’ She had known. She had understood before she had ever
dreamed of a city such as this, where every texture, every color, leapt out at
you, where every fragrance was a drug, and the air itself was something alive
and breathing.
I went into medicine to find
the visceral world, she thought, and only in the waiting rooms and corridors
outside the Emergency Room have I ever glimpsed the gatherings of clans, the
generations weeping and laughing and whispering together as the angel of death
passes over them.
‘You mean Ellie never
even told you her father’s name? She never spoke to you about Sheffield
or Ryan or Grady or…?’ Again and again, she had said no.
Yet Ellie had come back, to
stand in that very cemetery at Aunt Nancy’s funeral, whoever the hell
Aunt Nancy had been, and afterwards in that very restaurant had shown them Rowan’s
photograph from her wallet! Our daughter the doctor! And dying, in a
morphine dream, she had said to Rowan, ‘I wish they would send me back
down home, but they can’t. They can’t do that.’
There had been a moment
after they’d left her off at the hotel, and after she had gone upstairs
to shower and change on account of the muggy heat, when she had felt such
bitterness that she could not reason or rationalize or even cry. And of course,
she knew, knew as surely as she knew anything else, that there were countless
ones among them who would have loved nothing more than to escape it all, this
immense web of blood ties and memories. Yet she couldn’t really imagine
it.
All right, that had been the
sweet side, overwhelming as the perfume of this flower in the dark, all of them
there opening their arms.
But what truths lay ahead
behind this door, about the child woman in the casket? For a long time, as they
talked, voices splashing together like champagne, she had thought, Do any of you by any miracle know
the name of my father!
‘Carlotta will want
to… well, have her say.’
’… so young when
you were born.’
‘Father never actually
told us…’
From here, in the electric
moonlight on the broken flags, she could not see the side gallery which Ryan
and Bea had described to her, the gallery on which her mother had sat in a
rocking chair for thirteen years. ‘I don’t think she suffered.’
But all she had to do now
was open this iron gate, go up the marble steps, walk across the rotted boards,
push back the door that had been left open. Why not? She wanted to taste the
darkness inside so badly that she did not even miss Michael now. He couldn’t
do this with her.
Suddenly, as if she’d
dreamed it, she saw the light brighten behind the door. She saw the door itself
moved back, and the figure of the old woman there, small and thin. Her voice
sounded crisp and clear in the dark, with almost an Irish lilt to it, somber
and low as it was:
‘Are you coming in or
not, Rowan Mayfair?’
She pushed at the gate, but
it didn’t give, and so she moved past it. The steps were slippery, and
she came up slowly and felt the soft boards of the wooden porch give ever so
slightly under her.
Carlotta had disappeared,
but as Rowan entered the hallway now she saw her small dim figure far, far away
at the entrance to a large room where the lone light was shining that
illuminated all of the dim high-ceilinged distance before her.
She walked slowly after the
old woman.
She walked past a stairway,
rising straight and impossibly high to a dark second floor of which she could
see nothing, and on past doors to the right opening onto a vast living room.
The lights of the street shone through the windows of this room beyond, making
them smoky and lunar white, and revealing a long stretch of gleaming floor, and
a few indefinable pieces of scattered furniture.
At last passing a closed
door to the left, she moved on into the light and saw that she had come into a
large dining room.
Two candles stood on the
oval table, and it was their faintly dancing flames which gave the only
interior illumination to everything. Amazingly even it seemed, rising thinly to
reveal the murals on the walls, great rural scenes of moss-hung oaks, and
furrowed farmland. The doors and the windows soared to some twelve feet above
her head; indeed as she looked back down the long hallway, the front door
seemed immense, its surrounding frame covering the entire wall to the shadowy
ceiling.
She turned back, staring at
the woman who sat at the end of the table. Her thick wavy hair looked very
white in the dark, massed more softly around her face than before, and the
candlelight made two distinct and frightening flames in her round glasses.
‘Sit down, Rowan
Mayfair,’ she said. ‘I have many things to say to you.’
Was it stubbornness that
caused her to take one last slow look around her, or merely her fascination
which wouldn’t be interrupted? She saw that the velvet curtains were
almost ragged in some places, and the floor was covered with threadbare carpet.
A smell of dust or mold rose from the upholstered seats of the carved chairs.
Or was it from the carpet, perhaps, or the sad draperies?
Did not matter. It was
everywhere. But there was another smell, another delicious smell that made her
think of wood and sunlight, and strangely, of Michael. It smelled good to her.
And Michael, the carpenter, would understand that smell. The smell of the wood
in the old house, and the heat which had built up in it all day long. Faintly
blended with the whole was the smell of the wax candles.
The darkened chandelier
above caught the candlelight, reflecting it in hundreds of crystal teardrops.
‘It takes candles,’
said the old woman. ‘I’m too old now to climb up to change them.
And Eugenia is also too old. She can’t do it.’ With a tiny gesture
of her head, she pointed to the far corner.
With a start Rowan realized
that a black woman was standing there, a wraith of a creature with scant hair
and yellowed eyes and folded arms, seemingly very thin, though it was hard to
tell in the dark. Nothing was visible of her clothes but a soiled apron.
‘You can go now, dear,’
said Carlotta to the black woman. ‘Unless my niece would like something
to drink. But you don’t, do you, Rowan?’
‘No. No thank you,
Miss Mayfair.’
‘Call me Carlotta, or
Carl if you will. It doesn’t matter. There are a thousand Misses Mayfair.’
The old black woman moved
away, past the fireplace, and around the table and out the door into the long
hall. Carlotta watched her go, as if she wanted to be completely alone before
she said another word.
Suddenly there was a
clanging noise, oddly familiar yet completely undefinable to Rowan. And then
the click of a door being shut, and a dull deep throb as of a great motor
churning and straining within the depths of the house.
‘It’s an
elevator,’ Rowan whispered.
The old woman appeared to be
monitoring the sound. Her face looked shrunken and small beneath the thick cap
of her hair. The dull clank of the elevator coming to a halt seemed to satisfy
her. She looked up at Rowan, and then gestured to a lone chair on the long
flank of the table.
Rowan moved towards it, and
sat down, her back to the windows that opened on the yard. She turned the chair
so that she might face Carlotta.
More of the murals became
visible to her as she raised her eyes. A plantation house with white columns,
and rolling hills beyond it.
She looked past the candles
at the old woman and was relieved to see no reflection any more of the tiny
flames in her glasses. Only the sunken face, and the glasses gleaming cleanly
in the light, and the dark flowered fabric of the woman’s long-sleeved
dress, and her thin hands emerging from the lace at the sleeves, holding with
knotted fingers what seemed a velvet jewel box.
This she pushed forward
sharply towards Rowan.
‘It’s yours,’
she said. ‘It’s an emerald necklace. It’s yours and this
house is yours and the land upon which it stands, and everything of any
significance contained in it. Beyond that, there is a fortune some fifty times
beyond what you have now, perhaps a hundred times, though that is now beyond my
reckoning. But listen to what I say before you lay claim to what is yours.
Listen to all I have to tell you.’
She paused, studying Rowan’s
face, and Rowan’s sense of the agelessness of the woman’s voice,
indeed of her manner altogether, deepened. It was almost eerie, as if the
spirit of some young person inhabited the old frame, and gave it a fierce
contradictory animation.
‘No,’ said the
woman. ‘I’m old, very old. What’s kept me alive is waiting
for her death, and for the moment I feared above all, the moment of your coming
here. I prayed that Ellie would live a long life, that Ellie would hold you
close in those long years, until Deirdre had rotted in the grave, and until the
chain was broken. But fate has dealt me another little surprise. Ellie’s
death. Ellie’s death and not a word to tell me of it.’
‘It was the way she
wanted it,’ Rowan said.
‘I know.’ The
old woman sighed. ‘I know what you say is true. But it’s not the
telling of it, it’s the death itself that was the blow. And it’s
done, and couldn’t be prevented.’
‘She did what she
could to keep me away,’ Rowan said simply. ‘She insisted I sign a
promise that I’d never come. I chose to break it.’
The old woman was silent for
a moment.
‘I wanted to come,’
Rowan said. And then as gently, as imploringly as she could, she asked: ‘Why
did you want me kept away? Was it such a terrible story?’
The woman sat silent
regarding her. ‘You’re a strong woman,’ she said. ‘You’re
strong the way my mother was strong.’
Rowan didn’t answer.
‘You have her eyes,
did they tell you that? Were there any of them old enough to remember her?’
‘I don’t know,’
Rowan answered.
‘What have you seen
with your eyes?’ asked the old woman. ‘What have you seen that you
knew should not be there?’
Rowan gave a start. At first
she had thought she misunderstood the words; then in a split second she
realized she had not, and she thought instantly of the phantom who had appeared
at three o’clock, and confused with it suddenly and inexplicably was her
dream on the plane of someone invisible touching her and violating her.
In confusion she saw the
smile spread over the old woman’s face. But it wasn’t bitter or
triumphant. It was merely resigned. And then the face went smooth again and sad
and wondering. In the dim light, the old woman’s head looked like a skull
for a moment.
‘So he did come to you,’
she said with a soft sigh, ’and he laid his hands on you.’
‘I don’t know,’
Rowan said. ‘Explain this to me.’
But the woman merely looked
at her and waited.
‘It was a man, a thin
elegant man. He came at three o’clock. At the hour of my mother’s
death. I saw him as plainly as I see you, but it was only for a moment.’
The woman looked down. Rowan
thought she had closed her eyes. Then she saw the little gleam of light beneath
her lids. The woman folded her hands before her on the table.
‘It was the man,’
she said. ‘It was the man who drove your mother mad, and drove her mother
mad before her. The man who served my mother who ruled all those around her.
Did they speak of him to you, the others? Did they warn you?’
‘They didn’t
tell me anything,’ she said.
‘That’s because
they don’t know, and at last they realize they don’t know, and now
they leave the secrets to us, as they should have always done.’
‘But what did I see?
Why did he come to me?’ Once again, she thought of the dream on the
plane, and she could find no answer for connecting the two.
‘Because he believes
that you are his now,’ said the woman. ‘His to love and his to
touch and his to rule with promises of servitude.’
Rowan felt the confusion
again, and a dull heat in her face. His to touch. The haunting ambience of the
dream came back.
‘He will tell you it’s
the other way around,’ said the old woman. ‘When he speaks into
your ear so that no one can hear, he will say he is your slave, that he’s
passed to you from Deirdre. But it’s a lie, my dear, a vicious lie. He’ll
make you his and drive you mad if you refuse to do his will. That is what he’s
done to them all.’ She stopped, her wrinkled brows tightening, her eyes
drifting off across the dusty surface of the table. ‘Except for those who
were strong enough to rein him in and make him the slave he claimed to be, and
use him for their own ends… ’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Their
own endless wickedness.’
‘Explain it to me.’
‘He touched you, did
he not?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Oh yes you do. The
color flies into your cheeks, Rowan Mayfair. Well, let me ask you, my girl, my
independent young girl who has had so many men of her own choice, was it as
good as a mortal man? Think before you speak. He’ll tell you that no
mortal man could give you the pleasure he gives. But was it true? It carries a
terrible price, that pleasure.’
‘I thought it was a
dream.’
‘But you saw him.’
‘That was the night
before. The touching was in a dream. It was different.’
‘He touched her until
the very end,’ said the woman. ‘No matter how much drugs they gave
her. No matter how stupid her stare, how listless her walk. When she lay in bed
at night he came, he touched her. Like a common whore she writhed on the bed,
under his touch…" She bit down on her words, then the smile came
again playing on her lips, like the light. ‘Does that make you angry?
Angry with me that I tell you this? Do you think it was a pretty sight?’
‘I think she was sick
and out of her mind, and it was human.’
‘No, my dear, their
intercourse was never human.’
‘You want me to
believe that this is a ghost I saw, that he touched my mother, that I have
somehow inherited him.’
‘Yes, and swallow back
your anger. Your dangerous anger.’
Rowan was stunned. A wave of
fear and confusion passed over her. ‘You’re reading my mind, you’ve
been doing it all along.’
‘Oh yes, as best as I
can, I do. I wish I could read it better. Your mother was not the only woman in
this house with the power. Three generations before I was the one meant for the
necklace. I saw him when I was three years old, so clear and strong that he
could slip his warm hand in mine, he could lift me in the air, yes, lift my
body, but I refused him. I turned my back on him. I told him, You go back to
the hell from which you came. And I used my power to fight him.’
‘And this necklace
now, it comes to me because I can see him?’
‘It comes to you
because you are the only girl child and choice is not possible. It would come
to you no matter how weak your powers were. But that doesn’t matter.
Because your powers are strong, very strong, and always have been.’ She
paused, considering Rowan again, her face unreadable for a moment, perhaps
devoid of any specific judgment. ‘Imprecise, yes, and inconsistent, of
course, and uncontrolled perhaps — but strong.’
‘Don’t
overestimate them,’ said Rowan softly. ‘I never do.’
‘Long ago, Ellie told
me all about it,’ said the old woman. ‘Ellie told me you could make
the flowers wither. Ellie told me you could make the water boil. "She’s
a stronger witch than ever Antha was, or Deirdre was," that’s what
she told me, crying and begging me for advice as to what she could do!
"Keep her away!" I said. "See that she never comes home, see
that she never knows! See that she never learns to use it."’
Rowan sighed. She ignored
the dull pain at the mention of Ellie, of Ellie speaking to these people about
her. Cut off alone. And all of them here. Even this wretched old woman here.
‘Yes, and I can feel
your anger again, anger against me, anger for what you think you know that I
did to your mother!’
‘I don’t want to
be angry with you,’ said Rowan in a small voice. ‘I only want to
understand what you’re saying, I want to know why I was taken
away…"
Again, the old woman lapsed
into a thoughtful silence. Her fingers hovered over the jewel case and then
folded down upon it and lay still, all too much like the flaccid hands of
Deirdre in the casket.
Rowan looked away. She
looked at the far wall, at the panorama of painted sky above the fireplace.
‘Oh, but don’t
these bring you even the slightest consolation? Haven’t you wondered all
these years, were you the only one in the world who could read others’
thoughts, the only one who knew when someone near you was going to die? The only
one who could drive a person back away from you with your anger? Look at the
candles. You can make them go out and you can light them again. Do it.’
Rowan did nothing. She
stared at the little flames. She could feel herself trembling. If only you
really knew, if only you knew what I could do to you now…
‘But I do, you see, I
can feel your strength, because I too am strong, stronger than Antha or
Deirdre. And that is how I have kept him at bay in this house, that is how I
have prevented him from hurting me. That is how I have put some thirty years
between him and Deirdre’s child. Make the candles go out. Light them
again. I want to see you do it.’
‘I will not. And I
want you to stop playing with me. Tell me what you have to tell. But stop your
games. Stop torturing me. I have never done anything to you. Tell me who he is,
and why you took me from my mother.’
‘But I have. I took
you from her in order to get you away from him, and from this necklace, from
this legacy of curses and wealth founded upon his intervention and power.’
She studied Rowan, and then went on, her voice deepening yet losing nothing of
its preciseness. ‘I took you away from her to break her will, and
separate her from a crutch upon which she would lean, and an ear into which she
would pour her tortured soul, a companion she would warp and twist in her
weakness and her misery.’
Frozen in anger, Rowan gave
no answer. Miserably, she saw in her mind’s eyes the black-haired woman
in her coffin. She saw the Lafayette Cemetery in her mind, only shrouded with
the night, and still and deserted.
‘Thirty years you’ve
had to grow strong and straight, away from this house, away from this history
of evil. And what have you become, a doctor the like of which your colleagues
have never seen, and when you’ve done evil with your power, you’ve
drawn away in righteous condemnation of yourself, in shame that drove you on to
greater self-sacrifice.’
‘How do you know these
things?’
‘I see. What I see is
imprecise, but I see. I see the evil, though I cannot see the acts themselves,
for they’re covered up in the very guilt and shame that advertises them.’
‘Then what do you want
of me? A confession? You said yourself I turned my back on what I’ve done
that was wrong. I sought for something else, something infinitely more
demanding, something finer.’
‘"Thou shalt not
kill,"’ whispered the woman.
A shock of raw pain passed
through Rowan, and then in consternation she watched the woman’s eyes
grow wide, mocking her. In confusion, Rowan understood the trick, and felt
defenseless. For in a split second the woman had, with her utterance, provoked
the very image in Rowan’s mind for which the old woman had been
searching.
You haw killed. In
anger and rage, you have taken life. You have done it willfully. That is how
strong you are.
Rowan sank deeper into
herself, peering at the flat round glasses as they caught the light and then
let it go, and the dark eyes scarcely visible behind them.
‘Have I taught you
something?’ the woman asked.
‘You try my patience,’
Rowan said. ‘Let me remind you that I have done nothing to you. I have
not come to demand answers of you. I have made no condemnation. I haven’t
come to claim this jewel or this house or anything in it. I came to see my
mother laid to rest, and I came through that front door because you invited me
to do so. And I am here to listen. But I won’t be played with much
longer. Not for all the secrets this side of hell. And I don’t fear your
ghost, even if he sports the cock of an archangel.’
The old woman stared at her
for a moment. Then she raised her eyebrows and laughed, a short, sudden little
laugh, that had a surprisingly feminine ring to it. She continued to smile. ‘Well
put, my dear,’ she said. ‘Seventy-five years ago, my mother told me
he could have made the Greek gods weep with envy, so beautiful was he, when he
came into her bedroom.’ She relaxed slowly in her chair, pursing her
lips, then smiling again. ‘But he never kept her from her handsome mortal
men. She liked the same kind of men you do.’
‘Ellie told you that
too?’
‘She told me many
things. But she never told me she was sick. She never told me she was dying.’
‘When people are
dying, they become afraid,’ said Rowan. ‘They are all alone. Nobody
can die for them.’
The old woman lowered her
eyes. She remained still for a long moment, and then her hands moved over the
soft dome of the jewel box again, and grasping it, she snapped it open. She
turned it ever so slightly so that the light of the candles blazed in the
emerald that lay inside, caught on a bed of tangled golden chain. It was the
largest jewel Rowan had ever seen.
‘I used to dream of
death,’ Carlotta said, gazing at the stone. ‘I’ve prayed for
it.’ She looked up slowly, measuring Rowan, and once again her eyes grew
wide, the soft thin flesh of her forehead wrinkling heavily above her gray
brows. Her soul seemed closed and sunk in sadness, and it was as if for a
moment, she had forgotten to conceal herself somehow, behind meanness and
cleverness, from Rowan. She was merely staring at Rowan.
‘Come,’ she
said. She drew herself up. ‘Let me show what I have to show you. I don’t
think there’s much time now.’
‘Why do you say that!’
Rowan whispered urgently. Something in the old woman’s change of demeanor
terrified her. ‘Why do you look at me like that?’
The woman only smiled. ‘Come,’
she said. ‘Bring the candle if you will. Some of the lights still burn.
Others are burnt out or the wires have long ago frayed and come loose. Follow
me.’
She rose from the chair, and
carefully unhooked her wooden cane from the back of it, and walked with
surprising certainty across the floor, past Rowan who stood watching her,
guarding the tender flame of the candle in the curve of her left hand.
The tiny light leapt up the
wall as they proceeded down the hallway. It shone for a moment on the gleaming
surface of an old portrait of a man who seemed suddenly to be alive and to be
staring at Rowan. She stopped, turning her head sharply to look up, to see that
this had only been an illusion.
‘What is it?’
said Carlotta.
‘Only that I
thought…’ She looked at the portrait, which was very skillfully
done and showed a smiling black-eyed man, most certainly not alive, and buried
beneath layers of brittle, crazed lacquer.
‘What?’
‘Doesn’t matter,’
Rowan said, and came on, guarding the flame as before. ‘The light made
him look as though he’d moved.’
The woman looked back
fixedly at the portrait as Rowan stood beside her. ‘You’ll see many
strange things in this house,’ she said. ‘You’ll pass empty
rooms only to double back because you think you’ve seen a figure moving,
or a person staring at you.’
Rowan studied her face. She
seemed neither playful nor vicious now, only solitary, wondering and
thoughtful.
‘You aren’t
afraid of the dark?’ Carlotta asked.
‘No.’
‘You can see well in
the dark.’
‘Yes, better than most
people.’
The woman turned around, and
went on to the tall door at the foot of the stairs and pressed the button. With
a muffled clank the elevator descended to the lower floor and stopped heavily
and jerkily; the woman turned the knob, opening the door and revealing a gate
of brass which she folded back with effort.
Inside they stepped, onto a
worn patch of carpet, enclosed by dark fabric-covered walls, a dim bulb in the
metal ceiling shining down on them.
‘Close the doors,’
said the woman, and Rowan obeyed, reaching out for the knob and then pushing
shut the gate.
‘You might as well
learn how to use what is yours,’ she added. A subtle fragrance of perfume
rose from her clothes, something sweet like Chanel, mingled with the
unmistakable scent of powder. She pressed a small black rubber button to her
right. And up they went, fast, with a surge of power that surprised Rowan.
The hallway of the second
floor lay in even thicker darkness than the lower corridor. The air was warmer.
No open doorway or window gave even a seam of light from the street, and the
candle light burst weakly on the many white-paneled doors and yet another
rising stairway.
‘Come into this room,’
the old woman said, opening the door to the left and leading the way, her cane
thumping softly on the thick flowered carpet.
Draperies, dark and rotting
like those of the dining room below, and a narrow wooden bed with a high half
roof, carved it seemed, with the figure of an eagle. A similar deeply etched
symmetrical design was carved into the headboard.
‘In this bed your
mother died,’ said Carlotta.
Rowan looked down at the
bare mattress. She saw a great dark stain on the striped cloth that gave off a
gleam that was almost a sparkling in the shadows. Insects! Tiny black insects
fed busily on the stain. As she stepped forward, they fled the light, scurrying
to the four corners of the mattress. She gasped and almost dropped the candle.
The old woman appeared
wrapped in her thoughts, protected somehow from the ugliness of it.
This is revolting,’
said Rowan under her breath. ‘Someone should clean this room!’
‘You may have it
cleaned if you like,’ said the old woman, ’it’s your room now.’
The heat and the sight of
the roaches sickened Rowan. She moved back and rested her head against the
frame of the door. Other smells rose, threatening to nauseate her.
‘What else do you want
to show me?’ she asked calmly. Swallow your anger, she whispered within
herself, her eyes drifting over the faded walls, the little nightstand crowded
with plaster statues and candles. Lurid, ugly, filthy. Died in filth. Died
here. Neglected.
‘No,’ said the
old woman. ‘Not neglected. And what did she know of her surroundings in
the end? Read the medical records for yourself.’
The old woman turned past
her once more, returning to the hallway. ‘And now we must climb these
stairs,’ she said. ‘Because the elevator goes no higher.’
Pray you don’t need my
help, Rowan thought. She shrank from the mere thought of touching the woman.
She tried to catch her breath, to still the tumult inside her. The air, heavy
and stale and full of the faintest reminders of worse smells, seemed to cling
to her, cling to her clothes, her face.
She watched the woman go up,
managing each step slowly but capably.
‘Come with me, Rowan
Mayfair,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Bring the light. The old gas
jets above have long ago been disconnected.’
Rowan followed, the air
growing warmer and warmer. Turning on the small landing, she saw yet another
shorter length of steps and then the final landing of the third floor. And as
she moved up, it seemed that all the heat of the house must be collected here.
Through a barren window to
her right came the colorless light of the street lamp far below. There were two
doors, one to the left and one directly before them.
It was the left door which
the old woman opened. ‘See there, the oil lamp on the table inside the
door,’ she said. ‘Light it.’
Rowan set down the candle
and lifted the glass shade of the lamp. The smell of the oil was faintly
unpleasant. She touched the burning candle to the burnt wick. The large bright
flame grew even stronger as she lowered the shade. She held up the light to let
it fill a spacious low-ceilinged room, full of dust and damp, and cobwebs. Once
more tiny insects fled the light. A dry rustling sound startled her, but the
good smell of heat and wood was strong here, stronger even than the smell of
rotted cloth and mold.
She saw that trunks lay
against the walls; packing crates crowded an old brass bed in the far corner
beneath one of two square windows. A thick mesh of vines half covered the
glass, the light caught in the wetness from the rain which still clung to the
leaves, making them ever more visible. The curtains had long ago fallen down
and lay in heaps on the windowsills.
Books lined the wall to the
left, flanking the fireplace and its small wooden mantel, shelves rising to the
ceiling. Books lay helter-skelter upon the old upholstered chairs which
appeared soft now, spongy with dampness and age. The light of the lamp glinted
on the dull brass of the old bed. It caught the dull gleaming leather of a pair
of shoes, tossed it seemed against a long thick rug, tied in a lumpy roll and
shoved against the unused fireplace.
Something odd about the
shoes, odd about the lumpy roll of rug. Was it that the rug was bound with
rusted chain, and not the rope that seemed more probable?
She realized the old woman
was watching her.
This was my uncle Julien’s
room,’ said the old woman. ‘It was through that window there that
your grandmother Antha went out on the porch roof, and fell to her death below,
on the flagstones.’
Rowan steadied the lamp,
grasping it more firmly by the pinched waist of its glass base. She said
nothing.
‘Open the first trunk
there to your right,’ said the old woman.
Hesitating just a moment,
though why she didn’t know, Rowan knelt down on the dusty bare floor, and
set the lamp beside the trunk, and examined the lid and the broken lock. The
trunk was made of canvas and bound with leather and brass tacks. She lifted the
lid easily and threw it back gently so as not to scar the plaster wall.
‘Can you see what’s
inside?’
‘Dolls,’ Rowan
answered. ‘Dolls made of… of hair and bone.’
‘Yes, bone, and human
hair, and human skin, and the parings of nails. Dolls of your female ancestors
so far back there are no names for the oldest dolls, and they’ll fall to
dust when you lift them.’
Rowan studied them, row
after row set out carefully on a bed of old cheesecloth, each doll with its
carefully drawn face and long hank of hair, some with sticks for arms and legs,
others soft-bodied, and almost shapeless. The newest and finest of all the
dolls was made of silk with a bit of pearl stitched to its little dress, its
face of shining bone with nose and eyes and mouth drawn in dark brown ink,
perhaps, even in blood.
‘Yes, blood,’
said the old woman. ‘And that is your great-grandmother, Stella.’
The tiny doll appeared to
grin at Rowan. Someone had stuck the black hair to the bone skull with glue.
Bones protruded from the hem of the little tube of a silk dress.
‘Where did the bones
come from?’
‘From Stella.’
Rowan reached down, then
drew back, her fingers curling. She couldn’t bring herself to touch it.
She lifted the edge of the cheesecloth tentatively, seeing beneath yet another
layer, and here the dolls were fast becoming dust. They had sunk deep into the
cloth, and probably could not be lifted intact from it.
‘All the way back to
Europe they go. Reach in. Take the oldest doll. Can you see which one it is?’
‘It’s hopeless.
It will fall to pieces if I touch it. Besides, I don’t know which one it
is.’ She laid the cloth back, smoothing the top layer gingerly. And when
her fingers touched the bones, she felt a sudden jarring vibration. It was as
if a bright light had flashed before her eye. Her mind registered the medical
possibilities… temporal lobe disturbance, seizure. Yet the diagnosis
seemed foolish, belonging to another realm.
She stared down at the tiny
faces.
‘What’s the
purpose? Why?’
‘To speak to them when
you would, and invoke their help, so they can reach out of hell to do your
bidding,’ The woman pressed her withered lips into a faint sneer, the
light rising and distorting her face unkindly. ‘As if they would come
from the fires of hell to do anyone’s bidding.’
Rowan let out a long low
derisive sigh, looking down again at the dolls, at the horrid and vivid face of
Stella.
‘Who made these things?’
‘They all did, all
along. Cortland crept down in the night and cut the foot off my mother, Mary
Beth, as she lay in the coffin. It was Cortland who took the bones from Stella.
Stella wanted to be buried at home. Stella knew what he would do, because your
grandmother Antha was too little to do it.’
Rowan shuddered. She lowered
the lid of the trunk, and lifting the lamp carefully, rose to her feet,
brushing the dust from her knees. ‘This Cortland, this man who did this,
who was he? Not the grandfather of Ryan at the funeral?’
‘Yes, my dear, the
very same,’ said the old woman. ‘Cortland the beautiful, Cortland
the vicious, Cortland the instrument of him who has guided this family for centuries.
Cortland who raped your mother when she clung to him for help. I mean the man
who coupled with Stella, to father Antha who then gave birth to Deirdre, who by
him conceived you, his daughter and great-granddaughter.’
Rowan stood quiet,
envisioning the scheme of births and entanglements.
‘And who has made a
doll of my mother?’ she asked, as she stared into the old woman’s
face which now appeared ghastly in the light of the lamp playing on it.
‘No one. Unless you
yourself care to go to the cemetery and unscrew the stone and take her hands
out of the coffin. Do you think you could do that? He will help you do it, you
know, the man you have already seen. He’ll come if you put on the
necklace and call him.’
‘You have no cause to
want to hurt me,’ Rowan said, ‘I am no part of this.’
‘I tell you what I
know. Black magic was their game. Always. I tell you what you must know to make
your choice. Would you bow to this filth? Would you continue it? Would you lift
those wretched pieces of filth and call upon the spirits of the dead so that
all the devils in hell could play dolls with you?’
‘I don’t believe
in it,’ Rowan said, ‘I don’t believe that you do.’
‘I believe what I have
seen. I believe what I feel when I touch them. They are endowed with evil, as
relics are endowed with sanctity. But the voices who speak through them are all
his voice, the voice of the devil. Don’t you believe what you saw when he
came to you?’
‘I saw a man with dark
hair. He wasn’t a human being. He was some sort of hallucination.’
‘He was Satan. He will
tell you that is not so. He will give you a beautiful name. He will talk poetry
to you. But he is the devil in hell for one simple reason. He lies and he
destroys, and he will destroy you and your progeny if he can, for his ends, for
his ends are what matter.’
‘And what are they?’
To be alive, as we are
alive. To come through and to see and feel what we see and feel.’ The
woman turned her back, and moving her cane before her, walked to the left wall,
by the fireplace, stopping at the lumpy roll of rug, and then looking up at the
books that lined the shelves on either side of the paneled chimney above the
mantel.
‘Histories,’ she
said, ’histories of all those who came before, written by Julien. This
was Julien’s room, Julien’s retreat. In here he wrote his
confessions. How with his sister Katherine he lay to make my mother, Mary Beth,
and then with her he lay to make my sister Stella. And when he would have lain
with me, I spit into his face. I clawed at his eyes. I threatened to kill him.’
She turned to look fixedly at Rowan.
‘Black magic, evil
spells, records of his petty triumphs as he punished his enemies and seduced
his lovers. Not all the seraphim in heaven could have satisfied his lust, not
Julien’s.’
‘This is all recorded
there?’
‘All this and more.
But I have never read his books, and I never shall. It was enough to read his
mind as he sat day by day in the library below, dipping his pen and laughing to
himself, and giving vent to his fantasies. That was decades and decades ago. I
have waited so long for this moment.’
‘And why are the books
still here? Why didn’t you burn them?’
‘Because I knew that
if you ever came, you would have to see for yourself. No book has the power of
a burned book! No… You must read for yourself what he was, for what he
says in his own words can’t do anything else but convict and condemn him.’
She paused. ‘Read and choose,’ she whispered. ‘Antha couldn’t
make the choice. Deirdre couldn’t make the choice. But you can make it.
You are strong and clever and wise already in your years, wise. I can see this
in you.’
She rested both hands on the
crook of her cane and looked away, out of the corner of her eyes, pondering.
Once again, her cap of white hair seemed heavy around her small face.
‘I chose,’ she
said softly, almost sadly. ‘I went to church after Julien touched me,
after he sang me his songs and told me his lies. I honestly think he believed
his charms would win me over. I went to the shrine of Our Lady of Perpetual
Help and I knelt and prayed, and the strongest truth came through to me. Didn’t
matter if God in his heaven was a Catholic or a Protestant God, or the God of
the Hindus. What mattered was something deeper and older and more powerful than
any such image — it was a concept of goodness based upon the affirmation
of life, the turning away from destruction, from the perverse, from man using
and abusing man. It was the affirmation of the human and the natural.’
She looked up at Rowan. ‘I said, "God, stand by me. Holy Mother,
stand by me. Let me use my power to fight them, to beat them, to win against
them."’
Again her eyes moved off,
gazing back into the past perhaps. For a long moment they lingered on the rug
at her feet, bulging in its circles of rusted chain. ‘I knew what lay
ahead, even then. Years after I learned what I needed. I learned the same
spells and secrets they used. I learned to call up the very lowly spirits whom
they commanded. I learned to fight him in all his glory, with spirits
bound to me, whom I could then dismiss with the snap of my fingers. In sum, I
used their very weapons against them.’
She looked sullen, remote,
studying Rowan’s reactions yet seemingly indifferent to them.
‘I told Julien I would
bear no incestuous child by him. To show me no fantasies of the future. To play
no tricks on me, changing himself to a young man in my arms, when I could feel
his withered flesh, and knew it was there all along. "Do you think I care
if you are the most beautiful man in the world? You or your evil familiar? Do
you think I measure my choices by such vanity and self ‘indulgence?"
That’s what I said to him. If he touched me again, I promised I would use
the power I had in me to drive him back. I would need no human hands to help
me. And I saw fear in his eyes, fear even though.
I myself hadn’t learned
yet how to keep my threats, fear of a power in me which he knew was there even
when I was uncertain of it. But maybe it was only fear of one he couldn’t
seduce, couldn’t confuse, couldn’t win over.’ She smiled, her
thin lips revealing a shining row of even false teeth. That is a terrible
thing, you know, to one who lives solely by seduction.’
She lapsed into silence,
caught perhaps in remembering.
Rowan took a deep long
breath, ignoring the sweat that clung to her face and the warmth of the lamp.
Misery was what she felt, misery and waste and long lonely years, as she looked
at the woman. Empty years, years of dreary routine, and bitterness and fierce
belief, belief that can kill…
‘Yes, kill,’
sighed the woman. ‘I have done that. To protect the living from him who
was never living, and would possess them if he could.’
‘Why us?’ Rowan
demanded. ‘Why are we the playthings of this spirit you are talking
about, why us in all the world? We aren’t the only ones who can see
spirits.’
The old woman gave a long sigh.
‘Did you ever speak to
him?’ Rowan asked. ‘You said he came to you when you were a child,
he spoke in your ears words that no one could hear. Did you ever ask who he was
and what he really wanted?’
‘Do you think he would
have told me the truth? He won’t tell you the truth, mark my words. You
feed him when you question him. You give him oil as if he were the flame in
that lamp.’
The old woman drew closer to
her suddenly.
‘He’ll take from
your mind the answer best suited to lead you on, to enthrall you. He’ll
weave a web of deceits so thick you won’t see the world through it. He
wants your strength and he’ll say what he must say to get it. Break the
chain, child! You’re the strongest of them all! Break the chain and he’ll
go back to hell for he has no other place to go in all the wide world to find
strength like yours. Don’t you see? He’s created it. Bred sister to
brother, and uncle to niece, and son to mother, yes, that too, when he had to
do it, to make an ever more powerful witch, only faltering now and then, and
gaining what he lost in one generation by even greater strength in the next.
What was the cost of Antha and Deirdre if he could have a Rowan!’
‘Witch? You spoke the
word, witch?’ Rowan asked.
‘They were witches,
every one, don’t you see?’ The old woman’s eyes searched Rowan’s
face. ‘Your mother, her mother, and her mother before her, and Julien,
that evil despicable Julien, the father of Cortland who was your father. I was
marked for it myself until I rebelled.’
Rowan clenched her left
hand, cutting her palm with her nails, staring into the old woman’s eyes,
repelled by her yet unable to draw away from her.
‘Incest, my dear, was
the least of their sins, but the greatest of their schemes, incest to
strengthen the line, to double up the powers, to purify the blood, to birth a
cunning and terrible witch in each generation, going so far back it’s
lost in European history. Let the Englishman tell you about that, the
Englishman who came with you to the church, the Englishman who held your arm.
Let him tell you the names of the women whose dolls lie in that trunk. He
knows. He’ll sell you his brand of the black arts, his genealogy.’
‘I want to get out of
this room,’ Rowan whispered. She turned around, throwing the beam of the
light on the landing.
‘You know that it’s
true,’ said the old woman behind her. ‘You’ve always known
deep inside that an evil lived in you.’
‘You choose your words
badly. You speak of the potential for evil.’
‘Well, know that you
can put it to a finish! That can be the significance of your greater strength,
that you can do as I have done and turn it against him. Turn it against all of
them!’
She pushed past Rowan, the
hem of her dress scraping Rowan’s ankle, her cane thudding lightly as
before, as she walked out onto the landing, gesturing for Rowan to follow.
Into the only remaining door
on the third floor they went, a noxious overpowering smell flooding out over
them. Rowan drew back, scarcely able to breathe. Then she did what she knew she
had to do. She breathed in the stench, and swallowed it, because there was no
other way to tolerate it.
Lifting the lamp high, she
saw this was a narrow storage chamber. It was filled with jars and bottles on
makeshift shelves and the jars and bottles were filled with blackish, murky
fluid. Specimens in these containers. Rotting, putrid things. Stench of alcohol
and other chemicals, and most of all of putrefying flesh. Unbearable to think
of these glass con’ tainers broken open and the horrid smell of their
exposed contents.
‘They were Marguerite’s,’
said the old woman, ’and Marguerite was Julien’s mother and the
mother of Katherine, who was my grandmother. I don’t expect you to
remember these names. You can find them in the ledger books in the other room.
You can find them in the old records in the downstairs library. But mark what I
say. Marguerite filled these jars with horrors. You’ll see when you pour
out the contents. And mind me, do it yourself if you don’t want trouble.
Horrible things in those jars… and she, the healer!’ She almost
spat the word with contempt. ‘With the same powerful gift that you have
now, to lay hands on the ill, and bring together the cells to patch the
rupture, or the cancer. And that’s what she did with her gift. Bring your
lamp closer.’
‘I don’t want to
see this now.’
‘Oh? You’re a
doctor, are you not? Haven’t you dissected the dead of all ages? You cut
them open now, do you not?’
‘I’m a surgeon.
I operate to preserve and lengthen life. I don’t want to see these things
now…’
Yet even as she spoke she
was peering at the jars, looking at the largest of them in which the liquid was
still clear enough to see the soft, vaguely round thing floating there, half
shrouded in shadow. But that was impossible what she saw there. That looked
just like a human head. She drew back as if she’d been burnt.
Tell me what you saw.’
‘Why do you do this to
me?’ she said in a low voice, staring at the jar, at the dark rotted eyes
swimming in the fluid and the seaweed hair. She turned her back on it and
looked at the old woman. ‘I saw my mother buried today. What do you want
of me?’
‘I told you.’
‘No, you punish me for
coming back, you punish me for merely wanting to know, you punish me because I
violated your schemes.’
Was that a grin on the old
woman’s face?
‘Don’t you
understand that I am alone out there now? I want to know my people. You can’t
make me bend to your will.’
Silence. It was sweltering
here. She did not know how long she could stand it. ‘Is that what you did
to my mother?’ she said, her voice burning out in her anger. ‘You
made her do your will?’
She stepped backwards, as if
her anger was forcing her away from the old woman, her hand tightening
uncomfortably on the glass lamp which was now hot from the burning wick, so hot
she could scarcely hold it any longer.
‘I’m getting
sick in this room.’
‘Poor dear,’
said the woman. ‘What you saw in that jar was a man’s head. Well,
look closely at him when the time comes. And at the others you find there.’
‘They’re rotted,
deteriorated; they’re so old they’re no good for any purpose if
they ever were. I want to get out of here.’
Yet she looked back at the
jar, overcome with horror. Her left hand went to her mouth as if it could
somehow protect her, and gazing at the clouded fluid she saw again the dark
hole of a mouth where the lips were slowly deteriorating and the white teeth
shone bright. She saw the gleaming jelly of the eyes. No, don’t look at
it. But what was in the jar beside it? There were things moving in the fluid,
worms moving. The seal had been broken.
She turned and left the
room, leaning against the wall, her eyes shut, the lamp burning her hand. Her
heart thudded in her ears, and it seemed for a moment the sickness would get
the better of her. She’d vomit on the very floor at the head of these
filthy stairs, with this wretched vicious woman beside her. Dully, she heard
the old woman passing her again. She heard her progress as she went down the
stairs, steps slower than before, gaining only a little speed as the woman
reached the landing.
‘Come down, Rowan
Mayfair,’ she said. Tut out the lamp, but light the candle before you do,
and bring it with you.’
Slowly Rowan righted
herself. She pushed her left hand back through her hair. Fighting off another
wave of nausea, she moved slowly back into the bedroom. She set down the lamp,
on the little table by the door from which she’d taken it, just when she
thought her fingers couldn’t take the heat anymore, and for a moment she
held her right hand to her lips, trying to soothe the burn. Then slowly she
lifted the candle and plunged it down the glass chimney of the lamp, because
she knew the glass of the chimney was too hot to touch now. The wick caught,
wax dripping on the wick, and then she blew out the lamp, and stood still for a
moment, her eyes falling on that rolled rug and the pair of leather shoes
tossed against it.
No, not tossed, she thought.
No. Slowly she moved towards the shoes. Slowly, she extended her own left foot
until the toe of her shoe touched one of those shoes, and then she kicked the
shoe and realized that it was caught on something even as it fell loose and she
saw the gleaming white bone of the leg extending from the trouser within the
rolled carpet.
Paralyzed, she stared at the
bone. At the rolled rug itself. And then walking along it, she saw at the other
end what she could not see before, the dark gleam of brown hair. Someone
wrapped in the rug. Someone dead, dead a long time, and look, the stain on the
floor, the blackish stain on the side of the rug, near the bottom where the
fluids long ago flowed out and dried up, and see, even the mashed and tiny
insects fatally caught in the sticky fluid so long ago.
Rowan, promise me, you will never go
back, promise me.
From somewhere far below,
she heard the old woman’s voice, so faint it was no more than a thought. ‘Come
down, Rowan Mayfair.’
Rowan Mayfair, Rowan
Mayfair, Rowan Mayfair…
Refusing to hurry, she made
her way out, glancing back once more at the dead man concealed in the rug, at
the slender spoke of white bone protruding from it. And then she shut the door
and walked sluggishly down the stairs.
The old woman stood at the
open elevator door, merely watching, the ugly gold light from the elevator bulb
shining full on her.
‘You know what I found,’
Rowan said. She steadied herself as she reached the newel post. The little
candle danced for a moment, throwing pale translucent shadows on the ceiling.
‘You found the dead
man, wrapped in the rug.’
‘What in God’s
name has gone on in this house!’ Rowan gasped. ‘Are you all mad?’
How cold and controlled the
old woman seemed, how utterly detached. She pointed to the open elevator. ‘Come
with me,’ she said. ‘There is nothing more to see and only a little
more to say…’
‘Oh, but there’s
a lot more to say,’ Rowan said. ‘Tell me -did you tell my mother
these things? Did you show her those horrible jars and dolls?’
’1 didn’t drive
her mad if that’s your meaning.’
‘I think anyone who
grew up in this house might go mad.’
‘So do I. That’s
why I sent you away from it. Now come.’
‘Tell me what happened
with my mother.’
She stepped after the woman
into the small dusty chamber again, closing the door and the gate angrily. As
they moved down, she turned and stared at the woman’s profile. Old, old,
yes, she was. Her skin as yellow all over as parchment, and her neck so thin
and frail, the veins standing out under her fragile skin. Yes, so fragile.
‘Tell me what happened
to her,’ Rowan said, staring at the floor, not daring to look closely at
the woman again. ‘Don’t tell me how he touched her in her sleep,
but tell me what happened, really happened!’
The elevator stopped with a
jerk. The woman opened the gate, and pushed back the door, and walked out into
the hallway.
As Rowan closed the door,
the light died out as if the elevator and its bare bulb had never existed. The
darkness swept in close and faintly cool, and smelling of the rain from beyond
the open front door. The night gleamed outside, noisy with comforting sounds.
‘Tell me what happened,’
Rowan said again, softly, bitterly.
Through the long front
parlor they walked, the old woman leading the way, listing slightly to the left
as she followed her cane, Rowan coming patiently behind her.
The pale light of the candle
slowly crept throughout the whole room, lighting it thinly to the ceiling. Even
in decay, it was a beautiful room, its marble fireplaces and high mantel
mirrors shining in the dreary shadows. All its windows were floor-length
windows. Mirrors at the far ends gazed across the length of the room into each
other. Dimly Rowan saw the chandeliers reflected again and again and into
infinity. Her own small figure was there, repeated over and over and vanish-ing
finally in darkness.
‘Yes,’ said the
old woman. ‘It is an interesting illusion. Darcy Monahan bought these
mirrors for Katherine. Darcy Monahan tried to take Katherine away from all the
evil around her. But he died in this house of yellow fever. Katherine wept for
the rest of her life. But the mirrors stand today, there and there, and over
the fireplaces, just as Darcy fixed them.’
She sighed, once more
resting her two hands on the crook of her cane.
‘We have all…
from time to time… been reflected in these mirrors. And you see yourself
in them now, caught in the same frame.’
Rowan didn’t respond.
Sadly, distantly, she longed to see the room in the light, to see the carvings
in the marble fireplaces, to see the long silk draperies for what they really
were, to see the plaster medallions fixed to the high ceilings.
The old woman proceeded to
the nearest of the two side floor-length windows. ‘Raise it for me,’
she said. ‘It slides up. You are strong enough.’ She took the
candle from Rowan and set it on a small lamp table by the fireplace.
Rowan reached up to unsnap
the simple lock, and then she raised the heavy nine-paned window, easily
pushing it until it was almost above her head.
Here was the screened porch,
and the night outside, and the air fresh as it was warm, and full of the breath
of the rain again. She felt a rush of gratitude, and stood silently letting the
air kiss her face and her hands. She moved to the side as the old woman passed
her.
The candle, left behind,
struggled in an errant draft. Then went out. Rowan stepped out into the
darkness. Again that strong perfume came on the breeze, drenchingly sweet.
‘The night jasmine,’
said the old woman.
All around the railings of
this porch vines grew, tendrils dancing in the breeze, fine tiny leaves moving
like so many little insect wings beating against the screen. Flowers glimmered
in the dark, white and delicate and beautiful.
‘This is where your
mother sat day after day,’ said the old woman. ‘And there, out
there on the flags is where her mother died. Where she died when she fell from
that room above which had been Julien’s. I myself drove her out of that
window. I think I would have pushed her with my own hands if she hadn’t
jumped. "With my own hands I’d scratched at her eyes, the way I’d
scratched at Julien’s.’
She paused. She was looking
out through the rusted screen into the night, perhaps at the high faint shapes
of the trees against the paler sky. The cold light of the street lamp reached
long and bright over the front of the garden. It fell upon the high unkempt
grass. It even shone on the high back of the white wooden rocking chair.
Friendless and terrible the
night seemed to Rowan. Awful and dismal this house, a terrible engulfing place.
Oh, to live and die here, to have spent one’s life in these awful sad
rooms, to have died in that filth upstairs. It was unspeakable. And the horror
rose like something black and thick inside her, threatening to stop her breath.
She had no words for what she felt. She had no words for the loathing inside
her for the old woman.
‘I killed Antha,’
the old woman said. Her back was turned to Rowan, her words low and indistinct.
‘I killed her as surely as if I did push her. I wanted her to die. She
was rocking Deirdre in the cradle and he was there, by her side, he was staring
down at the baby and making the baby laugh! And she was letting him do it, she
was talking to him in her simpering, weak little voice, telling him he was her
only friend, now that her husband was dead, her only friend in this whole
world. She said, "This is my house. I can put you out if I want to."
She said that to me.
‘I said, "I’ll
scratch your eyes out of your head if you don’t give him up. You can’t
see him if you don’t have eyes. You won’t let the baby see
him."’
The old woman paused.
Sickened and miserable, Rowan waited in the muffled silence of the night
sounds, of things moving and singing in the dark.
‘Have you ever seen a
human eye plucked out of its socket, hanging on a woman’s cheek by the
bloody threads? I did that to her. She screamed and sobbed like a child, but I
did that. I did it and chased her up the stairs as she ran from me, trying to
hold her precious eye in her hands. And do you think he tried to stop me?’
‘I would have tried,’
Rowan said thickly, bitterly. ‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Because you wanted to
know! And to know what happened to one, you must know what happened to the one
before her. And you must know, above all, that this is what I did to break the
chain.’
The woman turned and stared
at Rowan, the cold white light shining in her glasses and making them blind
mirrors suddenly. ‘This I did for you, and for me, and for God, if there
is a God. I drove her through that window. "Let’s see if you can see
him if you’re blind," I cried. "Then can you make him
come!" And your mother, your mother screaming in the cradle in that very
room there. I should have taken her life. I should have snuffed it out then and
there while Antha lay dead outside on the flagstones. Would to God I had had
the courage.’
Again the old woman paused,
raising her chin slightly, the thin lips once again spreading in a smile. ‘I
feel your anger. I feel your judgment.’
‘Can I help it?’
Rowan whispered.
The old woman bowed her
head. The light of the street lamp settled on her white hair, her face in
shadow. ‘I couldn’t kill such a small thing,’ she said
wearily. ‘I couldn’t bring myself to take the pillow and put it
over Deirdre’s face. I thought of the stories from the old days of the
witches who had sacrificed babies, who’d stirred the baby fat in the cauldron
at the Sabbats. We are witches, we Mayfairs. And was I to sacrifice this tiny
thing as they had done? There I stood ready to take the life of a small baby, a
crying baby, and I could not bring myself to do what they had done.’
Silence once again.
‘And of course he knew
I couldn’t do it! He would have ripped the house apart to stop me had I
tried.’
Rowan waited, until she
could wait no longer, until the hate and anger in her were silently choking
her. In a thick voice, she asked:
‘And what did you do
to her later on - my mother - to break the chain, as you’ve said?’
Silence.
Tell me.’
The old woman sighed. She
turned her head slightly, gazing through the rusted screen.
‘From the time she was
a small child,’ she said, ’playing in that garden there, I begged
her to fight him. I told her not to look at him. I schooled her in turning him
away! And I had won my fight, won over her fits of melancholy and madness and
crying, and sickening confessions that she had lost the battle and let him come
into her bed, I had won, until Cortland raped her! And then I did what I had to
do to see that she gave you up and she never went after you.
‘I did what I had to
do to see that she never gained the strength to run away, to search for you, to
claim you again and bring you back into her madness, and her guilt and her
hysteria. When they wouldn’t give her electric shock at one hospital, I
took her to another. And if they wanted to take her off the drugs at that
hospital, I took her to another. And I told them what I had to tell them to
make them tie her to her bed, and give her the drugs, and give her the shock. I
told her what I had to tell her to make her scream so they would do it!’
‘Don’t tell me
any more.’
‘Why? You wanted to
know, didn’t you? And yes, when she writhed in her bedcovers like a cat
in heat, I told them to give her the shots, give them to her -’
‘Stop!’
’- twice a day or
three times a day. I don’t care if you kill her, but give it to her, I won’t
have her lie there, his plaything writhing in the dark, I won’t -’
‘Stop it. Stop.’
‘Why? Till the day she
died, she was his. Her last and only word was his name. What good was it all,
except that it was for you, for you, Rowan!’
‘Stop it!’ Rowan
hissed at her, her own hands rising helplessly in the air, ringers splayed. ‘Stop
it. I could kill you for what you are telling me! How dare you speak of God and
life when you did that to a girl, a young girl that you had brought up in this
filthy house, you did that to her, you did that to her when she was helpless
and sick and you… God help you, you are the witch, you sick and cruel old
woman, that you could do that to her, God help you, God help you, God damn you!’
A look of sullen shock swept
the old woman’s face. For one second in the weak light, she seemed to go
blank, with her round blank glass eyes shining like two buttons, and her mouth
slack and empty.
Rowan groaned, her own hands
moved to the side of her head, slipping into her hair, her lips pressed shut to
stop the words, to stop her rage, to stop the hurt and pain. ‘To hell
with you for what you did!’ she cried, half swallowing the words, her
body bent with the rage she couldn’t swallow.
The old woman frowned. She
reached out, and the cane fell from her hand. She took a single shuffling step
forward. And then her right hand faltered, and plunged towards the left knob of
the rocking chair in front of her. Her frail body twisted slowly and sank down
into the chair. As her head fell back against the high slats, she ceased to
move. Then her head slipped off the arm of the chair and dangled beside it.
There was no single noise in
the night. Only a dim continuous purring as if the insects sang and the frogs
sang and die faraway engines and cars, wherever they were, sang with them. It
seemed a train passed somewhere close, clicking rhythmically and fast beneath
the song. And there came the dull faraway sound of a whistle, like a guttural
sob in the dark’ ness.
Rowan stood motionless, her
hands dropped at her sides, limp and useless, as she stared dumbly through the
rusted mesh of the screen, at the soft lacy movement of the trees against the
sky. The deep singing of the frogs slowly broke itself away from the other
night songs, and then faded. A car came down the empty street beyond the front
fence, headlights piercing the thick wet foliage.
Rowan felt the light on her
skin. She saw it flash over the wooden cane lying on the floor of the porch,
over Carlotta’s black high-top shoe, bent painfully in as if the thin
ankle had snapped.
Did anyone see through the
thick shrubs the dead woman in the chair? And the tall blond woman figure
behind her?
Rowan shuddered all over.
She arched her back, her left hand rising and gripping a hank of her hair and
pulling it until the pain in her scalp was sharp, so sharp she couldn’t
quite bear it.
The rage was gone. Even the
faintest most bitter flash of anger had died away; and she stood alone and cold
in the dark, clinging to the pain as she held her own hair tight in her trembling
fingers, cold as if the warm night were not there, alone as if the darkness
were the darkness of the abyss from which all promise of light was gone, and
all promise of hope or happiness. The world gone. The world with all its
history, and all its vain logic, and all its dreams, and accomplishments.
Slowly, she wiped her mouth
with the back of her hand, sloppily like a child, and she stood looking down at
the limp hand of the dead woman, her own teeth chattering as the cold ate deep
into her, truly chilling her. Then she went down on her knee and lifted the
hand and felt for the pulse, which she knew wasn’t there, and then laid
it down in the woman’s lap, and looked at the blood trickling down from
the woman’s ear, running down her neck and into her collar.
‘I didn’t mean
to…" she whispered, barely forming the words.
Behind her the dark house
yawned, waited. She couldn’t bear to turn around. Some distant
unidentifiable sound shocked her. It filled her with fear; it filled her with
the worst and only real fear she’d ever known of a place in all her life,
and when she thought of the dark rooms, she couldn’t turn around. She
couldn’t go back into it. And the enclosed porch held her like a trap.
She rose slowly and looked
out over the deep grass, over a tangle of vine that clawed at the screen, and
shivered now against it with its tiny pointed leaves. She looked up at the
clouds moving beyond the trees, and she heard an awful little sound issuing
from her own lips, a kind of awful desperate moaning.
‘I didn’t mean
to…" she said again.
This is when you pray, she
thought miserably and quietly. This is when you pray to nothing and no one to
take away the terror of what you’ve done, to make it right, to make it
that you never never came here.
She saw Ellie’s face
in the hospital bed. Promise me,
you’ll never never…
‘I didn’t mean
to do it!’ It came so low, the whisper, that nobody but God could have
heard. ‘God, I didn’t mean to. I swear it. I didn’t mean to
do this again.’
Far away somewhere in
another realm other people existed. Michael and the Englishman and Rita Mae
Lonigan, and the Mayfairs gathered at the restaurant table. Even Eugenia, lost
somewhere within the house, asleep and dreaming perhaps. All those others.
And she stood here alone.
She, who had killed this mean and cruel old woman, killed her as cruelly as she
herself had ever killed. God damn her for it. God damn her into hell for all
she said and all she’d done. God damn her. But I didn’t mean it, I
swear…
Once again, she wiped her
mouth. She folded her arms across her breasts and hunched her shoulders and
shivered. She had to turn around, walk through the dark house. Walk back to the
door, and leave here.
Oh, but she couldn’t
do that, she had to call someone, she had to tell, she had to cry out for that woman
Eugenia, and do what had to be done, what was right to be done.
Yet the agony of speaking to
strangers now, of telling official lies, was more than she could endure.
She let her head fall lazily
to one side. She stared down at the helpless body, broken and collapsed within
its sack of a dress. The white hair so clean and soft-looking. All her paltry
and miserable life in this house, all her sour and unhappy life. And this is
how it ends for her.
She closed her eyes,
bringing her hands up wearily to her face, and then the prayers did come, Help
me, because I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what I’ve
done, and I can’t undo it. And everything the old woman said was true,
and I’ve always known, known it was evil inside me and inside them and
that’s why Ellie took me away. Evil.
She saw the thin pale ghost
outside the glass in Tiburon. She felt the invisible hands touching her, as she
had on the plane.
Evil.
‘And where are you?’
she whispered in the darkness. ‘Why should I be afraid to walk back into
this house?’
She raised her head. In the
long parlor, there came another faint, cracking noise behind her. Like an old
board creaking under a step. Or was it just a rafter breathing? So faint it
might have been a rat in the dark, creeping along the boards with its tiny
repulsive feet. But she knew it wasn’t. With every instinct in her, she
felt a presence there, someone near, someone in the dark, someone in the
parlor. Not the old black woman. Not the scratching of her slippers.
‘Show yourself to me,’
she whispered, the last of her fear turning to anger. ‘Do it now.’
Once again she heard it. And
slowly she turned around. Silence. She looked down one last time at the old
woman. And then she walked into the long front room. The high narrow mirrors
stared at one another in the shadowy stillness. The dusty chandeliers gathered
the light to themselves sullenly in the gloom.
I’m not afraid of you. I’m
not afraid of anything here. Show yourself as you did before.
The very furniture seemed
alive for one perilous instant, as if the small curved chairs were watching
her, as if the bookcases with their glass doors had heard her vague challenge,
and would bear witness to whatever took place.
‘Why don’t you
come?’ she whispered aloud again. ‘Are you afraid of me?’
Emptiness. A dull creak from somewhere overhead.
With quiet even steps she
made her way into the hallway, painfully aware of the sound of her own labored
breathing. She gazed dumbly at the open front door. Milky the light from the
street, and dark and shining the leaves of the dripping oaks. A long sigh came
out of her, almost involuntarily, and then she turned and moved away from this
comforting light, back through the hallway, against the thick shadows and
towards the empty dining room, where the emerald lay, wait-ing, in its velvet
box.
He was here. He had to be.
‘Why don’t you
come?’ she whispered, surprised at the frailty of her own voice. It
seemed the shadows stirred, but no shape materialized. Maybe a tiny bit of
breeze had caught the dusty draperies. A thin dull snap sounded in the boards
under her feet.
There on the table lay the
jewel box. Smell of wax lingering in the air. Her ringers were trembling as she
raised the lid, and touched the stone itself.
‘Come on, you devil,’
she said. She lifted the emerald, vaguely thrilled by its weight, in spite of
her misery, and she lifted it higher, until the light caught it, and she put it
on, easily manipulating the small strong clasp at the back of her neck.
Then, in one very strange
moment, she saw herself doing this. She saw herself, Rowan Mayfair, ripped out
of her past, which had been so far removed from all of this that it now lacked
detail, standing like a lost wanderer in this dark and strangely familiar
house.
And it was familiar, wasn’t
it? These high tapering doors were familiar. It seemed her eyes had drifted
over these murals a thousand times. Ellie had walked here. Her mother had lived
and died here. And how otherworldly and irretrievable seemed the glass and
redwood house in faraway California. Why had she waited so long to come?
She had taken a detour in
the dark gleaming path of her destiny. And what were all her past triumphs to
the confrontation of this mystery, and to think, this mystery in all its dark
splendor belonged by right to her. It had waited here all these years for her
to claim it and now, at last she was here.
The emerald lay against the
soft silk of her blouse heavily. Her fingers seemed unable to resist it,
hovering about it as if it were a magnet.
‘Is this what you want?’
she whispered.
Behind her, in the hallway,
an unmistakable sound answered her. The whole house felt it, echoed it, like
the case of a great piano echoes the tiniest touch to a single string. Then
again, it came. Soft but certain. Someone there.
Her heart thudded almost painfully.
She stood stranded, her head bowed, and as if in dreamy sleep, she turned and
raised her eyes. Only a few feet away, she made out a dim and indistinct
figure, what seemed a tall man.
All the smallest sounds of
the night seemed to die away and leave her in a void as she struggled to pick
this thing out from the murky dark that enmeshed it. Was she deceiving herself
or was that the scheme of a face? It seemed that a pair of dark eyes was
watching her, that she could just make out the contour of a head. Perhaps she
saw the white curve of a stiff collar.
‘Don’t play
games with me,’ she whispered. Once again, the whole house echoed the
sound with its uncertain creaks and sighs. And then wondrously, the figure
brightened, confirmed itself magically, and yet even as she gasped aloud, it
began to fade.
‘No, don’t go!’
she pleaded, doubting suddenly that she had ever seen anything at all.
And as she stared into the
confusion of light and shadow, searching desperately, a darker form suddenly
loomed against the dull faint light from the distant door. Closer it came,
through the swirling dust, with heavy distinct footfalls. Without any chance of
mistake she saw the massive shoulders, the black curly hair.
‘Rowan? Is that you,
Rowan?’
Solid, familiar, human.
‘Oh Michael,’
she cried, her voice soft and ragged. She moved into his waiting arms. ‘Michael,
thank God!’
TWENTY-NINE
WELL, she thought to
herself, silent, hunched over, sitting alone at the dining table, the supposed
victim of the horrors in this dark house - I am becoming one of these women now
who just falls into a man’s arms and lets him take care of everything.
But it was beautiful to
watch Michael in action. He made the calls to Ryan Mayfair, and to the police,
to Lonigan and Sons. He spoke the language of the plainclothesmen who came up
the steps. If anyone noticed the black gloves he wore, they did not say so,
maybe because he was talking too fast, explaining things, and moving things
along to hasten the inevitable conclusions.
‘Now she just got
here, she does not have the faintest idea who in the hell this guy is up in the
attic. The old woman didn’t tell her. And she’s in shock now. The
old woman just died out there. Now this body in the attic has been there a long
time, and what I’m asking you is not to disturb anything else in the
room, if you can just take the remains, and she wants to know who this man was
as much as you want to know.
‘And look, this is
Ryan Mayfair coming. Ryan, Rowan is in there. She’s in awful shape.
Before Carlotta died, she showed her a body upstairs.’
‘A body. Are you
serious?’
‘They need to take it
out. Could you or Pierce go up there, see that they don’t touch all those
old records and things? Rowan’s in there. She’s exhausted. She can
talk in the morning.’
At once Pierce accepted the
mission. Thunder of people going up the old staircase.
In hushed voices Ryan and
Michael talked. Smell of cigarette smoke in the hall. Ryan came into the dining
room and spoke to Rowan in a whisper.
‘Tomorrow, I’ll
call you at the hotel. Are you sure you don’t want to come with me and
with Pierce out to Metairie.’
‘Have to be close,’
she said. ‘Want to walk over in the morning.’
‘Your friend from
California is a nice man, a local man.’
‘Yes. Thank you.’
Even to old Eugenia, Michael
had been the protector, putting his arm around her shoulder as he escorted her
in to see ’old Miss Carl’ before Lonigan lifted the body from the
rocker. Poor Eugenia who cried without making a sound. ‘Honey, do you
want me to call someone for you? You don’t want to stay tonight in the
house alone, do you? You tell me what you want to do. I can get someone to come
here and stay with you.’
With Lonigan, his old
friend, he fell right into stride. He lost all the California from his voice,
and was talking just like Jerry, and just like Rita, who had come out with him
in ‘the wagon.’ Old friends, Jerry drinking beer with Michael’s
father on the front steps thirty-five years ago, and Rita double-dating with
Michael in the Elvis Presley days. Rita threw her arms around him. ‘Michael
Curry.’
Roaming to the front, Rowan
had watched them in the glare of the flashing lights. Pierce was talking on the
phone in the library. She had not even seen the library. Now a dull electric
light flooded the room, illuminating old leather and Chinese carpet.
‘… well, now,
Mike,’ said Lonigan, ’you have to tell Dr Mayfair this woman was
ninety years old, the only thing keeping her going was Deirdre. I mean we knew
it was just a matter of time once Deirdre went, and so she can’t blame
herself for whatever happened here tonight, I mean, she’s a doctor, Mike,
but she ain’t no miracle worker.’
No, not much, Rowan had
thought.
‘Mike Curry? You’re
not Tim Curry’s son!’ said the uniformed policeman. ‘They
told me it was you. Well, hell, my dad and your dad were third cousins, did you
know that? Oh, yeah, my dad knew your dad real well, used to drink beer with
him at Corona’s.’
At last the body in the
attic, bagged and tagged, was taken away, and the small dried body of the old
woman had been laid on the white padded stretcher as if it were alive, though
it was only being moved into the undertaker’s wagon - perhaps to lie on
the same embalming table where Deirdre had lain a day earlier.
No funeral, no interment
ceremony, no nothing, said Ryan. She had told him that herself yesterday. Told
Lonigan too, the man said. ‘There will be a Requiem Mass in a week,’
said Ryan. ‘You’ll still be here?’
Where would I go? Why? I
found where I belong. In this house. I’m a witch. I’m a killer. And
this time I did it deliberately.
‘… And I know
how terrible this has been for you.’
Wandering back into the
dining room, she heard young Pierce in the library door.
‘Now, she isn’t
considering staying in this house, tonight, is she?’
‘No, we’re going
back to the hotel,’ Michael said.
‘It’s just that
she shouldn’t be here alone. This can be a very unsettling house. A truly
unsettling house. Would you think me crazy if I told you that just now when I
went into the library there was a portrait of someone over the fireplace and
that now there’s a mirror?’
‘Pierce!’ said
Ryan wrathfully.
‘I’m sorry, Dad,
but…’
‘Now now, son, please.’
‘I believe you,’
said Michael with a little laugh. ‘I’ll be with her.’
‘Rowan?’ Ryan
approached her again carefully - she the bereaved, the victim, when in fact she
was the murderer. Agatha Christie would have known. But then 1 would have had
to do it with a candle stick.
‘Yes, Ryan.’
He settled down at the
table, careful not to touch the dusty surface with the sleeve of his perfectly
tailored suit. The funeral suit. The light struck his thoroughbred face, his
cold blue eyes, much lighter blue than Michael’s. ‘You know this
house is yours.’
‘She told me that.’
Young Pierce stood
respectfully in the doorway.
‘Well, there’s a
lot more to it,’ said Ryan.
‘Liens, mortgages?’
He shook his head. ‘No,
I don’t think you’ll ever have to worry about anything of that sort
as long as you live. But the point is, that whenever you want you can come
downtown and we’ll go over it.’
‘Good God,’ said
Pierce, ’is that the emerald?’ He had spied the jewel case in the
shadows at the other end. ‘And with all these people just trooping
through there.’
His father gave him a
subdued, patient look. ‘Nobody’s going to steal that emerald, son,’
he said with a sigh. He glanced anxiously at Rowan. He gathered up the jewel
case and looked at it as if he didn’t quite know what to do with it.
‘What’s wrong?’
Rowan asked. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Did she tell you
about this?’
‘Did anyone ever tell your
she asked quietly, unchalleng-ingly.
‘Quite a story,’
he said, with a subtle, forced smile. He laid the jewel box down in front of
her and patted it with his hand. He stood up.
‘Who was the man in
the attic, do they know?’ she asked.
‘They will soon. There
was a passport, and other papers with the corpse, or what was left of it.’
‘Where’s Michael?’
she asked.
‘Here, honey, over
here. Look, you want me to leave you alone?’ In the dark, his gloved
hands were almost invisible.
‘I’m tired, can
we go back? Ryan, can I call you tomorrow?’
‘When you want, Rowan.’
Ryan hesitated at the door.
Glanced at Michael. Michael made a move to leave. Rowan reached out and caught
his hand, startled by the leather.
‘Rowan, listen to me,’
said Ryan, ‘I don’t know what the hell Aunt Carl told you, I don’t
know how that body got upstairs, or what that’s about, or what she’s
told you about the legacy. But you have to clean out this old place, you’ve
got to burn the trash up there, get people to come here, maybe Michael will
help you, and throw things out, all those old books, those jars. You have to
let the air in and take stock. You don’t have to go through this place,
examining every speck of dust and dirt and ugliness. It’s an inheritance
but it isn’t a curse. At least it doesn’t have to be.’
‘I know,’ she
said.
Noise at the front door.
The two young black men who
had come to collect Grandma Eugenia were now standing in the hallway. Michael
went upstairs to help her. Ryan and then Pierce swept down to kiss Rowan on the
cheek. Rather like kissing the corpse, it seemed to her suddenly. Then she
realized it was the other way around. They kissed the dead people here the way
they kissed the living.
Warm hands, and the parting
flash of Pierce’s smile in the dark. Tomorrow, phone, lunch, talk et
cetera.
Sound of the elevator making
its hellish descent. People did go to hell in elevators in the movies.
‘And you have your
key, Eugenia, you just come on over tomorrow, you come in as you always did, if
you need or want anything. Now, honey, do you need any money?’
‘I got my pay, Mr
Mike. Thank you, Mr Mike.’
‘Thank you, Mr Curry,’
said the younger black man. Smooth, educated voice.
The older policeman came
back. He must have been in the very front hall because she could barely hear
him. ‘Yeah, Town-send.’
‘… passport,
wallet, everything right there in the shirt.’
Door closed. Darkness.
Quiet.
Michael coming back along
the hallway.
And now we are two, and the
house is empty. He stood in the dining room doorway looking at her.
Silence. He drew a cigarette
out of his pocket, mashing the pack back into it. Couldn’t be easy with
the gloves, but they did not seem to slow him down.
‘What do you say?’
he asked. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here for tonight.’ He
packed his cigarette on the face of his watch. Explosion of a match, and the
flash of light in his blue eyes as he looked up, taking in the dining room
again, taking in the murals.
There are blue eyes and blue
eyes. Could his black hair have grown so much in such a short time? Or was it
just the moisture in the warm air that made it so thick and curly?
The silence rang in her
ears. They were actually all gone.
And the whole place lay
empty and vulnerable to Rowan’s touch, with its many drawers and cabinets
and closets and jars and boxes. Yet the idea of touching anything was
repugnant. It wasn’t hers, it was the old woman’s, all of it. Dank
and stale, and awful, like the old woman. And Rowan had no spirit to move, no
spirit to climb the stairs again, or to see anything at all.
‘His name was Townsend?’
she asked.
‘Yeah. Stuart Townsend.’
‘"Who the hell
was he, do they have any idea?’
Michael thought for a
moment, flicked a tiny bit of tobacco off his lip, shifted his weight from one
hip to another. Pure beefcake, she thought. Downright pornographic.
T know who he was,’ he
said with a sigh. ‘Aaron Lightner, you remember him? He knows all about
him.’
‘What are you talking
about?’
‘You want to talk here?’
His eyes moved over the ceiling again, like antennae. ‘I’ve got
Aaron’s car outside. We could go back to the hotel, or downtown somewhere.’
His eyes lingered lovingly
on the plaster medallion, on the chandelier. There was something furtive and
guilty about the way he was admiring it in the middle of this crisis. But he
didn’t have to hide it from her.
‘This is the house, isn’t
it?’ she asked. ‘The one you told me about in California.’
His eyes homed to her,
locked.
‘Yeah, it’s the
one.’ He gave a little sad smile and a shake of his head. ‘It’s
the one all right.’ He tapped the ash into his cupped hand, and then
moved slowly away from the table towards the fireplace. The heavy shift of his
hips, the movement of his thick leather belt, all distractingly erotic. She
watched him tip the ashes into the empty grate, the invisible little ashes that
probably would have made no difference at all, had they been allowed to drift
to the dusty floor.
‘What do you mean, Mr
Lightner knows who that man was?’
He looked uncomfortable.
Extremely sexy and very uncomfortable. He took another drag off the cigarette,
and looked around, figuring.
‘Lightner belongs to
an organization,’ he said. He fished in his shirt pocket, and drew out a
little card. He placed it on the table. ‘They call it an order. Like a
religious order, but it isn’t religious. The name of it is the Talamasca.’
‘Dabblers in the black
arts?’
‘No.’
‘That’s what the
old woman said.’
‘Well, that’s a
lie. Believers in the black arts, but not dabblers or practitioners.’
‘She told a lot of
lies. There was truth in what she said, too, but every damned time it was
entangled with hate, and venom and meanness, and awful awful lies.’ She
shuddered. ‘I’m hot and I’m cold,’ she said. ‘I
saw one of those cards before. He gave one to me in California. Did he tell you
that? I met him in California.’
Michael nodded uneasily. ‘At
Ellie’s grave.’
‘Well, how is that
possible? That you’re his friend, and that he knows all about this man in
the attic? I’m tired, Michael. I feel like I might start screaming and
never be able to stop. I feel like if you don’t start telling
me…" She broke off, staring listlessly at the table. ‘I don’t
know what I’m saying,’ she said.
‘That man, Townsend,’
said Michael apprehensively, ’he was a member of the order. He came here
in 1929 trying to make contact with the Mayfair family.’
‘Why?’
‘They’ve been
watching this family for three hundred years, compiling a history,’
Michael said. ‘It’s going to be hard for you to understand all
this…"
‘And just by
coincidence, this man’s your friend?’
‘No. Slow down. None
of it was coincidence. I met him outside this house the first night I got here.
And I saw him in San Francisco, too, you saw him, remember, the night you
picked me up at my place, but we both thought he was a reporter. I had never
spoken to him, and before that night I’d never seen him before.’
‘I remember.’
‘And then outside this
house, he was there. I was drunk, I’d gotten drunk on the plane. Remember
I promised you I wouldn’t, well, I did. And I came here, and I saw
this… this other man in the garden. Only it wasn’t a real man. I
thought it was, and then I realized it wasn’t. I’d seen that guy
when I was a kid. I’d seen him every time I ever passed this house. I
told you about him, do you remember? Well, what I have to somehow explain
is… he’s not a real man.’
‘I know,’ she
said. ‘I’ve seen him.’ The most electrical feeling passed
through her. ‘Keep talking. I’ll tell you about it when you finish,
please.’
But he didn’t keep
talking. He looked at her anxiously. He was frustrated, worried. He was leaning
on the mantel, looking down at her, the light from the hallway half
illuminating his face, his eyes darting over the table, and finally returning
to her. It aroused a complete tenderness in her to see the protectiveness in
him, to hear in his voice the gentleness and the fear of hurting her.
Tell me the rest,’ she
said. ‘Look, don’t you understand, I have some terrible things I
have to tell you because you’re the only one I can tell. So you tell me
your story because you’re actually making it easier for me. Because I didn’t
know how I was going to tell you about seeing that man. I saw him after you
left, on the deck in Tiburon. I saw him at the very moment my mother died in
New Orleans, and I didn’t know she was dying then. I didn’t know
anything about her.’
He nodded. But he was still
confused, stymied.
‘If I can’t
trust you, for what it’s worth, I don’t want to talk to anybody.
What are you holding back? Just tell me. Tell me why that man Aaron Lightner
was kind to me this afternoon at the funeral when you weren’t there? I
want to know who he is, and how you know him. Am I entitled to ask that
question?’
‘Look, honey, you can
trust me. Don’t get mad at me, please.’
‘Oh, don’t
worry, it takes more than a lovers’ quarrel for me to blow somebody’s
carotid artery.’
‘Rowan, I didn’t
mean…"
‘I know, I know!’
she whispered. ‘But you know I killed that old woman.’
He made a small, forbidding
gesture. He shook his head.
‘You know I did.’
She looked up at him. ‘You are the only one who knows.’ Then a
terrible suspicion came into her mind. ‘Did you tell Lightner the things
I told you? About what I could do?’
‘No,’ he said,
shaking his head earnestly, pleading with her quietly and eloquently to believe
him. ‘No, but he knows, Rowan.’
‘Knows what?’
He didn’t answer. He
gave a little shrug, and drew out another cigarette, and stood there, staring
off, considering, apparently, as he pulled out his matchbook, and without even
noticing it, did that wonderful one-handed match trick of bending out one book
match, and closing the book and then bending that match and striking it and
putting the flame to the cigarette.
‘I don’t know
where to begin,’ he said. ‘Maybe at the beginning.’ He let
out the smoke, resting his elbow on the mantel again. ‘I love you. I
really do. I don’t know how all this came about. I have a lot of
suspicions and I’m scared. But I love you. If that was meant, I mean destined,
well, then I’m a lost man. Really lost, because I can’t accept the
destined part.
But I won’t give up
the love. I don’t care what happens. Did you hear what I said?’
She nodded. ‘You have
to tell me everything about these other people,’ she said. But she also
said without words, Do you know how much I love you and desire you?
She turned sideways in the
chair, the better to face him. She rubbed the back of her arms, again, and hung
the heel of her shoe on the chair rung. Looking up at him, she saw his hips
again, the slant of his belt, the shirt tight across his chest. She couldn’t
stop wanting him physically. Best to get it over with, wasn’t it? Oh, all
right, let’s eat all this delicious ice cream just to get rid of it. And
so you can tell me what you’re talking about with all this, and I can
tell you. About the man on the plane. And the old woman’s question. Was
it better than a mortal man?
His face darkened as he
looked at her. Loved her. Yes. This man, just the best man she had ever known
or touched or wanted ever. What would all this have been like without him?
‘Michael, talk
straight to me, please,’ she said.
‘Oh, yeah. But Rowan,
don’t freak out on me. Just listen to what I have to say.’
He picked up one of the
dining room chairs from along the wall, swung it around so that the back faced
her, and straddled it cowboy style, folding his arms on the back of it, as he
looked at her. That was pornographic too.
‘For the last two days,’
he said, ‘I’ve been holed up about sixty miles from here, reading
the history of the Mayfair family compiled by these people.’
‘The Talamasca.’
He nodded. ‘Now, let
me explain to you. Three hundred years ago, there was this man named Petyr van
Abel. His father had been a famous surgeon at the University of Leiden in Holland.
There are books still in existence that were written by this doctor, Jan van
Abel.’
‘I know who he is,’
she said, ’he was an anatomist.’
He smiled and shook his
head. ‘Well, he’s your ancestor, babe. You look like his son. At
least that’s what Aaron says. Now when Jan van Abel died, Petyr was
orphaned and he became a member of the Talamasca. He could read minds, he could
see ghosts. He was what other people might have called a witch, but the
Talamasca gave him shelter. Eventually, he went to work for them, and part of
his work was saving people accused in other countries of witchcraft. And if
they had real gifts, you know, the gifts that I have and you have and Petyr van
Abel had, well, he would help those people to reach the Motherhouse of the Talamasca
in Amsterdam.
‘Now, this Petyr van
Abel went to Scotland to try to intervene in the trial of a witch named Suzanne
Mayfair. But he came too late, and all he was able to do, which was plenty as
it turned out, was take her daughter Deborah away from the town where she might
eventually have been burnt too, and bring her to Holland. But before he did, he
saw this man, this spirit. He saw too that the child Deborah saw it, and Petyr
conjectured that Deborah had made it appear, which proved to be accurate.
‘Deborah didn’t
stay with the order. Eventually she seduced Petyr, and by him had a child named
Charlotte. Charlotte went to the New World and it was she who founded the
Mayfair family. But when Deborah died in France, a convicted witch, that
brown-haired man, that spirit, went to Charlotte. So did this emerald necklace
that is lying right here in this box. It passed along with the spirit, to
Charlotte.
‘All the Mayfairs
since are Charlotte’s descendants. And in each generation of those
descendants down to the present time at least one woman has inherited the
powers of Suzanne and Deborah, which included, among other things, the ability
to see this brown-haired man, this spirit. And they are what the Talamasca
calls the Mayfair Witches.’
She made a little sound,
half amazement, half nervous amusement. She drew herself up in the chair, and
watched the little changes in his face, as he silently sorted all the things he
wanted to tell. Then she decided to say nothing.
‘The Talamasca,’
he said, choosing his words with care. ‘They’re scholars,
historians. They’ve documented a thousand sightings of that brown-haired
man in and around this house. Three hundred years ago in Saint-Domingue, when
Petyr van Abel went there to talk to his daughter Charlotte, this spirit drove
him mad. It eventually killed him.’
He took another drag off the
cigarette, eyes moving around the room again, but not seeing it this time,
rather seeing something else, and then returning to her.
‘Now as I explained
before,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen that man since I was six years
old. I saw him every time I ever passed this house. And unlike the countless
people interviewed by the Talamasca over the years, I’ve seen him other
places. But the point is… the other night when I came back here, after
all these years, I saw that man again. And when I told Aaron what I saw, when I
told him that I’d been seeing that man since I was yea high, and when I
told him that it was you who rescued me, well, then he showed me the Talamasca’s
file on the Mayfair Witches.’
‘He hadn’t known
I was the one who pulled you out of the ocean?’
Michael shook his head. ‘He’d
come to San Francisco to see me because of my hands. That’s their
territory, so to speak, people who have special powers. It was routine. He was
reaching out to me, as routinely perhaps as Petyr van Abel went to try to
intervene in the execution of Suzanne Mayfair. And then he saw you outside my
house. He saw you come to pick me up, and do you know he thought you’d
hired me to come back here? He thought you’d hired a psychic to come back
here and investigate your background.’
He took a final drag off the
cigarette and pitched it into the grate. ‘Well, for a while anyway, he
thought that. Until I told him why you’d really come to see me, and how
you’d never seen this house, or even seen a picture of it. But there you
have it, you see.
‘And what you have to
do now is read the File on the Mayfair Witches. But there’s more to
it… as far as I’m concerned, I mean more to it that has to do with
me.’
‘The visions.’
‘Exactly.’ He
smiled, his face warm and beautiful. ‘Exactly! Because you remember I
told you I saw a woman and there was a jewel…’
‘And you’re
saying it’s the emerald.’
‘I don’t know,
Rowan. I don’t know. And then I do know. I know as surely as I know I’m
sitting here that it was Deborah Mayfair I saw out there, Deborah, and she was
wearing the emerald around her neck, and I was sent here to do something.’
To fight that spirit?’
He shook his head. ‘It’s
more complicated. That’s why you have to read the File. And Rowan, you
have to read it. You have to not be offended that such a file exists. You have
to read it.’
‘What does the
Talamasca get from all this?’ she asked.
‘Nothing,’ he
answered. ‘To know. Yes, they’d like to know. They’d like to
understand. It’s like, you know, they’re psychic detectives.’
‘And filthy rich, I
suppose.’
‘Yeah,’ he said,
nodding. ‘Filthy rich. Loaded.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘No, they’ve got
money like you’ve got. They’ve got money like the Catholic Church
has got. Like the Vatican. Look, it’s got nothing to do with their
wanting anything from you…"
‘OK, I believe it. It’s
just you’re naive, Michael. You really are. You really are naive.’
‘What in the hell
makes you say that, Rowan! Christ, where do you get the idea that I am naive!
You said this before and this is really crazy!’
‘Michael, you are. You
really are. OK, tell me the truth, do you still believe that these visions were
good? That these people who appeared to you were higher beings?’
‘Yes, I do,’ he
said.
‘This black-haired
woman, this convicted witch, as you called her, with the jewel was good…
the one who knocked you off the rock right into the Pacific Ocean
where…"
‘Rowan, no one can
prove a chain of controlled events like that! All I know…"
‘You saw this spirit
man when you were six? Let me tell you something, Michael, this man is not
good. And you saw him here two nights ago? And this black-haired woman is not
good either.’
‘Rowan, it’s too
early for you to make these interpretations.’
‘OK. All right. I don’t
want to make you mad. I don’t want to make you angry even for one second.
I’m so glad you’re here, you can’t know how glad I am that you’re
here, that you’re here with me in this house, and you understand all
this, that you’re… oh, it’s a terrible thing to say, but I’m
glad I’m not in it alone. And I want you here, that’s the whole
truth.’
‘I know, I understand,
and the important thing is, I am here, and you aren’t alone.’
‘But don’t you
make too many interpretations either. There is something terribly evil here,
something I can feel like the evil in me. No, don’t say anything. Just
listen to me. There’s something so bad that it could spill out and hurt
lots of people. More than it’s ever hurt in the past. And you’re
like some starry-eyed knight who just rode over the drawbridge out of the
castle!’
‘Rowan, that is not
true.’
‘All right. OK. They
didn’t drown you out there. They didn’t do that. And your knowing
all these people, Rita Mae and Jerry Lonigan, it’s all not connected.’
‘It’s connected,
but the question is, how is it connected? It’s crucial not to jump to
conclusions.’
She turned back towards the
table, resting her elbows on it and holding her head in her hands. She had no
idea now what time it was. The night seemed quieter than before; now and then
something in the house would snap or creak. But they were alone. Completely
alone.
‘You know,’ she
said, ‘I think about that old woman, and it’s like a cloud of evil
descending on me. It was like walking with evil to be with her. And she thought
she was the good one. She thought she was fighting the devil. It’s
tangled, but it’s tangled even more obscurely than that.’
‘She killed Townsend,’
he said.
She turned and looked at him
again. ‘You know that for sure?’
‘I laid my hands on
him. I felt the bone. She did it. She tied him up in that rug. He was maybe
drugged at the time, I don’t know. But he died in the rug, I know that
much. He chewed a hole in it.’
‘Oh, God!’ She
closed her eyes, her imagination filling in the implications too vividly.
‘And there were people
in this house all the time and they couldn’t hear him. They didn’t
know he was dying up there, or if they did they didn’t do anything about
it.’
‘Why would she do it!’
"Cause she hated us. I
mean she hated the Talamasca.’
‘You said
"us."’
‘That was a slip, but
a very informative one. I feel like I’m part of them. They’ve come
to me and they’ve asked me to be, more or less. They’ve taken me
into their confidence. But maybe what I really meant, is that she hated anyone
from outside who knew anything. There are dangers still to anybody from
outside. There’s danger to Aaron. You asked me what the Talamasca stands
to get out of this. It stands to lose another member.’
‘Explain.’
‘On the way home from
the funeral, coming back out to the country to get me, he saw a man on the road
and swerved, rolled over twice, and just got out of the damned car before it
exploded. It was that spirit thing. I know it was. So does he. I guess whatever
this big plan is, this entanglement, Aaron has served his purpose.’
‘Is he hurt?’
Michael shook his head. ‘He
knew what was going down, even as it was happening. But he couldn’t take
a chance. Suppose it hadn’t been an apparition and he’d run down a
real man. Just couldn’t chance it. He was belted in, too. I think he got
slammed on the head pretty bad.’
‘Did they take him to
a hospital?’
‘Yes, Doctor. He’s
OK. That is why I took so long to gethere. He didn’t want me to come. He
wanted you to come to them, out there in the country, read the file out there.
But I came on anyway. I knew that thing wasn’t going to kill me. I haven’t
served my purpose yet.’
‘The purpose of the
visions.’
‘No. He has his
purpose, and they have theirs. And they don’t work together. They work
against each other.’
‘What happens if you
try to run away to Tibet?’ she asked.
‘You want to go?’
‘If I go with you, you’re
not running away. But really, what if you do run away?’
‘I don’t know. I
don’t intend to, so it doesn’t compute. They want me to fight him,
to fight him and the little scheme he’s been laying down all along. I’m
convinced of it.’
‘They want you to
break the chain,’ she said. ‘That’s what the old woman said.
She said, "Break the chain," meaning this legacy that comes all the
way down from Charlotte, I guess, though she didn’t talk about anyone
that far back. She said she herself had tried. And that I could do it.’
‘That’s the
obvious answer, yes. But there has to be more to it than that, having to do
with him, and why he’s shown himself to me.’
‘OK,’ she said. ‘You
listen to me now. I’m going to read the file, every page of it. But I’ve
seen this thing too. And it doesn’t simply appear. It affects matter.’
‘When did you see it?’
‘The night my mother
died, at the very hour. I tried to call you. I rang the hotel, but you weren’t
there. It scared the hell out of me. But the apparition isn’t the
significant part. It’s what else happened. It affected the water around
the house. It made the water so turbulent that the house was swaying on its
pilings. There was absolutely no storm that night on Richardson Bay or San
Francisco Bay or any earthquake or any natural reason for that to happen. And
there’s something else too. The next time, I felt this thing touch me.’
‘When did that happen?’
‘On the plane. I
thought it was a dream. But it wasn’t. I was sore afterwards, just as if I’d
been with a large man.’
‘You mean it…?’
‘I thought I was
asleep, but the distinction I’m trying to make is, this thing isn’t
limited to apparitions. It’s involved with the physical in some very
specific way. And what I have to understand is its parameters.’
‘Well, that’s a
commendable scientific attitude. Could I ask whether or not its touching you
evoked any other, less scientific response?’
‘Of course it did. It
was pleasurable, because I was half asleep. But when I woke up, I felt like I’d
been raped. I loathed it.’
‘Oh, lovely,’ he
said anxiously. ‘Just lovely. Well, look, you’ve got the power to
stop this thing from that sort of violation.’
‘I know, and now that
I know that’s what it is, I will. But if anybody had tried to tell me day
before yesterday that some invisible being was going to slip under my clothes
on a flight to New Orleans, I wouldn’t have been any more prepared than I
was because I wouldn’t have believed it. But we know it doesn’t
want to hurt me. And we are fairly certain that it doesn’t want to hurt
you. What we have to keep in mind is that it does want to hurt anyone who
interferes with its plans, apparently, and now this includes your friend Aaron.’
‘Right,’ Michael
said.
‘Now you look tired,
like you’re the one who needs to be taken back to the hotel and put to
bed,’ she said. ‘Why don’t we go there?’
He didn’t answer. He
sat up, and rubbed the back of his neck with his hands. ‘There’s
something you’re not saying.’
‘What?’
‘And I’m not
saying it either.’
‘Well then say it,’
she said softly, patiently.
‘Don’t you want
to talk to him? Don’t you want to ask him yourself who he is and what he
is? Don’t you think you can communicate with him better and more truly
maybe than any of the rest of them? Maybe you don’t. But I do, I want to
talk to him. I want to know why he showed himself to me when I was a kid. I
want to know why he came so close to me the other night that I almost touched
him, touched his shoe. I want to know what he is. And I know, that no matter
what Aaron’s told me, or what Aaron will tell me, I think I’m smart
enough to get through to that thing, and to reason with it, and maybe that’s
exactly the kind of pride it expects to find in everyone who ever sees it.
Maybe it counts on that.
‘Now, if you haven’t
felt that, well, then, you’re smarter and stronger than I am, by a long,
long way. I never really talked to a ghost or a spirit, or whatever he is. And
boy, I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity, not even knowing what I know,
and knowing what he did to Aaron.’
She nodded. ‘Yeah, you’ve
covered it all right. And maybe it does play on that, the vanity in some of us
that we won’t run the way the others did. But there’s something
else between me and this thing. It touched me. And it left me feeling raped. I
didn’t like it.’
They sat there in silence
for a moment. He was looking at her, and she could all but hear the wheels
turning in his head.
He stood up and reached for
the jewel case, sliding it across the smooth surface of the table. He opened it
and looked at the emerald.
‘Go ahead,’ she
said. ‘Touch it.’
‘It doesn’t look
like the drawing I made of it,’ he whispered. ‘I was imagining it
when I made the drawing, not remembering it.’ He shook his head. He
seemed about to close the lid of the box again; then he removed his glove, and
laid his fingers on the stone.
In silence she waited. But
she could tell by his face that he was disappointed and anxious. When he sighed
and closed the box, she didn’t press him.
‘I got an image of you,’
he said, ’of your putting it around your neck. I saw myself standing in
front of you.’ He put the glove back on, carefully.
‘That’s when you
came in.’
‘Yeah,’ he said,
nodding. ‘I didn’t even notice that you were wearing it.’
‘It was dark.’
‘I saw only you.’
‘What does that matter?’
she shrugged. ‘I took it off and put it back in the case.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Just now, when you
touched it. Did you see anything else?’
He shook his head. ‘Only
that you love me,’ he said in a small voice. ‘You really do.’
‘You only have to
touch me to discover that,’ she said.
He smiled, but the smile was
sad, and confused. He shoved his hands in his pockets, as if he were trying to
get rid of them, and he bowed his head. She waited for a long moment, hating to
see him miserable.
‘Come on, let’s
go,’ she said. ‘This place is getting to you worse than me. Let’s
go back to the hotel.’
He nodded. ‘I need a
glass of water,’ he said. ‘Do you think there’s some cold
water in this house? I’m dry and I’m hot.’
‘I don’t know,’
she said. ‘I don’t even know if there’s a kitchen. Maybe there’s
a well with a moss-covered bucket. Maybe there’s a magic spring.’
He laughed softly. ‘Come
on, let’s find some water.’
She got up and followed him
out of the rear door of the dining room. Some sort of butler’s pantry, it
was, with a little sink in it, and high glassed cabinets filled with china. He
took his time passing through. He seemed to be measuring the thickness of the
walls with his hands.
‘Back here,’ he
said, passing through the next door. He pushed in an old black wall button. A
dingy overhead bulb flashed on, weak and dismal, revealing a long split-level
room, the upper portion a sterile workplace, and the lower, two steps down, a
small breakfast room with a fireplace.
A long series of glass doors
revealed the overgrown yard outside. It seemed the song of the frogs was louder
here, clearer. The dark outline of an immense tree obscured the northern corner
of the view completely.
The rooms themselves were
very clean and very streamlined in an old-fashioned way. Very efficient.
The built-in refrigerator
covered half the inside wall, with a great heavy door like the doors of walk-in
vaults in restaurants.
‘Don’t tell me
if there’s a body in there, I don’t want to know,’ she said
wearily.
‘No, just food,’
he said smiling, ’and ice water.’ He took out the clear glass
bottle. ‘Let me tell you about the South. There’s always a bottle
of ice water.’ He rummaged in one of the cabinets over the corner sink,
and caught up two jelly glasses with his right hand and set them down on the
immaculate counter.
The cold water tasted
wonderful. Then she remembered the old woman. Her house, really, her glass,
perhaps. A glass from which she’d drunk. She was overcome with revulsion,
and she set the glass in the small steel sink before her.
Yes, like a restaurant, she
thought, detaching herself slowly, rebelliously. The place was that well
equipped long long ago when someone had ripped out the Victorian fixtures they
so love these days in San Francisco. And put in all this shining steel.
‘What are we going to
do, Michael?’ she said.
He stared down at the glass
in his hand. Then he looked at her, and at once the tenderness and the
protectiveness in his eyes went to her heart.
‘Love each other,
Rowan. Love each other. You know, as sure as I am about the visions, I’m
sure that it isn’t part of anyone’s plan that we really love each
other.’
She stepped up to him and
slipped her arms around his chest. She felt his hands come up her back and
close warmly and tenderly on her neck and her hair. He held her deliciously
tight, and buried his face in her neck, and then kissed her again on the lips
gently.
‘Love me, Rowan. Trust
me and love me,’ he said, his voice heartbreakingly sincere. He drew
back, and seemed to retreat into himself a little, and then he took her hand,
and led her slowly towards the French door. He stood looking out into the
darkness.
Then he opened the door. No
lock on it. Maybe there was no lock on any of them. ‘Can we go outside?’
he asked.
‘Of course, we can.
Why do you ask me?’
He looked at her as if he
wanted to kiss her but he didn’t do it. And then she kissed him. But at
the mere delicious taste of him, all the rest of it returned. She snuggled
against him for a long moment. And then she led the way out.
They found that they had
come onto a screened porch, much smaller than the one on which the old woman
had died, and they went out another door, like many an old-fashioned screened
door, even to the spring that caused it to shut behind them. They went down the
wooden steps to the flagstones.
‘All this is OK,’
he said, ’it’s not in bad repair really.’
‘But what about the
house itself? Can it be saved, or is it too far gone?’
‘This house?’ He
smiled, shaking his head, his blue eyes shining beautifully as he glanced at
her and then up at the narrow open porch high overhead. ‘Honey, this
house is fine, just fine. This house will be here when you and I are gone. I’ve
never been in such a house. Not in all my years in San Francisco. Tomorrow, we’ll
come back and I’ll show you this house in the sunlight. I’ll show
you how thick these walls are. I’ll show you the rafters underneath if
you want.’ He stopped, ashamed it seemed of relishing it so much, and
caught again in the unhappiness and the mourning for the old woman, just as she
had been.
And then there was Deirdre,
and so many questions yet unanswered about Deirdre. So many things in this
history he described, and yet it seemed the darkest journey… Much rather
look at him and see the excitement in him as he looks up at the walls, as he
studies the doorframes and the sills and the steps.
‘You love it, don’t
you?’
‘I’ve loved it
ever since I was a kid,’ he said. ‘I loved it when I saw it two
nights ago. I love it now even though I know all kinds of things that happened
in it, even what happened to that guy in the attic. I love it because it’s
your house. And because… because it’s beautiful no matter what
anybody has done in it, or to it. It was beautiful when it was built. It will
be beautiful a hundred years from now.’
He put his arm around her
again, and she clung to him, nestling against him, and feeling him kiss her
hair again. His gloved fingers touched her cheek. She wanted to rip off the
gloves. But she didn’t say so.
‘You know, it’s
a funny thing,’ he said. ‘In all my years in California, I worked
on many a house. And I loved them all. But none of them ever made me feel my
mortality. They never made me feel small. This house makes me feel that. It
makes me feel it because it is going to be here when I’m gone.’
They turned and walked
deeper into the garden, finding the flags in spite of the weeds that pressed
against them, and the bananas that grew so thick and low that the great
bladelike leaves brushed their faces.
The shrubs closed out the
kitchen light behind them as they climbed the low flagstone steps. Dark it was
here, dark as the rural dark.
A rank green smell rose,
like the smell of a swamp, and Rowan realized that she was looking out at a
long pool of water. They stood on the flagstone lip of this great black pool.
It was so heavily overgrown that the surface of the water showed only in dim
flashes. The water lilies gleamed boldly in the faintest light from the far-off
sky. Insects hummed thickly and invisibly. The frogs sang, and things stirred
the water so that the light skittered on the surface suddenly, even deep among
the high weeds. There came a busy trickling sound as though the pond were fed
by fountains, and when she narrowed her eyes, she saw the spouts, pouring forth
their thin sparkling streams.
‘Stella built this,’
he said. ‘She built it over fifty years ago. It wasn’t meant to be
like this at all. It was a swimming pool. And now the garden’s got it.
The earth has taken it back.’
How sad he sounded. It was
as if he had seen something confirmed that he did not quite believe. And to
think how that name had struck her when Ellie said it in the final weeks of
fever and delirium. ‘Stella in the coffin.’
He was looking off towards
the front of the house, and when she followed his gaze, she saw the high gable
of the third floor with its twin chimneys floating against the sky, and the
glint of the moon or the stars, she didn’t know which, in the square
windows high up there, in the room where the man had died, and where Antha had
fled Carlotta. All the way down past those iron porches she had fallen - all
the way down to the flags, before her cranium cracked on the flags, and the
soft tissue of the brain was crushed, the blood oozing out of it.
She pressed herself more
closely against Michael. She locked her hands behind his back, resting her
weight against him.
She looked straight up at
the pale sky and its few scattered yet vivid stars, and then the memory of the
old woman came back again, and it was like the evil cloud wouldn’t let go
of her. She thought of the look on the old woman’s face as she’d
died. She thought of the words. And the face of her mother in the casket,
slumbering forever on white satin.
‘What is it, darlin’?’
he asked. A low rumble from his chest.
She pressed her face against
his shirt. She started to shiver as she had been doing on and off all night, and
when she felt his arms come down tighter and almost hard, she loved it.
The frogs were singing here,
that loud grinding woodland song, and far away a bird cried in the night.
Impossible to believe that streets lay near at hand, and that people lived beyond
the trees, that the distant tiny yellow lights twinkling here and there through
the glossy leaves were the lights of other people’s houses.
‘I love you, Michael,’
she whispered. ‘I do. I love you.’
But she couldn’t shake
the evil spell. It seemed to be part of the sky and the giant tree looming over
her head, and the glittering water down deep in the rank and wild grass. But it
was not part of any one place. It was in her, part of her. And she realized,
her head lying still against his chest, that this wasn’t only the
remembrance of the old woman and her brittle and personal malice, but a
foreboding. Ellie’s efforts had been in vain, for Rowan had known this
foreboding long ago. Maybe even all her life, she’d known that a dread
and dark secret lay ahead, and that it was a great and immense and greedy and
multilayered secret, which once opened would continue to unfold forever. It was
a secret that would become the world, its revelations crowding out the very
light of ordinary life.
This long day in the balmy
tropical city of old-fashioned courtesies and rituals had merely been the first
unfolding. Even the secrets of the old woman were the mere beginning.
And it draws its strength,
this big secret, from the same root from which I draw my strength, both the good
and the bad, because in the end, they cannot be separated.
‘Rowan, let me get you
away from here,’ he said. ‘We should have left before. This is my
fault.’
‘No, it doesn’t
matter, leaving here,’ she whispered. ‘I like it here. It doesn’t
matter where I go, so why not stay here where it’s dark and quiet and
beautiful?’
The soft heavy smell of that
flower came again, the one the old woman had called the night jasmine.
‘Ah, do you smell it,
Michael?’ She looked at the white water lilies glowing in the dark.
‘That’s the
smell of summer nights in New Orleans,’ he answered. ‘Of walking
alone, and whistling, and beating the iron pickets with a twig.’ She
loved the deep vibration of his voice coming from his chest. ‘That’s
the smell of walking all through these streets.’
He looked down at her,
struggling to make out her face, it seemed. ‘Rowan, whatever happens, don’t
let this house go. Even if you have to go away from it and never see it again,
even if you come to hate it. Don’t let it go. Don’t let it ever fall
into the hands of anyone who wouldn’t love it. It’s too beautiful.
It has to survive all this, just as we do.’
She didn’t answer. She
didn’t confess this dark fear that they weren’t going to survive,
that somehow everything that had ever given her consolation would be lost. And
then she remembered the old woman’s face, upstairs in the death room
where the man had died years and years ago, and the old woman saying to her, ‘You
can choose. You can break the chain!’ The old woman, trying to break
through her own crust of malice and viciousness and coldness. Trying to offer
Rowan something which she herself perceived to be shining and pure. And in the
same room with that man who had died, bound helplessly in that rug, while life
went on in the rooms below.
‘Let’s go,
darling dear,’ he said. ‘Let’s go back to the hotel. I insist.
And let’s just get into one of those big soft hotel beds and snuggle
together.’
‘Can we walk, Michael?
Can we walk slowly through the dark?’
‘Yes, honey, if you
want to.’
They had no keys to lock up.
They left the lights shining behind soiled or draped windows. They went down
the path and out the rusted gate.
Michael unlocked the car and
took out a briefcase and showed it to her. It was the whole story, he said, but
she couldn’t read it before he explained a few things. There were things
in there that were going to shock her, maybe even upset her. Tomorrow, they’d
talk about it over breakfast. He had promised Aaron that he wouldn’t put
it into her hands without explanations, and it was for her that he was doing
this. Aaron wanted her to understand.
She nodded. She had no
distrust of Aaron Lightner. It wasn’t possible for people to fool her,
and Lightner had no need to fool anyone. And when she thought of him now,
remembering his hand on her arm at the funeral, she had the uneasy feeling that
he too was an innocent, an innocent like Michael. And what made them innocent
was that they really didn’t understand the malice of people.
She was so tired now. No
matter what you see or feel or come to know, you get tired. You cannot grieve
on and on hour after hour day after day. Yet glancing back at the house she
thought of the old woman, cold and small, and dead in the rocker, her death
never to be understood or avenged.
If I had not killed her, I
could have hated her with such freedom! But now I have this guilt on account of
her, as well as all the other doubts and misery she brought to the fore.
Michael stood stranded,
staring at the front door. She gave a little tug to his sleeve as she drew
close to him.
‘Looks like a great
keyhole, doesn’t it?’ she asked.
He nodded, but he seemed far
away, lost in his thoughts. That’s what they called that style - the
keyhole doorway,’ he murmured. ‘Part of the Egyptian Greek
Italianate mishmash they loved so much when they built this house.’
‘Well, they did a good
job of it,’ she said wearily. She wanted to tell him about the door being
carved on the tomb in the cemetery but she was so tired.
They walked on slowly
together, winding over to Philip Street and then up to Prytania and over to
Jackson Avenue. They passed lovely houses in the dark; they passed garden
walls. Then down to St Charles they walked, past the shut-up stores and bars,
and past the big apartment houses, and towards the hotel, only an occasional car
slipping by, and the streetcar appearing once with a great iron clatter as it
rounded the bend, and then roared out of sight, its empty windows full of
butter yellow light.
In the shower, they made
love, kissing and touching each other hastily and clumsily, the feel of the
leather gloves exciting Rowan almost madly when they touched her naked breasts
and went down between her legs. The house was gone now; so was the old woman;
and the poor sad beautiful Deirdre. Just Michael, just this hard chest of which
she’d been dreaming, and his thick cock in her hands, rising out of its
nest of dark glossy curling hair.
Years ago some idiot friend
told her over coffee on the campus that women didn’t find men’s
bodies beautiful, that it was what men did that mattered. Well, she had always
loved men for both what they did, and their bodies. She loved this body, loved
its hardness and its tiny silky soft nipples, and the hard belly, and this
cock, which she took into her mouth. She loved the feel of these strong thighs under
her fingers, the soft hair in the curve of this backside. Silky and hard, that’s
what men were.
She ran her hands down
Michael’s legs, scratching the backs of his knees, and squeezing the
muscles of his calves. So strong. She shoved him back against the tiles,
sucking in longer more delicious strokes, her hands up to cup his balls, and
lift them and bind them against the base of the cock.
Gently, he tried to lift
her. But she wanted him to spill in her mouth. She brought his hips more
tightly against her. She wouldn’t let him go, and then he spilled over,
and the moan was as good as everything else.
Later when they climbed into
the bed, warm and dry, with the air-conditioning blowing softly, Michael
stripped off the gloves and they began again. ‘I can’t stop
touching you,’ he said. ‘I can’t stand it, and I want to ask
you what it was like when that thing happened, but I know I shouldn’t ask
you that, and you know, it’s like I’ve seen the face of the man who
touched you…"
She lay back on the pillow,
looking at him in the dark, loving the delicious crush of his weight against
her, and his hands almost pulling her hair. She made a fist of her right hand
and rubbed her knuckles along the dark shadowy stubble on his chin.
‘It was like doing it
yourself,’ she said softly, reaching and catching his left hand and
bringing it down so that she could kiss the palm of it. He stiffened, his cock
poking against her thigh. ‘It wasn’t the thunder and crackle of
another person. It wasn’t living cells against living cells.’
‘Hmmmm, I love these
living cells,’ he purred in her ear, kissing her roughly. He mauled her
with his kisses, her mouth coming back at him as disrespectful and hungry and
demanding as his own.
When she awoke it was four o’clock.
Time to go to hospital. No. Michael was deep asleep. He didn’t
feel the very gentle kiss she laid on his cheek. She put on the heavy white
terry-cloth robe she found hanging in the closet and went silently out into the
living room of the suite. The only light came from the avenue.
Deserted down there. Quiet
as a stage set. She loved early morning streets when they were like that, when
you felt you could go down and dance on them if you wanted as if they were
stages, because their white lines and signal lights meant nothing.
She felt clearheaded and all
right, and safe here. The house was waiting, but the house had waited for a
long time.
The switchboard told her
there was no coffee yet. But there was a message for her and for Mr Curry, from
a Mr Lightner, that he would return to the hotel later that day and could be reached
this morning at the Retreat House. She jotted down the number.
She went into the small
kitchen, found a pot, and coffee, and made it herself, and then went back and
carefully shut the bedroom door, and the door to the little hallway between the
bedroom and the living room.
Where was the File on the
Mayfair Witches? What had Michael done with the briefcase he’d taken from
the car?
She searched the little
living room with its skirted chairs and couch. She searched the small den and
the closets and even the kitchen. Then she slipped back into the hallway and
watched him sleeping there in the light from the window. Curly hair on the back
of his neck.
In the closet, nothing. In
the bathroom nothing.
Clever, Michael. But I’m
going to find it. And then she saw the very edge of the briefcase. He had
slipped it behind the chair.
Not very trusting, but then I’m
doing just what I more or less promised I wouldn’t, she thought. She drew
it out, stopping to listen to the pace of his deep breathing, and then she shut
the door, and tiptoed down the hall and shut the second door, and laid the
briefcase on the coffee table in the light of the lamp.
Then she got her coffee, and
her cigarettes, and sat down on the couch and looked at her watch. It was four
fifteen. She loved this time, absolutely loved it. It was a good time to read.
It had been her favorite time, too, for driving to the hospital, running one
red light after another in the great quiet vacuum, her mind filled with orderly
and detailed thoughts of the operations waiting for her. But it was an even
better time to read.
She opened the briefcase and
removed the great stack of folders, each of which carried the curious title:
The File on the Mayfair Witches. It made her smile.
It was so literal. ‘Innocent,’
she whispered. ‘They are all innocent. The man in the attic probably
innocent. And that old woman, a witch to the core.’ She paused, taking
her first drag off the cigarette and wondering how she understood it so completely,
and why she was so certain that they - Aaron and Michael - did not.
The conviction remained with
her.
Flipping quickly through the
folders, she sized up the manuscript, the way she always did the scientific
texts she wanted to devour in one sitting, and then she scanned one page at
random for the proportion of abstractions to concrete words, and found it very
comfortable, the latter outnumbering the former to an extremely high degree.
A snap to cover this in four
hours. With luck, Michael would sleep that long. The world would sleep. She
snuggled back on the couch, put her bare feet against the rim of the coffee
table, and began to read.
At nine o’clock, she
walked slowly back First Street until she reached the corner of Chestnut. The
morning sun was already high in the sky, and the birds were singing almost
furiously in the leafy canopy of branches overhead. The sharp caw of a crow cut
through the softer chorus. Squirrels scurried along the thick heavy branches
that reached out low and far over the fences and the brick walls. The clean
swept brick sidewalks were deserted; and the whole place seemed to belong to
its flowers, its trees, and its houses. Even the noise of the occasional
traffic was swallowed by the engulfing stillness and greenness. The clean blue
sky shone through the web of overhead foliage, and the light even in the shade
seemed somehow bright and pure.
Aaron Lightner was already
waiting for her at the gate, a small-boned man in light, tropical clothing,
with a prim British look to him, even to the walking stick in his hand.
She had called him at eight
and asked for this appointment, and she could see even from a distance that he
was deeply worried about her reaction to what she’d read.
She took her time crossing
the intersection. She approached him slowly, her eyes lowered, her mind still
swimming with the long story and all the detail which she’d so quickly
absorbed.
When she found herself
standing in front of him, she took his hand. She had not rehearsed what she
meant to say. It would be an ordeal for her. But it felt good to be here, to be
holding his hand, pressing it warmly, as she studied the expression on his open
and agreeable face.
‘Thank you,’ she
said, her voice sounding weak and inadequate to her. ‘You’ve
answered all the worst and most tormenting questions of my life. In fact, you
can’t know what you’ve done for me. You and your watchers - they
found the darkest part of me; and you knew what it was, and you turned a light
on it — and you connected it to something greater and older, and just as
real.’ She shook her head, still holding his hand, struggling to
continue. ‘I don’t know how to say what I want to say,’ she
confessed. ‘I’m not alone anymore! I mean me, all of me, not merely
the name and the part that the family wants. I mean who I am.’ She
sighed. The words were so clumsy, and the feeling behind them so enormous, as
enormous as her relief. ‘I thank you,’ she said, ‘that you
didn’t keep your secrets. I thank you from the bottom of my heart.’
She could see his amazement,
and his faint confusion. Slowly he nodded. And she felt his goodness, and above
all his willingness to trust.
‘What can I do for you
now?’ he asked, with total and disarming candor.
‘Come inside,’
she said. ‘Let’s talk.’
THIRTY
ELEVEN O‘CLOCK. He sat
up in the dark, staring at the digital clock on the table. How ever did he
sleep that long? He’d left the drapes open so the light would wake him.
But somebody had closed them. And his gloves? Where were his gloves? He found
them and slipped them on, and then climbed out of bed.
The briefcase was gone. He
knew it before he looked behind the chair. Foiled.
At once he put on his robe
and walked down the little hallway to the living room. No one here. Just the
scorched smell of old coffee coming from the kitchen, and the lingering perfume
of a cigarette. Made him want one immediately.
And there on the coffee
table, the empty sack of a briefcase, and the file — manila folders in
two neat stacks.
‘Ah, Rowan,’ he
groaned. And Aaron was never going to forgive him. And Rowan had read the part
about Karen Gar-field and Dr Lemle dying after they had seen her. She’d
read all the delicious gossip gleaned over the years from Ryan Mayfair and from
Bea and from others whom she had most surely met at the funeral. That, and a
thousand other things he couldn’t even think of at the moment.
If he went into the bedroom
and discovered that all her clothes were gone… But her clothes weren’t
here anyway, they were in her room.
He stood there scratching
his head, uncertain what to do first - ring her room, call Aaron, or go
screaming crazy. And then he saw the note.
It was right beside the two
stacks of manila folders - a single sheet of hotel stationery covered in a very
clear, straight hand.
Eight thirty a.m.
Michael,
Read the file. I love you.
Don’t worry. Going to nine o’clock appointment with Aaron. Can you
meet me at the house at three o’clock? I need some time alone there. I’ll
be looking for you around three. If not, leave word for me here. The Witch of
Endor
The Witch of Endor.’
Who was the Witch of Endor? Ah, the woman to whom King Saul had gone to conjure
the faces of his ancestors? Don’t overinterpret. It means she has
survived the file. The whiz kid. The brain surgeon. Read the file! It had taken
him two days. Read the file!
He peeled off his right
glove and laid his hand on the note. Flash of Rowan, dressed, bending over the
desk in the little room off this parlor. Then a flash of someone who’d
put the stationery here days ago, a uniformed maid, and other foolish things,
cascading in, none of which mattered. He lifted his fingers, waited until the
tingling stopped. ‘Give me Rowan,’ he said, and touched the paper
again. Rowan and Rowan not angry, but deeply secretive and… what? In the
midst of an adventure?
Yes, what he was sensing was
a strange, defiant excitement. And this he understood perfectly. He saw her
again, with shocking clarity, only it was someplace else, and at once the image
was confused, and then he lost it, and he put back on the glove.
He sat there for a moment,
drawing back into himself, instinctively hating this power, yet thinking about
the question of excitement. He remembered what Aaron had told him last night. ‘I
can teach you how to use it; but it will never be precise; it will always be
confusing.’ God, how he hated it. Hated even the sharp sense of Rowan
that had invaded him and wouldn’t leave him; he would have much preferred
the visceral memories of the bedroom and her lovely deep grosgrain voice
speaking to him so softly and honestly and simply. Much preferred to hear it
from her own lips. Excitement!
He called Room Service.
‘Send me a big
breakfast, Eggs Benedict, grits, yeah, a big bowl of grits, extra side of ham,
toast, and a full pot of coffee. And tell the waiter to use his key. I’ll
be getting dressed, and add a twenty percent tip for the waiter, please, and
bring me some cold cold water.’
He read the note again.
Aaron and Rowan were together now. This filled him with apprehension. And now
he understood how fearful Aaron had been when he himself had begun to read the
materials. And he hadn’t wanted to listen to Aaron. He had wanted to
read. Well, he couldn’t blame Rowan.
He couldn’t shake this
uneasiness either. She didn’t understand Aaron. And he certainly didn’t
understand her. And she thought he was naive. He
shook his head. And then there was Lasher. What did Lasher think?
Last night, before he’d
left Oak Haven, Aaron had said, ‘It was the man. I saw him in the
headlights. I knew it was a trick, but I couldn’t chance it.’
‘So what are you going
to do?’ Michael had asked.
‘Be careful,’
said Aaron. ‘What else can I do?’
And now she wanted him to
meet her at the house at three o’clock, because she needed some time
alone there. With Lasher? How was he going to put a lid on his emotions until
three o’clock?
Well, you’re in New
Orleans, aren’t you, old buddy? You haven’t been back to the old
neighborhood. Maybe it’s time to go.
He left the hotel at eleven
forty-five, the engulfing warm air surprising and delighting him as he stepped
outside. After thirty years in San Francisco, he had been braced for the chill
and the wind reflexively.
And as he walked in the
direction of uptown, he found he had been braced for a hill climb or hill
descent in the same subconscious fashion. The flat wide pavements felt wonderful
to him. It was as if everything was easier — every breath he took of the
warm breeze, every step, the crossing of the street, the gentle looking around
at the mature black-barked oaks that changed the cityscape as soon as he had
crossed Jackson Avenue. No wind cutting his face, no glare of the Pacific coast
sky blinding him.
He chose Philip Street for
the walk out to the Irish Channel, and moved slowly as he would have in the old
days, knowing the heat would get worse, that his clothes would get heavy, and
that even the insides of his shoes would become moist after a little while, and
he’d take off this khaki safari jacket sooner or later and sling it over
his shoulder.
But he soon forgot about all
that; this was the landscape of too many happy memories. It drew him away from
worrying about Rowan; it drew him away from worrying about the man; and he was
just sliding back into the past, drifting by the old ivy-covered walls, and the
young crepe myrtles growing thin and weedy and full of big floppy blossoms. He
had to slap them back as he went on. And it came to him again, as strongly as
it had before, that longing had embellished nothing. Thank God so much was
still here! The tall Queen Anne Victorians, so much larger than those of San
Francisco, were still standing right beside the earlier antebellum houses with
their masonry walls and columns, as sturdy and magnificent as the house on
First Street.
At last, he crossed
Magazine, wary of the speeding traffic, and moved on into the Irish Channel.
The houses seemed to shrink; columns gave way to posts; the oaks were no more;
even the giant hackberry trees didn’t go beyond the corner of Constance
Street. But that was all right, that was just fine. This was his part of town.
Or at least it had been.
Annunciation Street broke
his heart. The fine renovations and fresh paint jobs he had glimpsed on
Constance and Laurel were few and far between on this neglected street. Garbage
and old tires littered the empty lots. The double cottage in which he’d
grown up was abandoned, with big slabs of weathered plywood covering all its
doors and windows; and the yard in which he’d played was now a jungle of
weeds, enclosed by an ugly chain-link fence. He saw nothing of the old four o’clocks
which had bloomed pink and fragrant summer and winter; and gone were the banana
trees by the old shed at the end of the side alley. The little corner grocery
was padlocked and deserted. And the old corner bar showed not the slightest
sign of life.
Gradually he realized he was
the only white man to be seen.
He walked on deeper it
seemed into the sadness and the shabbiness. Here and there was a nicely painted
house; a pretty black child with braided hair and round quiet eyes clung to the
gate, staring up at him. But all the people he might have known were long gone.
And the dreary decay of
Jackson Avenue at this point hurt him to see it. Yet on he walked, towards the
brick tenements of the St Thomas Project. No white people lived in there
anymore. No one had to tell him that.
This was the black man’s
town back here now, and he felt cold appraising eyes on him as he turned down
Josephine Street towards the old churches and the old school. More boarded-up
wooden cottages; the lower floor of a tenement completely gutted. Ripped and
swollen furniture piled at a curb.
In spite of what he had seen
before, the decay of the abandoned school buildings shocked him. There was
glass broken out from the windows of the rooms in which he’d studied in
those long-ago years. And there, the gymnasium he had helped to build appeared
so worn, so past its time, so utterly forgotten.
Only the churches of St Mary’s
and St Alphonsus stood proud and seemingly indestructible. But their doors were
locked. And in the sacristy yard of St Alphonsus, the weeds grew up to his
knees. He could see the old electrical boxes open and rusted, the fuses torn
out.
‘Ya wanna see the
church?’
He turned. A small balding
man with a rounded belly and a sweating pink face was talking to him. ‘Ya
can go in the rectory and they’ll take ya in,’ the man said.
Michael nodded.
Even the rectory was locked.
You had to ring a bell and wait for the buzzer; and the little woman with the
thick glasses and the short brown hair spoke through a glass.
He drew out a handful of
twenty-dollar bills. ‘Let me make a donation,’ he said. ‘I’d
love to see both churches if I could.’
‘You can’t see
St Alphonsus,’ she said. ‘It isn’t used now. It isn’t
safe. The plaster’s falling.’
The plaster! He remembered
the glorious murals on the ceiling, the saints peering down at him from a blue
sky. Under that roof, he had been baptized, made his First Communion, and later
Confirmation. And that last night here, he had walked down the aisle of St
Alphonsus in his white cap and gown, with the other high school graduates, not
even thinking to take a last slow look around because he was excited to be
going with his mother out west.
‘Where did they all go?’
he asked.
‘Moved away,’
she said, as she beckoned for him to follow her. She was taking him through the
priest house itself into St Mary’s. ‘And the colored don’t
come.’
‘But why is it all
locked?’
‘We’ve had one
robbery after another.’
He couldn’t conceive
of it, not being able to wander into a quiet, shadowy church at any hour. Not
being able to escape the noisy sun-cooked street, and sit in the dim quiet,
talking to the angels and the saints, while old women in flowered dresses and
straw hats knelt whispering with dried lips their rosaries.
She led him through the
sanctuary. He had been an altar boy here. He had prepared the sacramental wine.
He felt a little throb of happiness when he saw the rows and rows of wooden
saints, when he saw the long high nave with its successive Gothic arches. All
splendid, all intact.
Thank God this was still
standing. He was getting choked up. He shoved his hands in his pockets and
lowered his head, only looking up slowly under his brows. His memories of
Masses here and Masses across the street at St Alphonsus mingled completely.
There had been no German-Irish quarrel by his time, just all the German and Irish
names jumbled together. And the grammar school had used the other church for
morning Mass. The high school had filled up St Mary’s.
It took no imagination to
see again the uniformed students filing out of the rows to go to Communion.
Girls in white blouses and blue wool skirts, boys in their khaki shirts and
trousers. But memory scanned all the years; when he was eight years old he’d
swung the smoking incense here, on these steps, for Benediction.
‘Take your time,’
the little woman said. ‘Just come back through the rectory when you’re
finished.’
For a half hour he sat in
the first pew. He did not know precisely what he was doing. Memorizing,
perhaps, the details he could not have called forth from his recollections.
Never to forget again the names carved in the marble floor of those buried
under the altar. Never to forget perhaps the painted angels high above. Or the
window far to his right in which the angels and the saints wore wooden shoes!
How curious. Could anyone now have explained such a thing? And to
think he’d never noticed it before, and when he thought of all those
hours spent in this church…
Think of Marie Louise with
her big breasts beneath the starched white uniform blouse, reading her missal
at Mass. And Rita Mae Dwyer, who had looked like a grown woman at fourteen. She
wore very high heels and huge gold earrings with her red dress on Sunday.
Michael’s father had been one of the men who moved down the aisles with
the collection basket on its long stick, thrusting it into row after row, face
appropriately solemn. You did not even whisper in a Catholic church in those
days unless you had to.
What did he think, that they
would have all been here, waiting for him? A dozen Rita Maes in flowered
dresses, making a noon visit?
Last night, Rita Mae had said,
‘Don’t go back there, Mike. Remember it the way it used to be.’
Finally he climbed to his
feet. He wandered up the aisle towards the old wooden confessionals. He found
the plaque on the wall listing those who had in the recent past paid for
restoration. He closed his eyes, and just for a moment imagined he heard
children playing in the schoolyards - the noontime roar of mingled voices.
There was no such sound. No
heavy swish of the swinging doors as the parishioners came and went. Only the
solemn empty place. And the Virgin under her crown on the high altar.
Small, far away, the image
seemed. And it occurred to him intellectually that he ought to pray to it. He
ought to ask the Virgin or God why he had been brought back here, what it meant
that he’d been snatched from the cold grip of death. But he had no belief
in the images on the altar. No memory of childlike belief came back to him.
Instead the memory that came
was specific and uncomfortable, and shabby and mean. He and Marie Louise had
met to exchange secrets right inside one of these tall front doors. In the
pouring rain it had been. And Marie Louise had confessed, reluctantly, that no,
she wasn’t pregnant, angry for being made to confess it, angry that he
was so relieved. ‘Don’t you want to get married? Why are we playing
these stupid games!’
What would have happened to
him if he had married Marie Louise? He saw her big, sullen brown eyes again. He
felt her sourness, her disappointment. He could not imagine such a thing.
Marie Louise’s voice
came back again. ‘You know you’re going to marry me sooner or
later. We’re meant for each other.’
Meant. Had he been meant to
leave here, meant to do the things he’d done in his life, meant to travel
so far? Meant to fall from the rock into the sea and drift slowly out, away
from all the lights of land?
He thought of Rowan —
not merely of the visual image, but of everything Rowan was to him now. He
thought of her sweetness and sensuality, and mystery, of her lean taut body
snuggled against his under the covers, of her velvety voice and her cold eyes.
He thought of the way she looked at him before they made love, so
unself-conscious, forgetting her own body completely, absorbed in his body. In
sum, looking at him the way a man looked at a woman. Just as hungry and just as
aggressive and yet yielding so magically in his arms.
He was still staring at the
altar — staring at the whole vast and gorgeously ornamented church.
He wished he could believe
in something. And then he realized that he did. He still believed in his
visions, in the goodness of the visions. He believed in them and their goodness
as surely as people believed in God or saints, or the God-given Tightness of a
certain path, as truly as they believed in a vocation.
And this seemed as foolish
as the other beliefs. ‘But I saw, but I felt, but I remember, but I
know…’ So much stammering. After all he still couldn’t
remember. Nothing in the entire Mayfair history had really brought him back to
those precious moments, except the image of Deborah, and for all his certainty
that she had been the one who had come to him, he had no real details, no truly
remembered moments or words.
On impulse, his eyes still
fixed on the altar, he made the sign of the cross.
How many years had it been
since he’d done that every day, three times a day? Curiously,
thoughtfully, he did it again. ‘In the Name of the Father, and of the
Son, and of the Holy Ghost,’ his eyes still fixed on the Virgin.
‘What do they want of
me?’ he whispered. And trying to reinvoke what little he could of the
visions, he realized in despair that the image of the dark-haired woman he had
seen was now replaced by the descriptive image of Deborah in the history. One
had blotted out the other! He had lost through his reading, not gained.
After a little while more,
of standing there in silence, his gloved hands shoved in his pockets, he went
slowly back down the aisle, until he had come to the altar rail, and then he
walked up the marble steps, crossed the sanctuary, and found his way out
through the priest house.
The sun was beating down on
Constance Street the way it always had. Merciless and ugly. No trees here. And
the garden of the priest house hidden behind its high brick wall, and the lawn
beside St Mary’s burned and tired and dusty.
The holy store on the far
corner, with all its pretty little statues and holy pictures, was no more.
Boards on the windows. A real estate sign on the painted wooden wall.
The little bald man with the
sweaty red face sat on the rectory steps, his arms folded on his knees, eyes
following a gust of gray-winged pigeons as they flew up the dreary peeling
facade of St Alphonsus.
‘They oughtta poison
them birds,’ he said. ‘They dirty up everything.’
Michael lighted a cigarette,
offered one to the man. The man took it with a nod. Michael gave him the near
empty matchbook.
‘Son, why don’t
you take off that gold watch and slip it inside your pocket?’ the man
said. ‘Don’t walk around here with that thing on your wrist, ya
hear?’
‘They want my watch,’
Michael said, ‘they’re gonna take my wrist with it, and the fist
that’s attached to it.’
The old man just shrugged
and shook his head.
Up on the corner of Magazine
and Jackson Michael went in a dark, evil-looking bar, in the sorriest old
sagging wooden clapboard building. In all his years in San Francisco, he had
never seen such a run-down place. A white man hung like a shadow at the far
end, staring at him with glittering eyes out of a cracked and caved-in face.
The bartender too was white.
‘Give me a beer,’
Michael said.
‘What kind?’
‘I don’t give a
damn.’
He timed it perfectly. At
three minutes before three he was crossing Camp Street, walking slowly, so the
heat would not kill him, and soothed once more by the sweet shade and random
beauty of the Garden District. Yes, all this was as it had always been. And at
once he felt good; at once he felt he was where he wanted to be, and maybe even
where he ought to be, if one could chart a course of one’s own.
At three p.m. exactly he
stood at the open gate. This was the first time he had seen the house in the
sunlight, and his pulse quickened. Here, yes. Even in its neglect it
was dignified, grand, merely slumbering beneath the overhanging vines, its long
shutters caked with flaking green paint yet still hanging straight on their
iron hinges. Waiting…
A giddiness overtook him as
he looked at it, a swift delight that for whatever reasons, he had come back. Doing what I am supposed to be
doing…
He went up the marble steps,
and pushed at the door, and when it opened he walked into the long broad
hallway. Never in San Francisco had he been in such a structure, had he stood
under such a high ceiling, or looked at doorways so graceful and tall.
A deep luster clung to the
heart pine boards in spite of the margin of sticky dust that ran along the
walls. Paint flaked from the high crown moldings but they themselves were
sound. He felt love for everything he saw — love for the workmanship of
the tapering keyhole doorways, and the fine newel post and balusters of the
long stairway. He liked the feel of the floor beneath his feet, so solid. And
the warm good wood smell of the house filled him with a sudden welcome
contentment. A house smelled like this in only one place in the whole world.
‘Michael? Come in,
Michael.’
He walked to the first of
the two living room doors. Dark and shadowy still, though she had opened all
the drapes. The light was slatted coming through the shutters, and dim and soft
pouring through the dirty screens of the porch beyond the side windows. Whiff
of honeysuckle. So sweet and good. And was that the Queen’s Wreath
bursting in little bright pink sprigs along the screens? He had not seen that
lovely wild vine in all this time.
She was sitting, small and
very pretty, on the long brown velvet couch with its back to the front of the
house. Her hair was falling down beautifully against her cheek. She had on one
of those loose wrinkled cotton overshirts that is as light as silk, and her
face and throat looked darkly tanned against the white T-shirt under it. Legs
long in the white pants, her toes naked and surprisingly sexy, with a thin
flash of red polish, in her white sandals.
‘The Witch of Endor,’
he said, swooping down to kiss her cheek and hold her face in his left hand,
warm, tender.
She took hold of both his
wrists, clinging to him, kissing him roughly and sweetly on the mouth. He could
feel the tremor in her limbs, the fever in her.
‘You’ve been
here all alone?’
She sat back as he took his
place beside her.
‘And why the hell not?’
she asked in her slow deep voice. ‘I quit the hospital officially this
afternoon. I’m going to apply for a job here. I’m going to stay
here, in this house.’
He let out a long whistling
sigh and smiled. ‘You mean it?’
‘Well, what do you
think?’
‘I don’t know.
All the way over here… coming back from the Irish Channel, I kept
thinking maybe you’d be here with your bag packed to go back.’
‘No. Not a chance. I’ve
already discussed three or four different hospitals here with my old boss in
San Francisco. He’s making calls for me. But what about you?’
‘What do you mean what
about me?’ he asked, ‘You know why I’m here. Where am I going
to go? They brought me here. They’re not telling me to go anyplace else.
They’re not telling me anything. I still can’t remember. I read
four hundred pages of the history and I can’t remember. It was Deborah I
saw, I know that much, but I don’t really know what she said.’
‘You’re tired
and hot,’ she said, touching her hand to his forehead. ‘You’re
talking crazy.’
He gave a little surprised
laugh. ‘Listen to you,’ he said, ‘the Witch of Endor. Didn’t
you read the history? What’s going on, Rowan? Didn’t you read all
that? We’re in a big spiderweb, and we don’t know who’s done
the weaving.’ He held out his gloved hands, looking down at his fingers. ‘We
just don’t know.’
She gave him a quiet, remote
look, which made her face seem very cold, even though it was flushed, and her
gray eyes were picking up the light wonderfully.
‘Well, you read it,
didn’t you? What did you think when you read it? What did you think?’
‘Michael, calm down,’
she said. ‘You’re not asking me what I think. You’re asking
me what I feel. I’ve been telling you what I think. We’re not stuck
in any web, and nobody’s doing the weaving. And you want my advice?
Forget about them. Forget about what they want, these people you saw in your
visions. Forget them from now on.’
‘What do you mean
"forget"?’
‘O K, listen to me. I’ve
been sitting here thinking for hours, thinking about it all. This is my
decision. I’m staying here, and I’m staying here because this is my
house and I like it. And I like the family I met yesterday. I like them. I want
to know them. I want to hear their voices and know their faces, and learn what
they have to teach. And also, I know I wouldn’t be able to forget that
old woman and what I did to her no matter where I went.’ She stopped, a
flash of sudden emotion transfiguring her face for a second, then gone again,
leaving it taut and cool. She folded her arms lightly, one foot up on the edge
of the small coffee table. ‘Are you listening?’
‘Yeah, of course.’
‘OK, I want you to stay
here, too. I hope and pray you will stay here. But not because of this pattern
or this web or whatever it is. Not because of these visions or because of the
man. Because there is absolutely no way to figure out what these things mean,
Michael, or what’s meant, to use the word you wrote in your notes, or why
you and I were thrown together. There is no way to know.’
She paused, her eyes
scanning him intently. Then she went on:
‘So I’ve made my
decision,’ she said, her words coming more slowly, ’based on what I
can know, and what I can see, and what I can define and understand, and that
is, that this place is where I belong, because I want to belong.’
He nodded. ‘I hear you,’
he said.
‘What I’m saying
is that I’m staying here in spite of this man and this seeming pattern,
this coincidence of me pulling you up out of the ocean and you being what you
are.’
He nodded again, a little
hesitantly, and then sat back taking a deep breath, his eyes not letting go of
hers. ‘But you can’t tell me,’ he said, ‘that you don’t
want to communicate with this thing, that you don’t want to understand
the meaning of all this…’
‘I do want to
understand,’ she said. ‘I do. But that wouldn’t keep me here
by itself. Besides, it doesn’t matter to this being whether or not we’re
in Montcleve, France, or Tiburon, California, or Donnelaith, Scotland. And as
for what matters to those beings you saw, they’re going to have to come
back and tell you what matters! You don’t know.’
She paused, deliberately and
obviously trying to soften her words as if she feared she’d become too
sharp.
‘Michael,’ she
said, ’if you want to stay, make up your mind based on something else.
Like maybe wanting to be here for me or because it’s where you were born,
or because you think you’d be happy here. Because it was the first place
you loved, this neighborhood, and maybe you could love it again.’
‘I never stopped
loving it.’
‘But don’t do
anything else to give in to them! Do things in spite of them.’
‘Rowan, I’m here
now in this room because of them. Don’t lose sight of that fact. We did
not meet at the yacht club, Rowan.’
She let out a long breath.
‘I insist on losing
sight of it,’ she said.
‘Did Aaron talk to you
about all this? Was this his advice to you?’
‘I didn’t ask
him for his advice,’ she said patiently. ‘I met with him for two
reasons. Firstly, I wanted to talk with him again, and confirm for myself that
he was an honest man.’
‘And?’
‘He’s everything
you said he was. But I had to see him again, really talk to him.’ She
paused. ‘He’s a bit of a spellbinder, that man.’
‘I know.’
‘I felt this when I
saw him at the funeral; and there was the other time, when I met him at Elite’s
grave.’
‘And you feel all
right about him now?’
She nodded. ‘I know
him now,’ she said. ‘He’s not so different from you and me.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘He’s dedicated,’
she said. She gave a little shrug. ‘Just the way I’m a dedicated
surgeon, and you’re dedicated when you’re bringing a house like
this back to life.’ She thought for a minute. ‘He has illusions,
the way you and I have illusions.’
‘I understand.’
‘The second thing was
- I wanted to tell him that I was grateful for what he’d given me in the
history. That he didn’t have to worry about resentment or a breach of
confidence from me.’
He was so relieved that he
didn’t interrupt her, but he was puzzled.
‘He filled in the
largest and the most crucial blank in my life,’ she said. ‘I don’t
think even he understands what it meant to me. He’s too wary. And he doesn’t
really know about loneliness. He’s been with the
Talamasca ever since he was a boy.’
‘I know what you mean.
But I think he does understand.’
‘But still he’s
wary. This thing — this charming brown-haired apparition, or whatever he
is — really tried to hurt him, you know.’
‘I know.’
‘But I tried to make
him understand how grateful I was. That I wasn’t challenging him in any
way. Two days ago I was a person without a past or a family. And now I have
both of those things. The most agonizing questions of my life have been
answered. I don’t think the full meaning of it has really sunk in. I keep
thinking of my house in Tiburon and each time I realize "You don’t
have to go back there, you don’t have to be alone there anymore."
And it’s a wonderful shock all over again.’
‘I never dreamed you’d
respond that way. I have to confess. I thought you’d be angry, maybe even
offended.’
‘Michael, I don’t
care what Aaron did to get the information. I don’t care what his
colleagues did, or what they’ve done all along. The point is, the
information wouldn’t be there in any form whatsoever if he hadn’t
collected it. I’d be left with that old woman, and the vicious things she
said. And all the shiny-faced cousins, smiling and offering sympathy, and
incapable of telling the whole story because they don’t know it. They
only know little glittering parts.’ She took a deep breath. ‘You
know, Michael, some people can’t receive gifts. They don’t know how
to claim them and make use of them. I have to learn how to receive gifts. This
house is a gift. The history was a gift. And the history makes it possible for
me to accept the family! And God, they are the greatest gift of all.’
Again he was relieved,
profoundly relieved. Her words held a charm for him. Nevertheless he could not
get over his surprise.
‘What about the part
of the file on Karen Garfield?’ he asked. ‘And Dr Lemle? I was so
afraid for you, reading that.’
The flash of pain in her
face this time was stronger, brighter.
Instantly he regretted his
bluntness. It seemed suddenly unforgivable to have blurted out these words.
‘You don’t
understand me,’ she said, her voice as even as before. ‘You don’t
understand the kind of person I am. I wanted to know whether or not I had that
power! I went to you because I thought if you touched me with your hands you
could tell me if this power was really there. Well, you couldn’t. But
Aaron has told me. Aaron has confirmed it. And nothing, nothing could be worse
than suspecting it and being unsure.’
‘I see.’
‘Do you?’ She
swallowed, her face working hard suddenly to preserve its expression of
tranquillity. And then her eyes went dull for a moment, and only brightened
again with an obvious act of will. In a dry whisper, she said, ‘I hate
what happened to Karen Garfield. I hate it. Lemle? Lemle was sick already. He’d
had a stroke the year before. I don’t know about Lemle, but Karen
Garfield… that was my doing, all right, and Michael, it was because I didn’t
know!’
‘I understand,’
he said softly.
For a long moment, she
struggled silently to regain her composure. When she spoke again, her voice was
weary and a little frayed.
‘There was still
another reason I had to see Aaron.’
‘What?’
She thought for a moment,
then:
‘I’m not in
communication with this spirit, and that means I can’t control it. It hasn’t
revealed itself to me, not really. And it may not.’
‘Rowan, you’ve
already seen it, and besides - it’s waiting for you.’
She was pondering, her hand
playing idly with a little thread on the edge of her shirt.
‘I’m hostile to
it, Michael,’ she said. ‘I don’t like it. And I think it
knows. I’ve been sitting here for hours alone, inviting it to come, yet
hating it, fearing it.’
Michael puzzled over this
for a moment.
‘It may have
overplayed its hand,’ she said.
‘You mean, the way it
touched you…’
‘No. I mean in me,
it may have overplayed its hand. It may have helped to create the very medium
who can’t be seduced by it, or driven crazy by it. Michael, if I could
kill a flesh and blood human being with this invisible power of mine, what do
you think my hostility feels like to Lasher?’
He narrowed his eyes,
studying her. ‘I don’t know,’ he confessed.
Her hand shook just a little
as she swept her hair back out of her face, the sunlight catching it for one
moment and making it truly blond.
‘My dislikes run very
deep. They always have. They don’t change with time. I feel an inveterate
dislike for this thing. Oh, I remember what you said last night, about wanting
to talk to it, reason with it, learn what it wants. But the dislike is what’s
strongest right now.’
Michael watched her for a
long silent moment. He felt a curious, near inexplicable, quickening of his
love for her.
‘You know, you’re
right in what you said before,’ he said. ‘I don’t really
understand you, or what kind of person you are. I love you, but I don’t
understand you.’
‘You think with your
heart,’ she said, touching his chest gently with her left fist. ‘That’s
what makes you so good. And so naive. But I don’t do that. There’s
an evil in me equal to the evil in people around me. They seldom surprise me.
Even when they make me angry.’
He didn’t want to
argue with her. But he was not naive!
‘I’ve been
thinking for hours about all this,’ she said. ‘About this power to
rupture blood vessels and aortas and bring about death as if with a whispered
curse. If this power I have is good for anything, maybe it’s good for
destroying this entity. Maybe it can act on the energy controlled by him as
surely as it acts upon flesh and blood cells.’
‘That never even
crossed my mind before.’
‘That’s why we
have to think for ourselves,’ she said. ‘I’m a doctor, first
and foremost. Only a woman and a person, second. And as a doctor, it’s
perfectly easy for me to see that this entity is existing in some continuous
relationship with our physical world. It’s knowable, what this being is.
Knowable the way the secret of electricity was knowable in the year 700 AD
though no one knew it.’
He nodded. ‘Its
parameters. You used that word last night. I keep wondering about its
parameters. If it’s solid enough when it materializes for me to touch it.’
‘Right. Exactly. What
is it when it materializes? I have to learn its parameters. And my power also
works according to the rules of our physical world. And I have to learn the
parameters of my power, too.’
The pain came back into her
face, again like a flash of light, somehow distorting her expression, and then
broadening until her smooth face threatened to rumple like that of a doll in a
flame. Only gradually did she go blank again, calm and pretty and silent. Her
voice was a whisper when she resumed.
That’s my cross, the
power. Just as your cross is the power in your hands. We’ll learn to
control these things, so that we decide when and where to use them.’
‘Yeah, that’s
exactly what we have to do.’
‘I want to tell you
something about that old woman, Carlotta, and about the power…’
‘You don’t have
to, if you don’t want to.’
‘She knew I was going
to do it to her. She foresaw it, and then she calculatedly provoked me. I could
swear she did.’
‘Why?’
Tart of her scheme. I go
back and forth thinking about it. Maybe she meant to break me, break my
confidence. She always used guilt to hurt Deirdre, and she used it probably
with Antha. But I’m not going to get drawn into the lengthy pondering of
her scheme. This is the wrong thing for us to do now, talk about them and what
they want — Lasher, the visions, that old woman — they’ve
drawn a bunch of circles for us and I don’t want to walk in circles.’
‘Yeah, do I ever know
what you mean.’
He let go of her eyes
slowly, and rummaged in his pocket for his cigarettes. Three left. He offered
her one, but she shook her head. She was watching him.
‘Some day, we can sit
at the table,’ she said, ‘drink white wine together, beer,
whatever, and talk about them. Talk about Petyr van Abel, and about
Charlotte, and about Julien and all that. But not now. Now I want to separate
the worthy from the unworthy, the substantial from the mystical. And I wish you
would do the same thing.’
‘I follow you,’
he said. He searched for his matches. Ah, no matches. Gave them to that old
man.
She slipped her hand in her
pants pocket, drew out a slender gold lighter, and lighted his cigarette.
‘Thanks,’ he
said.
‘Whenever we do focus
on them,’ she said, ‘the effect is always the same. We become
passive and confused.’
‘You’re right,’
he said. He was thinking about all the time he’d spent in the darkened
bedroom on Liberty Street, trying to remember, trying to understand. But here
he was in this house at last and except for two instances last night - when he’d
touched Townsend’s remains and when he’d touched the emerald
— he hadn’t removed the gloves. The mere thought of it scared him.
Touching the door frames and the tables and the chairs that had belonged to the
Mayfairs, touching the older things, the trunk of dolls in the attic, which
Rowan had described to him, and the jars, those stinking jars…
‘We become passive and
confused,’ she said again, commanding his attention, ’and we don’t
think for ourselves, which is exactly what we must do.’
‘I agree with you,’
he said. ‘I only wish I had your calmness. I wish I could know all these
half truths and not go spinning off into the darkness trying to figure things
out.’
‘Don’t be a pawn
in somebody’s game,’ she said. ‘Find the attitude which gives
you the maximum strength and the maximum dignity, no matter what else is going
on.’
‘You mean strive to be
perfect,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘You said in
California that you thought we should all aim to be perfect.’
‘Yes, I did, didn’t
I? Well, I believe that. I’m trying to figure the perfect thing to do. So
don’t act like I’m a freak if I don’t burst into tears,
Michael. Don’t think I don’t know what I did to Karen Garfield or
Dr Lemle, or that little girl. I know. I really do.’
‘I didn’t mean -’
‘Oh, yeah, you did too,’
she said with slight sharpness, ‘Don’t like me better when I cry
than when I don’t.’
‘Rowan, I didn’t
-’
‘I cried for a year before
I met you. I started crying when Ellie died. And then I cried in your arms. I
cried when the call came from New Orleans that Deirdre was dead, and I’d
never even known her or spoken to her or laid eyes on her. I cried and I cried.
I cried when I saw her in the coffin yesterday. I cried for her last night. And
I cried for that old woman, too. Well, I don’t want to go on crying. What
I have here is the real house, the family, and the history Aaron has given me.
I have you. A real chance with you. And what is there to cry about, I’d
like to know.’
She was glaring at him,
obviously sizzling with anger and with the conflict in herself, gray eyes
flashing at him in the half light.
‘You’re gonna
make me cry, Rowan, if you don’t stop,’ he said.
She laughed in spite of
herself. Her face softened beautifully, her mouth twisting unwillingly into a
smile.
‘All right,’ she
said. ‘And there is one thing more that could make me cry. I should tell
you that, in order to be perfectly truthful. And that is… I’d cry
if I lost you.’
‘Good,’ he
whispered. He kissed her quickly before she could stop him.
She made a little gesture
for him to sit back, to stay serious, and to listen. He nodded and shrugged.
Tell me - what do you want to do? I mean what do you want to do? I’m
not talking about what these beings want you to do. What’s inside you now?’
‘I want to stay here,’
he said. ‘I wish to hell I hadn’t stayed away so long. I don’t
know why I did.’
‘OK, now you’re
talking,’ she said. ‘You’re talking about something real.’
‘No doubt about it,’
he said. ‘I’ve been walking – back there, in the old streets,
where I grew up. It’s not the old neighborhood now. It was never
beautiful, but it’s squalid and ruined and… all gone.’
He saw the concern in her
eyes immediately.
‘Yeah, well it’s
changed,’ he said, with a little weary and accepting gesture. ‘But
New Orleans never was just that neighborhood to me. It was never Annunciation
Street. It was here, the Garden District, and it was uptown, it was down in the
French Quarter, it was all the other beautiful parts. And I love it. And I’m
glad I’m back here. I don’t want to leave again.’
‘OK,’ she said.
She smiled, the light glinting on the curve of her cheek and the edge of her
mouth.
‘You know, I kept
thinking, I’m home. I’m home. And no matter what does happen with
all the rest - I don’t want to leave home.’
‘The hell with them,
Michael,’ she said. ‘The hell with them, whoever they are, until
they give us some reason to feel otherwise.’
‘Well put,’ he
said. He smiled.
How mysterious she was, such
a baffling mixture of sharpness and softness. Maybe his mistake was that he had
always confused strength and coldness in women. Maybe most men did.
‘They’ll come to
us again,’ she said. ‘They have to. And when they do, then we’ll
think and we’ll decide what to do.’
‘Yeah, right,’
he said. ‘And what if I took off the gloves? Would they come to me now?’
‘But we’re not
holding our breath until then.’
‘No.’ He gave a
little laugh.
He grew quiet, filled with
excitement, and yet filled with worry though every word she spoke gladdened him
and made him feel that this anxiety would lift any second.
He found himself looking off
to the mirror at the far end of the room, and seeing their tiny reflection
there, and the repeated chandeliers, caught in the two mirrors, marching on,
countless, in a blur of silver light, to eternity.
‘Do you like loving me?’
she asked.
‘What?’
‘Do you like it?’
Her voice had a decided tremor in it for the first time.
‘Yeah, I love loving
you. But it’s scary, because you aren’t like anyone else I’ve
ever known. You’re so strong.’
‘Yes, I am,’ she
said thickly. ‘Because I could kill you right now if I wanted to. All
your manly strength wouldn’t do you any good.’
‘No, that isn’t
what I meant,’ he said. He turned and looked at her, and for one moment
in the shadows her face looked unspeakably cold and cunning, with her eyelids
at half mast, and her eyes gleaming. She looked malicious the way she had for
one instant in the house in Tiburon in the cold light coming through the glass
into a darkened room.
She sat up slowly, with a
soft rustle of cloth, and he found himself shrinking from her, instinctively,
every hair standing on end. It was the hard wariness you feel when you see a
snake in the grass two inches from your shoe, or you realize the man on the
next bar stool has just turned towards you and opened a switchblade knife.
‘What the hell’s
the matter with you?’ he whispered.
But then he saw. He saw she
was shaking and her cheeks were blotched with pink yet deathly white, and her
hands reached out for him and then shrank back and she looked at them and then
clasped them together, as if trying to contain something unspeakable. ‘God,
I didn’t even hate Karen Gar-field,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t!
So help me God, I…’
‘No, it was all a
mistake,’ he said, ’a terrible mistake, and you won’t ever
make that mistake again.’
‘No, never,’ she
said. ‘Even with that old woman, I swear, I didn’t really believe
it.’
Desperately he wanted to
help her but he didn’t know what to do. She was quivering like a flame in
the shadows, her teeth stabbing her lower lip, her right hand clenching her own
left hand cruelly.
‘Stop, honey, stop
— you’re hurting yourself,’ he said. But she felt like
something made of steel, unbending, when he touched her.
‘I swear, I didn’t
believe it. It’s like an impulse, you know and you don’t really
believe you can possibly… I was so angry with Karen Garfield. It was
outrageous, her coming there, her walking into Ellie’s house, so stupidly
outrageous!’
‘I know, I understand.’
‘What do I do to
neutralize it? Does it come back inside me and burn me from within?’
‘No.’
She turned away from him,
drawing up her knees and peering out into the room dully, a little calmer now,
though her eyes were unnaturally wide, and her fingers were still working
anxiously.
‘I’m surprised
you haven’t hit upon the obvious answer,’ she said, ‘the one
that is so clear and so neat.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Maybe your purpose is
simple. It’s to kill me.’
‘God, how could you
think of such a thing?’ He drew closer to her, brushing her hair back out
of her face, and gathering her near to him.
She looked at him as if from
a long long distance away.
‘Honey, listen to me,’
he said. ‘Anybody can take a human life. It’s easy. Very easy.
There are a million ways. You know ways I don’t know because you’re
a doctor. That woman, Carlotta, small as she was, she killed a man strong
enough to strangle her with one hand. When I sleep next to any woman, she can
kill me if she wants to. You know that. A scalpel, a hat pin, a bit of lethal poison.
It’s easy. And we don’t do those things, nothing on earth can make
most of us ever even think of them, and that’s how it’s been all
your life with you. And now you find you’ve got a mutant power, something
that exceeds the laws of choice and impulse and self-control, something that
calls for a more subtle understanding, and you have that understanding. You
have the strength to know your own strength.’
She nodded; but she was
still shaking all over. And he could tell that she didn’t believe him.
And in a way, he wasn’t sure he believed himself. What was the use of
denying it? If she didn’t control this power, she would inevitably use it
again.
But there was something else
he had to say, and it had to do with the visions and the power in his hands.
‘Rowan,’ he
said, ’you asked me to take off the gloves the first night we met. To
hold your hands. I’ve made love to you without the gloves. Just your body
and my body, and our hands touching and my hands touching you all over, and
what is it I see, Rowan? What do I feel? I feel goodness and I feel love.’
He kissed her cheek. He
kissed her hair and brought it back off her forehead with his hand.
‘You’re right in
many things you’ve said, Rowan, but not in that. I’m not meant to
hurt you. I owe my life to you.’ He turned her head towards him and
kissed her, but she was still cold and trembling, and far far beyond his reach.
She took his hands and moved
them down and away from her, gently, nodding, and then she kissed him gently,
but she didn’t want to be touched now. It didn’t do any good.
He sat there for a while,
thinking, looking at the long ornate room. Looking at the high mirrors in their
dark carved frames, and the dusty old Bozendorfer piano at the far end, and the
draperies like long streaks of faded color in the gloom.
Then he climbed to his feet.
He couldn’t sit still any longer. He paced the floor in front of the
couch, and found himself at the side window, looking out over the dusty screen
porch.
‘What did you say a
moment ago?’ he asked, turning around. ‘You said something about
passivity and confusion. Well, this is it, Rowan, the confusion.’
She didn’t answer him.
She was sitting crouched there, staring at the floor.
He went back to her and
gathered her up, off the couch and into his arms. Her cheeks were still
splotched with pink, and very pale. Her lashes were dark and long as she looked
down.
He pressed his lips against
her mouth softly, feeling no resistance, almost no awareness, as if it were the
mouth of someone unconscious or deep asleep. Then slowly she came back to life.
She slipped her hands up around his neck, and kissed him back.
‘Rowan, there is a
pattern,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘There is a great web and we’re
in it, but I believe now as I believed then, they were good, the people who brought
us together. And what they want of me is good. I gotta figure it out, Rowan. I
have to. But I know it’s good. Just as I know that you are good, too.’
He heard her sigh against
him, felt the lift of her warm breasts against his chest. When at last she
slipped away, it was with great tenderness, kissing his fingers as she let them
go.
She walked out towards the
center of the long room. She stood under the high broad archway that divided
the space into two parlors, and she looked up at the beautiful carving in the
plaster, and at the way the arch curved down to meet the cornices at either
end. She seemed to be studying this, to be lost in contemplating the house.
He felt bruised and quiet.
The whole exchange had hurt him. He couldn’t shake a feeling of misery
and suspicion, though it was not suspicion of her.
‘Who gives a damn!’
she whispered as if she were talking to herself, but she seemed fragile and
uncertain.
The dusty sunlight crept in
from the screened porch and showed the amber wax on the old boards. The motes
of dust swirled around her.
‘Talk, talk, talk,’
she said. ‘The next move is theirs. You’ve done everything you
could. And so have I. And here we are. And let them come to us.’
‘Yes, let them come.’
She turned to him inviting
him silently to draw closer, her face imploring and almost sad. A split second
of dread shocked him, and left him empty. The love he felt for her was so
precious to him, and yet he was afraid, actually afraid.
‘What are we going to
do, Michael?’ she said. And suddenly she smiled, a very beautiful and
warm smile.
He laughed softly. ‘I
don’t know, honey.’ He shrugged and shook his head. ‘I don’t
know.’
‘You know what I want
from you right now?’
‘No. But whatever it
is, you can you have it.’
She reached out for his
hand. ‘Tell me about this house,’ she said, looking up into his
eyes. ‘Tell me everything you know about a house like this, and tell me
if it really can be saved.’
‘Honey, it’s
just waiting for that, just waiting. It’s solid as any castle in
Montcleve or Donnelaith.’
‘Could you do it? I don’t
mean with your own hands…’
‘— I’d
love to do it with my own hands.’ He looked at them suddenly, these
wretched gloved hands. How long since he’d held a hammer and nails, or
the handle of a saw, or laid a plane to wood. And then he looked up at the
painted arch above them, at the long sweep of the ceiling with its fractured
and peeling paint. ‘Oh, how I’d love to,’ he said.
‘What if you had carte
blanche, what if you could hire anybody and everybody you wanted —
plasterers, painters, roofers, people to bring it all back, to restore every
nook and cranny…"
Her words went on, slow yet
exuberant. But he knew everything she was saying, he understood. And he
wondered if she could possibly understand all that it really meant to him. To
work on a house like this had always been his greatest dream, but it wasn’t
merely a house like this, it was this house. And back and back he traveled in
memory, until he was a boy again, outside at the gate, a boy who went off to
the library to pull down off the shelves the old picture books which had this
house inside them, this very room and that hallway, because he never dreamed he
would see these rooms except in books.
And in the vision the woman
had said, converging upon this very moment in time, in this house, in this
crucial moment when…
‘Michael? You want to
do it?’
Through a veil, he saw her
face had lighted up like the face of a child. But she seemed so far away, so
brilliant and happy and far away.
Is that you, Deborah?
‘Michael, take off the
gloves,’ Rowan said, her sudden sharpness startling him. ‘Go back
to work! Go back to being you. For fifty years nobody’s been happy in
this house, nobody’s loved in this house, nobody’s won! It’s
time for us to love here and to win here, it’s time for us to win the
house back itself. I knew that when I finished the File on the Mayfair Witches.
Michael, this is our house.’
But you can
alter… Never think for a moment that you do not have the power, for the
power derives from…
‘Michael, answer me.’
Alter what? Don’t
leave me like this. Tell me!
But they were gone, just as
if they’d never come near, and here he stood, with Rowan, in the sunshine
and on the warm amber-colored floor, and she was waiting for him to answer.
And the house waited, the
beautiful house, beneath its layers of rust and soil, beneath its shadows and
its tangled ragged vines, and in its heat and its dampness, it waited.
‘Oh, yes, honey, yes,’
he said as if waking from a dream, his senses flooded suddenly with the
fragrance of the honeysuckle on the screens, and the singing of the birds
outside, and the warmth of the sun itself coming in on them.
He turned around in the
middle of the long room. ‘The light, Rowan, we have to let in the light.
Come on,’ he said, taking her hand. ‘Let’s see if these old
shutters still open.’
THIRTY-ONE
QUIETLY, reverently, they
began to explore the house. At first it was as if they had crept away from the
guards in a museum, and dared not abuse their accidental freedom.
They were too respectful to
touch the personal belongings of those who had once lived here. A coffee cup
lying on a glass table in the sun room. A magazine folded on a chair.
Rather they traveled the
rooms and the hallways, opening the drapes and shutters, merely peeking now and
then into closets and cabinets and drawers, with the greatest care.
But slowly, as the shadowy
warmth became more and more familiar, they grew bolder.
In the library alone, they
browsed for an hour, examining the spines of the leather-bound classics and the
old plantation ledgers from Riverbend, saddened when they saw the pages were
spongy and ruined. Almost nothing of the old accounts could be read.
They did not touch the
papers on the desk which Ryan Mayfair would collect and examine. They studied
the framed portraits on the walls.
‘That’s Julien,
it has to be.’ Darkly handsome, smiling at them as they stood in the
hallway. ‘What is that in the back-ground?’ It had darkened so
badly Michael couldn’t make it out. Then he realized, Julien was standing
on the front porch of this house.
‘Yes, and there, that
old photograph, that’s apparently Julien with his sons. The one closest
to Julien is Cortland. That’s my father.’ Once again, they were
grouped on the porch, smiling through the faded sepia, and how cheerful, even
vivacious, they seemed.
And what would you
see if you touched them, Michael? And how do you know it isn’t what
Deborah wants you to do?
He turned away quickly. He
wanted to follow Rowan. He loved the way Rowan walked, her long loose strides,
the way her hair swayed with the rhythm. She turned in the dining room doorway
and smiled back at him. Coming?
In the small high-ceilinged
pantry, they discovered shelves on top of shelves of gorgeous china: Minton,
Lenox, Wedgwood, Royal Doulton - flowered patterns, Oriental patterns, patterns
bordered in silver and gold. Old white ware and Oriental porcelain, antique
Blue Willow, and old Spode.
There were chests upon
chests of sterling, heavy ornate pieces by the hundreds, nestled in felt,
including very old sets with the English marks and the initial M in the
European style engraved on the back.
Michael was the one who knew
such things; his long love affair with Victoriana in all forms stood him well.
He could identify the fish knives and the oyster forks and the jelly spoons,
and dozens of other tiny special items, of which there were a countless number
in a dozen different ornate patterns.
Sterling candlesticks they
found, elaborate punch bowls and serving platters, bread plates and butter
dishes and old water pitchers, and coffee urns and teapots and carafes.
Exquisite chasing. Magically the darkest tarnish gave way to a hard rub of the
finger, revealing the old luster of pure silver beneath.
Cut-glass bowls of all sizes
were pushed to the back of the cabinets, leaded crystal dishes and plates.
Only the tablecloths and the
piles of old napkins were too far gone, the fine linen and lace having rotted
in the inevitable damp, the letter M showing proudly still here and there
beneath the dark stain of mildew.
Yet even a few of these had been
carefully preserved in a dry cedar-lined drawer, wrapped in blue paper. Heavy
old lace that had yellowed beautifully. And tumbled among them were napkin
rings of bone and silver and gold.
Touch them? Did the M B M
stand for Mary Beth Mayfair? And here, here is a ring with the letters J M and
you know to whom that must have belonged. He put it back, gloved fingers now as
agile as bare fingers, though his hands were hot and uncomfortable, and the
cross as she called it was biting into him with its weight.
The late afternoon sun came
in long slanting rays through the dining room windows. Look at her again in
this setting. Rowan Mayfair. The murals sprang to life, revealing a whole
population of little figures lost in the dreamy plantation fields. The great
oblong table stood sturdy and fine as it had perhaps for a century. The
Chippendale chairs, with their intricately carved backs, lined the walls.
Shall we dine here together
soon with high flickering candles?
‘Yes,’ she
whispered. ‘Yes!’
Then in the butler’s
pantry they found the delicate glassware, enough for a royal banquet. They
found thin fine-spun goblets and thick-bottomed tumblers etched with flowers
— sherry glasses, glasses for brandy, for champagne, for white wine and
red wine, and shot glasses, and dessert glasses, and decanters to go with them,
with glass stoppers, and crystal cut-glass pitchers, and pretty dishes again,
stacks of them, glimmering in the light.
So many treasures, Michael
thought, and all of them waiting it seemed for the touch of a wand to bring
them back into service.
‘I’m dreaming of
parties,’ Rowan said, ’of parties like in the old days, of bringing
them all together, and piling the table with food. Of Mayfairs and Mayfairs.’
Michael gazed in silence at
her profile. She held a delicate stem glass in her right hand, letting it catch
the fragile sun.
‘It’s all so
graceful, so seductive,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know life could
be the way that it seems here. I didn’t know there were houses like this
anywhere in America. How strange it all is. I’ve traveled the whole
world, and never been to a place like this. It’s as if time forgot this
place completely.’
Michael couldn’t help
but smile. ‘Things change very slowly here,’ he said. ‘Thank
God for that.’
‘Yet it’s as if
I dreamed of these rooms, and of a way of life that can be lived here, and
never remembered on waking. But something in me, something in me must have
remembered. Something in me felt alien and lost in the world we made out there.’
They wandered out into the
sunshine together, roaming around the old pool and through the ruined cabana. ‘This
is all solid,’ Michael explained as he examined the sliding doors, and
the washbasin and shower. ‘It can be repaired. Look, this is built of
cypress. And the pipes are copper. Nothing destroys cypress. I could fix that
plumbing in a couple of days.’
Back into the high grass
they walked, where the old outbuildings had once stood. Nothing remained but
one lone sad tumbledown wooden structure on the very inside edge of the rear
lot.
‘Not so bad, not so
bad at all,’ Michael said, peering through the dusty screens. ‘Probably
the menservants lived out here, it’s a sort of garconraere.’
Here was the oak tree in
which Deirdre had sought refuge, soaring to perhaps eighty feet over their
heads. The foliage was dark and dusty and tight with the heat of the summer. It
would break into a glorious mint green in the spring. Great clumps of banana
trees sprang like monstrous grass in patches of sunlight. And a long
beautifully built brick wall stretched across the back of the property,
overgrown with ivy and tangled wisteria right to the hinges of the Chestnut
Street gates.
‘The wisteria is still
blooming,’ Michael said. ‘I love these purple blossoms - how I used
to love to touch them when I went walking, to see the petals shiver.’
Why the hell can’t you
take off the gloves for a moment, just to feel those tender little petals in
your hand?
Rowan stood with her eyes
closed. Was she listening to the birds? He found himself staring at the long
back wing of the main house, at the servants’ porches with their white
wooden railings and white privacy lattice, and just the sight of this lattice
subdued him and made him feel happy. These were all the random colors and
textures of home.
Home. As if he had ever
lived in such a place. Well, had any wandering observer ever loved it more? And
in a way he had always lived in it, it was the place he had longed for when he
went away, the place he had dreamed of…
You cannot imagine
the strength of the assault…
‘Michael?’
‘What is it, honey?’
He kissed her, catching the delicious smell of the sun in her hair. The warmth
gave a glisten to her skin. But the frisson of the visions lingered. He opened
his eyes wide, letting the burnt afternoon light fill them, letting the soft
hum of the insects lull him.
tangle of lies…
Rowan went before him in the
high grass.
‘There are flagstones
here, Michael.’ Her voice so thin in the great openness. ‘All of
this is flagstone. It’s covered over.’
He wandered after her, back
into the front garden. They found little Greek statues, cement satyrs
beautifully weathered, peeping with blind eyes from beneath the overgrown
boxwood; a marble nymph lost in the dark waxen leaf camellias, and the tiny
yellow lantana blooming beautifully wherever the sun broke in.
‘Bacon and eggs, we
called this little flower,’ he said, picking a sprig of it for her. ‘See
the tiny brown and yellow petals, mingled with the orange. And there, there’s
the blue kind. And see that flower, that’s impatiens, and look, that’s
hollyhock - the big blue flowers growing by the porch, but we always called it
althaea.’
‘Althaea, that’s
so lovely.’
‘That vine there is
the Queen’s Wreath, or the Coral Wreath, but we called it Rose of Montana.’
They could just see the
white streak of Deirdre’s old rocking chair above the lace of the vines. ‘They
must have trimmed them for her to see out,’ he said. ‘See how they’ve
grown up the other side, fighting the bougainvillea? Ah, but it’s the
queen of the wall, isn’t it?’
Almost violent the
fluorescent purple bracts that everyone thought were flowers.
‘Lord God, how many
times did I try to make all this in some little back yard in California, before
I turned over the key to the new owner. After I’d hung the Quaker Lace
curtains on the windows, and done the floors with Minwax Golden Oak, and found
the claw-footed tub from the salvage yard. And here the place looms, the
genuine article…"
‘And it’s yours,
too,’ she said. ‘Yours and mine.’ How innocent she seemed
now, how full of eager sincerity her soft smile.
She wound her arm around him
again, squeezed his gloved hand with her naked fingers. ‘But what if it’s
all decayed inside, Michael? What would it take to cure everything that’s
wrong?’
‘Come here, stand back
here, and look,’ he said. ‘See the way the servants’ porches
run completely straight up there? There’s no weakness in the foundation
of this house at all. There are no leaks visible on the first floor, no
dampness seeping through. Nothing! And in the old days those porches were the
hallways by which the servants came and went. That’s why there are so
many floor-length windows and doors, and by the way every window and door I’ve
tried is level. And the house is all open on this side to catch the river
breeze. All over the city, you’ll see that, houses open on the river
side, to catch the river breeze.’
She gazed up at the windows
of Julien’s old room. Was she thinking again of Antha?
‘I can feel the curse
lifting from this place,’ she whispered. That’s what was meant,
that you and I should come, and love each other here.’
Yes, I believe that, he
thought, but somehow or other he didn’t say it. Maybe the stillness
around him seemed too alive; maybe he was afraid to challenge something unseen
that watched and listened.
‘All these walls are
solid brick, Rowan,’ he went on, ’and some of them as much as
twenty inches thick. I measured them with my hands when I walked through the
various doorways. Twenty inches thick. They’d been plastered over outside
to make the house look like stone because that was the fashion. See the scoring
in the paint? To make it look like a villa built of great blocks of stone?
‘It’s a polyglot,’
he confessed, ’with its cast-iron lace and Corinthian columns and Doric
and Ionic columns, and the keyhole doorways —’
‘Yeah, keyholes,’
she said. ‘And I’ll tell you about another place where I saw a
doorway like that. It’s on the tomb. At the very top of the Mayfair tomb.’
‘How do you mean at
the top?’
‘Just the carving of a
doorway, like the doorways in this house. I’m sure that’s what it
was, unless it’s really meant to be a keyhole. I’ll show you. We
can walk over there today or tomorrow. It’s right off the main path.’
Why did that fill him with
uneasiness? A doorway carved on the tomb? He hated graveyards, he hated tombs.
But sooner or later he had to see it, didn’t he? He went on talking,
stifling the feeling, wanting to have the moment and the sight of the house
before him, bathed in the lovely sun.
‘Then there are those
curved Italianate windows on the north side,’ he said, ’and that’s
another architectural influence. But it’s all of a piece, finally. It
works because it works. It’s built for this climate with its fifteen-foot
ceilings. It’s a great trap for light and cool breezes, a citadel against
the heat.’
Slipping her arm around him,
she followed him back inside and up the long shadowy stairs.
‘See, this plaster is
firm,’ he explained. ‘It’s almost surely the original, but it
was done by master craftsmen. They probably ran those crown moldings by hand.
There aren’t even the minimum cracks you’d expect from settlement.
When I get under the house I’m going to find these are chain walls that
go clear down to the ground, and that the sills that support this house are
enormous. They have to be. Everything is level, firm.’
‘And I thought it was
hopeless when I first saw it.’
‘Take this old
wallpaper down with your imagination,’ he said. Taint the walls in your
mind’s eyes with bright warm colors. See all this woodwork shining white
and clean.’
‘It’s ours now,’
she whispered. ‘Yours and mine. We’re writing the file from now on.’
‘The File on Rowan and
Michael,’ he said with a faint smile. He paused at the top of the stairs.
‘Things up here on the second floor are simpler. The ceilings are about a
foot lower, and you don’t have the ornate crown moldings. It’s all
a smaller scale.’
She laughed and shook her
head. ‘And how high are these smaller rooms, thirteen feet, perhaps?’
They turned and went down
the hall to the first bedroom on the very front of the house. Its windows
opened both to the front and the side porches. Belle’s prayer book lay on
the chest of drawers, with her name engraved in the cover in gold letters.
There were photographs in gilt frames behind dim glass hanging on dulled and
rusted chains.
‘Julien again. Has to
be,’ said Michael. ‘And Mary Beth, look, that woman looks like you,
Rowan.’
‘So they told me,’
she said softly.
Belle’s rosary, with
her named engraved on the back of the crucifix, lay still on the pillow of the
four-poster bed. Dust rose from the feather comforter when Michael touched it.
A wreath of roses peered down at him from the satin tester above.
Gloomy it all seemed with
its fading flowered paper, and the heavy armoires tilting ever so slightly
forward, and the carpet threadbare and the color of dust itself. The branches
of the oaks looked like ghosts beyond the pongee curtains. The bathroom was
clean and very plain — tile from Stella’s time, Michael figured. A
great old tub such as one still finds now and then in old hotels, and a high
pedestal lavatory, and stacks of towels, layered with dust, on a wicker stand.
‘Oh, but Michael, this
is the best room,’ Rowan said behind him. ‘This is the one that
opens to the south and the west. Help me with this window.’
They forced the stubborn
sash. ‘It’s like being in a tree house,’ she said as she
stepped outside on the deep front gallery. She laid her hand on the fluted
Corinthian column and looked into the twisted branches of the oaks. ‘Look,
Michael, there are ferns growing in the branches, hundreds of little green
ferns. And there, a squirrel. No, there are two of them. We’ve frightened
them. This is so strange. It’s like we’re in the woods, and we can
jump out there and start climbing. We could just wander heavenward through this
tree.’
Michael tested the rafters
underneath. ‘Solid, just like everything else. And the iron lace isn’t
rusted, not really. All it needs is paint.’ No leaks in the roof above
either.
Just waiting, waiting all
this time to be restored. He stopped, and slipped off his khaki jacket. The
heat was getting to him finally, even here where the river breezes did flood
by.
He slung the jacket over his
shoulder and held it with one hooked finger.
Rowan stood, with arms
folded, leaning on the cast-iron railing. She looked out over the quiet still
corner.
He was looking down through
the tangle of the little sweet olive trees, at the front gate. He was seeing
himself as a boy standing there, just seeing himself so clearly. She clasped
his hand suddenly and drew him after her back inside.
‘Look, that door
connects to the next bedroom. That could be a sitting room, Michael. And both
lead on to that side porch.’
He was staring at one of the
oval photographs. Stella? Had to be Stella.
‘Wouldn’t it be
wonderful?’ she was saying. ‘It has to be the sitting room.’
He glanced down again at the
white leather cover of the prayer book with the words Belle Mayfair inscribed
in gold. Just for a second, he thought, Touch it. And to think, Belle was so
sweet, so good.
How could Belle hurt you? You’re
in this house and not using the power.
‘Michael?’
But he couldn’t do it.
If he began, how could he stop? And it would kill him, those electrical shocks
passing through him, and the blindness, the inevitable blindness when the
images swam around him like murky water, and the cacophony of all the voices.
No. You don’t have to. Nobody has told you that you have to.
The thought suddenly that
someone might make him do it, might tear off the glove and force his hand on
these objects, made him cringe. He felt cowardly. And Rowan was calling him. He
looked down at the prayer book as he moved away.
‘Michael, this must
have been Millie’s room. It has a fireplace, too.’ She stood before
a high dresser, holding a small monogrammed handkerchief. ‘These rooms
are like shrines,’ she said.
Beyond the long window, the
bougainvillea grew so thick over the side porch that the lower railings could
no longer be seen. This was the porch above Deirdre’s porch. Open,
because only that lower part had been screened in.
‘Yes, all these rooms
have fireplaces,’ he said absently, his eyes on the fluorescent purple
blossoms of the bougainvillea. ‘I’m going to have a look at the
firebricks in the chimneys. These little shallow grates were never used for
wood, they were used for coal.’
Now they housed gas heaters,
and he rather liked that, for in all this time, he’d never seen a little
gas heater blazing away in the cozy winter dark, with all those tiny blue and
gold flames.
Rowan stood at the closet
door. ‘What is that smell, Michael?’
‘Lord, Rowan Mayfair,
you never smelled camphor in an old closet?’
She laughed softly. ‘I’ve
never even seen an old closet, Michael Curry. I’ve never lived in an old
house, nor visited an old hotel. State of the art was my adoptive father’s
motto. Rooftop restaurants and brass and glass. You can’t imagine the
lengths to which he went to maintain those standards. And Ellie couldn’t
stand the sight of anything old or used. Ellie threw out all her clothes after
a year’s wear.’
‘You must think you
slipped off the planet.’
‘No, not really. Just
slipped into another interpretation,’ she said, her voice trailing off.
Thoughtfully she touched the old clothes hanging there. All he saw were
shadows.
‘And to think,’
she whispered, ‘the century is almost over, and she lived all her life
right here in this room.’ She stepped back. ‘God, I hate this
wallpaper. Look, there’s a leak up there.’
‘Nothing major, honey.
Just a little leak. There’s bound to be one or more in a house this size.
That’s nothing. But I think the plaster’s dead up there.’
‘Dead? The plaster is
dead?’
‘Too old to take a
patch. See the way it’s crumbled. So we’ll put in a new ceiling,’
he said, shrugging. ‘Two days’ work.’
‘You’re a genius.’
He laughed and shook his
head.
‘Look, there’s
an old bathroom there,’ she said. ‘Each room has its own bathroom. I’m
trying to see everything cleaned and finished…"
‘I see it,’ he
said. ‘I see it all with every step I take.’
Carlotta’s room was
the last major room at the end of the hallway — a great gloomy cavern it
seemed, with its black four-poster bed and its faded taffeta ruffles, and a few
dreary slipcovered chairs. A stale smell rose around them. A bookshelf held law
texts and reference books. And there, the rosary and the prayer book as if she’d
only just laid them down. Her white gloves in a tangle, and a pair of cameo
earrings, and a string of jet beads.
‘We used to call those
Grandma beads,’ he said with vague surprise. ‘I forgot all about
those.’ He moved to touch them and then drew back his gloved hand as if he’d
drawn near to something hot.
‘I don’t like it
in here, either,’ Rowan whispered. She was hugging the backs of her arms
again in that chilled, miserable gesture. Scared maybe. ‘I don’t
want to touch what belonged to her,’ she said, looking vaguely repelled
by the items strewn on the dresser, repelled by the old furniture, beautiful as
it was.
‘Ryan will take care
of it,’ she murmured, becoming ever more uneasy. ‘He said that
Gerald Mayfair will come and take away her things. She left her personal things
to Gerald’s grandmother.’ At last she turned as if something had
startled her, then stared almost angrily at the mirror between the side
windows. ‘There’s that smell again, that camphor. And something
else.’
‘Verbena, and rose
water,’ he said. ‘See the bottle? They plant little things like
that now in quaint northern California bed-and-breakfast hotels. I’ve
planted them on many a marble-top table. And there they sit. The real thing.’
‘It’s too real,’
she whispered, ’it’s dreary and unhappy.’
They moved on to the rear
door of the room which opened onto a little corridor and a short stairs, and
then two small rooms, following one upon the other.
‘The maids slept here
in the old days,’ Michael explained. ‘Eugenia has that room back
there now. Technically we are looking into the servants’ wing, and they
would never have used this connecting door, because it wasn’t here until
recent years. They cut through the brick wall to put it in. In the old days the
servants would have come into the main house by means of the porch.’
At the far end of the wing,
they could see a dull light burning. ‘That’s the stairway that
leads down to the kitchen. And that old bathroom back there was Eugenia’s.
In the old days southern people had the black servants use a different
bathroom. You’ve heard enough about all that, I imagine.’
They turned back into the
larger room. Rowan moved carefully across the faded rug, and Michael followed
her to the window and gently pushed back the soft frail curtain, so that they
could look down on the brick sidewalks of Chestnut Street, and the artful
facade of the grand house across the way.
‘See, open to the
river side,’ said Michael, looking at the other building. ‘And look
at the oak trees on that property and the old carriage house is still standing.
See the stucco peeling from the bricks. It, too, was made to look like stone.’
‘From every window you
see the oaks,’ Rowan said, speaking low as if not to disturb the dust. ‘And
the sky, such a deep blue. Even the light is different here. It’s like
the soft light of Florence or Venice.’
‘That it is,’
Michael said.
Again, he found himself
staring apprehensively at the belongings of this woman. Maybe Rowan’s
uneasiness had communicated itself to him. He imagined, compulsively and
painfully, having to take off his glove and lay his naked hand upon things that
had been hers.
‘What is it, Michael?’
‘Let’s go,’
he said under his breath, clasping her hand again and moving back into the main
hall.
Only reluctantly did she
follow Michael into Deirdre’s old room. Here her confusion and revulsion
seemed to deepen. Yet he knew she was compelled to make this journey. He saw
the way her eyes moved hungrily over the framed photographs, and the little
Victorian cane-seated chairs. Michael hugged her close as she stared down at
the vicious stain on the mattress.
‘That’s awful. I’ve
got to call someone,’ he said, ’to clean that up.’
‘I’ll do it,’
she said.
‘No, I will. You asked
downstairs if I could take over, hire the people I needed to restore the whole
place. Well, I can take care of that too.’
He looked at the stain, a
great oval of brown, the center of it sticky. Had the woman hemorrhaged when
she was dying? Or had she lain there with her waste seeping out in the heat of
this awful old room?
‘I don’t know,’
Rowan whispered, though he hadn’t voiced the question. She gave a ragged
sigh. ‘I’ve already asked for the records. Ryan’s requesting
everything through legal channels. I talked to him today. I called the doctor.
I talked to the nurse, too, Viola. Sweet old woman. She told it like Dickens.
All the doctor said was that there was no reason to take her to the hospital.
The whole thing was crazy. He didn’t like my asking him questions. He
suggested that I was wrong to ask him. He said it was the humane thing to let
her die.’
He held her more tightly,
grazing her cheek with his lips.
‘What are those
candles?’ she asked, staring at the little bedside altar. ‘And that
awful statue. What’s that?’
‘The Blessed Mother,’
he said. ‘When there’s a naked heart on it like that I guess you
call it the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I don’t really remember. The
candles are blessed candles. I saw them flickering up here, when I was outside
that first night. I never dreamed she was dying. If I’d known I… I
don’t know. I didn’t even know who lived here when I first came.’
‘But why did they burn
these blessed candles?’
‘It’s to comfort
the dying. The priest comes. He gives her what they call the Last Sacraments. I
went with the priest a couple of times when I was an altar boy.’
‘They did that for
her, but they didn’t take her to the hospital.’
‘Rowan, if you had
known, if you had come, do you think she could have been brought around? I don’t
think so, honey. I don’t think it matters now.’
‘Ryan says no. She was
hopeless. He says that once about ten years ago, Carlotta took her off the drugs.
There was no response to any stimulus except reflex. Ryan says they did
everything they could, but then Ryan is covering Ryan, isn’t he? But I’ll
know when I see the records, and then I’ll feel better… or worse.’
She moved away from the bed,
her eyes drifting more sluggishly over the room. She seemed to be forcing
herself to evaluate it the way they had evaluated everything else.
Tentatively he pointed out
to her that only in this room was there the ornamentation that was common to
the lower floor. He drew her attention to the scrollwork crowning the windows.
A crystal chandelier, covered with dust, hanging from an ornate plaster
medallion. The bed itself was huge and vaguely ugly.
‘It’s not like
the others, the four-posters,’ she said.
‘It’s newer,
machine made,’ he explained. ‘It’s American. That was the
kind they bought by the millions near the end of the last century. Probably
Mary Beth bought it and it was very much the thing.’
‘She stopped time, didn’t
she?’
‘Mary Beth?’
‘No, that hateful
Carlotta. She stopped time here. She made everything grind to a halt. Think of
young girls growing up in a house like this. There isn’t a scrap of
evidence that they ever had anything beautiful or special or contemporary of
their own.’
‘Teddy bears,’
Michael whispered. Hadn’t Deirdre said something about teddy bears in the
garden in Texas?
Rowan had not heard him. ‘Well,
her reign is over,’ she said, but it was without triumph or resolution.
She suddenly moved forward
and picked up the plaster Virgin with the exposed red heart, and pitched it
across the room. It landed on the marble floor of the open bathroom, the body
breaking into three uneven pieces. She stared at it as if shocked by what she’d
done.
He was astonished. Something
purely irrational and completely superstitious shook him. The Virgin Mary
broken on the bathroom floor. He wanted to say something, some magic words or
prayers to undo it; like tossing salt over your shoulder or knocking on wood.
Then his eye caught something glittering in the shadows. A heap of tiny
glittering things on the table at the far side of the bed.
‘Look, Rowan,’
he said softly, slipping his fingers around the back of her neck. ‘Look,
on the other table, over there.’
It was the jewel box, and it
stood open. It was the velvet purse. Gold coins heaped everywhere, and ropes of
pearls, and gems, hundreds of small glittering gems.
‘Good God,’ she
whispered. She moved around the bed, and stared down at it as if it were alive.
‘Didn’t you
believe it?’ he asked her. But he wasn’t sure now whether he had
believed it himself. They look fake, don’t they? Like a motion-picture
treasure. Couldn’t possibly be real.’
She looked at him across the
barren empty bed. ‘Michael,’ she said softly, ’would you
touch them? Would you… lay your hands on them?’
He shook his head. ‘I
don’t want to, Rowan,’ he said.
She stood silent, drawing
into herself, it seemed, her eyes becoming vague and unfocused. She hugged her
arms again, the way she always did it seemed when she was upset, as if her
interior misery made her cold.
‘Michael,’ she
said again softly, ’would you touch something of Deirdre’s? Her
nightgown. Maybe the bed.’
‘I don’t want
to, Rowan. We said we wouldn’t…’
She looked down, her hair
tumbling over her eyes so that he couldn’t see them.
‘Rowan, I can’t
interpret it. It will just be confusion. I’ll see the nurse that helped
her dress, or maybe the doctor, or maybe a car that passed when she was sitting
out there, watching. I don’t know how to use it. Aaron’s taught me
a little. But I’m still not very good. I’ll see something ugly and I’ll
hate it. And it scares me, Rowan, because she’s dead. I touched all kinds
of things for people in the beginning. But I can’t now. Believe me,
I… I mean when Aaron teaches me…’
‘What if you saw
happiness? What if you saw something beautiful like that woman in London saw,
who touched her robe for Aaron?’
‘Did you believe in
that, Rowan? They aren’t infallible, these people in the Talamasca. They’re
just people.’
‘No, they aren’t
just people,’ she said. ‘They’re people like you and me. They
have preternatural powers like you and I have preternatural powers.’
Her voice was mild,
unchallenging. But he understood what she felt. He stared again at the blessed
candles, and then at the broken statue, which he could just see in the shadows
behind her on the bathroom floor. Flash of the May procession and the giant
statue of the Virgin tilting as it was carried through the streets. Thousands
of flowers. And he thought again of Deirdre, Deirdre in the botanical garden,
talking in the dark to Aaron. ‘I want normal life.’
He moved around the bed and
went to the old-fashioned dresser. He opened the top drawer. Nightgowns of soft
white flannel, whiff of sachet, very sweet. And lighter summer garments of real
silk.
He lifted one of these nightgowns
- a thin sleeveless thing sewn with pale pastel flowers. He laid it down in a
wrinkled heap on the dresser, and he took off his gloves. For a second he
clasped his hands together tightly and then he picked up the garment in both
hands. He closed his eyes. ‘Deirdre,’ he said, ’only Deirdre.’
An enormous place gaped
before him. Through the lurid flickering glare he saw hundreds of faces, he
heard voices wailing and screaming. An unbearable sound. A man came towards him
stepping over the bodies of the others! ‘No. Stop!’ He had dropped
the nightgown. He stood there with his closed eyes trying to remember what he’d
just glimpsed, though he couldn’t bear to be surrounded by it again.
Hundreds of people shifting and turning, and someone speaking to him in a rapid
ugly mocking voice. ‘Christ, what was it?’ He stared down at his
hands. He had heard a drum behind all of it, a marching cadence, a sound he
knew.
Mardi Gras, years ago.
Rushing through the winter street with his mother. ‘Going to see the
Mystic Krewe of Comus.’ Yes, that had been the very drum song. And the
glare had been the glare of the flickering reeking flambeaux.
‘I don’t
understand,’ he said.
‘What are you saying?’
‘I didn’t see
anything that made any sense.’ He looked down angrily at the nightgown.
Slowly he reached out for it. ‘Deirdre, in the last days,’ he said.
‘Only Deirdre in the last days.’ He touched the soft wrinkled cloth
very gently. ‘I’m seeing the view from the porch, the garden,’
he whispered. Yes, the Queen’s Wreath vine, and that is a butterfly
climbing the screen, and his hand right there beside her. ‘Lasher’s
there, she’s glad he’s there, and he’s right beside her.’
And if he turned his head and looked up from the rocker he’d see Lasher.
He set the nightgown down again. ‘And it was all sunlight and flowers,
and she was… was all right.’
Thank you, Michael.’
‘I don’t want to
do it again, Rowan, I’m sorry I can’t do it. I don’t want to.’
‘I understand,’
she said. She came towards him. ‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice was
low and sincere and soothing, but her eyes were full of bewilderment. What had
he seen that first time around, she wanted to know.
So did he. But what chance
had he of knowing?
Yet he was here, inside the
house, and he had the power, which had been given to him, presumably by them!
And he was being a coward with the power, he, Michael Curry, a coward, and he
kept saying he meant to do what they wanted him to do.
Hadn’t they wanted him
to come here? Didn’t they want him to touch things? And she wanted him
to. How could she not?
He reached out and touched
the foot of Deirdre’s bed. Flash of midday, nurses, a cleaning woman
pushing a tired vacuum, someone complaining, ceaselessly, a whine. It came so
fast finally it was blurred; he ran his fingers along the mattress: her white leg
like a thing made out of dough, and Jerry Lonigan there, lifting her, saying
under his breath to his assistant, Look at this place, will you look at it, and
when he touched the walls, her face suddenly, Deirdre, idiot smile, drool on
her chin. He touched the door to the bathroom, a white nurse bullying her,
telling her to come now, and move her feet, she knew that she could, pain
inside Deirdre, pain eating her insides, a man’s voice speaking, the
cleaning woman coming, going, the flush of the toilet, the hum of the
mosquitoes, the sight of a sore on her back, good God, look at it, where she
has rubbed against the rocker over the years, a festering sore, caked with baby
powder, are you people crazy, and the nurse just holds her on the toilet. I can’t…
He turned and pushed past
Rowan, brushing her hand away as she tried to stop him. He touched the post of
the stairs. Flash of a cotton dress passing him, beat of footsteps on the old
carpet. Someone screaming, crying.
‘Michael!’
He ran up the steps after
them. The baby was roaring in the cradle. It echoed all the way up the three
flights from the parlor.
Stench of chemicals, rotted
filth in those jars. He’d glimpsed it last night, she’d told him
about it, but now he had to see it, didn’t he? And touch it. Touch
Marguerite’s filthy jars. He’d smelled it last night when he’d
come up to find Townsend’s body, only it wasn’t the body. His hand
on the railing, caught a flash of Rowan with the lamp in her hand. Rowan angry
and miserable and trying to escape the old woman, who was beating her with
words, viciousness, and then the black woman with her dust mop, and a carpenter
putting a pane of glass in this window that looked out over the roof. God, that
is an awful smell up here, lady. Just do your job. Deirdre’s bedroom,
shrill clang of other voices, rising to a peak, then washing away, and another
wave coming. And the door, the door straight ahead, someone laughing, a man
speaking French, what he’s saying, let me hear one distinct word, the
stench is behind it.
But no, first Julien’s
room, Julien’s bed. The laughing grew louder, but a baby’s crying
was mixed up with it, someone rushing up the stairs just behind him. The door
gave him Eugenia again, dusting, complaining about the stench, Carlotta’s
voice droning on, the words indistinguishable, and then that awful stain there
in the darkness where Townsend died, drawing his last breath through the hole
in the carpet, and the mantel, wavering flash of Julien! The same man, yes, the
same man he’d seen when he held Deirdre’s night-gown, yes, you,
Julien, staring at him, I see you, and then footsteps running, no, I
don’t want to see this, but he reached out for the windowsill, grabbed
the little cord of the shade, and up it ran, rattling at the top, revealing the
dirty windowpanes.
She flew past him, Antha,
through the glass, scuttling out on the roof, terrified, tangle of hair over
her wet face, her eye, look at her eye, it’s on her cheek, dear God.
Sobbing, ‘Don’t hurt me, don’t hurt me! Lasher, help me!’
‘Rowan!’
And Julien, why didn’t
he do something, why did he stand there crying silently, doing nothing. ‘You
can call on the devil in hell and the saints in heaven, they won’t help
you,’ said Carlotta, her voice a snarl as she climbed through the window.
And Julien helpless. ‘Kill
you, bitch, kill you, you will I not…’
She’s gone, she’s
fallen, her scream unfurling like a great billowing red flag against the blue
sky. Julien with his face in his hands. Helpless. Shimmering gone, a ghost
witness. The chaos again, Carlotta fading. He clamped his hands on the iron
bed, Julien sitting there, wavering yet distinct for an instant, I know you,
dark eyes, smiling mouth, white hair, yes, you, don’t touch me! ‘Eh,
bien, Michel, at last!’
His hand struck the packing
crates lying on the bed, but he couldn’t see them. He could see nothing
but the light wavering and forming the image of the man sitting there under the
covers, and then it was gone, and then it was there. Julien was trying to get
out of the bed… No, get away from me.
‘Michael!’
He had shoved the boxes off
the bed. He was stumbling over the books. The dolls, where were the dolls? In
the trunk. Julien said that, didn’t he? He said it in French. Laughter, a
chorus of laughter. Rustle of skirts around him. Something broke. His knee
struck something sharp, but he crawled on towards the trunk. Latches rusted, no
problem, throw back the lid.
Wavering, vanishing, Julien
stood there, nodding, pointing down into the trunk.
The rusted hinges broke
completely as the lid slammed back into the old plaster and fell loose. What
was that rustling, like taffeta all around him, feet scraping the floor around
him, figures looming over him, like flashes of light through shutters, here and
then gone, let me breathe, let me see. It was like the rustle of the nuns’
skirts when he was in school and they came thundering down the hallway to hit
the boys, to make the boys get back in line, rustling of beads and cloth and
petticoats…
But there are the dolls.
Look, the dolls! Don’t
hurt them, they are so old and so fragile, with their dumb scribble scratch
faces looking at you, and look, that one, with the button eyes, and the braids
of gray, in her tiny little perfect man clothes of tweed to the very trousers.
God, bones inside!
He held it. Mary Beth! The
flapping gores of her skirts came against him; if he looked up he’d see
her looking down; he did see her, there was no limit to what he could see, he
could see the backs of their heads as they closed in on him, but nothing would
hold steady even for an instant. It was all gossamer, and solid for one second
and then nothing, the room full of dusty nothing and crowded to overflowing.
Rowan came through as if through the tear in a fabric, grabbing him by the arm,
and in a glimmering flash he saw Charlotte, knew it was Charlotte. Had he
touched the doll? He looked down, they were all higgledy piggledy and so
fragile on the layer of cheesecloth.
But where is Deborah?
Deborah, you have got to tell me… He folded back the cloth, tumbling the
newer dolls on each other, were they crying, somebody was crying, no, that was
the baby screaming in the cradle, or Antha on the roof. Or both of them. Flash
of Julien again, talking rapidly in French, down on one knee beside him, I
can’t understand you. One millimeter of a second, and gone. You’re
driving me crazy, what good am I to you or to anyone if I am crazy?
Get these skirts away from
me! It was so much like the nuns.
‘Michael!’
He groped under the cloth -
where? - easy to tell for there lay the oldest, a mere stick thing of bones and
one over from it, the blond hair of Charlotte, and that meant that the frail
little thing between them was his Deborah. Tiny beetles raced from beneath it
as he touched it. Its hair was disintegrating, oh, God, it’s falling
apart, even the bones are turning to dust. And in horror, he drew back. He had
left the print of his finger in its bone face. The blast of a fire caught him,
he could smell it; her body all crumpled up like a wax thing on top of the
pyre, and that voice in French ordering him to do something, but what?
‘Deborah,’ he
said, touching it again, touching its little ragged dress of velvet. ‘Deborah!’
It was so old his breath was going to blow it away. Stella laughed. Stella was
holding it. ‘Talk to me,’ she said with her eyes squeezed shut, the
young man beside her laughing. ‘You don’t really think this is
going to work!’
What do you want of me?
The skirts pushed closer
around him, mingling voices in French and English. He tried to catch Julien
this time. It was like trying to catch a thought, a memory, something flitting
through your mind when you listened to music. His hand lay on the little
Deborah doll, crushing it down into the trunk, the blond hair doll tumbling
against him. I’m destroying them.
‘Deborah!’
Nothing, nothing.
What have I done that
you won’t tell me!
Rowan was calling him.
Shaking him; he almost hit her.
‘Stop it!’ he
shouted. ‘They’re all here, in this house! Don’t you see? They’re
waiting, they’re… they’re… there’s a name for it,
they’re hovering… earthbound!’
How strong she was. She
wouldn’t stop. She pulled him to his feet. ‘Let me go.’ He
saw them everywhere he looked, as if they were woven into a veil that was
moving in the wind.
‘Michael, stop it, it’s
enough, stop…’
Have to get out of here. He
grabbed for the door frame. When he looked back at the bed he saw only the
packing crates. He stared at the books. He had not touched the books. The sweat
was pouring down his face, his clothes, look at his clothes, he ran his naked
hands over his shirt, trembling, flash of Rowan, shimmer of them all around him
again, only he couldn’t see their faces and he was tired of looking for
their faces, tired of the draining zapping feelings running through him, ‘I
can’t do this, goddamn it!’ he shouted. This was like being under
water, even the voices he heard as he clamped his hands to his ears were like
wavering hollow voices under water. And the stench, not possible to avoid it.
The stench from the jars that were waiting, the jars…
Is this what you wanted of me, to come back
here and to touch things and to know and to find out? Deborah, where are you?
Were they laughing at him?
Flash of Eugenia with her dust mop. Not you! Go away. I want to see the dead
not the living. And that was Julien’s laughter, wasn’t it? Someone
was definitely crying, a baby crying in a cradle, and a dull low voice cursing
in English, kill you, kill you, kill you.
‘It’s enough,
stop, don’t…’
‘No, it isn’t.
The jars are there. It is not enough. Let me do it, once and for all, with all
of it.’
He pushed her aside, amazed
again at the strength with which she tried to stop him, and shoved open the
door to the room of the jars. If only they would shut up, if only that baby
would stop crying, and the old woman cursing, and that voice in French… ‘I
can’t…"
The jars.
A gust of air came up the
stairway and moved the sluggish stench for an instant. He was standing with his
hands over his ears looking at the jars. He took a deep breath, but the stench
went into his lungs. Rowan was watching him. Is this what you want me to touch? And they wanted to come
back, like a great sloppy veil again closing around him, but he wouldn’t
let them. He sharpened his focus. The jars only. He took another breath.
The smell was enough to kill
you, but it can’t. It can’t really hurt you. Look. And now in the
swimming ugly light, he put his hand on the dingy glass, and through his
splayed fingers saw an eye looking at him. ‘Christ,’ it’s a
human head, but what was he getting from the jar itself, through his tortured
fingers, nothing, nothing but images so faint they were like the thing inside,
a cloud surrounding him, in which the visual and the audial were blended and
ever dissolving, and trying to be solid and breaking apart again. The jar was
there, shining.
These were his fingers
scratching at the wax seal.
And the beautiful flesh and
blood woman in the door was Rowan.
He broke the seal open, and
plunged his hand into the liquid, while the fumes from it went up his nose like
poison gas. He gagged, but that didn’t stop him. He grabbed the head
inside by the hair though it fell away in his fingers, slipped like seaweed.
The head was slimy and
falling to pieces. Chunks of it rose against the glass, pushing against his
wrist. But he had a hold of it, his thumb sinking into the putrid cheek. He drew
it up out of the jar, knocking the jar on the floor so that the stinking liquid
splattered on him. He held the head - dim flash of the head speaking, the head
laughing, the features mobile though the head was dead, and the hair was brown
hair, the eyes bloodshot but brown, and blood seeping from the dead mouth that
talked.
Aye, Michael, flesh
and blood when you are nothing but bones.
The whole man sat on the
bed, naked, and dead, yet alive with Lasher in him, the arms thrashing and the
mouth opening. And beside him Marguerite, with her hag hair and her hands on
his shoulders, her big wide taffeta skirts out like a circle of red light
around her, holding the dead thing, just as Rowan was trying to hold him now.
The head slipped out of his
hands. It slid in the muck on the floor. He went down on his knees. God! He was
sick. He was going to vomit. He felt the convulsion, and the pain in a circle
around his ribs. Vomit. I can’t help it. He turned towards the corner,
tried to crawl away… It poured out of him.
Rowan held him by the
shoulder. When you’re this sick you don’t give a damn who’s
touching you, but again, he saw the dead thing on the bed. He tried to tell
her. His mouth was sour and full of vomit. God. Look at his hands. The mess was
all over the floor, on his clothes.
But he got to his feet, his
fingers slipping off the doorknob. Pushing Julien out of the way, and Mary
Beth, and then Rowan, and groping for the fallen head, squashed fruit on the
floor, breaking apart like a melon.
‘Lasher,’ he
said to her, wiping at his mouth. ‘Lasher, in that head, in the body of
that head.’
And the others? Look at
them, filled with heads. Look at them! He snatched at another, smashed it
against the wood of the shelf, so that the greenish remains slid down soft and
rotten, like a giant greenish egg yoke onto the floor, oozing off the skull
that emerged dark and shrunken as he caught it and held it, the face just
dripping away.
Aye, Michael, when
you are nothing but bones, like the bones you hold in your hands.
‘Is this flesh?’
he cried. ‘Is this flesh!’ He kicked the rotten head on the floor.
He threw down the skull and kicked the skull. Like rubber. ‘You aren’t
going to get her, not for this, not for anything.’
‘Michael!’
He was sick again, but he
wasn’t going to let it come. His hand caught the edges of the shelf.
Flash of Eugenia.
‘Sure hate the smell
of this attic, Miss Carl.’ ‘You leave it, Eugenia.’
He turned around and wiping
both his hands on his coat, wiping them furiously, he said to Rowan, ‘He
came into the dead bodies. He possessed them. He looked through their eyes and
he spoke through their vocal cords, and used them, but he couldn’t make
them come alive again, he couldn’t make the cells begin to multiply
again. And she saved the heads. He came into the heads, long after the bodies
were gone, and he looked through the eyes.’
Turning, he snatched up one
jar after another. She stood beside him. They were peering through the glass,
the shimmer of the images almost blinding him to what he meant to see, but he
was determined to see. Heads with brown hair, and look, a blond head with
streaks of brown in it, and look, the face of a black man, with blotches of
white skin on it, and streaks of lighter hair, and here another, with the white
hair streaked with brown.
‘Dear God, don’t
you see? He not only went into them, he changed the tissues, he caused the
cells to react, he changed them but he couldn’t keep them alive.’
Heads, heads, heads. He
wanted to smash all the jars.
‘You see that? He
caused a mutation, a new cell growth! But it was nothing, nothing compared to
being alive! They rotted. He couldn’t stop them! And they won’t
tell me what they want me to do!’
His slippery fingers closed
in a fist. He smashed at one of the jars and saw it fall. She didn’t try
to stop him. But she had her arms around him. And she was begging him to come
out of the room with her, dragging him. If she didn’t watch it, they were
both going to go down in this muck, for sure, this filthy muck.
‘But look! You see
that!’ Far back on the shelf, behind the jar he’d just broken. The
finest of them, the liquid clear, the thick seal tarlike and intact. Through
the flicker of meaningless indistinguishable images and sounds he heard her:
‘Open it, break it,’
she said.
He did. The glass fell away
soundlessly into the ashy layer of whispering voices, and he held this head, no
longer even caring about the stench, or the spongy, moldering texture of the
thing he held.
Again the bedroom,
Marguerite at the dressing table, tiny-waisted, big skirts, turning to smile at
him, toothless, eyes dark and quick, hair like a great ugly cascade of Spanish
moss, and Julien reed thin and white-haired and young with his arms folded, you
devil. Let me see you, Lasher. And then the body on the bed, beckoning
for her to come, and then her lying down beside him and the dead rotting
fingers tearing open her bodice, and touching her living breast. The dead cock
erect between his legs. ‘Look at me, change me, look at me, change me.’
Had Julien turned his back?
No such luck. He stood at the foot of the bed, his hands on the pillars of the
bed, his face beating with the faint light of the candle blowing in the wind
from the open windows. Fascinated, fearless.
Yes, and look at this thing
in your hands, now, this was his face, wasn’t it? His face! The face you
saw in the garden, in the church, in the auditorium, the face that you saw all
those many times. Arid the brown hair, oh yes, the brown hair.
He let it slide to the floor
with the others. He backed away from it, but the eye pits were staring up at
him, and the lips were moving. Did Rowan see it?
‘Do you hear it
talking?’
Voices all around him, but
there was only one voice, one clear searing soundless voice:
You cannot stop me. You cannot stop
her. You do my bidding. My patience is like the patience of the Almighty. I see to the finish. I see the
thirteen. 1 shall be flesh when you are dead.
‘He’s speaking
to me, the devil’s speaking to me! You hear it?’
He was out of the door and
down the stairs before he realized what he was doing, or that his heart was
thundering in his ears, and that he couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t
endure it any longer, he had always known it would be like this, the plunging
into the nightmare, and that was enough, wasn’t it, what did they want of
him, what did she want? That bastard had spoken to him! That thing he had seen
standing in the garden, had spoken to him, and through that rotted head! He was
no coward, he was a human man! But he couldn’t take any more of it.
He’d torn off his coat
and thrown it away in the corner of the hallway. Ah, the muck on his fingers,
he couldn’t wipe it off.
Belle’s room. Clean
and quiet. I’m sorry about the filth, please let me lie down on the clean
bed. She was helping him, thank God for that, not trying to stop him.
The bedspread was clean and
white and full of dust but the dust was clean, and the sun coming through the
opened windows was beautiful and full of dust. Belle. Belle is what he touched
now, the soft sweet spirit of Belle.
He was lying on his back.
She had the gloves for him. She was wiping his hands with the warm washcloth,
so lovingly, and her face was full of concern. She pressed her fingers to his
wrist.
‘Lie quiet, Michael. I
have the gloves here. Lie quiet.’
What was that cold hard
thing near his cheek? He reached up. Belle’s rosary, and it was tangling
painfully in his hair when he pulled it loose, but that was O K. He wanted it.
And there was Belle. Oh, how
lovely.
He tried to tell Rowan Belle
was standing there. Rowan was listening to his pulse. But Belle was gone. He
had a rosary in his hands; he’d felt its cold beads next to his face, and
Belle had been right there, talking to him.
There she was.
‘Rest, Michael,’
Belle said. Sweet tremulous voice like Aunt
Viv. She was fading but he
could still see her. ‘Don’t be afraid of me, Michael, I’m not
one of them, that’s not why I’m here.’
‘Make them talk to me,
make them tell me what they want. Not them, but the ones who came to me. Was it
Deborah?’
‘Lie quiet, Michael,
please.’
What did you say, Rowan? His
mouth hadn’t moved.
‘We aren’t meant
to have these powers,’ he said. ‘They destroy the human in us. You’re
human when you’re at the hospital. I was human when I had the hammer and
nails in my hands.’
Everything was sliding. How
could he explain to her, it had been like scaling a mountain, it had been like
all the physical work he’d ever put his hands to, and his back to, done
in a single hour. But she wasn’t there. She’d kissed him and laid a
quilt over him and gone out because he was asleep. Belle was sitting at the dresser,
such a lovely picture. Sleep, Michael.
‘Are you going to be
here when I wake up?’
‘No, darling, I’m
not really here now. It’s their house, Michael. I’m not one of them.’
Sleep.
He clutched at the rosary
beads. Millie Dear said, Time to go to church. The rooms are so clean and
quiet. They love each other. Pearl gray gabardine. It has to become our house.
That’s why I loved it so when I was small and I’d walk here. Loved
it. Our house. Never any quarrel between Belle and Millie Dear. So nice…
Something almost adorable about Belle with her face so pretty in old age, like
a flower pressed in a book, tinted still and fragrant.
Deborah said to him… incalculable
power, power to transmute…
He shuddered.
… not easy, so
difficult you can scarce imagine it, the hardest thing perhaps that you…
I can do this!
Sleep.
And through his sleep, he
heard the comforting sound of breaking glass.
When he awoke, Aaron was
there. Rowan had brought him a change of clothes from the hotel, and Aaron
helped him into the bathroom, so that he could wash and change. It was spacious
and actually comfortable.
Every muscle in him ached.
His back ached. His hands burned. He had the antsy awful feeling that he’d
had all those weeks on Liberty Street, until he pulled the gloves back on and
took a swallow of the beer Aaron gave him at his request. The pain in his
muscles was awful, and even his eyes were tired, as if he’d been reading
for hours by a poor light.
‘I’m not going
to get drunk,’ he told both of them.
Rowan explained that his heart
had been racing, that whatever had happened it had been an extreme physical
exertion, that a pulse reading like that was something you expected after a man
had run a four-minute mile. It was important that he rest, and that he not
remove the gloves again.
OK by him. He would have
loved nothing better than to encase his hands in concrete!
They went back to the hotel
together, ordered supper, and sat quietly in the living room of the suite. For
two hours, he told them everything he had seen:
He told them about the
little snatches of the visions that were coming back to him even before he’d
taken off the gloves. He told them about the first vision when he held Deirdre’s
nightgown, and how it was Julien he’d seen in the hellish place, and how
he’d seen him upstairs.
He told and he told. He
described and described. He wished Aaron would speak, but he understood why
Aaron did not.
He told them about Lasher’s
ugly prophecy, and the weird feeling of intimacy he had with the thing now
though he had not really touched it but merely that rotted stinking head.
He told them finally about
Belle, and then exhausted from the telling, he sat there, wanting another beer,
but afraid they’d think he was a drunk if he drank another, then giving
in and getting up and getting it out of the refrigerator no matter what they
thought.
‘I don’t know
why I’m involved, any more than I did before,’ he said. ‘But
I know they’re there, in that house. You remember Cortland said he wasn’t
one of them. And Belle said to me she wasn’t one of them… if I didn’t
imagine it… well, the others who are part of it are there! And that thing
altered matter, just a little but it did it, it possessed the dead bodies and
worked on the cells.
‘It wants Rowan, I
know it does. It wants Rowan to use her power to alter matter! Rowan has more
of that power than any of the others before her. Hell, she knows what the cells
are, how they operate, how they’re structured!’
Rowan seemed struck by those
words. Aaron explained that after Michael had gone to sleep, and Rowan was sure
his pulse was normal, that she had called Aaron and asked him to come to the
house. He’d brought crates of ice in which to pack the specimens in the
attic, and together they had opened each jar, photographed the contents, and
then packed it away.
The specimens were at Oak
Haven now. They were frozen. They’d be shipped to Amsterdam in the
morning, which was what Rowan wanted. Aaron had also removed Julien’s
books, and the trunk of dolls, and they too would go to the Motherhouse. But
Aaron wanted to photograph the dolls first and he wanted to examine the books,
and of course Rowan had agreed to all this, or it wouldn’t have happened.
So far, the books appeared
to be no more than ledgers, with various cryptic entries in French. If there
was an autobiography such as Richard Llewellyn had indicated, it had not been
in that attic room.
It gave Michael an
irrational relief to know those things were no longer in the house. He was on
his fourth beer now, as they sat together on the velvet couches. He didn’t
care what they thought about it. Just one night’s peace, for Chrissakes,
he thought. And he had to slow down his brain so he could think it through.
Besides, he wasn’t getting drunk. He didn’t want to be drunk.
But what was one more beer
now, and besides they were here where they were safe.
At last, they fell quiet.
Rowan was staring at Michael, and suddenly for the whole disaster Michael felt
mortally ashamed.
‘And how are you, my
dear?’ asked Michael. ‘After all this madness. I’m not being
very much help to you, am I? I must have scared you to death. Do you wish you’d
followed your adoptive mother’s advice and stayed in California?’
‘You didn’t
scare me,’ she said affectionately, ’and I liked taking care of
you. I told you that once before. But I’m thinking. All the wheels in my
head are turning. It’s the strangest mixture of elements, this whole
thing.’
‘Explain.’
‘I want my family,’
she said. ‘I want my cousins, all nine hundred of them or however many
there are. I want my house. I want my history — and I mean the one Aaron
gave to us. But I don’t want this damned thing, this secret mysterious
evil thing. I don’t want it, and yet it’s so… so seductive!’
Michael shook his head. ‘It’s
like I told you last night. It’s irresistible.’
‘No, not irresistible,’
she said, ’but seductive.’
‘And dangerous?’
Aaron suggested. ‘I think we are more certain of that now than ever. I
think we know we are talking of a creature which can change matter.’
‘I’m not so sure,’
said Rowan. ‘I examined those stinking things as best I could. The
changes were insignificant; they were changes in the surface tissue. But of
course the samples were hopelessly old and corroded…"
‘But what about the
one with the face like Lasher?’ Michael asked. ‘The duplicate?’
She shook her head. ‘No
evidence to indicate it wasn’t a look-alike person,’ she said. ‘Julien
looked like Lasher. Remarkably so. Again the changes may have been skin deep.
Impossible to tell.’
‘OK, skin deep, but
what about that?’ Michael pressed. ‘You ever heard of a thing that
could do that? We aren’t talking about a blush, we’re talking about
something permanent! Something there after a century.’
‘You know what the
mind can do,’ said Rowan. ‘I don’t have to tell you that
people can control their bodies to an amazing extent by thought. They can make
themselves die if they want to. They’ve been known to make themselves
levitate, if you believe the anecdotal evidence. Stilling heart rates, raising
temperatures, that’s all well documented. The saints in their trances
could make the wounds of the stigmata open in their hands. They can also make
these same wounds close. Matter is subject to mind, and we are only beginning
to understand the extent of it. And besides, we know that when this thing
materializes it has a solid body. At least it seems solid. So the thing changed
the subcutaneous tissue of a corpse. What of it? It wasn’t even a live
body, from what you’ve told me. It’s all rather crude and imprecise.’
‘You amaze me,’
said Michael almost coldly.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I’m
sorry. But I have a horrible feeling it’s all planned that you’re
who you are, that you’re a brilliant doctor! It’s all planned.’
‘Calm down, Michael.
There are too many flaws in this whole story for everything to be planned.
Nothing’s planned in this family. Consider the history.’
‘It wants to be human,
Rowan,’ said Michael, ‘that’s the meaning of what it said to
Petyr van Abel and to me. It wants to be human, and it wants you to help it.
What did the ghost of Stuart Townsend say to you, Aaron. It said, "It’s
all planned.‘"
‘Yes,’ said
Aaron thoughtfully, ’but it’s a mistake to over-interpret that
dream. And I think Rowan is right. You cannot assume that you know what is
planned. And by the way, for what it’s worth, I don’t think this
thing can become human. It wants to have a body, perhaps, but I don’t
think that it would ever be human.’
‘Oh, that’s
beautiful,’ said Michael, ’just beautiful. And I do think it
planned everything. It planned for Rowan to be taken away from Deirdre. That’s
why it killed Cortland. It planned for Rowan to be kept away until she’d
become not only a witch, but a witch doctor. It planned the very moment of her
return.’
‘But again,’
said Rowan, ’why did it show itself to you? If you’re to intervene,
why did it show itself to you?’
He sighed. With a sinking
heart he thought about his pleas to Deborah, about touching the old doll of
Deborah, and not seeing her or hearing her voice. The delirium came back to
him, the stench of the room, and the ugliness of the rotted specimens. He
thought of the mystery of the doorway. Of the spirit’s strange words, I
see the thirteen.
‘I’m going on
with my own plan,’ said Rowan calmly. ‘I’m going to
claim the legacy and the house, just as I told you. I still want to restore the
house. I want to live in it. I won’t be deterred from it.’ She
looked at him, expecting him to say something. ‘And this being, no matter
how mysterious he is, is not going to get in the way of that, if I have
something to say about it. I told you it’s overplayed its hand.’
She looked at Michael,
almost angrily. ‘Are you with me?’ she demanded.
‘Yes, I’m with
you, Rowan. I love you! And I think you’re right to go ahead. We can
start on the house any damn time you want. I want that too.’
She was pleased, immensely
pleased, but still her calm distressed him. He looked at Aaron.
‘What do you think,
Aaron?’ he asked. ‘About what the creature said, about my role in
this? You have to have an interpretation.’
‘Michael, what’s
important is that you interpret. That you regain an understanding of
what happened to you. I have no certain interpretation of anything.
‘This may sound
frightfully strange to you, but as a member of the Talamasca, as the brother of
Petyr, and Arthur and Stuart, I’ve already accomplished my most important
goals here. I’ve made successful contact with both of you. The Mayfair
history has been given to Rowan. And you have some knowledge now, fragmentary
and biased as it may be, to assist you.’
‘You guys are a bunch
of monks,’ said Michael grumpily. He lifted his beer in a careless toast.
’ "We watch, and we are always here." Aaron, why did all this
happen?’
Aaron laughed
good-naturedly, but he shook his head. ‘Michael, Catholics always want us
to offer the consolations of the Church. We can’t do it. I don’t
know why it’s happened. I do know that I can teach you to control the
power in your hands, to shut it off at will so it stops tormenting you.’
‘Maybe,’ said
Michael wearily. ‘Right now I wouldn’t take off these gloves to
shake hands with the president of the United States.’
‘When you want to work
with it,’ said Aaron, I’m at your service. I’m here for both
of you.’ He looked at Rowan for a long moment and then back to Michael. ‘I
don’t have to warn you to be careful, do I?’
‘No,’ said
Rowan. ‘But what about you? Has anything else happened since the traffic
accident?’
‘Little things,’
said Aaron. ‘They’re not important in themselves. And it might very
well be my imagination. I’m as human as the next man, as far as that
goes. I feel I’m being watched however, and menaced in a rather subtle
way.’
Rowan started to interrupt,
but he gestured for silence.
‘I have my guard up. I’ve
been in these situations before. And one very odd aspect of the whole thing is
this: when I’m with you — either of you — I don’t feel
this… this presence near me. I feel completely safe.’
‘If it harms you,’
said Rowan, ’it makes its final tragic error. Because I shall never
address it or recognize it in any way. I’ll try to kill it when I see it.
All its schemes will be in vain.’
Aaron reflected for a
moment.
‘Do you think it knows
that?’ asked Rowan.
‘Possibly,’ said
Aaron. ‘But it’s like everything else. A puzzle. A pattern can be a
puzzle. It can involve great and intricate order; or it can be a labyrinth. I
honestly don’t know what it knows. I do believe that Michael is entirely
right. It wants a human body. There seems no doubt of it. But what it knows and
what it doesn’t know… I can’t say. I don’t know what it
really is. I don’t guess anyone knows.’
He took a sip of his coffee
and then moved the cup away. Then he looked at Rowan.
‘There’s no
doubt it will approach you, of course. You realize this. This antipathy you
feel won’t keep it at bay forever. I doubt it’s keeping it at bay
now. It’s simply waiting for a proper opportunity.’
‘God,’ Michael
whispered. It was like hearing that an assailant would soon attack the person
he loved most in all the world. He felt a crippling jealousy and anger.
Rowan was looking at Aaron. ‘What
would you do if you were me?’ asked Rowan.
I’m not sure,’
Aaron answered. ‘But I cannot emphasize enough that it is dangerous.’
The history told me that.’
‘And that it’s
treacherous.’
‘The history told me
that too. Do you think I should try to make contact with it?’
‘No. I don’t. I
think letting it come to you is the wisest thing you can do. And for the love
of God, try to remain in complete control always.’
‘There’s no
getting away from it, is there?’
‘I don’t think
so. And I can make a guess as to what it will do when it approaches you.’
‘What?’
‘It will demand your
secrecy and your cooperation. Or it will refuse to reveal itself or its
purposes fully.’
‘It will divide you
from us,’ said Michael.
‘Exactly,’ Aaron
went on.
‘Why do you think it
will do that?’
Aaron shrugged. ‘Because
that is what I would do if I were it.’
‘What’s the
chance of driving it out? Of a straight-out exorcism?’
‘I don’t know,’
said Aaron. ‘Those rituals certainly do work, but I myself don’t
know how to make them work, and I don’t know what the effect would be
upon an entity this powerful. You see, that is the remarkable thing. This being
is a monarch among its kind. A sort of genius.’
She laughed softly.
‘It’s so cunning
and unpredictable,’ Aaron said. ‘I’d be dead right now if it
wanted me to be dead. Yet it doesn’t kill me.’
‘For God’s sake,
Aaron,’ Michael said, ‘don’t challenge it.’
‘It knows I would hate
it,’ said Rowan, ’if it hurt you.’
‘Yes, that may explain
why it hasn’t gone farther. But there we are again, at the beginning.
Whatever you do, Rowan, never lose sight of the history. Consider the fate of
Suzanne, and Deborah, and Stella, and Antha and Deirdre. Maybe if we knew the
full story of Marguerite or Katherine, or Marie Claudette or the others from
Saint-Domingue their stories would be just as tragic. And if any one character
in the drama can be held responsible for so much suffering and death, it is
Lasher.’
Rowan seemed lost in her
thoughts for a moment. ‘God, I wish it would go away,’ she
murmured.
‘That would be too
much to ask for, I think,’ said Aaron. He sighed and took out his pocket
watch, and then rose from the couch. ‘I’m going to leave you now. I’ll
be upstairs in my suite if you need me.’
‘Thank God you’re
staying,’ said Rowan. ‘I was afraid you’d go back to Oak
Haven.’
‘No. I have Julien’s
books upstairs, and I think I should like to be in town just now. As long as I
don’t crowd you.’
‘You don’t crowd
us at all,’ said Rowan.
‘Let me ask you one
more thing,’ Michael said. ‘When you were in the house, what did it
feel like?’
Aaron gave a little laugh
and shook his head. He considered for a minute. ‘I think you can imagine,’
he said gently. ‘But one thing did surprise me - that it was so
beautiful; so grand and yet so inviting, with all the windows opened and the
sun coming in. I suppose I thought it would be forbidding. But nothing could
have been farther from the truth.’
This was the answer Michael
had hoped to hear, but the mood was still on him from the long ordeal of the
afternoon, and it failed to cheer him.
‘It’s a
wonderful house,’ said Rowan, ‘And it’s already changing. We’re
already making it ours. How long will it take, Michael, to bring it back to
what it was meant to be?’
‘Not long, Rowan, two,
three months, maybe less. By Christ-mas it could be finished. I’m itching
to do it. If I could just lose this feeling…"
‘What feeling?’
‘That it’s all
planned.’
‘Forget about that,’
said Rowan crossly.
‘Let me make a
suggestion,’ Aaron said. ‘Get a good night’s sleep, then
proceed with what you really want to do - with the legal questions at hand,
with the settling of the estate, with the house perhaps - all the good things
you want to do. And be on guard. Be on guard always. When our mysterious friend
approaches, insist upon your own terms.’
Michael sat sullenly staring
at the beer as Rowan walked Aaron to the door. She came back, settled down beside
him, and slipped her arm around him.
‘I’m scared,
Rowan,’ he said, ’and I hate it. Positively hate it.’
‘I know, Michael,’
she said, ’but we’re going to win.’
That night, after Rowan had
been asleep for hours, Michael got up, went into the living room, and took the
notebook out of his valise which Aaron had given him at the retreat house. He
felt normal now. And the abnormalities of the day seemed strangely distant.
Though he was still sore all over, he felt rested. And it was comforting to
know Rowan was only a few feet away, and that Aaron slept in the suite above.
Now Michael wrote down
everything he had told them. He went through it in writing as he had gone
through it in words, only more slowly, and perhaps more thoughtfully, and he
talked about it with himself in the notebook as he would in a diary because
that is what the notebook had become.
He wrote down all he could
remember of the little fragments that had come back before he had taken off the
gloves. And it was not surprising that he could remember almost nothing at all. And then
the beginning of the catastrophe when he’d held Deirdre’s nightgown
in his hand:
‘Same drums as the
Comus Parade. Or any such parade. The point is, an awful frightening sound, a
sound to do with some sort of dark and potentially destructive energy.’
He stopped. Then went on. ‘I
remember something else too, now. At Rowan’s house in Tiburon. After we
made love. I woke up thinking the place was on fire and there were all kinds of
people downstairs. I remember now. It was the same ambience, the same lurid
sort of light, the same sinister quality.
‘And the fact of the
matter was, that Rowan was just down there by the fire she’d lighted in
the fireplace.
‘But it was the same
feeling. Fire and people there, many many people, crowded together, a commotion
in the flickering light.
‘And I had no sense of
recognition when I saw Julien upstairs, or when I saw Charlotte, or Mary Beth,
or Antha, poor, tragic Antha scrambling over that roof. To see something like
that is to feel it; it swallows you. There’s nothing left of you inside
while you’re seeing it. But they weren’t in my visions. None of
them. And Deborah was just a body crumpled on the pyre. She wasn’t
standing there with them. Now surely that means something in itself.’
He reread what he had
written. He wanted to add more but he was leery of embellishment. He was leery
of logic. Deborah’s not one of them? That’s why she wasn’t
there?
He went on to describe the
rest. ‘Antha was wearing a cotton dress. I saw the patent leather belt
she wore. When she crawled across the roof, she tore her stockings. Her knees
were bleeding. But her face, that was the unforgettable part, her eye torn out
of the socket. And the sound of her voice. I’ll carry that sound to the
grave with me. And Julien. Julien looked as solid as she did while he was
watching. Julien wore black. And Julien was young. Not a boy, by any means. But
a vigorous man, not an old man. Even in the bed he wasn’t old.’
Again he paused. ‘And
what else did Lasher say that was new. Something about patience, about
waiting… and then that mention of the thirteen.
‘But the thirteen
what? If it’s a number on a doorway, I haven’t seen it. The jars,
there weren’t thirteen jars. There were more like twenty, but I’ll
verify this with Rowan.’
Again, he stopped, thought
about embellishments, but didn’t add them.
‘The cheerful fiend
didn’t say a damn thing about a doorway,’ he wrote. ‘No, just
his threat that I’d be dead while he’d be flesh and blood.’
Dead. Tombs. Something Rowan
had said before the day was shattered, like a piece of glass. Or like a glass
jar. Something about a keyhole doorway carved on the Mayfair tomb.
‘I’ll go there
tomorrow, and see for myself. If the number thirteen is carved somewhere on
that doorway, I hope to God it brings me more enlightenment than what happened
today.
‘Whatever happens, no
matter what I see, or what I think it means, I begin some serious work
tomorrow. And so does Rowan. She goes downtown early with Ryan and Pierce to
talk about the legacy. I start to talk to the other contractors in town. I
start real, true, honest work on the house.
‘And that feels better
than any other course of action. It feels like a form of salvation.
‘Let’s see how
Lasher likes it. Let’s see what he chooses to do.’
He left the notebook on the
table and went back to bed.
In sleep, Rowan was so
smooth and expressionless that she was like a perfect wax mannequin beneath the
sheets. The warmth of her skin surprised him when he kissed her. Stirring
slowly, she turned and wound her arms around him, and nuzzled against his neck.
‘Michael…’ she whispered in a dreamy voice. ‘St
Michael, the archangel…’ Her fingers touched his lips, as if
groping in the dark to know that he was really there. ‘Love you…’
‘I love you, too,
darlin’,’ he whispered. ‘You’re mine, Rowan.’ And
he felt the heat of her breasts against his arm, as he drew her close to him.
She turned over and her soft fleecy sex was a little flame against his thigh,
as she settled back into sleep.
THIRTY-TWO
THE LEGACY.
It had come into her mind
some time during the night: a half dream of hospitals and clinics, and
magnificent laboratories, peopled by brilliant researchers…
And all of this you can do.
They wouldn’t
understand. Aaron would and Michael would. But the rest of them wouldn’t because
they didn’t know the secrets of the file. They didn’t know what had
been in the jars.
They knew things but they
didn’t know all the way back over the centuries to Suzanne of the
Mayfair, midwife and healer in her filthy Scottish village, or Jan van Abel at
his desk in Leiden, drawing his clean ink illustration of a flayed torso to
reveal the layers of muscle and vein. They didn’t know about Marguerite
and the dead body flopping on the bed, and roaring with the voice of a spirit,
or Julien watching, Julien who had put the jars in the attic instead of
destroying them almost a century ago.
Aaron knew and Michael knew.
They would understand the dream of hospitals and clinics and laboratories, of
healing hands laid upon sore and aching bodies by the thousands.
What a joke on you, Lasher!
Money was no mystery to her;
she was not frightened by the legacy. She could already imagine to the limits
that it might allow. She’d never been charmed by money as she had been by
anatomy and microsurgery, by biophysics or neuro-chemistry. But it was no
mystery. She’d studied it before, and she’d study it now. And the
legacy was something that could be mastered like any other subject… and
converted into hospitals, clinics, laboratories… lives saved.
If only she could get the
memory of the dead woman out of the house. For that was the real ghost to her,
not the ghosts whom Michael had seen, and when she thought of his suffering she
could scarcely bear it. It was like seeing everything she loved in him dying
inside. She would have driven all the demons in the world back away from him if
only she’d known how to do it.
But the old woman. The old
woman lay in the rocker still as if she would never leave it. And her stench
was worse than the stench of the jars, because it was Rowan’s murder. And
the perfect crime.
The stench corrupted the
house; it corrupted the history. It corrupted the dream of the hospitals. And
Rowan waited at the door.
We want in, old
woman. I want my house and my family. The jars have been smashed and the contents
are gone now. I have the history in my hand, brilliant as a jewel. I shall
atone for it all. Let me in so that I can fight the battle.
Why were they not friends,
she and the old woman? Rowan had only contempt for the evil, spiteful voice
which had taunted Michael from the contents of the broken jars.
And the spirit knew she
loathed it. That when she remembered its secretive touch, she loathed it.
Alone yesterday, hours
before Michael had come, she had sat there, waiting for Lasher, listening to
every creak and whisper in the old walls.
If you think you can
frighten me, you are tragically mistaken. I have no fear of you, and no love
either. You are mysterious. Yes. And I am curious, but that is a very cold
thing for a scientific mind such as mine. Very cold. You stand between me and
the things I could love warmly.
She should have destroyed
the jars then. She should have never urged Michael to take off the gloves, and
she never would again, of that she was certain. Michael couldn’t endure
this power in his hands. He couldn’t really endure his memory of the
visions. It made him suffer, and it filled her with dread to see him afraid.
It was the fact of the
drowning that had brought them together, not these mysterious dark forces that
lurked in the house. Voices speaking from rotted heads in jars. Ghosts in
taffeta. His strength and her strength, that had been the origin of their love,
and the future was the house, the family, the legacy which could bring the
miracles of medicine to thousands, even millions.
What were all the dark
ghosts and legends on earth compared to those hard and glittering realities? In
her sleep, she saw the buildings rise. She saw the immensity. And the words of
the history ran through her dreams. No, never meant to kill the old woman, the
one awful flaw. To have killed. To have done something so wrong…
At six o’clock, when
her breakfast arrived, the newspaper came with it.
SKELETON
FOUND IN FAMOUS GARDEN DISTRICT HOUSE
Well, that was inevitable,
wasn’t it? Seems Ryan had warned her that they couldn’t quash it.
Numbly, she scanned the several paragraphs, amused in spite of herself, at the
gothic tale unfolding in a quaint old-fashioned journalistic style.
Who could argue with the
statement that the Mayfair mansion had always been associated with tragedy? Or
that the one person who might have shed light upon the demise of Texan Stuart
Townsend was Carlotta Mayfair, who had died the very night that the remains
were discovered, after a long and distinguished legal career?
The rest was an elegy to
Carlotta, which filled Rowan with coldness and guilt.
Surely someone from the
Talamasca was clipping this story. Perhaps Aaron was reading it in his rooms
above. What would he write in the file about it? It comforted her to think of
the file.
In fact, she was a lot more
comfortable now than a sane person ought to be. For no matter what was
happening, she was a Mayfair, among all the other Mayfairs; and her secret
sorrows were tangled with older, more intricate sorrows.
Even yesterday when Michael
had been smashing the jars and wrestling with the power, it had not been the
worst for her, not by any means. She had him, she had Aaron, she had all the
cousins. She wasn’t alone. Even with the murder of the old woman, she wasn’t
alone.
She sat still for a long
time after reading the story, her hands clasped on top of the folded newspaper,
as rain came down hard outside, and the food on the breakfast table grew cold.
No matter what else she
felt, she ought to grieve in silence for the old woman. She ought to let the
misery coagulate in her soul. And the woman was going to be dead forever now.
Wasn’t she?
The truth was, so much was
happening to her, and so rapidly, that she could no longer catalog her
responses; or even manifest any response at all. She passed in and out of
emotion. Yesterday when Michael was lying on the bed, his pulse racing and his
face flushed, she had been frantic. She had thought, If I lose this man, I’ll
die with him. I swear it. And an hour after, she had broken one jar after
another, spilling the contents into the white dishpan, and poking at it with an
ice pick as she examined it, before handing it over to Aaron to be packed in
the ice. Clinical as any doctor. No difference at all.
In between these moments of
crisis, she was drifting, watching, remembering, because it was all too
different, too purely unusual, and finally too much.
This morning, waking at four
a.m., she had not known where she was. Then it all came back to her, the
mingled flood of curses and blessings, her dream of the hospitals, and Michael
beside her, and the desire for him like a drug.
Not his fault really that
his every gesture, word, movement, or facial expression was electrically erotic
to her, no matter what else might be going on. He was a sex object and delightfully
oblivious to it, because in his innocence he didn’t really understand the
greed of her desire.
Sitting up in bed with her
arms wrapped around her knees, she had wondered if this wasn’t somehow
worse for a woman than a man, because a woman could find the smallest things
about a man violently erotic, such as the way his curly hair was mashed down
now on his forehead, or the way it curled on the back of his neck.
Weren’t men a little
more direct about things? Did they go mad over a woman’s ankle? Seems Dostoyevsky
said they did. But she had doubted it. It was excruciating for her to look at
the dark fleece on the back of Michael’s wrist, to see his gold watchband
cutting into it, to imagine his arm later, with the white cuff rolled up, which
for some reason made it even more sexy than when the arm was naked, and the
flash of his fingers as he lighted his cigarettes. All directly genitally
erotic. Everything done with a sharp edge, a punch. Or his low growly voice,
full of tenderness, when he talked on the phone to his Aunt Viv.
When he’d been on his
knees in that foul, ugly room, he’d been battling, striking out. And on
the dusty bed after, he had been irresistible to her in his exhaustion, his
large, strong hands curled and lying empty on the counterpane. Loosening his
thick leather belt and the zipper of his jeans, all erotic, that this powerful
thing was suddenly dependent upon her. But then the terror had gripped her when
she felt his pulse.
She’d sat with him for
a long tense time, until the pulse returned to normal; until his skin had
cooled. Until he was breathing in regular sleep. So coarsely and perfectly
beautiful he’d been, the white undershirt stretched tight over his chest,
just a real man and so exquisitely mysterious to her, with that dark hair on
his chest and on the backs of his arms, and the hands so much bigger than hers.
Only his fear cooled her
passion, and his fear never lasted very long.
This morning, she had wanted
to wake him up by clamping her mouth on his cock. But he needed his sleep now
after all that had happened. He needed it badly. She only prayed he had peace
in his dreams. And besides she was going to marry him as soon as it seemed
polite to ask him. And they had all their lives in the First Street house, didn’t
they, to do things like that?
And it seemed wrong to do
what she’d done several mornings with Chase, her old palomino cop from
Marin County, which was roll over next to him, press her hips against his flank
and her face against his suntanned upper arm, and squeeze her legs tightly
together, until the orgasm ran through her like a wash of blinding light.
It wasn’t much fun to
do that, either — nothing, in fact, compared to being tacked to the
mattress by an adorable brute, with a little gold crucifix dangling from a
chain around his neck.
He hadn’t even stirred
when the thunder rolled overhead, when the crack came so loud and sudden that
it was like guns tearing loose the roof.
And now, two hours later, as
the rain fell, and the breakfast grew cold, she sat dreaming, her mind running
over all the past and all the possibilities, and this crucial meeting, soon to
begin.
The phone startled her. Ryan
and Pierce were in the lobby, ready to take her downtown.
Quickly she wrote a note for
Michael, saying she was off on Mayfair legal business, and would be back for
dinner, no later than six. ‘Please keep Aaron with you and don’t go
over to the house alone.’ She signed it with love.
‘I want to marry you,’
she said aloud as she placed the note on the bedside table. Softly he snored into
the pillow. ‘The archangel and the witch,’ she said, even more
loudly. He slept on. She chanced one kiss on his naked shoulder, felt gently of
the muscle in his upper arm, enough to drag her right into the bed if she
lingered on it, and went out and shut the door.
Skipping the fancy paneled
elevator, she walked down the carpeted stairs, staring for a moment at
Smooth-faced Ryan and his handsome son as if they were aliens from another
universe in their tropical wool suits, with their mellow southern voices, there
to guide her to a space ship disguised as a limousine.
The small quaint brick
buildings of Carondelet Street glided past in a curious silence, the sky like
polished stone beyond the delicate downpour, the lightning opening a vein in
the stone, the thunder crackling menacingly and then dying away.
At last they came into a
region of burnished skyscrapers, a shining America for two blocks, followed by
an underground garage that might have been anywhere in the world.
No surprises in the spacious
thirtieth-floor offices of May-fair and Mayfair, with its traditional
furnishings and thick carpet, not even that two of the assembled Mayfair
lawyers were women, and one was a very old man, or that the view through the
high glass windows was of the river, gray as the sky, dotted with interesting
tugs and barges, beneath the rain’s silver veil.
Then coffee and conversation
of the most vague and frustrating sort with the white-haired Ryan, his light
blue eyes as opaque as marbles, speaking interminably it seemed of ’considerable
investments,’ and ’long term holdings,’ and’tracts of
land which have been held for over a century,’ and hard-core conservative
investments ’larger than you might expect.’
She waited; they had to give
her more than this; they had to. And then like a computer she analyzed the
precious names and details when he at last began to let them slip.
Here it was, finally, and
she could see the hospitals and the clinics shimmering against the dream
horizon, though she sat there motionless, expressionless, letting Ryan talk on.
Blocks of real estate in
downtown Manhattan and Los Angeles? The major financing for the Markham Harris
Resorts worldwide hotel chain? Shopping malls in Beverly Hills, Coconut Grove,
Boca Raton, and Palm Beach? Condominiums in Miami and Honolulu? And then once
more references to the ‘very large’ hard-core investments in
treasury bills, Swiss francs and gold.
Her mind drifted but never
very far. So Aaron’s descriptions in the file had been completely
accurate. He had given her the backdrop and the proscenium arch for this little
drama to be fully appreciated. Indeed he had given her knowledge of which these
clean-faced lawyers in their shining pastel office garments could not possibly
dream.
And once again, it struck
her as positively strange that Aaron and Michael had ever feared her
displeasure for placing a tool of that power in her hands. They didn’t
understand power, that was their problem. They’d never sliced into a
cerebellum.
And this legacy was a
cerebellum, wasn’t it?
She drank her coffee in
silence. Her eyes ran over the other Mayfairs, who also sat there in silence,
as Ryan continued drawing his vague pictures of municipal bonds, oil leases,
some cautious financing in the entertainment industry and of late in computer technology.
Now and then she nodded, and made a small note with her silver pen.
Yes, of course, she
understood that the firm had managed things for over a century. That deserved a
nod and a heartfelt murmur. Julien had founded the firm for such management. And
of course she could well envision how the legacy was entangled with the
finances of the family at large — ’all to the benefit of the
legacy, of course. For the legacy is first and foremost, but there has never
been a conflict, in fact, to speak of a conflict is to misunderstand the
scope…"
‘I understand.’
‘Ours has always been
a conservative approach, but to appreciate fully what I’m saying, one
must understand what such an approach means when one is speaking of a fortune
of this size. You might, realistically, think in terms of a small oil-producing
nation and I do not exaggerate - and of policies aimed at conserving and
protecting rather than expanding and developing, because when capital in this
amount is properly conserved against inflation or any other erosion or
encroachment, the expansion is virtually unstoppable, and the development in
countless directions is inevitable, and you are faced with the day-to-day issue
of investing revenues so large that…’
‘You’re talking
billions,’ she said in a quiet voice.
Silent ripples passed
through the assemblage. A Yankee blunder? She caught no vibration of
dishonesty, only confusion, and fear of her and what she might eventually do.
After all, they were Mayfairs, weren’t they? They were scrutinizing her
as she was scrutinizing them.
Pierce glanced at his
father, Pierce who was of all of them the most purely idealistic and the least
tarnished. Ryan glanced at the others, Ryan who understood the scope of what
was at stake in a way perhaps that the others could not.
But no answer was
forthcoming.
‘Billions.’ She
spoke again. ‘In real estate alone.’
‘Well, actually, yes,
I have to say that is correct, yes, billions in real estate alone.’
How embarrassed and
uncomfortable they all seemed, as if a strategic secret had been revealed.
She could smell the fear
suddenly, the revulsion of Lauren Mayfair, the older blond-haired woman lawyer,
in her seventies perhaps, with the soft powdery wrinkled skin, who eyed her
from the end of the table and imagined her shallow, spoilt, and programmed to
be totally ungrateful for what the firm had done. And then there was Anne Marie
Mayfair to the right, dark-haired, pretty, forty years or more, skillfully
rouged, and smoothly dressed in her gray suit and blouse of saffron silk, and
more frankly curious, peering at Rowan steadily through horn-rimmed glasses,
but convinced that disaster of one sort or another must lie ahead.
And Randall Mayfair,
grandson of Garland, slender, with a hoary thatch of gray hair, and a soft
wattle of a neck spilling over his collar, who merely sat there, eyes sleepy
under his heavy brows and faintly purpled lids, not fearful, but watchful and
by nature, resigned.
And when their eyes met,
Randall answered her silently. Of course
you don’t understand. How could you? How many people can understand?
And so you’ll want control, and for that you are a fool.
She cleared her throat,
ignoring the revealing manner in which Ryan made his hands into a church
steeple just beneath his chin and stared at her hard with his marble blue eyes.
‘You’re
underestimating me,’ she said in a monotone, her eyes sweeping the group.
‘I’m not underestimating you. I only want to know what’s
involved here. I cannot remain passive. It would be irresponsible to remain
passive.’
Moments of silence. Pierce
lifted his coffee cup and drank without a sound.
‘But what we’re
really talking about,’ said Ryan calmly and courteously, the steeple
having fallen, ‘to be completely practical here, you understand, is that
one can live in queenly luxury on a fraction of the interest earned by the
reinvestment of a fraction of the interest earned by the reinvestment of…
et cetera, if you follow me, without the capital ever being touched in any
incidence or for any reason…"
‘Again, I cannot be
passive, nor complacent, nor negligently ignorant. I do not believe that I
should be any of those things.’
Silence, and once again Ryan
to break it. Conciliatory and gentlemanly. ‘What specifically would you
like to know?’
‘Everything, the nuts
and bolts of it. Or perhaps I should say the anatomy. I want to see the entire
body as if it were stretched on a table. I want to study the organism as a
whole.’
A quick exchange of glances
between Randall and Ryan. And then Ryan again. ‘Well, that’s
perfectly reasonable but it may not be as simple as you imagine…’
‘Yet there must be a
beginning to it somewhere, and at some point, an end.’
‘Well, undoubtedly,
but I think you’re envisioning this, if I may say so, in the wrong way.’
‘One thing
specifically,’ she said. ‘How much of this money goes into
medicine? Are there any medical institutions involved?’
How startled they were. A
declaration of war, it seemed, or so said the face of Anne Marie Mayfair,
glancing at Lauren and then at Randall, in the first undisguised bit of
hostility which Rowan had witnessed since she’d come to this town. The
older Lauren, a finger hooked beneath her lower lip, eyes narrow, was too
polished for such a display and merely looked fixedly at Rowan, her gaze now
and then shifting very slowly to Ryan, who again began to speak.
‘Our philanthropic
endeavors have not in the past involved medicine, per se. Rather the Mayfair
Foundation is more heavily involved with the arts and with education, with educational
television in particular, and with scholarship funds at several universities,
and of course we donate enormous sums through several established charities,
quite independent of the Foundation, but all of this, you see, is carefully
structured, and does not involve the release of the control of the money
involved, so much as the release of the earnings…"
‘I know how that works,’
she said quietly. ‘But we are talking about billions, and hospitals,
clinics, and laboratories are profit-making institutions. I wasn’t
thinking of the philanthropic question, really. I was thinking of an entire
area of involvement, which could have considerable beneficial impact upon human
lives.’
How curiously cold and
exciting this moment was. How private too. Rather like the first time she had
ever approached the operating table and held the microinstruments in her own
hands.
‘We have not tended to
go in the direction of medicine,’ said Ryan with an air of finality. ‘The
field would require intense study, it would require an entire
restructuring… and Rowan, you do realize that this network of investments,
if I may call it that, has evolved over a century’s time. This isn’t
a fortune which can be lost if the silver market crashes, or if Saudi Arabia
floods the world with free oil. We are talking about a diversification here
which is very nearly unique in financial annals, and carefully planned
maneuvers which have proven profitable through two world wars and numberless
smaller upheavals.’
‘I understand,’
she said. ‘I really do. But I want information. I want to know
everything. I can start with the paper you filed with the IRS, and move on from
there. Perhaps what I want is an apprenticeship, a series of meetings in which
we discuss various areas of involvement. Above all I want statistics, because
statistics are the reality finally…"
Again, the silence, the
inner confusion, the glances ricocheting off each other. How small and crowded
the room had become.
‘You want my advice?’
asked Randall, his voice deeper and rougher than that of Ryan, but equally
patient in its mellow southern cadences. ‘You’re paying for it,
actually, so you might as well have it.’
She opened her hands. ‘Please.’
‘Go back to being a
neurosurgeon; draw an income for anything and everything you will ever need;
and forget about understanding where the money comes from. Unless you want to
cease being a doctor and become what we are - people who spend their lives at
board meetings, and talking to investment counselors and stockbrokers and other
lawyers and accountants with little ten-key adding machines, which is what you
pay us to do.’
She studied him, his dark
unkempt gray hair, his droopy eyes, the large wrinkled hands now clasped on the
table. Nice man. Yes, nice man. Man who isn’t a liar. None of them are
liars. None of them are thieves either. Intelligently managing this money requires
all their skill and earns them profits beyond the dreams of those with a taste
for thievery.
But they are all lawyers,
even pretty young Pierce with the porcelain skin is a lawyer, and lawyers have
a definition of truth which can be remarkably flexible and at odds with anyone
else’s definition.
Yet they have ethics. This
man has his ethics; but he is profoundly conservative, and those who are
profoundly conservative are not interventionists; they are not surgeons.
They do not even think in
terms of great goodness, or saving thousands, even millions of lives. They
cannot guess what it would mean if this legacy, this egregious and monumental
fortune, could be returned to the hands of the Scottish midwife and the Dutch
doctor as they approached the sickbed, hands out to heal.
She looked away, out towards
the river. For a moment her excitement had blinded her. She wanted the warmth
to die away from her face. Salvation, she whispered inside her soul. And it was
not important that they understand it. What was important was that she
understood it, and that they withheld nothing, and that as things were removed
from their control, they were not hurt or diminished, but that they too should
be saved.
‘What does it all
amount to?’ she asked, her eyes fixed on the river, on the long dark
barge being pushed upstream by the shabby snub-nosed tug.
Silence.
‘You’re thinking
of it in the wrong way,’ said Randall. ‘It’s all of a piece,
a great web…’
‘I can imagine. But I
want to know, and you mustn’t blame me for it. How much am I worth?’
No answer.
‘Surely you can make a
guess.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t
like to, because it might be entirely unrealistic if viewed from a…"
‘Seven and one half
billion,’ she said. ‘That’s my guess.’
Protracted silence. Vague
shock. She had hit very close to it, hadn’t she? Close perhaps to an IRS
figure, which had surfaced in one of these hostile and partially closed minds.
It was Lauren who answered,
Lauren whose expression had changed ever so slightly, as she drew herself up to
the table and held her pencil in both hands.
‘You’re entitled
to this information,’ she said in a delicate, almost stereotypically
feminine voice, a voice that suited her carefully groomed blond hair and pearl
earrings. ‘You have every legal right to know what is yours. And I do not
speak only for myself when I say that we will cooperate with you completely,
for that we are ethically bound to do. But I must say, personally, that I find
your attitude rather morally interesting. I welcome the chance to talk with you
about every aspect of the legacy, down to the smallest detail. My only fear is
that you’re going to tire of this game, long before all the cards are on
the table. But I am more than willing to take the initiative and begin.’
Did she realize how very
patronizing this was? Rowan doubted it. But after all, the legacy had belonged
to these people for over fifty years, hadn’t it? They deserved patience.
Yet she could not quite give them what they deserved.
‘There really isn’t
any other way for either of us to go about it,’ Rowan said. ‘It isn’t
merely morally interesting that I want to know what’s involved, it’s
morally imperative that I find out.’
The woman chose not to
respond. Her delicate features remained tranquil, her small pale eyes widening
slightly, her thin hands trembling only a little as they held the pencil at
both ends. The others at the table were watching her, though each in his or her
own fashion tried to disguise it.
And Rowan realized: this is
the brains behind the firm, this woman, Lauren. And all the time, Rowan had
thought it was Ryan. Silently she acknowledged her mistake, wondering if the
woman could possibly perceive what she was thinking. We have been wrong
about each other…
But one could read anything
into such an impassive face and such a graceful slow manner.
‘May I ask you a
question,’ the woman asked, still looking directly at Rowan. ‘It’s
a purely business question, you understand.’
‘Of course.’
‘Can you take being
rich? I mean really, really rich? Can you handle it?’
Rowan was tempted to smile.
It was such a refreshing question, and again, so patronizing and so insulting.
Any number of replies came to her lips. But she settled for the simplest.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And I want to build hospitals.’
Silence.
Lauren nodded. She folded
her arms on the table, her eyes taking in the entire assembly. ‘Well, I
don’t see any problem with that,’ she said calmly. ‘Seems
like an interesting idea. And we’re here to do what you want, of course.’
Yes, she was the brains
behind the firm. And she had allowed Ryan and Randall to do the talking. But
she was the one who would be the teacher and eventually the obstacle.
No matter.
Rowan had what she wanted.
The legacy was as real as the house was real, as real as the family was real.
And the dream was going to be realized. In fact, she knew: it could be done.
‘I think we can talk
about the immediate problems now, don’t you?’ Rowan asked. ‘You’ll
need to make an inventory of the possessions at the house? I believe someone
mentioned this. Also, Carlotta’s things. Is there anyone who wants to
remove them?’
‘Yes, and regarding
the house,’ said Ryan. ‘Have you come to any decision?’
‘I want to restore it.
I want to live in it. I’ll be marrying Michael Curry soon. Probably
before the end of the year. We’ll make our home there.’
It was as if a bright light
had snapped on, bathing each one of them in its warmth and illumination.
‘Oh, that’s
splendid,’ said Ryan.
‘So glad to hear it,’
said Anne Marie.
‘You don’t know
what the house means to us,’ said Pierce.
‘I wonder if you know,’
said Lauren, ’how very happy everyone will be to hear of this.’
Only Randall was quiet,
Randall with his droopy lids, and his fleshy hands, and then even he said
almost sadly, ‘Yes, that would be very simply wonderful.’
‘But can someone come
and take the old woman’s things away?’ Rowan asked. ‘I don’t
want to go in until that’s done.’
‘Absolutely,’
said Ryan. ‘We’ll begin the inventory tomorrow. And Gerald Mayfair
will call at once for Carlotta’s things.’
‘And a cleaning team,
I need a professional team to scrub down a room on the third floor and to
remove all the mattresses.’
‘Those jars,’
said Ryan, with a look of distaste. ‘Those disgusting jars.’
‘I emptied all of them.’
‘Whatever was in them?’
asked Pierce.
Randall was studying her
with his heavy sagging eyes at half mast.
‘It was all rotted. If
they can get the stench out, and take away the mattresses, we can begin the
restoration. All the mattresses, I think…"
‘Start fresh, yes. I’ll
take care of it. Pierce can go up there now.’
‘No, I’ll go
myself,’ she said.
‘Nonsense, Rowan, let
me handle it,’ said Pierce. He was already on his feet. ‘Do you
want replacements for the mattresses? They’re doubles, aren’t they,
those antique beds? Let me see, there are four. I can have them delivered and
installed this afternoon.’
‘That’s splendid,’
said Rowan. ‘The maid’s room needn’t be touched, and Julien’s
old bed can be dismantled and stored.’
‘Got it. What else can
I do for you?’
That’s more than
enough. Michael will take care of the rest. Michael will handle the renovation
himself.’
‘Yes, he is quite
successful at that, isn’t he?’ said Lauren quietly. Instantly she
realized the slip she had made. She lowered her eyes, then looked up at Rowan,
attempting to mask her slight confusion.
They had already
investigated him, hadn’t they? Had they found out about his hands?
‘We’d love to
keep you a while longer,’ said Ryan quickly. ‘Just a few papers we
have to show you, in connection with the estate, and perhaps some basic
documents pertaining to the legacy…"
‘Yes, of course, let’s
get to work. I’d like nothing better.’
‘Then it’s
settled. And we’ll take you to lunch afterwards. We wanted to take you to
Galatoire’s, if you have no other plans.’
‘Sounds wonderful.’
And so it was begun.
It was three o’clock
when she reached the house. In the full heat of the day, though the sky was
still overcast. The warmth seemed collected and stagnant beneath the oaks. As
she stepped out of the cab, she could see the tiny insects swarming in the
pockets of shadow. But the house caught her up instantly. Here alone again. And
the jars are gone, thank God, and the dolls, and very soon all that belonged to
Carlotta. Gone.
She had the keys in her
hand. They had shown her the papers pertaining to the house, which had been
entailed with the legacy in the year 1888 by Katherine. It was hers and hers alone.
And so were all the other billions which they wouldn’t speak of aloud. All mine.
Gerald Mayfair, a personable
young man with a bland face and nondescript features, came out the front door.
Quickly he explained that he was just leaving, he had only just placed the last
carton of Carlotta’s personal possessions in the trunk of his car.
The cleaning team had
finished about a half hour before.
He eyed Rowan a little
nervously as she offered her hand. He couldn’t have been more than
twenty-five, and did not resemble Ryan’s family. His features were
smaller and he lacked the poise she’d observed in the others. But he
seemed nice - what one would call a nice young guy.
His speaking voice was
certainly agreeable.
Carlotta had wanted his
grandmother to have her things, he explained. Of course the furniture would
remain. It belonged to Rowan. It was all quite old, dating from the time that
Carlotta’s grandmother, Katherine, had furnished the house.
Rowan thanked him for taking
care of things so quickly. She assured him she would be at the Requiem Mass for
Carlotta.
‘Do you know if she’s
been… buried?’ "Was that the proper word for being slipped
into one of those stone drawers?
Yes, he said, she had been
interred this morning. He’d been there with his mother. They’d
gotten her message to come for the things when they returned home.
She told him how much she
appreciated it, how much she wanted to meet all the family. He nodded.
‘It was nice of your
two friends to come,’ he said.
‘My friends? Come to
what?’
‘This morning at the
cemetery, Mr Lightner and Mr Curry.’
‘Oh, of course.
I… I should have been there myself.’
‘Doesn’t matter.
She didn’t want any fuss, and frankly…’
He stood quiet for a moment
on the flagstone walk, looking up at the house, and wanting to say something,
but seemingly unable to speak.
‘What is it?’
Rowan asked.
Perhaps he’d wandered
up there and seen all that broken glass before the cleaning team had arrived.
Surely he would have wanted to see where the ‘skeleton’ had lain,
that is, if he’d read the papers, or if the other Mayfairs had told him,
which maybe they had.
‘You plan to live in
it?’ he asked suddenly.
‘To restore it, to
bring it back to the old splendor. My husband… the man I’m going to
marry. He’s an expert on old houses; he says it’s absolutely solid.
He’s eager to begin.’
Still he stood quiet in the
shimmering air, his face glistening slightly, and his expression full of
expectation and hesitancy. Finally he said:
‘You know it has seen
so many tragedies. That’s what Aunt Carlotta always said.’
‘And so did the
morning paper,’ she said, smiling. ‘But it’s seen much
happiness, hasn’t it? In the old days, for decades at a stretch. I want
it to see happiness again.’
She waited patiently, and
then finally, she asked:
‘What is it you really
want to say to me?’
His eyes moved over her
face, and then with a little shift to his shoulders, and a sigh, he looked back
up at the house.
‘I think I should tell
you that Carlotta… Carlotta wanted me to burn the house after her death.’
‘You’re serious?’
‘I never had any
intention of doing it. I told Ryan and Lauren. I told my parents. But I thought
I should tell you. She was adamant. She told me how to do it. That I was to
start the fire in the attic with an oil lamp that was up there, and then move
down to the second floor and start the drapes burning and finally come down to
the first. She made me promise. She gave me a key.’
He handed this key to Rowan.
‘You don’t
really need it,’ he said. ‘The front door hasn’t been locked
in fifty years, but she was afraid someone might lock it. She knew she wouldn’t
die till Deirdre died, and those were her instructions.’
‘When did she tell you
this?’
‘Many times. The last
time was a week ago, maybe less.
Right before Deirdre
died… when they first knew she was dying. She called me late at night and
reminded me. "Burn it all," she said.’
‘She would have hurt
everyone if she had done that!’ Rowan whispered.
‘I know. My parents
were horrified. They were afraid she’d burn it herself. But what could
they do? Ryan said she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t have asked me to do
it if she’d been able to do it. He told me to humor her. Tell her I’d
do it so that she’d be sure of that, and not go to some other extreme.’
‘That was wise.’
He gave a little nod, then
his eyes drifted away from hers and back to the house.
‘I just wanted you to
know,’ he said. ‘I thought you should know.’
‘And what else can you
tell me?’
‘What else?’ He
gave a little shrug. Then he looked at her, and though he meant to turn away,
he didn’t. He locked in. ‘Be careful,’ he said. ‘Be
very careful. It’s old and it’s gloomy and it’s… it’s
not perhaps what it seems.’
‘How so?’
‘It’s not a
grand house at all. It’s some sort of domicile for something. It’s
a trap, you might say. It’s made up of all sorts of patterns. And the
patterns form a sort of trap.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t
know what I’m saying. I’m speaking off the top of my head. It’s
just… well, all of us have a little talent for feeling things…’
‘I know.’
‘And well, I guess I
wanted to warn you. You don’t know anything about us.’
‘Did Carlotta say that
about the patterns, about its being a trap?’
‘No, it’s only
my opinion. I came here more than the others. I was the only one Carlotta would
see in the last few years. She liked me. I’m not sure why. Sometimes I
was only there out of curiosity, though I wanted to be loyal to her, I really
did. It’s been like a cloud over my life.’
‘You’re glad it’s
finished.’
‘Yes. I am. It’s
dreadful to say it, but then she didn’t want to live on any longer. She
said so. She was tired. She wanted to die. But one afternoon, when I was alone
here, waiting for her, it came to me that it was a trap. A great big trap. I don’t
really know what I mean. I’m only saying perhaps that if you feel
something, don’t discount it…’
‘Did you ever see anything
when you were here?’
He thought for a moment,
obviously picking up her meaning with no difficulty.
‘Maybe once,’ he
said. ‘In the hallway. But then again, I could have imagined it.’
He fell silent. So did she.
That was the end of it, and he wanted to be going.
‘It was very nice to
talk to you, Rowan,’ he said with a feeble smile. ‘Call me if you
need me.’
She went inside the gate,
and watched almost furtively as his silver Mercedes, a large sedan, drove
slowly away.
Empty now. Quiet.
She could smell pine oil.
She climbed the stairs, and moved quickly from room to room. New mattresses,
still wrapped in shining plastic, on all the beds. Sheets and counterpanes
neatly folded and stacked to one side. Floors dusted.
Smell of disinfectant from
the third floor.
She went upstairs, moving
into the breeze from the landing window. The floor of the little chamber of the
jars was scrubbed immaculate except for a dark deep staining which probably
would never scrub away. Not a shard of glass to be seen in the light from the
window.
And Julien’s room,
dusted, straightened, boxes stacked, the brass bed dismantled and laid against
the wall beneath the windows, which had also been cleaned. Books nice and
straight. The old dark sticky substance scraped away from the spot where
Townsend had died.
All else was undisturbed.
Going back down to Carlotta’s
room, she found the drawers empty, the dresser bare, the armoire with nothing
left but a few wooden hangers. Camphor.
All very still. She saw
herself in the mirrored door of the armoire, and was startled. Her heart beat
loudly for a moment. No one else here.
She walked downstairs to the
first floor, and back down the hallway to the kitchen. They had mopped these
floors and cleaned the glass doors of the cabinets. Good smell of wax again,
and pine oil, and the smell of wood. That lovely smell.
An old black phone stood on
the wooden counter in the pantry.
She dialed the hotel.
‘What are you doing?’
she asked.
‘Lying here in bed feeling
lonely and sorry for myself. I went over to the cemetery this morning with
Aaron. I’m exhausted. I still ache all over, like I’ve been in a
fight. Where are you? You aren’t over there, are you?’
‘Yes, and it’s
warm and empty and all the old woman’s things are gone, and the
mattresses are gone, and the attic room is scrubbed clean.’
‘Are you the only one
there?’
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And it’s beautiful. The sun’s coming out.’ She stood
looking about herself, at the light pouring through the French windows into the
kitchen, at the light in the dining room, falling on the hardwood floor. ‘I’m
definitely the only one here.’
‘I want to come over
there,’ he said.
‘No, I’m leaving
now to walk back to the hotel. I want you to rest. I want you to go for a
checkup.’
‘Be serious.’
‘Have you ever had an
electrocardiogram?’
‘You’re going to
scare me into a heart attack. I had all that after I drowned. My heart’s
perfect. What I need is erotic exercise in large doses sustained over an
endless period of time.’
‘Depends on your pulse
when I get there.’
‘Come on, Rowan. I’m
not going for any checkup. If you’re not here in ten minutes, I’m
coming to get you.’
‘I’ll be there
sooner than that.’
She hung up.
For a moment she thought
about something she’d read in the file, something Arthur Langtry had
written about his experience of seeing Lasher, something about his heart
skipping dangerously, and about being dizzy. But then Arthur had been a very
old man.
Peace here. Only the cries
of the birds from the garden.
She walked slowly through
the dining room and through the high keyhole doorway into the hall, glancing
back at it to enjoy its soaring height and her own seeming smallness. The light
poured in through the sun room, shining on the polished floor.
A great lovely sense of well-being
came over her. All mine.
She stood still for a few
seconds, listening, feeling. Trying to take full possession of the moment,
trying to remember the anguish of yesterday and the day before, and to feel
this in comparison, this wonderful lighthearted feeling. And once again the
whole lurid tragic history comforted her, because she with all her own dark
secrets had a place in it. And she would redeem it. That was the most important
thing of all.
She turned to walk to the
front of the house, and for the first time noticed a tall vase of roses on the
hall table. Had Gerald put them there? Perhaps he had forgotten to mention it.
She stopped, studying the
beautiful drowsy blooms, all of them blood red, and rather like the
florist-perfect flowers for the dead, she thought, as if they’d been
picked from those fancy sprays left in the cemetery.
Then with a chill, she
thought of Lasher. Flowers tossed at Deirdre’s feet. Flowers put on the
grave. In fact, she was so violently startled that for a moment she could hear
her heart again, beating in the stillness. But what an absurd idea. Probably
Gerald had put the flowers here, or Pierce when he had seen to the mattresses.
After all, this was a commonplace vase, half filled with fresh water, and these
were simply florist roses.
Nevertheless the thing
looked ghastly to her. In fact, as her heartbeat grew steady again, she
realized there was something distinctly odd about the bouquet. She was not an
expert on roses, but weren’t they generally smaller than this? How large
and floppy these flowers looked. And such a dark blood color. And look at the
sterns, and the leaves; the leaves of roses were invariably almond-shaped, were
they not, and these leaves had many points on them. As a matter of fact, there
wasn’t any leaf in this entire bouquet which had the same pattern or
number of points as another. Strange. Like something grown wild, genetically
wild, full of random and overwhelming mutation.
They were moving, weren’t
they? Swelling. No, just unfolding, as roses often do, opening little by little
until they fall apart in a cascade of bruised petals. She shook her head. She
felt a little dizzy.
Probably left there by
Pierce. And what did it matter? She’d call him from the hotel just to
make sure, and tell him she appreciated it.
She moved on to the front of
the house, trying to capture the feeling of well-being again, breathing in the
luxurious warmth around her. Very like a temple, this house. She looked back at
the stairs. All the way up there, Arthur had seen Stuart Townsend.
Well, there was no one there
now.
No one. No one in the long
parlor. No one out there on the porch where the vines crawled on the screens.
No one.
‘Are you afraid of me?’
she asked out loud. It gave her a curious tingling excitement to speak the words.
‘Or is it that you expected me to be afraid of you and you’re angry
that I’m not? That’s it, isn’t it?’
Only the stillness answered
her. And the soft rustling sound of the rose petals falling on the marble
table.
With a faint smile, she went
back to the roses, picked one from the vase, and gently holding it to her lips
to feel its silky petals, she went out the front door.
It really was just an
enormous rose, and look how many petals, and how strangely confused they
seemed. And the thing was already withering.
In fact, the petals were
already brown at the edges and curling. She savored the sweet perfume for
another slow second, and then dropped the rose into the garden as she went out
the gate.
PART
THREE
Come
into my Parlor
THIRTY-THREE
THE MADNESS of restoration
began on Thursday morning, though the night before over dinner at Oak Haven
with Aaron and Rowan, he had begun to outline what steps he would take. As far
as the grave was concerned, and all his thoughts about it and the doorway and
the number thirteen, they had gone into the notebook, and he did not wish to
dwell on them anymore.
The whole trip to the
cemetery had been grim. The morning itself had been overcast yet beautiful, of
course, and he had liked walking there with Aaron, and Aaron had shown him how
to block some of the sensations that came through his hands. He’d been
practicing, going without the gloves, and here and there touching gateposts, or
picking sprigs of wild lantana, and turning off the images, pretty much the way
one blocks a bad or obsessive thought, and to his surprise it more or less
worked.
But the cemetery. He had
hated it, hated its crumbling romantic beauty, and hated the great heap of
withering flowers from Deirdre’s funeral which still surrounded the
crypt. And the gaping hole where Carlotta Mayfair was soon to be laid to rest,
so to speak.
Then as he was standing
there, realizing in a sort of stunned miserable state that there were twelve
crypts in the tomb and the doorway carved on the top made thirteen portals, up
came his old friend Jerry Lonigan with some very pale-faced May-fairs, and a
coffin on wheels which could only belong to Carlotta, which was slipped, with
only the briefest ceremony by the officiating priest, into the vacant slot.
Twelve crypts, the keyhole
door, and then that coffin sliding in, blam! And his eyes moving up to that
keyhole door again, which did look exactly like the doors in the house, but
why? And then they were all going, with a quick exchange of pleasantries, for
the Mayfairs assumed he and Aaron were there for the ceremony and expressed
their appreciation before they went away.
‘Come have a beer with
me some time,’ said Jerry.
‘Best to Rita.’
The cemetery had dropped
into a buzzing, dizzying silence. Not a single thing he had seen since the
beginning of this odyssey, not even the images from the jars, had filled him
with as much dread as the sight of this tomb. ‘There’s the thirteen,’
he had said to Aaron.
‘But they have buried
so many in those crypts,’ Aaron had explained. ‘You know how it’s
done.’
‘It’s a pattern,’
he’d murmured halfheartedly, feeling the blood drain from his face. ‘Look
at it, twelve crypts and a doorway. It’s a pattern. I tell you. I knew
the number and the door were connected. I just don’t know what they mean.’
Later that afternoon waiting
for Rowan, while Aaron typed away on his computer in the front room, presumably
on the Mayfair history, Michael had drawn the doorway in his notebook. He hated
it. He hated the empty middle of it, for that’s what it had been in the
bas-relief, not a door, but a doorway.
‘And I’ve seen
that doorway somewhere else, in some other representation,’ he wrote. ‘But
I don’t know where.’
He had hated even thinking
about it. Even the thing trying to be human had not filled him with such apprehension.
But over supper, on the
patio at Oak Haven, with the ashen twilight surrounding them and the candles
flickering in their glass shades, they had resolved again to spend no more time
poring over interpretations. They would move forward as they said. He and Rowan
had spent the night in the front bedroom of the plantation, a lovely change
from the hotel, and in the morning when he woke up at six, with the sun beating
on his face, Rowan was already on the gallery, enjoying her second pot of
coffee, and raring to go.
As soon as he arrived back
in New Orleans, at nine o’clock, the work began.
He had never had so much
fun.
He rented a car and roamed
the city, taking down the names of the construction crews who were working on
the finest of the uptown houses and the classy restorations going on in the
Quarter downtown. He got out and talked to the bosses and the men; sometimes he
went inside with the more talkative people who were willing to show him their
work in progress, discussing the local wage scales and expectations, and asking
for the names of carpenters and painters who needed work.
He called the local
architectural firms who were famous for handling the grand homes, and requested
various recommendations. The sheer friendliness of people astonished him. And
the mere mention of the Mayfair house kindled excitement. People were only too
eager to give advice.
For all the work that was
going on, the city was full of unemployed craftsmen. The oil boom of the 19705
and early 19805 had generated tremendous interest and activity in restoration.
And now the city lay under the cloud of the oil depression, with an economy
bruised by numerous foreclosures. Money was tight. There were mansions on the
market for half of what they were worth.
By one o’clock he had
hired three crews of excellent painters, and a team of the finest plasterers in
the city - quadroons descended from the colored families who had been free long
before the Civil War, and who had been plastering the ceilings and walls of New
Orleans houses for over seven and eight generations.
He had also signed up two
teams of plumbers, one excellent roofing company, and a well-known uptown
landscaping expert to begin the clearing and the restoration of the garden. At
two p.m. the man walked the property with Michael for half an hour, pointing
out the giant camellias and azaleas, the bridal wreath and the antique roses,
all of which could be saved.
Two cleaning women had also
been hired - upon recommendation of Beatrice Mayfair - who began the detailed
dusting of furniture, the polishing of the silver, and the washing of the china
which had lain under its layer of dust for many a year.
A special crew was scheduled
to come in Friday morning to commence draining the pool, and seeing what had to
be done to restore it and revamp its antiquated equipment. A kitchen specialist
was also scheduled for Friday. Engineers were scheduled to examine the
foundation and the porches. And an excellent carpenter and jack-of-all-trades
named Dart Henley was eager to become Michael’s second in command.
At five o’clock, while
there was still plenty of light, Michael went under the house with a flashlight
and a dust mask and confirmed, after forty-five minutes of serious crawling,
that indeed the interior walls were chain walls, descending directly to the
ground, that the underneath was dry and clean, and that there was ample space
for a central air and heat duct system.
Meantime, Ryan Mayfair came
through the house to take the official and legal inventory for the estates of
Deirdre and Carlotta Mayfair. A team of young lawyers, including Pierce,
Franklin, Isaac, and Wheatfield Mayfair — all descendants of the original
brothers of the firm — accompanied a group of appraisers and antique
dealers who identified, appraised, and tagged every chandelier, picture,
mirror, and fauteuil.
Priceless French antiques
were brought down from the attic, including some fine chairs which needed only
reupholstering and tables which required no repair at all. Stella’s art
deco treasures, equally delicate and equally preserved, were also brought into
the light.
Old oil paintings by the
dozens were discovered, as well as rugs rolled in camphor balls, old
tapestries, and all the chandeliers from Riverbend, each crated and marked.
It was after dark when Ryan
finished.
‘Well, my dear, I’m
happy to report: no more bodies.’
Indeed, a call from him
later in the evening confirmed that the enormous inventory was almost the same
as the one taken at the death of Antha. Things had not even been moved. ‘All
we did most of the time was check them off the list,’ he said. Even the
count of the gold and jewels was the same. He’d have the inventory for
her right away.
By that time, Michael was
back at the hotel, had feasted on delicious room service from the Caribbean
Room downstairs, and was perusing all the architecture books he’d gleaned
from the local stores, pointing out to Rowan the pictures of the various houses
that surrounded hers, and the other mansions scattered throughout the Garden
District.
He had bought a ’house’
notebook in the K&B drugstore on Louisiana Avenue, and was making lists of
what he meant to do. He would have to call tile men early in the morning, and
take a more careful look at the old bathrooms, because the fixtures were
absolutely marvelous, and he did not want to change what did not need to be
changed.
Rowan was reading over some
of the papers she would sign. She had opened a joint account at the Whitney
Bank that afternoon just for the renovations, depositing three hundred thousand
dollars in it, and she had the signature cards for Michael and a book of
checks.
‘You can’t spend
too much money on this house,’ she said. ‘It deserves the best.’
Michael gave a little
delighted laugh. This had always been a dream — to do it without a
budget, as if it were a great work of art, every decision being made with the
purest aims.
At eight o’clock,
Rowan went down to meet Beatrice and Sandra Mayfair for drinks in the bar. She
was back within the hour. Tomorrow she would have breakfast with another couple
of cousins. It was all rather pleasant and easy. They did the talking. And she
liked the sound of their voices. She’d always liked to listen to people,
especially when they talked so much that she didn’t have to say anything
much herself.
‘But I’ll tell
you,’ she said to Michael, ‘they do know things and they aren’t
telling me what they know. And they know the older ones know things. They’re
the ones I have to talk to. I have to win their trust.’
On Friday, as the plumbers
and the roofers swarmed over the property, and the plasterers went in with
their buckets and ladders and drop cloths, and a loud chugging machine began to
pump the swimming pool dry, Rowan went downtown to sign papers.
Michael went to work with
the tile men in the front bathroom. It had been decided to fix up the front
bath and bedroom first so that he and Rowan could move in as soon as possible.
And Rowan wanted a shower without disturbing the old tub. That meant ripping
out some tile, and building in more, and fitting the tub with a glass enclosure.
‘Three days we’ll
have it for you,’ the workman promised.
The plasterers were already
removing the wallpaper from the bedroom ceiling. The electrician would have to
be called in, as the wires to the old brass chandelier had never been properly
insulated. And Rowan and Michael would want a ceiling fan in place of the old
fixture. More notes.
Some time around eleven,
Michael wandered out on the screened porch off the parlor. Two cleaning women
were working noisily and cheerfully in the big room behind him. The decorator
recommended by Bea was measuring the windows for new draperies.
Forgot about these old
screens, Michael thought. He made a note in his book. He looked at the old
rocker. It had been scrubbed clean, and the porch itself had been swept. The
bees hummed in the vines. Through the thick stand of banana trees to the left,
he could just see the bright occasional flashes of the workmen surrounding the
pool. They were shoveling two feet of earth from off the flagstone patio.
Indeed, the area of paving was far larger than anyone had supposed.
He took a deep breath,
staring out at the crepe myrtle across the lawn.
‘No ladders thrown
down yet, am I right, Lasher?’ His whisper seemed to die on the empty
air.
Nothing but the hum of the
bees, and the mingled sounds of the workmen - the low grind of a lawn mower
just starting up, and the sound of the diesel leaf blowers navigating the
paths. He glanced at his watch. The air-conditioning men were due any minute.
He had sketched out a system of eight different heat pumps which would provide
both cooling and heating, and the worst problem would be the placement of the
equipment, what with the attics filled with boxes and furniture and other
items. Maybe they could go directly to the roof.
Then there were the floors.
Yes, he had to get an estimate on the floors right away. The floor of the
parlor was still very beautifully finished, apparently from the time Stella had
used it as a dance floor. But the other floors were deeply soiled and dull. Of
course nobody would do any interior painting or floor finishing until the
plasterers were out. They made too much dust. And the painters, he had to go
see how they were coming along on the outside. They had to wait until the
roofers had sealed the parapet walls at the top. But the painters had plenty of
work to do sanding and preparing the window frames and the shutters. And what
else? Oh, the phone system, yes, Rowan wanted something state of the art. I
mean the house was so big. And then there was the cabana, and that old servants’
quarters building way at the back. He was thinking of turning a small
contractor loose on that little building now, for an entire renovation.
Ah, this was fun. But why
was he getting away with it? That was the question. Who was biding whose time?
He didn’t want to
confess to Rowan that he couldn’t shake an underlying apprehensiveness,
an underlying certainty that they were being watched. That the house itself was
something alive. Maybe it was only the lingering impression of the images in
the attic — of all the skirts gathered around him, of all of them
earthbound and here. He didn’t really believe in ghosts in that sense.
But the place had absorbed the personalities of all the Mayfairs, hadn’t
it, as old houses are supposed to do. And it seemed every time he turned that
he was about to see someone or something that really wasn’t there.
What a surprise to step into
the parlor and see only the sunlight and the solemn neglected furniture. The
enormous mirrors, towering over the room like guardians. The old pictures
lifeless and dim in their frames. For a long moment he looked at the soft
portrait of Stella - a painted photograph. So sweet her smile, and her black
shining marcelled hair. Out of the corners of her eyes, she looked at him,
through the filth that clung to the dim glass.
‘Did you want
something, Mr Mike?’ the young cleaning woman asked him. He shook his
head.
He turned back and looked at
the empty rocker. Had it moved? This was foolish. He was inviting something to
happen. He closed his notebook and went back to work.
Joseph, the decorator, was
waiting for him in the dining room.
And Eugenia was here.
Eugenia wanted to work. Surely there was something she could do. Nobody knew
this house the way she did, she’d worked in this house for five years,
she had. Eugenia had told her son this very morning that she was not too old to
work, that she would work until she dropped dead.
Did Dr Mayfair want silk for
these draperies? asked the decorator. Was she sure about that? He had a score
of damasks and velvets to show her that wouldn’t cost half as much.
When Michael met Rowan for
lunch at Mayfair and Mayfair she was still signing. He was surprised at the
ease and trust with which Ryan greeted him and began to explain things.
‘It was always the
custom before Antha and Deirdre to make bequests at a time such as this,’
he said, ’and Rowan wants to revive the custom. We’re making a list
now of the Mayfairs who might accept a bequest, and Beatrice is already on the
phone to anybody and everybody in the family. Please understand this isn’t
as insane as it sounds. Most Mayfairs have money in the bank, and always have
had. Nevertheless, there are cousins in college, and a couple in medical
school, and others who are saving to buy a first home. You know -that sort of
thing. I think it’s commendable of Rowan to want to revive the custom.
And of course considering the size of the estate…’
Nevertheless there was
something cunning in Ryan, something calculating and watchful. And wasn’t
that natural? He seemed to be testing Michael with these riffs of information.
Michael only nodded, and shrugged. ‘Sounds great.’
By late afternoon, Michael
and Rowan were back at the house conferring with the men around the pool. The
stench of the muck that had been dredged from the bottom was unbearable.
Shirtless and barefooted, the men carried it away in wheelbarrows. There were no
real leaks in the old cement. You could tell because there was no sogginess in
the ground anywhere. The foreman told Michael they could have the whole thing
patched and replastered by the middle of next week.
‘Sooner if you can,’
said Rowan. ‘I don’t mind paying you overtime to work this weekend.
Bring it back fast. I can’t stand the sight of it the way it is now.’
They were glad for the extra
paychecks. In fact, just about every workman on the place was happy to work the
weekend.
All new heating and
filtering equipment was being installed for the pool. The gas connections were
satisfactory. The new electric service was already going in.
And Michael got on the phone
to another painting crew to take care of the cabana. Sure, they’d work
Saturday, for time and half. Wouldn’t take much to paint its wooden
doors, and refit its shower, lavatory, and small changing rooms.
‘So what color do you
want the house to be?’ Michael asked. ‘They’ll get to the
outside painting faster than you think. And you want the cabana and the gargonmere
painted the same color, don’t you?’
‘Tell me what you want,’
she said.
‘I’d leave it
the violet color it’s always been. The dark green shutters go with it
just fine. I’d keep the whole scheme, actually — blue for the roofs
of the porches, and gray for the porch floors, and black for the cast iron. By
the way, I found a little man who can replace the pieces of the iron that are
missing. He’s already making the molds. He has his own shop back by the
river. Did anyone tell you about the iron fence that runs around this property?’
Tell me.’
‘It’s even older
than the house. It was the early nineteenth century version of chain link. That
is, it was prefab. And it goes all the way down First Street and turns on Camp
because that’s how big the property once was. Now, we should paint it,
just a nice coat of black paint is all it needs, just like the railings…’
‘Bring in all the
crews you need,’ she said. ‘The violet color is perfect. And if you
have to make a decision without me, make it. Make it look like you think it
should look. Spend what you think ought to be spent.’
‘You’re a
contractor’s dream, darling,’ he said. ‘We’re off to a
roaring start. Gotta go. See that man who just came out the back door? He’s
coming to tell me he ran into a problem with the upstairs bathroom walls. I
knew he would.’
‘Don’t work too
hard,’ she said in his ear, her deep velvety voice bringing the chills up
on him. A nice little throb of excitement caught him between the legs as she
crushed her breasts against his arm. No time for it.
‘Work too hard? I’m
just warming up. And let me tell you something else, Rowan. There are a couple
of damn near irresistible houses I’d like to tackle in this town when we’re
through here. I see the future, Rowan. I see Great Expectations with offices on
Magazine Street. I could bring those houses back slowly and carefully and ride
out the bad market. This house is only the first.’
‘How much do you need
to pick them up?’
‘Honey, I have the
money to do that,’ he said, kissing her quickly. ‘I’ve got
plenty of money. Ask your cousin Ryan if you don’t believe me. If he hasn’t
already run a complete credit check on me, I’d be very surprised.’
‘Michael, if he says
one wrong word to you…’
‘Rowan, I’m in
paradise. Relax!’
Saturday and Sunday rolled
by at the same grand pace. The gardeners worked until after dark mowing down
the weeds and digging the old cast-iron furniture out of the brush.
Rowan and Michael and Aaron
set up the old table and chairs in the center of the lawn, and there they had
their lunch each day.
Aaron was making some
progress with Julien’s books, but they were mostly lists of names, with
brief enigmatic statements. No real autobiography at all. ‘So far, my
most unkind guess is that these are lists of successful vendettas." He
read a sampling.
‘"April 4, 1889
Hendrickson paid out as he deserved.’
‘"May 9, 1889,
Carlos paid in kind.’
‘"June 7, 1889,
furious with Wendell for his display of temper last night. Showed him a thing
or two. No more worries there."
‘It goes on like that,’
said Aaron, ’page after page, book after book. Occasionally there are
little maps and drawings, and financial notes. But for the most part that’s
all it is. I’d say there are approximately twenty-two entries per year. I’ve
yet to come upon a coherent full paragraph. No, if the autobiography exists, it’s
not here.’
‘What about the attic,
are you game to go up there?’ asked Rowan.
‘Not now. I had a fall
last night.’
‘What are you talking
about?’
‘On the staircase at
the hotel. I was impatient with the elevator. I fell to the first landing. It
might have been worse.’
‘Aaron, why didn’t
you tell me?’
‘Well, this is soon
enough. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about it, except that I don’t
recall losing my footing. But I’ve a sore ankle, and I’d like to
put off going up into the attic.’
Rowan was crestfallen,
angry. She gazed up at the facade of the house. There were workmen everywhere.
On the parapets, on the porches, in the open bedroom windows.
‘Don’t become
unduly alarmed,’ said Aaron. ‘I want you to know, but I don’t
want you to fret.’
It was clear to Michael that
Rowan was speechless. He could feel her fury. He could see the disfigurement of
the anger in her face.
‘We’ve seen
nothing here,’ said Michael to Aaron. ‘Absolutely nothing. And no
one else has seen anything, at least not anything worth mentioning to either of
us.’
‘You were pushed, weren’t
you?’ asked Rowan in a low voice.
‘Perhaps,’ said
Aaron.
‘He’s deviling
you.’
‘I think so,’
said Aaron with a little nod. ‘He likes to knock Julien’s books
about too, when he has the opportunity, which seems to be whenever I leave the
room. Again, I thought it important you know about it, but I don’t want
you to fret.’
‘Why’s he doing
it?’
‘Maybe he wants your
attention,’ said Aaron. ‘But I hesitate to say. Whatever the case,
trust that I can protect myself. The work here does seem to be coming along
splendidly.’
‘No problems,’
said Michael, but he was pitched into gloom.
After lunch, he walked Aaron
to the gate.
‘I’m having too
much fun, aren’t I?’ he asked.
‘Of course you aren’t,’
said Aaron. ‘What a strange thing to say.’
‘I wish it would come
to a boil,’ said Michael. ‘I think I’ll win when it does. But
the waiting is driving me nuts. After all, what is he waiting for?’
‘What about your
hands? I do wish you’d try to go without the gloves.’
‘I have. I take off
the gloves for a couple of hours each day. I can’t get used to the heat,
the zinging feeling, even when I can blot everything else out. Look, do you
want me to walk with you back to the hotel?’
‘Of course not. I’ll
see you there tonight if you have time for a drink.’
‘Yeah, it’s like
a dream coming true, isn’t it?’ he asked wistfully. ‘I mean
for me.’
‘No, for both of us,’
said Aaron.
‘You trust me?’
‘Why on earth would
you ask?’
‘Do you think I’m
going to win? Do you think I’m going to do what they want of me?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I think she loves me
and that it’s going to be wonderful what happens.’
‘So do I.’
He felt good, and each
successive hour brought some new realization of it; and in his time at the
house, there had been no other fragmentary memories of the visions. No sense of
the ghosts.
It was comfortable each
night being with Rowan, comfortable being in the spacious old suite, and making
love, and then getting up again, to go back to work on the books and on the
notes. It was comfortable being tired from a day of physical exertion, and
feeling his body springing back from those two months of torpor and too much
beer.
He was drinking little or no
beer now; and in the absence of the dulling alcohol, his senses were
exquisitely sharpened; he could not get enough of Rowan’s sleek, girlish
body and her inexhaustible energy. Her total lack of narcissism or self-consciousness
awakened in him a roughness that she seemed to love. There were times when
their lovemaking was like horseplay, and even more violent than that. But it
always ended in tenderness and a feverish embrace, so that he wondered how he
had ever slept all these years, without her arms around him.
THIRTY-FOUR
HER PRIVATE TIME was still
the early morning. No matter how late she read, she opened her eyes at four o’clock.
And no matter how early he went to bed, Michael slept like the dead till nine unless
someone shook him or screamed at him.
It was all right. It gave
her the margin of quiet that her soul demanded. Never had she known a man who
accepted her so completely as she was; nevertheless there were moments when she
had to get away from everyone.
Loving him these last few
days she had understood for the first time why she had always taken her men in
small doses. This was slavery, this persistent passion — the inability to
even look at his smooth naked back or the little gold chain around his powerful
neck without wanting him, without gritting her teeth silently at the thought of
reaching under the covers and stroking the dark hair around his balls and
making his cock grow hard in her hand.
That his age gave him some
leverage against her - the ability to say after the second time, tenderly but
firmly, No, I can’t do it again - made him all the more tantalizing,
worse perhaps than a teasing young boy, though she didn’t really know,
because she’d never been teased by a young boy. But when she considered
the kindness, the mellowness, the total lack of young-man self-centeredness and
hatefulness in him, the trade-off of age against boundless energy was a perfect
bargain indeed.
‘I want to spend the
rest of my life with you,’ she had whispered this morning, running her
finger down the coarsened black stubble which covered not only his chin but his
throat, knowing that he wouldn’t stir. ‘Yes, my conscience and my
body need you. Everything I’ll ever be needs you.’
She had even kissed him
without a chance of waking him.
But now was her time alone,
with him safely out of sight and out of mind.
And it was such an
extraordinary time to walk through the deserted streets just as the sun was
rising, to see the squirrels racing through the oaks, and to hear the violent
birds crying mournfully and even desperately.
A mist sometimes crawled
along the brick pavements. And the iron fences shimmered with the dew. The sky
was shot through and through with red, bloody as a sunset, fading slowly into
blue daylight.
The house was cool at this
hour.
And this morning, she was
glad of it because the heat in general had begun to wear on her. And she had an
errand to perform which gave her no pleasure.
She should have attended to
it before now, but it was one of those little things she wanted to ignore, to
weed out from all the rest that was being offered her.
But as she went up the
stairs now, she found herself almost eager. A little twinge of excitement
caught her by surprise. She went into the old master bedroom, which had belonged
to her mother, and moved to the far side of the bed, where the velvet purse of
gold coins still lay, ignored, on the marble top bedside table. The jewel box
was there, too. In all the hubbub no one had dared touch them.
On the contrary, at least
six different workmen had come to report that these items were there, and
somebody ought to do something about them
Yes, something about them.
She stared down at the gold
coins, which spilled out of the old velvet bag in a grimy heap. God only knew
where they had actually come from.
Then she gathered up the
sack, put the loose coins inside, picked up the jewel box, and took them down
to her favorite room, which was the dining room.
The soft morning light was
just breaking through the soiled windows. A plasterer’s drop cloth
covered half the floor, and a tall spidery ladder reached to the unfinished
patchwork on the ceiling.
She pushed back the canvas
that covered the table, and removed the draping from the chair, and then she
sat down with her load of treasures and put them in front of her.
‘You’re here,’
she whispered. ‘I know you are. You’re watching me.’ She felt
cold as she said it. She laid out a handful of coins, and pushed them apart the
better to see them in the gathering light. Roman coins. It didn’t take an
expert to see it. And here, this was a Spanish coin, with amazingly clear
numerals and letters. She reached into the sack and pulled out another little
trove. Greek coins? About these she wasn’t certain. A stickiness clung to
them, part damp and part dust. She longed to polish them.
It struck her suddenly that
that would be a good task for Eugenia, polishing all these coins.
And no sooner had the
thought made her smile, than she thought she heard a sound in the house. A
vague rustling. Just the singing of the boards, Michael would say if he were
here. She paid no attention.
She gathered up all the
coins and shoved them back in the purse, pushed it aside, and took up the jewel
box. It was very old, rectangular, with tarnished hinges. The velvet had worn
through in some places to show the wood beneath, and it was deep inside, with
six large compartments.
The various jewels were in
no order, however. Earrings, necklaces, rings, pins, they were all tangled
together. And in the bottom of the box, like so many pebbles, were what
appeared to be raw stones, gleaming dully. Were these real rubies? Emeralds?
She could not imagine it. She did not know a real pearl from a fake. Nor gold
from an imitation. But these necklaces were fine artifacts, skillfully
fashioned, and a sense of reverence and sadness came over her as she touched
them.
She thought of Antha
hurrying through the streets of New York with a handful of coins to sell. And a
stab of pain went through her. She thought of her mother, lying in the rocker
on the porch, the drool slipping down her chin, and all this wealth so near at
hand, and the Mayfair emerald around her neck, like some sort of child’s
bauble.
The Mayfair emerald. She hadn’t
even thought of it since the first night when she’d tucked it away in the
china pantry. She rose and went to the pantry now — unlocked all this
time like everything else — and there was the small velvet case on the
wooden shelf behind the glass door, among the Wedgwood cups and saucers, just
where she’d left it.
She took it to the table,
set it down, and carefully opened it. The jewel of jewels - large, rectangular,
glinting exquisitely in its dark gold setting. And now that she knew the
history, how she had changed towards it.
On the first night it had
seemed unreal, and faintly repulsive. Now it seemed a living thing, with a tale
to tell of its own, and she found herself hesitant to remove it from the soiled
velvet. Of course it did not belong to her! It belonged to those who had
believed in it, and who had worn it with pride, those who had wanted him
to come to them.
Just for a moment, she felt
a longing to be one of them. She tried to deny it, but she felt it - a longing
to accept with a whole heart the entire inheritance.
Was she blushing? She felt
the warmth in her face. Maybe it was simply the humid air and the sun rising
slowly outside, and the garden filling up with a bright light that made the
trees come alive beyond the glass, and made the sky suddenly blue in the
topmost panes of the windows.
But it was more likely shame
that she felt. Shame that Aaron or Michael might know what she’d been
thinking. Lusting after the devil like a witch. She laughed softly.
And it seemed unfair
suddenly, very unfair that he should be her sworn enemy before they’d
even met.
‘What are you waiting
for?’ she asked aloud. ‘Are you like the shy vampire of myth who
must be invited in? I think not. This is your home. You’re here now. You’re
listening to me and watching me.’
She sat back in the chair,
her eyes running over the murals as they slowly came to life in the pale
sunlight. For the first time she spied a tiny woman naked in the window of the
dim plantation house in the painting. And another faded nude seated upon the
dark green bank of the small lagoon. It made her smile. Rather like discovering
a secret. She wondered if Michael had seen these two tawny beauties. Oh, the
house was full of undiscovered things, and so was its sad and melancholy
garden.
Beyond the windows, the
cherry laurel suddenly swayed in the breeze. In fact, it began to dance as if a
wind had caught its stiff dark limbs. She heard it stroke the banister of the
porch. It scraped against the roof above, and then settled back to itself, as
the wind moved on, it seemed, to the distant crepe myrtle.
Entrancing the way the high
thin branches, full of pink blossoms, succumbed to the dance, and the entire
tree thrashed against the gray wall of the neighboring house, and sent down a
shower of dappled, fluttering leaves. Like so much light falling in tiny
pieces.
Her eyes misted slightly;
she was conscious of the relaxation of her limbs, of giving in to a vague
dreaminess. Yes, look at the tree dance. Look at the cherry laurel again, and
the shower of green coming down on the boards of the porch. Look at the thin
limbs reaching all the way in to scrape the window-panes.
With a dull shock, she
focused her eyes, staring at the branches, staring at their concerted,
deliberate movement as they stroked the glass.
‘You,’ she
whispered.
Lasher in the trees, Lasher
the way Deirdre would make him come outside the boarding school. And Rita Mae
never knew what she’d actually described to Aaron Lightner.
She was rigid now in the
chair. The tree was bending close, and then swaying back ever so gracefully,
and this time the branches veritably blotted out the sun, and the leaves
tumbled down the glass, broken and spinning. Yet the room was warm and airless.
She did not remember rising
to her feet. But she was standing. Yes, he was there. He was making the trees
move, for nothing else on earth could make them move like that. And the tiny
hairs were standing up on the backs of her arms. And she felt a vague chill
over her scalp, as if something were touching her.
It seemed the air around her
changed. Not a breeze, no. More like a curtain brushing her. She turned around,
and stared out through the empty window at Chestnut Street. Had there been
something there, a great dense shadow for a moment, a thing contracting and
then expanding, like a dark sea being with tentacles? No. Nothing but the oak
across the street. And the sky growing ever more radiant.
‘Why don’t you
speak?’ she said. ‘I’m here alone.’
How strange her voice
sounded.
But there were other sounds
intruding now. She heard voices outside. A truck had stopped; and she could
hear the scrape of the gate as the workmen pushed it back on the flagstones.
Even as she waited, her head bowed, there came a turning of the knob.
‘Hey, there, Dr
Mayfair…"
‘Morning, Dart.
Morning, Rob. Morning, Billy.’
Heavy feet mounted the
stairs. With a soft deep vibration, the little elevator was being brought down,
and soon its brass door opened with the familiar dull clang.
Yes, their house now.
She turned sluggishly,
almost stubbornly, and gathered together the entire trove of treasures. She
took them into the china pantry and put them in the large drawer, where the old
tablecloths had once been, moldering, before they were discarded. The old key
was still in the lock. She turned it and put the key in her pocket.
Then she went back out,
steps slow, uneasy, relinquishing the house to the others.
At the gate, she turned and
looked back. No breeze at all in the garden. Just to make certain of what she’d
seen, she turned and followed the path, around and past her mother’s old
porch, and back to the servants’ gallery that ran along the dining room.
Yes, littered with curling
green leaves. Something brushed her again, and she turned around, her arm up as
if to defend herself from a dangling spiderweb.
A stillness seemed to drop
down around her. No sounds had followed her here. The foliage grew high and
dense over the balustrade.
‘What keeps you from
speaking to me?’ she whispered. ‘Are you really afraid?’
Nothing moved. The heat
seemed to rise from the flagstones beneath her. Tiny gnats congregated in the
shadows. The big drowsy white ginger lilies leaned over close to her face, and
a dull crackling sound slowly drew her eye to the depths of the garden patch,
to a dark tangle from which a vagrant purple iris sprang, savage and shivering,
a hideous mouth of a flower, its stem snapping back now as though a cat darting
through the brush had bent it down carelessly.
She watched it sway and then
right itself and grow still, its ragged petals trembling. Lurid, it looked. She
had the urge to put her finger into it, as if it were an organ. But what was
happening to it? She stared, the heat heavy on her eyelids, the gnats rising so
that she lifted her right hand to drive them away. Was the flower actually
growing?
No. Something had injured
it, and it was breaking from its stem, that was all, and how monstrous it
looked, how enormous; but it was all in her perspective. The heat, the
stillness, the sudden coming of the men like intruders into her domain right at
the moment of her greatest peace. She could be sure of nothing.
She took her handkerchief
out of her pocket and blotted her cheeks, and then walked down the path towards
the gate. She felt confused, unsure - guilty that she’d come alone, and
uncertain that anything unusual had happened.
All her many plans for the
day came back to her. So much to do, so many real things to do. And Michael
would be getting up just about now. If she hurried, they might have breakfast
together.
THIRTY-FIVE
MONDAY MORNING Michael and
Rowan went downtown together to obtain their Louisiana driver’s licenses.
You couldn’t buy a car here until you had the state driver’s
license.
And when they turned in
their California licenses, which they had to do in order to receive the
Louisiana license, it was sort of ceremonial and final and oddly exciting. Like
giving up a passport or citizenry, perhaps. Michael found himself glancing at
Rowan, and he saw her secretive and delighted smile.
They had a light dinner
Monday night at the Desire Oyster Bar. A searing hot gumbo, full of shrimp and
andouille sausage; and ice cold beer. The doors of the place were open along
Bourbon Street, the overhead fans stirring the cool air around them, the sweet,
lighthearted jazz pouring out of the Mahogany Hall bar across the street.
‘That’s the New
Orleans sound,’ Michael said, ‘that jazz with a real song in it, a
joie de vivre. Nothing ever dark in it. Nothing ever really mournful. Not even
when they play for the funerals.’
‘Let’s take a
walk,’ she said. ‘I want to see all these seedy joints for myself.’
They spent the evening in
the Quarter, roaming away from the garish lights of Bourbon Street finally, and
past the elegant shop windows of Royal and Chartres, and then back to the river
lookout opposite Jackson Square.
The size of the Quarter
obviously amazed Rowan, as well as the feeling of authenticity which had
somehow survived the renovations and the various improvements. Michael found himself
overwhelmed again by the inevitable memories — Sundays down here with his
mother. He could not argue against the improvements of curbs and street lamps,
and new cobblestones laid around Jackson Square. The place seemed if anything
more vital now than it had been in its shabbier and more volatile past.
It felt so good after the
long walk to sit on the bench at the riverfront, merely watching the dark glitter
of the water, watching the dancing boats, strung with lights like big wedding
cakes, as they swept past the distant indistinct shapes of the far bank.
A gaiety prevailed among the
tourists who came and went from the lookout. Soft conversation and random
bursts of laughter. Couples embraced in the shadows. A lone saxophonist played
a ragged, soulful song for the quarters people tossed into the hat at his feet.
Finally, they walked back
into the thick of the pedestrian traffic, making their way to the soiled old
Cafe du Monde for the famous cafe au lait and sugared doughnuts. They sat for a
while in the warm air, as the others came and went from the sticky little
tables around them; then meandered out among the glitzy shops which now filled
the old French Market, across from the sad and graceful buildings of Decatur
Street with their iron-lace balconies and slender iron colonettes.
Because she asked him to, he
drove her up through the Irish Channel, skirting the dark brooding ruin of the
St Thomas Project, and following the river with its deserted warehouses for as
long as he could. Annunciation Street looked a little better in the night
maybe, with cheerful lights in the windows of the little houses. They drove on,
uptown, on a narrow tree-lined street, into the Victorian section where the
rambling houses were full of gingerbread and fretwork, and he pointed out to
her his old-time favorites, and those he would love to restore.
How extraordinary it felt to
have money in his pockets in his old home town. To know he could buy those
houses, just the way he’d dreamed of it in the long-ago hopelessness and
desperation of childhood.
Rowan seemed eager, happy,
curious about things around her. No regrets apparently. But then it was so
soon…
She talked now and then in
easy bursts, her deep grosgrain voice always charming him and distracting him
slightly from the content of what she said. She agreed the people here were
incredibly friendly. They took their time about everything they did; but they
were so completely without meanness it was almost hard to figure out. The
accents of the family members baffled her. Beatrice and Ryan spoke with a touch
of New York in their voices. Louisa had a completely different accent, and
young Pierce didn’t sound like his father; and all of them sounded just a
little bit like Michael sooner or later on some words.
‘Don’t tell them
that, honey,’ he cautioned her. I’m from the other side of Magazine
Street and they know it. Don’t think they don’t.’
‘They think you’re
wonderful,’ she said dismissing his comment. ‘Pierce says you’re
an old-fashioned man.’
He laughed. ‘Well,
hell,’ Michael said, ’maybe I am.’
They stayed up late,
drinking beer and talking. The old suite was as large as an apartment with its
den and its kitchen, as well as the living room and the bedroom. He wasn’t
getting drunk at all these days, and he knew she was aware of it, but she didn’t
say anything, which was just as well. They talked about the house and all the
things they meant to do.
Did she miss the hospital?
Yes, she did. But that wasn’t important right now. She had a plan, a
great plan for the future, which she would disclose soon enough.
‘But you can’t
give up medicine. You don’t mean that?’
‘Of course I don’t,’
she said patiently, dropping her voice a little for emphasis. ‘On the
contrary. I’ve been thinking about medicine in an entirely different
light.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It’s too soon
to explain. I’m not sure myself. But the question of the legacy changes
things, and the more I learn about the legacy the more things are going to
change. I’m in a new internship with Mayfair and Mayfair. The subject is money.’
She gestured to the papers on the table. ‘And it’s moving along
pretty well.’
‘You really want to do
this?’
‘Michael, everything
we do in life, we do with certain expectations. I grew up with money. That
meant I could go to medical school and proceed right through a long residency
in neuro-surgery. I didn’t have a husband or kids to worry about. I didn’t
have anything to worry about. But now the sums of money have changed radically.
With money like the Mayfair money, one could fund research projects, build
whole laboratories. Conceivably one could set up a clinic, adjacent to a
medical center, for work in one specialty of neurosurgery.’ She shrugged.
‘You see what I mean.’
‘Yeah, but if you
become involved in that way, it will take you out of the Operating Room, won’t
it? You’ll have to be an administrator.’
‘Possibly,’ she
said. ‘The point is, the legacy presents a challenge. I have to use my
imagination, as the cliche goes.’
He nodded. ‘I see what
you’re saying,’ he responded. ‘But are they going to give you
trouble?’
‘Ultimately, yes. But
it’s not important. When I’m ready to make my moves, that won’t
matter. And I’ll make the changes as smoothly and tactfully as I can.’
‘What changes?’
‘Again, it’s too
early. I’m not ready yet to draw up a grand plan. But I’m thinking
of a neurological center here in New Orleans, with the finest equipment
obtainable and laboratories for independent research.’
‘Good Lord, I never
thought of anything like that.’
‘Before now, I never
had the remotest chance of inaugurating a research program and completely
controlling it — you know, determining the goals, the standards, the
budget,’ She had a faraway look in her eye. ‘The important thing is
to think in terms of the site of the legacy. And to think for myself.’
A vague uneasiness seized
him. He didn’t know why. He felt a chill rise on the back of his neck as
he heard her say:
‘Wouldn’t that
be the redemption, Michael? If the Mayfair legacy went into healing? Surely you
see it. All the way from Suzanne and Jan van Abel, the surgeon, to a great and
innovative medical center, devoted of course to the saving of lives.’
He sat there pondering and
unable to answer.
She gave a little shrug and
put her hands to her temples. ‘Oh, there’s so much to study,’
she said, ‘so much to learn. But can’t you see the continuity?’
‘Yeah, continuity,’
he said under his breath.
Like the continuity he was
so certain of when he woke in the hospital after he drowned — everything
connected. They chose me because of who I was, and it’s all
connected…
‘It’s all
possible,’ she said, scanning him for reaction. A little flame danced in
her cheeks, in her eyes.
‘Very near to perfect,’
he said.
‘So why do you look like
that? What’s the matter?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Michael, stop
thinking about those visions. Stop thinking about invisible people in the sky
giving our lives meaning. There are no ghosts in the attic! Think for yourself.’
‘I am, Rowan. I am. Don’t
get angry. It’s a stunning idea. It’s perfect. I don’t know
why it makes me uneasy. Have a little patience with me, honey. Like you said,
our dreams have to be in proportion to our resources. And so it’s a
little over my head.’
‘All you have to do is
love me and listen to me, and let me think out loud.’
‘I’m with you,
Rowan. Always. I think it’s great.’
‘You’re having
trouble imagining it,’ she said. ‘I understand. I’ve only
begun myself. But goddamn it, the money’s there, Michael. There is
something absolutely obscene about the amount of that money. For two
generations, these corporation lawyers have tended this fortune, allowing it
feed upon itself and multiply like a monster.’
‘Yeah, I know,’
he said.
‘Long ago, they lost
sight of the fact that it was the property of one person. It belongs to itself
in some horrible way, it’s greater than any human being should have or
control.’
‘A lot of people would
agree with you,’ he said.
But he couldn’t shake
that memory of lying in the hospital bed in San Francisco and believing that
his whole life had meaning, that everything he’d ever done and been was
about to be redeemed.
‘Yes, it would redeem
everything,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t it?’
So why did he see the grave
in his mind, with its twelve slots, and the doorway above, and the name Mayfair
inscribed in big letters, and the flowers withering in the suffocating heat?
He forced himself out of
this, and went for the best distraction he knew. Just looking at her, just
looking and thinking about touching her, and resisting the urge, though she was
only inches from him, and willing, yes, almost surely, willing to be touched.
It was working. A little
switch was suddenly thrown in the ruthless mechanism called his brain. He was
thinking of how her naked legs looked in the lamplight, and how delicate and
full her breasts looked beneath her short silk gown.
Breasts always struck him as
miracles; when you touched them and suckled them, they seemed entirely too
luscious to be more than momentary — like sherbet or whipped cream, you
expected them to melt in your mouth. That they stayed there, day after day,
just waiting for you, was part of the whole impossibility of the female sex for
him. That was all the science he knew. He bent forward, pressed his lips
against her neck, and gave a little determined growl.
‘Now you’ve done
it,’ she whispered.
‘Yeah, well, it’s
about time,’ he said in the same deep voice. ‘How would you like to
be carried to bed?’
‘I’d love it,’
she purred. ‘You haven’t done that since the first time.’
‘Christ! How could I have
been so thoughtless!’ he whispered. ‘What kind of an old-fashioned
man am I?’ He shoved his left arm under her hot silky thighs and cradled
her shoulders with his right, kissing her as he picked her up, secretly
exultant that he
didn’t lose his balance and go sprawling. But he had her — light
and clinging, and suddenly feverishly compliant. Making it to the bed was a
cinch.
On Tuesday, the
air-conditioning men began their work. There were enough gallery roofs for
every piece of equipment. Joseph, the decorator, had taken away all the French
furniture that needed restoration. The beautiful old bedroom sets, all dating
from the plantation era, needed no more than polishing, and the cleaning women
could take care of that.
The plasterers had finished
in the front bedroom. And the painters sealed off the area with plastic drapery
so that they could get a clean job in spite of the dust from the work going on
in the rest of the house. Rowan had chosen a light champagne beige for the
bedroom walls, and white for the ceiling and the woodwork. The carpet men had
come to measure upstairs. The floor men were sanding the dining room where for
some reason a fancy oak floor had been laid over the old hearth pine, which
needed only a fresh coat of polyurethane.
Michael had checked out the
chimneys himself from the roof. The wood-burning fireplaces of the library and
the double parlor were all in good condition with an excellent draft. The rest
of the hearths had long ago been fitted for gas, and some of them were sealed.
It was decided to change the heaters to the more attractive kind which looked
like real coal fires.
Meantime the appliances in
the kitchen had all been replaced. The old wooden butcher-block countertops
were being sanded. They would be varnished by the end of next week.
Rowan sat cross-legged on
the parlor floor with the decorator, surrounded by swatches of
brilliant-colored cloth. It was a beige silk she chose for the front room
draperies. She wanted something in darker damask for the dining room, something
that would blend with the faded plantation murals. Upstairs, everything was to
be cheerful and light.
Michael went through books
of paint chips, choosing soft peach tones for the lower floor, a dark beige for
the dining room which would pick up a major color in the murals, and white for
the kitchen and pantries. He was soliciting bids from the window cleaners, and
from the companies which cleaned chandeliers. The grandfather clock in the
parlor was being repaired.
By late Friday morning,
Beatrice’s housekeeper, Trina, had purchased all new bedding for the
various upstairs rooms, including new down pillows and comforters, and the
linens had been packed with sachets into the armoires and the dresser drawers.
The duct work had been completed in the attics. The old wallpaper was down in
Millie’s room and the old sickroom and Carlotta’s room, and the
plasterers had almost completed the proper preparation of the walls for fresh
paint.
The burglar alarm system had
also been finished, including smoke detectors, glass protectors, and buttons to
summon emergency medical help.
Meantime, another crew of
painters was at work in the parlor.
The only flaw in the day
perhaps was Rowan’s noontime argument by phone with Dr Larkin in San
Francisco. She had told him she was taking an extended vacation. He felt she
had sold out. An inheritance and a fancy house in New Orleans had lured her
away from her true vocation. Clearly her vague statements as to her purpose and
her future only further inflamed him. Finally she became exasperated. She wasn’t
turning her back on her life’s work. She was thinking in terms of new
horizons, and when she wanted to talk about it with him, she’d let him
know.
When she got off the phone,
she was exhausted. She wasn’t even going back to California to close up
the Tiburon house.
‘It chills me even to
think of it,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I feel so strongly.
I just don’t ever want to see the place again. I can’t believe I’ve
escaped. I could pinch myself to know for sure that I’m not dreaming,’
Michael understood;
nevertheless he advised her not to sell the house until a certain amount of
time had passed.
She shrugged. She’d
put it on the market tomorrow if she hadn’t already rented the place to
Dr Slattery, her San Francisco replacement. In exchange for an extremely low
rent and a waiver of deposits, Slattery had cheerfully agreed to box up everything
personal in the house and ship it south. Ryan had arranged for warehouse
storage.
‘Those boxes will
probably stay there unopened,’ she said, ’for twenty years.’
At about two on Friday,
Michael went with Rowan to the Mercedes-Benz dealer on St Charles Avenue. Now
this was a fun errand. It was in the same block as the hotel. When he was a kid
walking home from the old library at Lee Circle, he used to go into this big
showroom and open the doors of the stunningly beautiful German cars and swoon
over them for as long as he could get away with it before a salesman took
notice. He didn’t bother mentioning it. The fact was, he had a memory for
every block they passed, and everything they did.
He merely watched with quiet
amusement as Rowan wrote out a check for two cars - the jaunty little 500 SL
two-seater convertible, and the big classy four-door sedan. Both in cream with
caramel leather upholstery, because that is what they had there on the floor.
The day before, he himself
had picked up a neat, shiny, and luxurious American van, in which he could stow
anything he wanted, yet still speed around in comfort and ease with the
air-conditioning and the radio roaring. It amused him that Rowan did not seem
to find the experience of buying these two cars to be anything remarkable. She
did not even seem to find it interesting.
She asked the salesman to
deliver the sedan to First Street, drive it in the back carriage gates, and
drop the keys at the Pontchartrain. The convertible they would take with them.
She drove it out of the
showroom and up St Charles Avenue, to a crawl in front of the hotel.
‘Let’s get out
of here this weekend,’ she said. ‘Let’s forget about the house
and the family.’
‘Already?’ he
asked. He had been dreaming of taking one of the riverboats for the supper
cruise tonight.
‘I’ll tell you
why. I made the interesting discovery that the best white beaches in Florida
are less than four hours from here. Did you know that?’
‘That’s right,
they are.’
‘There are a couple of
houses for sale in a Florida town called Destin, and one of them has its own
boat slip nearby. I picked up all this from Wheatfield and Beatrice. Wheatfield
and Pierce used to go to Destin at spring break. Beatrice goes all the time.
Ryan made the calls for me to the real estate agent. What do you say?’
‘Well, sure, why not?’
Another memory, thought
Michael. That summer when he was fifteen and the family drove to those very
white beaches on the panhandle of Florida. Green water under the red sunset.
And he’d been thinking about it the day he drowned off Ocean Beach,
almost an hour exactly before he met Rowan Mayfair.
‘I didn’t know
we were so close to the Gulf,’ she said. ‘Now, the Gulf is serious
water. I mean like the Pacific Ocean is serious water.’
‘I know.’ He
laughed. ‘I know serious water when I see it.’ He really broke up.
‘Well, look, I’m
dying to see the Gulf.’
‘Of course.’
‘I haven’t been
in the Gulf since I was in high school and we went to the Caribbean. If it’s
as warm as I remember it-’
‘Yes, that is
definitely worth a trip.’
‘You know, I can
probably get somebody to bring the Sweet Christine down here, or
better yet, buy a new boat. Ever cruise the Gulf or the Caribbean?’
‘No.’ He shook
his head. ‘I should have known after I saw that house in Tiburon.’
‘Just four hours,
Michael,’ she said. ‘Come on, it won’t take us fifteen
minutes to pack a bag.’
They made one last stop at
the house.
Eugenia was at the kitchen
table, polishing up all the silver plate from the kitchen drawers.
‘It’s a joy to
see this place come back,’ she said.
‘Yes, it is, isn’t
it?’ said Michael. He put his arm lightly around her thin shoulder. ‘How
about moving back into your old room, Eugenia? You want to?’
Oh, yes, she said she’d
love to. She’d stay this weekend, certainly. She was too old for those
children at her son’s house. She was screaming too much at those
children. She’d be happy to come back. And yes, she still had her keys. ‘But
you don’t never need no keys around here.’
The painters were working
late upstairs. The yard crew would be there until dark. Dart Henley, Michael’s
second in command, gladly agreed to oversee everything for the week-end. No
worry at all.
‘Look, the pool’s
almost finished,’ Rowan said. Indeed, all the patchwork inside had been
done, and they were applying the final paint.
All the wild growth had been
cleared from the flagstone decking, the diving boards had been restored, and
the graceful limestone balustrade had been uncovered throughout the garden. The
thick boxwood had been taken out; more old cast’iron chairs and tables
had been discovered in the disappear-ing brush. And the lower flagstone steps
of the side screen porch had been uncovered, proving that before Deirdre’s
time it had been open. One could once again walk out from the side windows of
the parlor, across the flags, and down and onto the lawn.
‘We ought to leave it
that way, Rowan. It needs to be open,’ Michael said. ‘And besides,
we have that nice little screened porch off the kitchen in back. They’ve
already put up the new screen back there. Come, take a look.’
‘You think you can
tear yourself away?’ Rowan asked. She tossed him the car keys. ‘Why
don’t you drive?’ she asked. ‘I think I make you nervous.’
‘Only when you run
lights and stop signs at such high speeds,’ he said. ‘I mean, it’s
breaking two laws simultaneously that makes me nervous.’
‘OK, handsome, as long
as you get us there in four hours.’
He took one last look at the
house. The light here was like the light of Florence, on that score she had
been right. Washing down the high south facade, it made him think of the old
palazzi of Italy. And everything was going so well, so wonderfully well.
He felt an odd pain inside
him, a twinge of sadness and pure happiness.
I am here, really here, he
thought silently. Not dreaming about it any longer far away, but here. And the
visions seemed distant, fading, unreal to him. He had not had another flash of
them in so long.
But Rowan was waiting, and
the clean white southern beaches were waiting. More of his wonderful old world
to be reclaimed. It crossed his mind suddenly that it would be luscious to make
love to her in yet another new bed.
THIRTY-SIX
THEY RODE into the town of
Fort Walton, Florida, at eight o’clock after a long slow crawl out of
Pensacola. The whole world had come to the beach tonight, bumper to bumper. To
press on to Destin was to risk finding no accommodations.
As it was, the older wing of
a Holiday Inn was the only thing left. All the money in the world couldn’t
buy a suite at the fancier hotels. And the little helter-skelter town with all
its neon signs was a mite depressing in its highway shabbiness.
The room itself seemed
damned near unbearable, smelly and dimly lighted, with dilapidated furniture and
lumpy beds. But then they changed into their bathing suits and walked out the
glass door at the end of the corridor and found themselves on the beach.
The world opened up, warm
and wondrous under a heaven of brilliant stars. Even the glassy green of the
water was visible in the pouring moonlight. The breeze had not the faintest
touch of a chill in it. It was even silkier than the river breeze of New
Orleans. And the sand was a pure surreal white, and fine as sugar under their
feet.
They walked out together
into the surf. For a moment, Michael could not quite believe the delicious
temperature of the water, nor its glassy, shining softness as it swirled around
his ankles. In a strange moment of circular time, he saw himself at Ocean Beach
on the other side of the continent, his fingers frozen, the bitter Pacific wind
lashing his face, thinking of this very place, this seemingly mythical and
impossible place, beneath the southern stars.
If only they could receive
all this, and hold it to their breasts, and keep it, and cast off the dark
things that waited and brooded and were sure to reveal themselves…
Rowan threw herself forward
into the water. She gave a low, sweet laugh. She nudged at his leg with her
foot, and he let himself tumble down into the shallow warm waves beside her.
Going back on his elbows, he let the water bathe his face.
They swam out together, with
long lazy strokes, through gentle waves, where their feet still scraped the
bottom, until it was so deep finally that they could stand with the water up to
their shoulders.
The white dunes down the
beach gleamed like snow in the moonlight, and the distant lights of the larger
hotels twinkled softly and silently beneath the black star-filled sky. He
hugged Rowan, feeling her wet limbs sealed against him. The world seemed
altogether impossible — something imagined in its utter easiness, its
absence of all barriers or harshness or assaults upon the senses or the flesh.
‘This is paradise,’
she said. ‘It really is. God, Michael, how could you ever leave?’ She
broke from him, not waiting for an answer, and swam with swift strong strokes
towards the horizon.
He remained where he was,
his eyes scanning the heavens, picking out the great constellation of Orion
with its belt of jewels. If he had ever been this happy before in his life, he
couldn’t remember it. He absolutely couldn’t. No one had ever
created in him the happiness that she did. Nothing ever created in him the
happiness of this moment — this freshness and beauty and motherly warmth.
Yes, back where I belong,
and I have her with me, and I don’t care about all the rest. Not
now… he thought.
Saturday they spent looking
at the available property. Much of the beach-front from Ft Walton to Seaside
was taken up by the large resorts and high-rise condominiums. The individual
houses were few and at a great price.
At about three o’clock,
they walked into ‘the house’ - a Spartan modern affair with low
ceilings and severe white walls. The rectangular windows made the Gulf view
into a series of paintings in simple frames. The horizon cut the paintings
exactly in half. Down below the high front decks were the dunes, which must be
preserved, it was explained to them, as they were the protection against the
high waves when the hurricanes came.
By means of a long pier they
walked out over the dunes and then went down weathered wooden steps to the
beach itself. In the dazzle of the sun the whiteness was again unbelievable.
The water was a perfect foaming green.
Far, far down the beach to
either side the high rises broke the vista with their white towers, seemingly
as clean and geometric as this little house itself. The cliffs and crags and
trees of California were utterly absent. It was a wholly different environment
— suggestive of the Greek islands, in spite of its flatness, a cubist
landscape of blinding light and sharp lines.
He liked it. He told her
that immediately, yes, he really did like it, and this house would be just
fine.
Above all he liked the
contrast to the lushness of New Orleans. The house was well built, with its
coral-colored tile floors and thick carpets, and its gleaming stainless steel
kitchen. Yes, cubist, and stark. And inexplicably beautiful in its own way.
The one disappointment for
Rowan was that a boat couldn’t be docked here, that she would have to
drive a couple of miles to the marina on the bay side of the highway, and take
the boat out through Destin harbor into the Gulf. But that was not so terribly
inconvenient when one measured it against the luxury of this long stretch of
unspoiled beach.
As Rowan and the agent wrote
up the offer to purchase, Michael walked out on the weathered deck. He shaded
his eyes as he studied the water. He tried to analyze the sense of serenity it
produced in him, which surely had to do with the warmth and the deep brilliance
of the colors. In retrospect it seemed that the hues and tints of San Francisco
had always been mixed with ashes, and that the sky had always been half
invisible beyond a fog, or a deep mist, or a fleece of unremarkable clouds.
He could not connect this
brilliant seascape to the cold gray Pacific, or to his scant awful memories of
the rescue helicopter, of lying there chilled and aching on the stretcher, his
clothes drenched. This was his beach and his water, and it wouldn’t hurt
him. What the hell, maybe he could even get to like being on the Sweet
Christine down here. But he had to confess, the thought of that made him
slightly sick.
Late in the afternoon, they
dined in a little fish restaurant near the marina in Destin, very rough and
noisy with the beer in plastic cups. The fresh fish was better than very good.
At sunset they were on the motel beach again, sprawled in the weathered wooden
chairs. Michael was making notes on things back at First Street. Rowan slept,
her tanned skin quite noticeably darkened from the last week of time outdoors,
and this one hour perhaps on the burning beach. Her hair was streaked with
yellow. It made a pain in him to look at her, to realize how very young she was
still.
He woke her gently as the
sun began to sink. Enormous and blood red, it made its spectacular path across
the glittering emerald sea.
He shut his eyes finally
because it was too much. He had to veer away from it, and come back again,
slowly, as the hot breeze ruffled his hair.
At nine o’clock that
evening, after they had enjoyed a tolerable meal at a bayside restaurant, the
call came from the real estate agent. Rowan’s offer on the house had been
accepted. No complications. The wicker and painted wood furniture was included.
Fireplace fittings, dishes, everything would remain. They would move to clear
title and close escrow as soon as possible. She could probably claim the keys
in two weeks.
On Sunday afternoon, they
visited the Destin Marina. The choice of boats was fabulous. But Rowan was
still toying with the idea of sending for the Sweet Christine. She
wanted something seaworthy. And there was really nothing here that surpassed
the luxury and solidity of the old Sweet Christine.
It was late afternoon when
they started back. With the radio playing Vivaldi, they saw the sunset as they
sped along Mobile Bay. The sky seemed limitless, gleaming with magical light
beyond an endless terrain of darkening clouds. The scent of rain mingled with
the heat.
Home. Where I belong. Where
the sky looks as I remember it. Where the low country spreads out forever. And
the air is my friend.
Fast and silent the traffic
flowed on the interstate highway; the low cushy Mercedes-Benz cruised easily at
eighty-five. The music ripped the air with its high pure violin glissandos. Finally
the sun died to a wash of blinding gold. The dark swampy woodlands closed
around them as they sped into Mississippi, the eighteen-wheelers rumbling by,
the lights of the little towns flickering for an instant, then vanishing, as
the last of the tarnished light died away.
Did she miss the drama of
California? he asked her. Miss the cliffs and the yellow hills?
She was looking at the sky
just as he was. You never saw such a sky out there. No, she said softly. She
missed nothing. She was going to be sailing different waters, warm waters.
After a long while, when it
was truly dark, and the only view now was the view of the glowing red tail
lamps before them she said:
‘This is our
honeymoon, isn’t it?’
‘I guess it is.’
‘I mean, it’s
the easy part. Before you realize what kind of person I really am.’
‘And what kind is that?’
‘You want to ruin our
honeymoon?’
‘It won’t ruin
it.’ He glanced at her. ‘Rowan, what are you talking about?’
No answer. ‘You know you’re the only person in this world I really
know right now. You’re the only one I don’t handle literally with
kid gloves. I know more about you than you realize, Rowan.’
‘What would I do
without you?’ she whispered, snuggling back against the seat, stretching
out her long legs.
‘Meaning?’
‘I don’t know.
But I’ve figured something out.’
‘I’m afraid to
ask.’
‘He’s not going
to show himself till he gets ready.’
‘I know.’
‘He wants you here
right now. He’s standing back out of the way for you. He showed himself
to you that first night just to entice you.’
‘This is giving me the
creeps. Why is he so willing to share you?’
‘I don’t know.
But I’ve given him opportunities, and he’s not really showing
himself. Strange things happen, crazy things, but I’m never sure…’
‘Like what things?’
‘Oh, not worth
dwelling on. Look, you’re tired. You want me to drive for a while?’
‘Good Lord, no. And I’m
not tired. I just don’t want him here with us right now, in this
conversation. I have a feeling he’ll come soon enough.’
Late that night, he woke up
in the big hotel bed alone. He found her sitting in the living room. He
realized she’d been crying.
‘Rowan, what is it?’
‘Nothing, Michael.
Nothing that doesn’t happen to a woman once a month,’ she said. She
gave a little forced smile, faintly bitter. ‘It’s just… well,
you’ll probably think I’m insane, but I was hoping I was pregnant.’
He took her hand, not
knowing whether it was the right thing to kiss her. He too felt the
disappointment, but more significant, he felt happy that she had actually
wanted to have a child. All this time, he’d been afraid to ask her what
her feelings were about such a thing. And his own carelessness had been
worrying him. That would have been great, darling,’ he said. ‘Just
great.’
‘You think so? You
would have been happy?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Michael, let’s
do it then. Let’s go on and get married.’
‘Rowan, nothing would
make me happier,’ he said simply. ‘But are you sure this is what you
want?’
She gave him a slow patient
smile. ‘Michael, you’re not getting away,’ she said, with a
small playful frown. ‘What’s the point of waiting?’
He couldn’t help but
laugh.
‘And what about
Mayfair Unlimited, Rowan? The cousins and company. You know what they’re
going to say, honey.’
She shook her head, with the
same knowing smile as before. ‘Do you want to hear what I have to say? We’re
fools if we don’t do it.’
Her gray eyes were still
rimmed in red, but her face was very tranquil now, and so pretty to look at, so
soft to touch. So unlike the face of anyone he’d ever known, or loved, or
even dreamed of.
‘Oh, I want to do it,’
he whispered. ‘But I’m forty-eight years old, Rowan. I was born the
same year your mother was born. Yes, I want it. I want it with all my heart.
But I have to think of you.’
‘Let’s have the
wedding at First Street, Michael,’ she said in her soft husky voice, her
eyes puckering slightly. ‘What do you think? Wouldn’t it be
perfect? On that beautiful side lawn.’
Perfect. Like that plan for
the hospitals built upon the Mayfair legacy. Perfect.
He wasn’t sure why he
was hesitating. He couldn’t resist. Yet it was all too good to be true,
too sweet actually, her openness and her love, and the pride it engendered in
him -that this woman of all women should need and love him just the way he
needed and loved her.
‘Those cousins of
yours will draw up all the papers to protect you… you know, the house,
the legacy. All that.’
‘It’s automatic.
It’s all entailed or something. But they’ll probably manufacture a
storehouse of papers of one kind or another.’
‘I’ll sign on
the dotted line.’
‘Michael, the papers
really don’t mean anything. What I have is yours.’
‘What I want is you,
Rowan.’
Her face brightened; she
drew her knees up, turning sideways on the couch to face him, and she leaned
over and kissed him.
Suddenly it hit him, grandly
and deliciously. Getting married. Marrying Rowan. And the promise, the
absolutely dazzling promise of a child. This kind of happiness was so
completely unfamiliar to him that he was almost afraid. But not quite.
It seemed the very thing
that they must do at all costs. Preserve what they had and what they wanted,
against the dark current that had brought them together. And when he thought of
the years ahead - of all the simple and heartbreakingly important possibilities
- his happiness was too great to be expressed.
He knew better than to even
try. After a few moments of silence, bits of poetry came to him, little phrases
that barely caught the light of his contentment the way a bit of glass catches
light. They left him. He was contented and empty, and full of nothing but a
quiet inarticulate love.
In perfect understanding, it
seemed, they looked at each other. Questions of failure, of haste, all the what
if’s of life, did not matter. The quiet in her was talking to the quiet
in him.
When they went into the
bedroom, she said she wanted to spend their wedding night at the house, and
then go on to Florida for the honeymoon. Wouldn’t that be the best way to
handle it? A wedding night under that roof, and slipping away afterwards.
Surely the workmen could get
the front bedroom ready in a couple of weeks.
‘I guarantee it,’
he said.
In that big antique bed in
the front room. He could almost hear the ghost of Belle say, ‘How lovely
for both of you.’
THIRTY-SEVEN
UNEASY SLEEP. She shifted,
turned and put her arm over his back, drawing her knees under his, warm and
snug again. The air-conditioning was almost as good as the Florida Gulf breeze.
But what was it tugging at
her neck, tangled in her hair, and hurting her? She moved to brush it away, to
free her hair. Something cold pressed against her breast. She didn’t like
it.
She turned over on her back,
half dreaming once again that she was in the Operating Room, and this was a
most difficult procedure. She had to envision carefully what she meant to do -
to guide her hands every step with her mind - commanding the blood not to flow,
commanding the tissues to come together. And the man lay split open all the way
from his crotch to the top of his head, all his tiny organs exposed, quivering,
red, impossible for his size, waiting for her somehow to make them grow.
‘Too much, I can’t
do this,’ she said. ‘I’m a neurosurgeon, not a witch!’
She could see every vessel
now in his legs and arms as if he were one of those clear plastic dummies
threaded through and through with red, to teach children about circulation. His
feet quivered. They too were small, and he was wriggling his toes trying to
make them grow. How blank was the expression on his face, but he was looking at
her.
And that tugging in her hair
again, something pulling at her hair. Again, she pushed it away, and this time
her finger caught it — what was it, a chain?
She didn’t want to
lose the dream. She knew it was a dream now, but she wanted to know what was
going to happen to this man, how this operation was to end.
‘Dr Mayfair, put down
your scalpel,’ said Lemle. ‘You don’t need that anymore.’
‘No, Dr Mayfair,’
said Lark. ‘You can’t use it here.’
They were right. It was past
the point for something so crude as the tiny flickering steel blade. This was
not a matter of cutting, but of construction. She was staring at the long open
wound, at the tender organs shivering like plants, like the monstrous iris in
the garden. Her mind raced with the proper specifications as she guided the
cells, explaining as she went along so that the young doctors would understand.
‘There are sufficient cells there, you see, in fact, they exist in
profusion. The important thing is to provide for them a superior DNA, so to
speak, a new and unforeseen incentive to form organs of the proper size.’
And behold, the wound was closing over organs of the proper size and the man
was turning his head, and his eyes snapped open and shut like the eyes of a
doll.
Applause rose all around
her, and looking up she was amazed to see that they were all Dutchmen here,
gathered at Leiden; even she wore the big black hat and the gorgeous thick
sleeves, and this was a painting by Rembrandt, of course, The Anatomy
Lesson, and that is why the body looked so perfectly neat, though it
hardly explained why she could see through it.
‘Ah, but you have the
gift, my child, you are a witch,’ said Lemle.
‘That’s right,’
said Rembrandt. Such a sweet old man. He sat in the corner, his head to one
side, his russet hair wispy now in old age.
‘Don’t let Petyr
hear you,’ she said.
‘Rowan, take the
emerald off,’ Petyr said. He stood at the foot of the table. ‘Take
it off, Rowan, it’s around your neck. Remove it!’
The emerald?
She opened her eyes. The
dream lost its vibrancy like a taut veil of silk suddenly torn free and
furling. The darkness was alive around her.
Very slowly the familiar
objects came to light. The closet doors, the table by the bed, Michael, her
beloved Michael, sleeping beside her.
She felt the coldness
against her naked breast, she felt the thing caught in her hair, and she knew
what it was.
‘Oh God!’ She
covered her mouth with her left hand but not before that little scream had
escaped, her right hand snatching the thing off her neck as if it had been a
loathsome insect.
She sat up, hunched over,
staring at it in the palm of her hand. Like a clot of green blood. Her breath
caught in her throat, and she saw that she had broken the old chain, and her
hand was shaking uncontrollably.
Had Michael heard her cry
out? He didn’t move even as she leaned against him.
‘Lasher!’ she
whispered, her eyes moving up as if she could find him in the shadows. ‘Do
you want to make me hate you!’ Her words were a hiss. For one second the
fabric of the dream was clear again, as if the veil had once more been lowered.
All the doctors were leaving the table.
‘Done, Rowan.
Magnificent, Rowan.’
‘A new era, Rowan.’
‘Very simply
miraculous, my dear,’ said Lemle.
‘Cast it away, Rowan,’
said Petyr.
She flung the emerald over
the foot of the bed. Somewhere in the small hallway it struck the carpet, with
a dull impotent little sound.
She put her hands to her
face, and then feverishly, she felt of her neck, felt of her breasts as if the
damnable thing had left some layer of dust or grime on her.
‘Hate you for this,’
she whispered again in the dark. ‘Is that what you want?’
Far off it seemed she heard
a sigh, a rustling. Through the far hallway door, she could just barely make
out the curtains in the living room against the light of the street, and they
moved as if ruffled by a low draft, and that was the sound she heard, wasn’t
it?
That and the slow measured
song of Michael’s breathing. She felt foolish for having flung the stone
away. She sat with her hands over her mouth, knees up, staring into the
shadows.
Well, didn’t you
believe the old tales? Why are you shaking like this? Just one of his tricks,
and no more difficult for him than making the dance of the wind in the trees.
Or making that iris move in the garden. Move. It did more than move, though,
didn’t it? It actually… And then she remembered those roses, those
strange large roses on the hall table. She had never asked Pierce where they
had come from. Never asked Gerald.
Why are you so frightened?
She got up, put on her robe,
and walked barefoot into the hall, Michael sleeping on, undisturbed, in the bed
behind her.
She picked up the jewel and
wound the two strands of broken chain around it carefully. Seemed dreadful to
have broken those fragile antique links.
‘But you were stupid
to do this,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll never put it on now, not of
my own free will.’
With a low creak of the
springs, Michael turned over in the bed. Had he whispered something? Her name
maybe?
She crept silently back into
the bedroom, and dropping to her knees, found her purse in the corner of the
closet and put the necklace into the side zipper pocket.
She wasn’t shaking
now. But her fear had alchemized perfectly to rage. And she knew she couldn’t
sleep any more.
Sitting alone in the living
room as the sun rose, she thought of all the old portraits at the house, the
ones she’d been going through, and wiping clean, and preparing to hang,
the very old ones she could identify which no one else in the family could.
Charlotte with her blond hair, so deeply faded beneath the lacquer that she
seemed a ghost. And Jeanne Louise, with her twin brother standing behind her.
And gray-haired Marie Claudette with the little painting of Riverbend on the
wall above her.
All of them wore the
emerald. So many paintings of that one jewel. She closed her eyes and dozed on
the velvet couch, wishing for coffee, yet too sleepy to make it. She’d been
dreaming before this happened, but what was it all about — something to
do with the hospital and an operation, and now she couldn’t remember.
Lemle there. Lemle whom she hated so much…
And that dark-mouthed iris
that Lasher had made…
Yes, I know your tricks. You
made it swell and break from its stem, didn’t you? Oh, nobody really
understands how much power you have. To make whole leaves sprout from the stem
of a dead rose. Where do you get your handsome form when you appear, and why won’t
you do it for me? Are you afraid I’ll scatter you to the four winds, and
you’ll never have the strength to gather yourself together?
She was dreaming again, wasn’t
she? Imagine, a flower changing like that iris, altering before her eyes, the
cells actually multiplying and mutating…
Unless it was just a trick.
A trick like putting the necklace on her in her sleep. But wasn’t
everything a trick?
‘Well, boys and girls,’
said Lark once as they stood over the bed of a comatose and dying man, ’we’ve
done all our tricks, haven’t we?’
What would have happened if
she had tried a couple of her own? Like telling the cells of that dying man to
multiply, to mutate, to restructure, and seal off the bruised tissue. But she
hadn’t known. She still didn’t know how far she could go.
Yes, dreaming. Everyone
walking through the halls at Leiden. You know what they did to Michael Servetus
in Calvinist Geneva, when he accurately described the circulation of the blood
in 1553, they burnt him at the stake, and all his heretical books with him. Be careful,
Dr van Abel.
I am not a witch.
Of course, none of us are. It’s
a matter of constantly re-evaluating our concept of natural
principles.
Nothing natural about those
roses.
And now the air in here,
moving the way it was, catching the curtains and making them dance, stirring
the papers on the coffee table in front of her, even lifting the tendrils of
her hair, and cooling her. Your tricks. She didn’t want this dream
anymore. Do the patients at Leiden always get up and walk away after the
anatomy lesson?
But you won’t dare
show yourself, will you?
She met Ryan at ten o’clock
and told him all about the plans for the marriage, trying to make it
matter-of-fact and definite, so as to invite as few questions as possible.
‘And one thing I wish
you could do for me,’ she said. She took the emerald necklace out of her
purse. ‘Could you put this in some sort of vault? Just lock it away,
where no one can possibly get at it.’
‘Of course, I can keep
it here at the office,’ he said, ’but Rowan, there are several things
I ought to explain to you. This legacy is very old - you have to have a little
patience now. The rules and rubrics, so to speak, are quaint and bizarre, but
nevertheless explicit. I’m afraid you’re required to wear the
emerald at the wedding.’
‘You don’t mean
this.’
‘You understand, of
course, these small requirements are probably quite vulnerable to contest or
revision in a court of law, but the point of following them to the letter is -
and has always been - to avoid even the remotest possibility of anyone ever
challenging the inheritance at any point in its history, and with a personal
fortune of this size and this
And on and on he went in
familiar lawyerly fashion, but she understood. Lasher had won this round.
Lasher knew the terms of the legacy, didn’t he? He had simply given her
the appropriate wedding present.
Her anger was cold and dark
and isolating just as it had always been at its worst. She gazed off, out the
office window, not even seeing the soft cloud-filled sky, or the deep winding
gash of the river below it.
‘I’ll have this
gold chain repaired,’ Ryan said. ‘Seems to be broken.’
It was one o’clock
when she reached First Street with lunch in a little brown sack — two
sandwiches and a couple of bottles of Dutch beer. Michael was all excited. They’d
found a treasure trove of old New Orleans red bricks under the earth on the
back lot. Beautiful bricks, the kind they couldn’t make anymore. They
could now build the new gateposts with the perfect material. And they’d
also found a stash of old blueprints in the attic.
‘They look like the
original plans,’ he said. ‘They may have been drawn by Darcy
himself. Come on. I left them up there. They’re so fragile.’
She went with him up the
stairs. How fresh it all looked with the new paint; even Deirdre’s room
was lovely now, the way it should have always been.
‘Nothing’s the
matter, is it?’ he asked.
Wouldn’t he know? she
thought. Wouldn’t he have to sense it? And to think she had to wear the
damned thing at the wedding. Her great dream of the Mayfair Medical Center, and
everything else would go right out the window if she didn’t. He’d
go crazy when she told him. And she couldn’t bear to see the scared look
in his eyes again. She couldn’t bear to see him agitated and weak, that
was the truth of it.
‘No, nothing’s
wrong,’ she said. ‘I was just downtown all morning with the lawyers
again, and I missed you.’ She threw her arms around him, nuzzling her
head under his chin. ‘I really really missed you.’
THIRTY-EIGHT
No ONE seemed the least
surprised at the news. Aaron drank a toast with them over breakfast, and then
went back to work in the library at First Street, where at Rowan’s
invitation he was cataloging the rare books.
Smooth-talking Ryan of the
cold blue eyes came by Tuesday afternoon, to shake Michael’s hand. In a
few words of pleasant conversation, he made it clear that he was impressed with
Michael’s accomplishments, which could only mean of course that Michael
had been investigated, through the regular financial channels, just as if he
were bidding on a job.
‘It’s all sort
of annoying, I’m sure,’ Ryan admitted finally, ‘investigating
the fiancé of the designee of the Mayfair legacy, but you see, I don’t
have much choice in the matter…"
‘I don’t mind,’
Michael said with a little laugh. ‘Anything you couldn’t find out
and you wanna know, just ask.’
‘Well, for starters,
how did you ever do so well without committing a crime?’
Michael laughed off the
flattery. ‘When you see this house in a couple of months,’ he said,
’you’ll understand.’ But he wasn’t fool enough to think
his modest fortune had impressed this man. What were a couple of million in
blue chip securities compared to the Mayfair legacy? No, this was a little talk
about the geography of New Orleans - that he had come from the other side of
Magazine Street, and that he still had the Irish Channel in his voice. But
Michael had been too long out west to worry about something like that.
They walked together over
the newly clipped grass. The new boxwood - small and trim - was now in place
throughout the garden. It was possible to see the flower beds as they had been
laid out a century before - to see the little Greek statues placed at the four
corners of the yard.
Indeed, the entire classical
plan was reemerging. The long octagonal shape of the lawn was the same as the
long octagonal shape of the pool. The perfectly square flagstones were set in a
diamond pattern against the limestone balustrades which broke the patio into
distinct rectangles and marked off paths which met at right angles, framing
both garden and house. Old trellises had been righted so that they once again
defined the gateways. And as the black paint went up on the cast-iron lace
railings, it brought to life their ornate and repetitive design of curlicues
and rosettes.
Yes, patterns - everywhere
he looked he discerned patterns — struggling against the sprawling crepe
myrtle and the glossy-leafed camellias, and the antique rose as it fought its
way up the trellis, and against the sweet little four o’clocks which
fought for light in the brightest patches of unhindered sun.
Beatrice, very dramatic in a
great pink hat and large square silver-rimmed glasses, met with Rowan at two o’clock
to discuss the wedding. Rowan had set the date for Saturday a week. ‘Less
than a fortnight!’ Beatrice declared with alarm. No, everything had to be
done right. Didn’t Rowan understand what the marriage would mean to the
family? People would want to come from Atlanta and New York.
It couldn’t be done
before the last of October. And surely Rowan would want the renovations of the
house to be complete. It meant so much to everyone to see the house.
All right, said Rowan, she
guessed she and Michael could wait that long, especially if it meant they could
spend their wedding night in the house, and the reception could be held here.
Definitely, said Michael;
that would give him almost eight solid weeks to get things in shape. Certainly
the main floor could be finished and the front bedroom upstairs.
‘It would be a double
celebration, then, wouldn’t it?’ said Bea. ‘Your wedding, and
the reopening of the house. Darlings, you will make everyone so very happy.’
And yes, every Mayfair in
creation must be invited. Now Beatrice went to her list of caterers. The house
could hold a thousand if tents were arranged over the pool and over the lawn.
No, not to worry. And the children could swim, couldn’t they?
Yes, it would be like old
times, it would be like the days of Mary Beth. Would Rowan like to have some
old photographs of the last parties given before Stella died?
‘We’ll gather all
the photographs for the reception,’ said Rowan. ‘It can be a
reunion. We’ll put out the photographs for everyone to enjoy.’
‘It’s going to
be marvelous.’
Suddenly Beatrice reached
out and took Michael’s hand.
‘May I ask you a
question, darling? Now that you’re one of the family? Why in the world do
you wear these horrible gloves?’
‘I see things when I
touch people,’ he said before he could stop himself.
Her large gray eyes
brightened. ‘Oh, that’s most intriguing. Did you know Julien had
that power? That’s what they always told me. And Mary Beth too. Oh,
darling, please let me.’ She began to roll the leather back, her long
pink almond-shape fingernails lightly scraping his skin as she did it. ‘Please?
May I? You don’t mind?’ She ripped the glove off and held it up
with a triumphant yet innocent smile.
He did nothing. He remained
passive, his hand open, fingers slightly curled. He watched as she laid her
hand on his, and then squeezed his hand firmly. In a flash the random images
crowded into his head. The miscellany came and went so fast he caught none of
it - merely the atmosphere, the wholesomeness, the equivalent of sunshine and
fresh air, and the very distinct register of Innocent. Not one of them.
‘What did you see?’
she asked.
He saw her lips stop moving
before the words came clear.
‘Nothing,’ he
said as he drew back. ‘It’s considered to be the absolute
confirmation of goodness, and good fortune. Nothing. No misery, no sadness, no
illness, nothing at all.’ And in a way, that had been perfectly true.
‘Oh, you are a darling,’
she said, blank-faced and sincere, and then swooped in to kiss him. ‘Where
did you ever find such a person?’ she asked Rowan. And without waiting
for an answer, she said, ‘I like you both! And that’s better than
loving you, for that’s expected, you know. But liking you, what a curious
surprise. You really are the most adorable couple, you with your blue eyes,
Michael, and Rowan with that scrumptious butterscotch voice! I could kiss you
on your eyes every time you smile at me — and don’t do it now, how
dare you? -and I could kiss her on her throat every time she utters a word! A
single solitary word!’
‘May I kiss you on the
cheek, Beatrice?’ he asked tenderly.
‘Cousin Beatrice to
you, you gorgeous hunk of man,’ she said with a little theatrical pat of
her heaving bosom. ‘Do it!’ She shut her eyes tight, and then
opened them with another dramatic and radiant smile.
Rowan was merely smiling at
them both in a vague, bemused fashion. And now it was time for Beatrice to take
her downtown to Ryan’s office. Interminable legal matters. How horrible.
Off they went.
He realized the black
leather glove had fallen to the grass. He picked it up, and put it on.
Not one of them…
But who had been speaking?
Who had been digesting and relaying that information? Maybe he was simply
getting better at it, learning to ask the questions, as Aaron had tried to
teach him to do.
Truth was, he hadn’t
paid much attention to that aspect of the lessons. He mainly wanted to shut the
power off. Whatever the case, there had, for the first time since the debacle
of the jars, been a clear and distinct message. In fact,-it was infinitely more
concise and authoritative than the majority of the awful signals he’d
received that day. It had been as clear as Lasher’s prophecy in its own
way.
He looked up slowly. Surely
there was someone on the side porch, in the deep shade, watching him. But he
saw nothing. Only the painters at work on the cast iron. The porch looked
splendid now that the old screen had been stripped away and the makeshift
wooden railings removed. It was a bridge between the long double parlor and the
beautiful lawn.
And here we will be married,
he thought dreamily. And as if to answer the great crepe myrtles caught the
breeze, dancing, their light pink blossoms moving gracefully against the blue
sky.
When he got back to the
hotel that afternoon, there was an envelope waiting for him from Aaron. He tore
it open even before he reached the suite. Once the door was soundly shut on the
world, he pulled out the thick glossy color photograph and held it to the
light.
A lovely dark-haired woman
gazed out at him from the divine gloom spun by Rembrandt - alive, smiling the
very smile he had only just seen on Rowan’s lips. The Mayfair emerald
gleamed in this masterly twilight. So painfully real the illusion, that he had
the feeling the cardboard on which it was printed might melt and leave the face
floating, gossamer as a ghost, in the air.
But was this his Deborah,
the woman he had seen in the visions? He
didn’t know. No shock of recognition came to him no matter how
long he studied it.
Taking off the gloves and
handling it yielded nothing, only the maddeningly meaningless images of
intermediaries and incidental persons he had come by now to expect. And as he
sat on the couch holding the photograph, he knew it would have been the same
had he touched the old oil painting itself.
‘What do you want of
me?’ he whispered.
Out of innocence and out of
time, the dark-haired girl smiled back at him. A stranger. Caught forever in
her brief and desperate girlhood. Fledgeling witch and nothing more.
But somebody had told him
something this afternoon when Beatrice’s hand had touched his! Somebody
had used the power for some purpose. Or was it simply his own inner voice?
He put aside his gloves, as
he was accustomed to do now when alone here, and picked up his pen and his
notebook, and began to write.
‘Yes, it was a small
constructive use of the power, I think. Because the images were subordinate to
the message. I’m not sure that ever happened before, not even the day I
touched the jars. The messages were mingled with the images, and Lasher was
speaking to me directly, but it was mixed together. This was quite something
else.’
And what if he were to touch
Ryan’s hand tonight at dinner, when they all gathered around the
candlelighted table in the Caribbean Room downstairs? What would the inner
voice tell him? For the first time, he found himself eager to use the power.
Perhaps because this little experiment with Beatrice had turned out so well.
He had liked Beatrice. He
had seen perhaps what he wanted to see. An ordinary human being, a part of the
great wave of the real which meant so much to him and to Rowan.
‘Married by November 1.
God, I have to call Aunt Viv. She’ll be so disappointed if I don’t
call.’
He put the photograph on
Rowan’s bedside table for her to see.
There was a lovely flower
there, a white flower that looked like a familiar lily, yet somehow different.
He picked it up, examining it, trying to figure why it looked so strange, and
then he realized it was much longer than any lily he’d ever seen, and its
petals seemed unusually fragile.
Pretty. Rowan must have
picked it when she was walking back from the house. He went into the bathroom,
filled a glass with water, and put the lily in it, and brought it back to the
table.
He didn’t remember
about touching Ryan’s hand until the dinner was long over and he was
alone upstairs again, with his books. He was glad he hadn’t done it. The
dinner had been too much fun, what with young Pierce regaling them with old
legends of New Orleans - all the lore he remembered but which Rowan had never
heard - and entertaining little anecdotes about the various cousins, all of it
loosely strung together in a natural and beguiling way. But Pierce’s
mother, Gifford, a trim, beautifully groomed brunette, and also a Mayfair by
birth, had stared at him and Rowan fearfully and silently throughout the meal,
and talked almost not at all.
And of course the whole
dinner was, for him, another one of those secretly satisfying moments —
comparing this night to the event of his boyhood when Aunt Viv had come from
San Francisco to visit his mother, and he had dined in a real restaurant - the
Caribbean Room - for the very first time.
And to think, Aunt Viv would
be here before the end of next week. She was confused, but she was coming. What
a load off his mind.
He’d sock her away in
some nice comfortable condominium on St Charles Avenue - one of the new brick
town houses with the pretty mansard roofs and the French windows. Something
right on the Mardi Gras parade route so she could watch from her balcony. In
fact, he ought to be scanning the want ads now. She could take cabs anywhere
she had to go. And then he’d break it to her very gently that he wanted
her to stay down here, that he didn’t want to go back to California, that
the house on Liberty Street wasn’t home to him anymore.
About midnight, he left his
architecture books and went into the bedroom. Rowan was just switching off the
light. 1 ‘Rowan,’ he said, ’if you saw that thing you’d
tell me, wouldn’t you?’
‘What are you talking
about, Michael?’
‘If you saw Lasher, you’d
tell me. Right away.’
‘Of course I would,’
she said. ‘Why would you even ask me that? Why don’t you put away
the picture books and come to bed?’
He saw that the picture of
Deborah had been propped up behind the lamp. And the pretty white lily in the
water glass was standing in front of the picture.
‘Lovely, wasn’t
she?’ Rowan said. ‘I don’t suppose there is a way in the
world to get the Talamasca to part with the original painting.’
‘I don’t know,’
he said. ‘Probably not likely. But you know that flower is really
remarkable. This afternoon, when I put it in the glass, I could swear it had
only a single bloom, and now there are three large blooms, look at it. I must
not have noticed the buds.’
She looked puzzled. She
reached out, took the flower carefully from the water and studied it. ‘What
kind of lily is it?’ she asked.
‘Well, it’s kind
of like what we used to call an Easter lily, but they don’t bloom at this
time of year. I don’t know what it is. Where did you get it?’
‘Me? I’ve never
seen it before.’
‘I assumed you’d
picked it somewhere.’
‘No, I didn’t.’
Their eyes met. She was the
first to look away, raising her eyebrows slowly, and then giving a little tilt
to her head. She put the lily back in the glass. ‘Maybe a little gift
from someone.’
‘Why don’t I
throw it away?’ he said.
‘Don’t get
upset, Michael. It’s just a flower. He’s full of little tricks,
remember?’
‘I’m not upset,
Rowan. It’s just that it’s already withering. Look at it, it’s
turning brown, and it looks weird. I don’t like it.’
‘All right,’ she
said, very calmly. ‘Throw it away.’ She smiled. ‘But don’t
worry about anything!’
‘Of course not. What
is there to worry about? Just a three-hundred-year-old demon with a mind of his
own, who can make flowers fly through the air. Why shouldn’t I be
overjoyed about a strange lily popping up out of nowhere? Hell, maybe he did it
for Deborah. What a nice thing to do.’
He turned and stared at the
photograph again. Like a hundred Rembrandt subjects, his dark-haired Deborah
appeared to be looking right back at him.
He was startled by Rowan’s
soft little laugh. ‘You know, you are cute when you’re angry,’
she said. ‘But there’s probably a perfectly good explanation for
how the flower got here.’
‘Yeah, that’s
what they always say in the movies,’ he said. ‘And the audience
knows they’re crazy.’
He took the lily into the
bathroom and dropped it into the trash. It really was withering. No waste,
wherever the hell it came from, he figured.
She was waiting for him when
he came out, her arms folded, looking very serene and inviting. He forgot all
about his books in the living room.
The next evening he walked
over alone to First Street. Rowan was out with Cecilia and Clancy Mayfair,
making the rounds of the city’s fashionable malls.
The house was hushed and
empty when he got there. Even Eugenia was out tonight, with her two boys and
their children. He had it all to himself.
Though the work was
progressing wonderfully, there were still ladders and drop cloths virtually
everywhere. The windows were still bare, and it was too soon to clean them. The
long shutters, removed for sanding and painting, lay side by side like great
long planks on the grass.
He went into the parlor,
stared for a long time at his own shadowy reflection in the mirror over the
first fireplace, the tiny red light of his cigarette like a firefly in the
dark.
A house like this is never
quiet, he thought. Even now he could hear a low singing of creaks and snaps in
the rafters and the old floors. You could have sworn someone was walking
upstairs, if you didn’t know better. Or that far back in the kitchen,
someone had just closed a door. And that funny noise, it was like a baby
crying, far far away.
But nobody else was here.
This wasn’t the first night he’d slipped away to test the house and
test himself. And he knew it wouldn’t be the last.
Slowly he walked back
through the dining room, through the shadowy kitchen and out the French doors.
A flood of soft light bathed the night around him, pouring from the lanterns on
the freshly restored cabana, and from the underwater lights of the pool. It
shone on the neatly trimmed hedges and trees, and on the cast-iron furniture,
all sanded and newly painted, and arranged in little groups on the clean swept
flags.
The pool itself was
completely restored, and filled to the brim. Very glamorous it seemed, the long
rectangle of deep blue water, rippling and shining in the dusk.
He knelt down and put his
hand in the water. A little too hot really for this early September weather,
which was no cooler than August when you got right down to it. But good for
swimming now in the dark.
A thought occurred to him.
Why not go into the pool now? It seemed wrong somehow without Rowan — that
the first splash was one of those moments that ought to be shared. But what the
hell? Rowan was having a good time, no doubt, with Cecilia and Clancy. And the
water was so tempting. He hadn’t swum in a pool in years.
He glanced back up at the
few lighted windows scattered throughout the dark violet wall of the house.
Nobody to see him. Quickly he peeled off his coat, shirt and trousers, his
shoes and his socks. He stripped off his shorts. And walking to the deep end,
he dove in without another thought.
God! This was living! He
plunged down until his hands touched the deep blue bottom, then turned over so
that he could see the light glittering on the surface above.
Then he shot upwards,
letting his natural buoyancy carry him right through that surface, shaking his
head and treading water, as he looked up at the stars. There was noise all
around him! Laughter, chatter, people talking in loud, animated voices to one
another, and underneath it all, the fast-paced wail of a Dixieland band.
He turned, astonished, and
saw the lawn strung with lanterns and filled with people; everywhere young
couples were dancing on the flagstones or even right on the grass. Every window
in the house was lighted. A young man in a black dinner jacket suddenly dove
into the pool right in front of him, blinding him with a violent splash of
water.
The water suddenly filled
his mouth. The noise was now deafening. At the far end of the pool stood an old
man in a tailcoat and white tie, beckoning to him.
‘Michael!’ he
shouted. ‘Come away at once, man, before it’s too late!’
A British accent; it was
Arthur Langtry. He broke into a rapid swim for the far end. But before he’d
taken three strokes, he lost his wind. A sharp pain caught him in the ribs, and
he veered for the side.
As he caught hold of the lip
of the pool and pulled himself up again, the night around him was empty and
quiet.
For a second he did nothing.
He remained there, panting, trying to control the beating of his heart, and
waiting for the pain in his lungs to go away. His eyes moved all the while over
the empty patio, over the barren windows, over the emptiness of the lawn.
Then he tried to climb up
and out of the pool. His body felt impossibly heavy, and even in the heat he
was cold. He stood there shivering for a moment, then he went into the cabana
and picked up one of the soiled towels he used in the day, when he came in here
to wash his hands. He towelled dry with it, and went back out and looked again
at the empty garden and the darkened house. The freshly painted violet walls
were now exactly .the color of the twilight sky.
His own noisy breathing was
the only sound in the quiet. But the pain was gone from his chest, and slowly
he forced himself to breathe deeply several times.
Was he frightened? Was he
angry? He honestly didn’t know. He was in a state of shock maybe. He wasn’t
sure on that score either. He felt he’d run a four-minute mile again,
that was certain, and his head was beginning to hurt. He picked up his clothes
and dressed, refusing to hurry, refusing to be driven away.
Then for a long moment he
sat on the curved iron bench, smoking a cigarette and studying things around
him, trying to remember exactly what he’d seen. Stella’s last
party. Arthur Langtry.
Another one of Lasher’s
tricks?
Far away, over the lawn, all
the way at the front fence, among the camellias, he thought he saw someone
moving. He heard steps echoing. But it was only an evening stroller, someone
peeping perhaps through the leaves.
He listened until he could
no longer hear the distant footsteps, and he realized he was hearing the click
of the riverfront train passing, just the way he’d heard it on
Annunciation Street when he was a boy. And that sound again, the sound of a
baby crying, that was just a train whistle.
He rose to his feet, stubbed
out the cigarette, and went back into the house.
‘You don’t scare
me,’ he said, offhandedly. ‘And I don’t believe it was Arthur
Langtry.’
Had someone sighed in the
darkness? He turned around. Nothing but the empty dining room around him.
Nothing but the high keyhole door to the hallway. He walked on, not bothering
to soften his footfalls, letting them echo loudly and obtrusively.
There was a faint clicking.
A door closing? And the sound a window makes when it is raised — a
vibration of wood and panes of glass.
He turned and went up the
stairway. He went to the front and then through every empty room. He didn’t
bother with the lights. He knew his way around the old furniture, ghostly under
its plastic drapery. The pale light from the street lamp floating through the
doorways was plenty enough for him.
Finally he had covered every
foot of it. He went back down to the first floor and out the door.
When he got back to the
hotel, he called Aaron from the lobby and asked him to come down to the bar for
a drink. It was a pleasant little place, right in the front, small, with a few
cozy tables in a dim light, and seldom crowded.
They took a table in the
corner. Swallowing half a beer in record time, he told Aaron what had happened.
He described the gray-haired man.
‘You know, I don’t
even want to tell Rowan,’ he said.
‘Why not?’ Aaron
asked.
‘Because she doesn’t
want to know. She doesn’t want to see me upset again. It drives her nuts.
She tries to be understanding, but things just don’t affect her the same
way. I go crazy. She gets angry.’
‘I think you must tell
her.’
‘She’ll tell me
to ignore it, and to go on doing what makes me happy. And sometimes I wonder if
we shouldn’t get the hell out of here, Aaron, if somebody shouldn’t…"
He stopped.
‘What, Michael?’
‘Ah, it’s crazy.
I’d kill anybody who tried to hurt that house.’
‘Tell her. Just tell
her simply and quietly what happened. Don’t give her the reaction which
will upset her, unless of course she asks for it. But don’t keep any
secrets, Michael, especially not a secret like that.’
He was quiet for a long
time. Aaron had almost finished his drink.
‘Aaron, the power she
has. It there any way to test it, or work with it, or learn what it can do?’
Aaron nodded. ‘Yes,
but she feels she’s worked with it all her life in her healing. And she’s
right. As for the negative potential, she doesn’t want to develop it; she
wants to rein it incompletely.’
‘Yes, but you’d
think she’d want to play with it once in a while, in a laboratory
situation.’
‘In time, perhaps.
Right now I think she’s focused completely upon the idea of the medical
center. As you said, she wants to be with the family and realize these plans.
And I have to admit this Mayfair Medical is a magnificent conception. I think
Mayfair and Mayfair are impressed, though they’re reluctant to say so.’
Aaron finished his wine. ‘What about you?’ Aaron gestured to Michael’s
hands.
‘Oh, it’s
getting better. I take the gloves off more and more often. I don’t
know…’
‘And when you were
swimming?’
‘Well, I took them
off, I guess. God, I didn’t even think about it. I… You don’t
think it had to do with that, do you?’
‘No, I don’t
think so. But I think you’re very right to assume it might not have been
Langtry. It’s no more than a feeling perhaps, but I don’t think
Langtry would try to come through in that way. But do tell Rowan. You want
Rowan to be perfectly honest with you in return, don’t you? Tell her the
whole thing.’
He knew Aaron was right. He
was dressed for dinner and waiting in the living room of the suite when Rowan
came in. He fixed her a club soda with ice, and explained the whole incident as
briefly and concisely as he could.
At once, he saw the anxiety
in her face. It was almost a disappointment, that something ugly and dark and
awful had once again blighted her stubborn sense that everything was going
well. She seemed incapable of saying anything. She merely sat on the couch,
beside the heap of packages she’d brought home with her. She did not
touch the drink.
‘I think it was one of
his tricks,’ said Michael. ‘That was my feeling. The lily, that was
some kind of trick. I think we should just go right on.’
That’s what she wanted
to hear, wasn’t it?
‘Yes, that’s
exactly what we should do,’ she said, with slight irritation. ‘Did
it… shake you up?’ she asked. ‘I think I might have gone
crazy seeing something like that.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It
was shocking. But it was sort of fascinating. I guess it made me angry. I kind
of… well, had one of those attacks, sort of…"
‘Oh, Christ, Michael.’
‘No, no! Sit back
down, Dr Mayfair. I’m fine. It’s just that when these things
happen, there’s an exertion, an overall systemic reaction or something. I
don’t know. Maybe VTIV scared and I don’t know it. That’s
probably what it is. One time when I was a kid, I was riding the roller coaster
at Pontchartrain Beach. We got right to the top and I figured, well, I won’t
brace myself for once. I’ll just go down the big dip completely relaxed.
Well, the strangest thing happened. I felt these cramps in my stomach and my
chest. Painful! It was like my body tensed for me, without permission. It was
sort of like that. In fact, it was exactly like that.’
She was really losing it.
She sat there with her arms folded, and her lips pressed together, and she was
losing it. Finally in a low voice she said, ‘People die of heart attacks
on roller coasters. Just the way they die from other forms of stress.’
‘I’m not going
to die.’
‘What makes you so
sure?’
‘Because I’ve
done it before,’ he said. ‘And I know it’s not time.’
She gave a little bitter
laugh. ‘Very funny,’ she said.
‘I’m completely
serious.’
‘Don’t go over
there anymore alone. Don’t give it any opportunity to do this to you.’
‘Bullshit, Rowan! I’m
not scared of that damned thing. Besides, I like going over there. And…’
‘And what?’
‘The thing is going to
show itself sooner or later.’
‘And what makes you so
sure it was Lasher?’ she asked in a quiet voice. Her face had gone
suddenly smooth. ‘What if it was Langtry, and Langtry wants you
to leave me?’
‘That doesn’t
compute.’
‘Of course it computes.’
‘Look. Let’s
drop it. I only want to be straight with you, to tell you everything that
happens, not to hold back on something like that. And I don’t want you to
hold back either.’
‘Don’t go over
there again,’ she said, her face clouding. ‘Not alone, not at
night, not asking for trouble.’
He made some little derisive
noise.
But she had risen and
stalked out of the room. He’d never seen her behave in quite that manner.
In a moment she reappeared, with her black leather bag in hand.
‘Open your shirt,
would you please?’ she asked. She was removing her stethoscope.
‘What! What is this?
You gotta be kidding.’
She stood in front of him,
holding the stethoscope and staring at the ceiling. Then she looked down at
him, and smiled. ‘We’re going to play doctor, OK? Now open your
shirt?’
‘Only if you open your
shirt too.’
‘I will immediately
afterwards. In fact, you can listen to my heart too if you want.’
‘Well, if you put it
that way. Christ, Rowan, this thing is cold.’
‘I only warm it in my
hands for children, Michael.’
‘Well, hell, don’t
you think big brave guys like me feel hot and cold?’
‘Stop trying to make
me laugh. Take a slow deep breath.’
He did what she asked. ‘So
what do you hear in there?’
She stood up, gathered the
stethoscope in one hand, and put it back in the bag. She sat beside him and
pressed her fingers to his wrist.
‘Well?’
‘You seem fine. I don’t
hear any murmur. I don’t pick up any congenital problems, or any
dysfunction or weakness of any kind.’
‘That’s good old
Michael Curry!’ he said. ‘What does your sixth sense tell you?’
She reached over and placed
her hands on his neck, slipping her fingers down inside his open collar and
gently caressing the flesh. It was so gentle and so unlike her regular touch
that it brought chills up all over his back, and it stirred the passion in him
to a quick, surprising little bonfire.
He was one step from being a
pure animal now as he sat there, and surely she must have felt it. But her face
was like a mask; her eyes were glassy and she was so still, staring at him, her
hands still holding him, that he almost became alarmed.
‘Rowan?’ he
whispered.
Slowly she withdrew her
hands. She seemed to be herself again, and she let her fingers drop playfully
and with madden-ing gentleness into his lap. She scratched at the bulge in his
jeans.
‘So what does your
sixth sense tell you?’ he asked again, resisting the urge to rip her
clothing to pieces on the spot.
‘That you’re the
most handsome, seductive man I’ve ever been in bed with,’ she said
languidly. ‘That falling in love with you was an amazingly intelligent
idea. That our first child will be incredibly handsome and beautiful and strong.’
‘Are you teasing me?
You didn’t really see that?’
‘No, but it’s
going to happen,’ she said. She laid her head on his shoulder. ‘Wonderful
things are going to happen,’ she said as he folded her against him. ‘Because
we’re going to make them happen. Let’s go in there now and make
something wonderful happen between the sheets.’
By the end of the week,
Mayfair and Mayfair held its first serious conference devoted entirely to the
creation of the medical center. In consultation with Rowan, it was decided to
authorize several coordinated studies as to the feasibility, the optimum size
of the center, and the best possible New Orleans location.
Ryan scheduled fact-gathering
trips for Anne Marie and Pierce to several major hospitals in Houston, New
York, and Cambridge. Meetings were being arranged at the local level to discuss
the possibility of affiliation with universities or existing institutions in
town.
Rowan was hard at work
reading technical histories of the American hospital. For hours she talked long
distance to Larkin, her old boss, and other doctors around the country, asking
for suggestions and ideas.
It was becoming obvious to
her that her most grandiose dream could be realized with only a fraction of her
capital, if capital was even involved at all. At least that is how Lauren and
Ryan Mayfair interpreted her dreams; and it was best to allow things to proceed
on that basis.
‘But what if some day
every penny of that money could be flowing into medicine,’ said Rowan
privately to Michael, ’going into the creation of vaccines and
antibiotics, operating rooms and hospital beds?’
The renovations were going
so smoothly that Michael had time to look at a couple of other properties. By
mid-September, he’d acquired a big deep dusty shop on Magazine Street for
the new Great Expectations, just a few blocks from First Street and from where
he’d been born. It was in a vintage building with a flat above and an
iron gallery that covered the sidewalk. Another one of those perfect moments.
Yes, it was all going
beautifully and it was so much fun. The parlor was almost finished. Several of
Julien’s Chinese rugs and fine French armchairs had been returned to it.
And the grandfather clock was working once again.
Of course the family
besieged them to leave their digs at the Pontchartrain and come to this or that
house until the wedding. But they were too comfortable there in the big suite
over St Charles Avenue. They loved the Caribbean Room, and the staff of the
small elegant hotel; they even loved the paneled elevator with the flowers
painted on the ceiling, and the little coffee shop where they sometimes had
breakfast.
Also Aaron was still
occupying the suite upstairs, and they had both become extremely fond of him. A
day wasn’t a day without coffee or a drink or at least a chat with Aaron.
And if he was suffering any more of those accidents now, he didn’t say
so.
The last weeks of September
were cooler. And many an evening they remained at First Street, after the
workers had gone, having their wine at the iron table, and watching the sun set
beyond the trees.
The very last light caught
in the high attic windows which faced south, turning the panes to gold.
So quietly grand. The bougainvillea
gave forth its purple blooms in dazzling profusion, and each newly finished
room or bit of painted ironwork excited them, and filled them with dreams of
what was to come.
Meantime Beatrice and Lily
Mayfair had talked Rowan into a white dress wedding at St Mary’s
Assumption Church. Apparently the legacy stipulated a Catholic ceremony. And
the trappings were considered to be absolutely indispensable for the happiness
and satisfaction of the whole clan. Rowan seemed pleased when she finally gave
in.
And Michael was secretly
elated.
It thrilled him more than he
dared to admit. He had never hoped for anything so graceful or traditional in
his life. And of course it was the woman’s decision, and he hadn’t
wanted to pressure Rowan in any way. But ah, to think of it, a formal white
dress wedding in the old church where he’d served Mass.
As the days grew even
cooler, as they moved into a beautiful and balmy October, Michael suddenly
realized how close they were to their first Christmas together, and that they would
spend it in the new house. Think of the tree they could have in that enormous
parlor. It would be marvelous, and Aunt Viv was finally settling in at the new
condominium. She was still fussing for her personal things, and he was
promising to fly to San Francisco any day now to get them, but he knew she
liked it here. And she liked the Mayfairs.
Yes, Christmas, the way he
had always imagined it ought to be. In a magnificent house, with a splendid
tree, and a fire going in the marble fireplace.
Christmas.
Inevitably, the memory of
Lasher in the church came back to him. Lasher’s unmistakable presence,
mingled with the smell of the pine needles and the candles, and the vision of
the plaster Baby Jesus, smiling in the manger.
Why had Lasher looked so
lovingly at Michael on that long-ago day when he’d appeared in the
sanctuary by the crib?
Why all of it? That was the
question finally.
And maybe Michael would
never know. Maybe, just maybe, he had somehow completed the purpose for which
his life had been given back to him. Maybe it had never been anything more than
to return here, to love Rowan, and that they should be happy together in the
house.
But he knew it couldn’t
be that simple. Just didn’t make sense that way. It would be a miracle if
this lasted forever. Just a miracle, the way the creation of Mayfair Medical
was a miracle, and that Rowan wanted a baby was a miracle, and that the house
would soon be theirs was a miracle… and like seeing a ghost was a miracle
— a ghost beaming at you from the sanctuary of a church, or from under a
bare crepe myrtle tree on a cold night.
THIRTY-NINE
ALL RIGHT, here we go again,
thought Rowan. It was what? The fifth gathering in honor of the engaged couple?
There had been Lily’s tea, and Beatrice’s lunch, and Cecilia’s
little dinner at Antoine’s. And Lauren’s little party downtown in
that lovely old house on Esplanade Avenue.
And this time it was
Metairie - Cortland’s house, as they still called it though it had been
the home of Gifford and Ryan, and their youngest son, Pierce, for years. And
the clear October day was perfect for a garden party of some two hundred.
Never mind that the wedding
was only ten days away, on November i, the Feast of All Saints. The Mayfairs
would hold two more teas before then, and another lunch somewhere, the place
and time to be confirmed later.
‘Any excuse for a
party!’ Claire Mayfair had said. ‘Darling, you don’t know how
long we’ve been waiting for something like this.’
They were milling on the
open lawn now beneath the small, neatly clipped magnolia trees, and through the
spacious low-ceilinged rooms of the trim brick Williamsburg house. And the
dark-haired Anne Marie, a painfully honest individual who seemed now utterly
enchanted by Rowan’s hospital schemes, introduced her to dozens of the same
people she had seen at the funeral,
and dozens more whom she’d never seen before.
Aaron had been so right in
his descriptions of Metairie, an American suburb. They might have been in
Beverly Hills or Sherman Oaks in Houston. Except perhaps that the sky had that
glazed look she had never seen anywhere else except in the Caribbean. And the
old trees that lined the curbs were as venerable as those of the Garden
District.
But the house itself was
pure elite suburbia with its eighteenth-century Philadelphia antiques and
wall-to-wall carpet, and each family portrait carefully framed and lighted, and
the soft propitiatory saxophone of Kenny G pouring from hidden speakers in the
white Sheetrock walls.
A very black waiter with an
extremely round head and a musical Haitian accent poured the bourbon or the
white wine into the crystal glasses. Two dark-skinned female cooks in starched
uniforms turned the fat pink peppered shrimp on the smoking grill. And the
Mayfair women in their soft pastel dresses looked like flowers among the
white-suited men, a few small toddlers romping on the grass, or sticking their
tiny pink hands into the spray of the little fountain in the center of the
lawn.
Rowan had found a
comfortable place in a white lawn chair beneath the largest of the magnolias.
She sipped her bourbon, as she shook hands with one cousin after another. She
was beginning to like the taste of this poison. She was even a little high.
Earlier today, when she’d
tried on the white wedding dress and veil for the final fitting, she’d
found herself unexpectedly excited by the fanfare, and grateful that it had
been more or less forced upon her.
‘Princess for a Day,’
that’s what it would be like, stepping in and out of a pageant. Even the
wearing of the emerald would not really be an ordeal, especially since it had
remained safely it its case since that awful night, and she’d never
gotten around to telling Michael about its mysterious and unwelcome appearance.
She knew that she ought to have told, and several times she’d been on the
verge, but she just couldn’t do it.
Michael had been overjoyed
about the church wedding, everyone could see it. His parents had been married
in the parish, and so had his grandparents before that. Yes, he loved the idea,
probably more than she did. And unless something else happened with that awful
necklace, why spoil it all for him? Why spoil it for both of them? She could
always explain afterwards, when the thing was safely locked in a vault. Yes,
not a deception, just a little postponement.
Also, nothing else had
happened since. No more deformed flowers on her bedside table. Indeed the time
had flown, with the renovations in full swing, and the house in Florida
furnished and ready for their official honeymoon.
Another good stroke of luck
was that Aaron had been completely accepted by the family, and was now
routinely included in every gathering. Beatrice had fallen in love with him, to
hear her tell it, and teased him mercilessly about his British bachelor ways
and all the eligible widows among the Mayfairs. She had even gone so far as to
take him to the symphony with Agnes Mayfair, a very beautiful older cousin
whose husband had died the year before.
How is he going to handle
that one, Rowan wondered. But she knew by now that Aaron could ingratiate himself
with God in heaven or the Devil in hell. Even Lauren, the iceberg lawyer,
seemed fond of Aaron. At lunch the other day, Lauren had talked to him steadily
about New Orleans history. Ryan liked him. Isaac and Wheatfield liked him. And
Pierce questioned him relentlessly about his travels in Europe and the East.
Aaron was also an
unfailingly faithful companion to Michael’s Aunt Vivian. Everybody ought
to have an Aunt Vivian, the way Rowan figured it, a fragile little doll-like
person brimming with love and sweetness who doted on Michael’s every
word. She reminded Rowan of Aaron’s descriptions in the history of Millie
Dear and Aunt Belle.
But the move had not been
easy for Aunt Vivian. And though the Mayfairs had wined and dined her with
great affection, she could not keep up with their frenetic pace and their
energetic chatter. This afternoon she had begged to remain at home, sorting
through the few items she’d brought with her. She was beseeching Michael
to go out and pack up everything in the Liberty Street house and he was putting
it off, though he and Rowan both knew such a trip was inevitable.
But to see Michael with Aunt
Viv was to love him for a whole set of new reasons; for nobody could have been
kinder or more patient. ‘She’s my only family, Rowan,’ he’d
remarked once. ‘Everybody else is gone. You know, if things hadn’t
worked out with you and me, I’d be in the Talamasca now. They would have
become my family.’
How well she understood;
with a shock, she had been carried back by those words into her own bitter
loneliness of months before.
God, how she wanted things
to work here! And the ghost of First Street was keeping his counsel, as if he
too wanted them to work out. Or had her anger driven him back? For days after
the appearance of the necklace she had cursed him under her breath for it.
The family had even accepted
the idea of the Talamasca, though Aaron was persistently vague with them about
what it really was. They understood no more perhaps than that Aaron was a
scholar and a world traveler, that he had always been interested in the Mayfair
history because they were an old and distinguished southern family.
And any scholar who could
unearth a breathtakingly beautiful ancestor named Deborah, immortalized by none
other than the great Rembrandt, and authenticated beyond doubt by the
appearance of the unmistakable Mayfair emerald on her breast, was their kind of
historian. They were dazzled by the bits and pieces of her story as Aaron
revealed them. Good Lord, they’d thought Julien made up all that foolishness
about ancestors coming from Scotland.
Meantime Bea was having the
photograph of the Rembrandt Deborah reproduced in oil so that it would be
hanging on the wall at First Street on the day of the reception. She was
furious with Ryan for not recommending the purchase of the original. But then
the Talamasca wouldn’t part with the original. Thank God that after Ryan’s
guess as to the inevitable price, the subject had been dropped altogether.
Yes, they loved Aaron and
they loved Michael and they loved Rowan.
And they loved Deborah.
If they knew anything of
what had happened between Aaron and Cortland or Carlotta years ago, they said
not one word. They did not know that Stuart Townsend had been a member of the
Talamasca; indeed, they were utterly confused about the discovery of that
mysterious body. And it was becoming increasingly obvious that they thought
Stella had been responsible for its presence.
‘Probably died up
there from opium or drink at one of those wild parties and she simply wrapped
him up in the carpet and forgot about him.’
‘Or maybe she
strangled him. Remember those parties she used to give?’
It amused Rowan to listen to
them talk, to hear their easy bursts of laughter. Never the slightest
telepathic vibration of malice reached her. She could feel their good
intentions now, their celebratory gaiety.
But they had their secrets,
some of them, especially the old ones. With each new gathering, she detected
stronger indications. In fact, as the date of the wedding grew closer, she felt
certain that something was building.
The old ones hadn’t
been stopping at First Street merely to extend their best wishes, or to marvel
at the renovations. They were curious. They were fearful. There were secrets
they wanted to confide, or warnings perhaps which they wanted to offer. Or
questions they wanted to ask. And maybe they were testing her powers, because
they indeed had powers of their own. Never had she been around people so loving
and so skilled at concealing their negative emotions. It was a curious thing.
But maybe this would be the
day when something unusual would happen.
So many of the old ones were
here, and the liquor was flowing, and after a series of cool October days the
weather was pleasantly warm again. The sky was a perfect china blue, and the
great curling clouds were moving swiftly by, like graceful galleons in the
thrust of a trade wind.
She took another deep drink
of the bourbon, loving the burning sensation in her chest, and looked around
for Michael.
There he was, still trapped
as he’d been for an hour by the overwhelming Beatrice, and the strikingly
handsome Gifford, whose mother had been descended from Lestan Mayfair, and
whose father had been descended from Clay Mayfair, and who had married, of
course, Cortland’s grandson, Ryan. Seems there were some other Mayfair
lines tangled up in it, too, but Rowan had been drawn away from them at that
point in the conversation, her blood simmering at the sight of Gif-ford’s
pale fingers wound — for no good reason — around Michael’s
arm.
So what did they find so
fascinating about her heartthrob that they wouldn’t let him out of their
clutches? And why was Gifford such a nervous woman, to begin with? Poor
Michael. He didn’t know what was going on. He sat there with his gloved
hands shoved in his pockets, nodding and smiling at their little jokes. He didn’t
detect the flirtatious edge to their gestures, the flaming light in their eyes,
the high seductive ring to their laughter.
Get used to it. The son of a
bitch is irresistible to refined women. They’re all on to him now, that he’s
the bodyguard who reads Dickens.
Yesterday, he’d
climbed the long thin ladder up the side of the house like a pirate climbing
the rope ladder of a ship. And then, the sight of him, bare-chested, with his
foot on the parapet, his hair blowing, one hand raised to wave as if he had no
idea in the world that this series of unself-conscious gestures was driving her
slowly out of her mind. Cecilia had looked up and said, ‘My, but he is a
good-looking man, you know.’
‘Yes, I do,’
Rowan had mumbled.
Her desire for him at such
moments was excruciating. And he was all the more enticing in his new
three-piece white linen suit (‘You mean dress like an ice-cream man?’),
which Beatrice had dragged him to Perlis to buy. ‘Darling, you’re a
southern gentleman now!’
Porn, that’s what he
was. Walking porn. Take the times when he rolled up his sleeves and tucked his
Camel cigarettes in the right-arm fold, and put a pencil behind his ear, and
stood arguing with one of the carpenters or painters, and then put one foot
forward and raised his hand sharply like he was going to push the guy’s
chin through the top of his head.
And then there were the
skinny dips in the pool after everybody was off the property (no ghosts since
the first time), and the one weekend they’d gotten away to Florida to
claim the new house, and the sight of him sleeping naked on the deck, with
nothing on but the gold wristwatch, and that little chain around his neck. Pure
nakedness couldn’t have been more enticing.
And he was so supremely
happy! He was the only one in this world perhaps who loved that house more than
the May-fairs did. He was obsessed with it. He took every opportunity to pitch
in on the job with his men. And he was stuffing the gloves away more and more
often. Seems he could drain an object of the images if he really tried, and
after that he’d keep it out of other hands, and it would be safe, so to
speak, and now he had a whole chest of such tools which he used, barehanded,
with regularity.
Thank God, the ghosts and
the spooks were leaving them both alone. And she had to stop worrying about him
over there with his harem.
Better to concentrate on the
group gathering around her -stately old Felice had just pulled up a
chair, and the pretty garrulous Margaret Ann was settling on the grass, and the
dour Madgalene, the one who looked young but wasn’t, had been there for
some time, watching the others in an unusual silence.
Now and then a head would
turn, one of them would look at her, and she would receive some vague shimmer
of clandestine knowledge, and a question perhaps, and then it would fade. But
it was always one of the older ones - Felice, who was Barclay’s youngest
daughter and seventy-five years old, or Lily, seventy-eight, they said, and the
granddaughter of Vincent, or the elderly bald-headed Peter Mayfair, with the
wet shining eyes and the thick neck though his body was very straight and
strong - Garland’s youngest son, surely a wary and knowing elder.
And then there was Randall,
older perhaps than his uncle Peter, saggy-eyed and seemingly wise, slouched on
an iron bench in the far corner, gazing at her steadily, no matter how many
blocked his view from time to time, as if he wanted to tell her something of
great importance but did not know how to begin it.
I want to know. I
want to know everything.
Pierce now looked at her
with undisguised awe, utterly won over to the dream of the Mayfair Medical, and
almost as eager as she was to make it a reality. Too bad he’d lost some
of the easy warmth he’d shown before, and was almost apologetic as he
brought a succession of young men to be introduced, briefly explaining the
lineage and present occupation of each one. (‘We’re a family of
lawyers, or What does a gentleman do when he doesn’t have to do
anything.7’) There was something utterly lovable about Pierce as far as
she was concerned. She wanted to put him at ease again. His was a friendliness
behind which there was not a single shadow of self-centeredness.
She noted with pleasure as
well that after each introduction, he presented the very same person to Michael
with a simple, unexplained cordiality. In fact, all of them were being gracious
to Michael. Gifford kept pouring the bourbon in his glass. And Anne Marie had
now settled beside him and was talking intently to him, her shoulder brushing
his shoulder.
Turn it off, Rowan. You can’t
lock up the beautiful beast in the attic.
In clusters they surrounded
her, then broke away so that a new cluster might form. And all the while they
talked about the house on First Street, above all about the house.
For the ongoing restoration
of First Street brought them undisguised joy.
First Street was their
landmark, all right, and how they had hated to see it falling down, how they
had hated Carlotta.
Rowan caught it behind their
congratulatory words. She tasted it when she looked into their eyes. The house
was free at last from despicable bondage. And it was amazing how much they knew
about the very latest changes and discoveries. They even knew the colors Rowan
had chosen for rooms they hadn’t yet seen.
So splendid that Rowan had
kept all the old bedroom furniture. Did she know that Stella had once slept in
Carlotta’s bed? And the bed in Millie’s room had belonged to
Grandmere Katherine, and Great Oncle Julien had been born in the bed in the front
room, which was to be Rowan and Michael’s bed.
What did they think about
her plan for the great hospital? In her few brief conversations outside the
firm, she’d found them amazingly receptive. The name, Mayfair Medical,
delighted them.
It was crucial to her that
the center break new ground, she’d explained last week to Bea and
Cecilia, that it fulfill needs which others had not addressed. The ideal
environment for research, yes, that was mandatory, but this was to be no ivory
tower institute. It was to be a true hospital with a large proportion of its
beds committed to nonpaying patients. If it could draw together the top
neurologists and neurosurgeons in the nation and become the most innovative,
effective, and complete center for the treatment of neurological problems, in
unparalleled comfort and with the very latest equipment, it would be her dream
come true.
‘Sounds quite terrific
if you ask me,’ Cecilia had said.
‘It’s about
time, I think,’ said Carmen Mayfair over lunch. ‘You know, Mayfair
and Mayfair has always given away millions, but this is the first time anyone
has shown this sort of initiative.’
And of course that was only
the beginning. No need to explain yet that she foresaw experiments in the
structure and arrangement of intensive care units, and critical care wards,
that she wanted to devise revolutionary housing for the families of patients,
with special educational programs for spouses and children who must participate
in the ongoing rehabilitation of those with incurable diseases or disabilities.
But each day her vision
gained new momentum. She dreamed of a humanizing teaching program designed to
correct all the horrors and abuses which had become the cliches of modern
medicine; she planned a nursing school in which a new type of supernurse,
capable of a whole range of new responsibilities, could be created.
The words ‘Mayfair
Medical’ could become synonymous with the finest and most humane and
sensitive practitioners in the profession.
Yes, they would all be
proud. How could they not be?
‘Another drink?’
‘Yes, thank you.
Bourbon will be fine. Too fine.’
Laughter.
She took another sip as she
nodded now to young Timmy Mayfair, who had come to shake hands. Yes, and hello
again to Bernardette Mayfair, whom she’d met briefly at the funeral, and
to the beautiful little red-haired girl with the hair ribbon, who was named
Mona Mayfair, daughter of CeeCee, yes, and the tomboyish Jennifer Mayfair, Mona’s
best friend and fourth cousin, yes, met you before, of course. Jenn had a voice
like her own, she thought, deep and husky.
Bourbon was better when it
was very cold. But it was also sneaky when it was cold. And she knew she was
drinking just a little too much of it. She took another sip, acknowledging a
little toast from across the garden. One toast after another was being made to
the house, and to the marriage. Was anybody here talking about anything else?
‘Rowan, I have
photographs that go all the way back —’
‘… and my mother
saved all the articles from the papers…"
‘You know, it’s
in the books on New Orleans, oh, yes, I have some of the very old books, I can
drop them off for you at the hotel…’
‘… you
understand, we are not going to be knocking on the door day and night, but just
to know!…’
‘Rowan, our
great-grandfathers were born in that house… all the people you see here
were…’
‘Oh, poor Millie Dear
never lived to see the day…’
‘… a package of
daguerreotypes… Katherine and Darcy, and Julien. You know Julien was
always photographed at the front door. I have seven different pictures of him
at the front door.’
The front door?
More and more Mayfairs
streamed in. And there at last was the elderly Fielding - Clay’s son -
utterly bald, and with his fine, translucent skin and red-rimmed eyes —
and they were bringing him here, to sit beside her.
No sooner had he eased down
in the chair than the young ones began to appear to pay court to him as they
had to her.
Hercules, the Haitian
servant, put the tumbler of bourbon in the old man’s hand.
‘You got that now, Mr
Fielding?’
‘Yes, Hercules, no
food! I’m sick of food. I’ve eaten enough food for a lifetime.’
His voice was deep, and
ageless the way the old woman’s voice had been.
‘And so no more
Carlotta,’ he said grimly to Beatrice, who had come to kiss him. ‘And
I’m the only old one left.’
‘Don’t talk
about it, you’re going to be with us forever,’ said Bea, her
perfume swirling about them, sweet and floral, and expensive like her brilliant
red silk dress.
‘I don’t know
that you’re all that much older than I am,’ declared Lily Mayfair,
sitting beside him, and indeed for a moment she did seem as old as he was, with
her wispy luminous white hair and sunken cheeks, and the bony hand she laid on
his arm.
Fielding turned to Rowan. ‘So
you’re restoring First Street. You and that man of yours are going to
live there. And so far things have gone well?’
‘Why shouldn’t
they?’ Rowan asked with a gentle smile.
But she was warmed suddenly
by the blessing Fielding gave her as he rested his hand on her own.
‘Splendid news, Rowan,’
he said, his low voice gaining resonance now that he had caught his breath
after the long odyssey from the front door. ‘Splendid news.’ The
whites of his eyes were yellowed, though his false teeth were shining white. ‘All
those years, she wouldn’t let anyone touch it,’ he said with a
touch of anger. ‘Old witch, that’s what she was.’
Little gasps rose from the
women gathered to the left. Ah, but this was what Rowan wanted. Let the
polished surface be broken.
‘Granddaddy, for heaven’s
sakes.’ It was Gifford at his elbow. She picked up his fallen cane from
the grass and hooked it over the back of the chair. He ignored her.
‘Well, it’s the
truth,’ he said. ‘She let it fall to ruin! It’s a wonder it
can be restored at all.’
‘Granddaddy,’
said Gifford, almost desperately.
‘Oh, let him talk,
darling,’ said Lily, with a little palsy to her small head, eyes
flickering over Rowan, her thin hand knotted around her drink.
‘You think anyone
could shut me up,’ said the old man. ‘She said he was the
one who wouldn’t let her, she blamed it all on him. She believed
in him and used him when she had her reasons.’
A hush was falling over
those around them. It seemed the light died a little as the others pressed in.
Rowan was vaguely aware that the dark gray figure of Randall was moving in the
corner of her eye.
‘Granddaddy, I wish
you wouldn’t…" said Gifford.
Oh, but I wish you
would!
‘She was the one,’
Fielding said. ‘She wanted it to fall down around her. I wonder sometimes
why she didn’t burn it, like that wicked housekeeper in Rebecca.
I used to worry that she’d do it. That she’d burn all the old
pictures. You see the pictures? You see Julien and his sons standing in front
of the doorway?’
‘The doorway. You mean
the keyhole door at the front of the house?’
Had Michael heard him? Yes,
he was coming towards them, obviously trying to silence Cecilia who whispered
nonstop in his ear, oblivious to the dazed expression on his face, and Aaron
stood not very far away, under the magnolia, unnoticed, eyes fixed on the
group. If only she could put a spell on them so that they didn’t see
Aaron.
But they weren’t
noticing anything except each other, Fielding nodding, and Felice speaking up,
her silver bracelets jangling as she pointed at Fielding.
‘Tell her about it,’
said Felice, ‘I say you should. You want my opinion? Carlotta wanted that
house. She wanted to rule in that house. She was mistress of it till the day
she died, wasn’t she?’
‘She didn’t want
anything,’ grumbled Fielding, with a flopping dismissive gesture of his
left hand. ‘That was her curse. She only wanted to destroy.’
‘What about the
doorway?’ asked Rowan.
‘Granddaddy, I’m
going to take you…"
‘You’re not
going to take me anywhere, Gifford,’ he said, his voice almost youthful
in its determination. ‘Rowan’s moving back into that house. I have
things to say to Rowan.’
‘In private!’
Gifford declared.
‘Let him talk,
darling, what’s the harm?’ said Lily. ‘And this is private. We’re
all Mayfairs here.’
‘It’s a
beautiful house, she’ll love it!’ said Magdalene sharply. ‘What
are you all trying to do, scare her?’
Randall stood behind
Magdalene, eyebrows raised, lips slightly pursed, all the wrinkles of his saggy
old face drawn long and deep, as he looked down at Fielding.
‘But what were you
going to say?’ asked Rowan.
‘It’s just a
package of old legends,’ said Ryan, with a faint touch of irritation,
though he spoke more slowly, obviously trying to hold it in. ‘Stupid old
legends about a doorway and they don’t mean anything.’
Michael drew up behind
Fielding, and Aaron came a little closer. Still they took no notice.
‘I want to know,
actually,’ said Pierce. He was standing to the left behind Felice and
beside Randall. Felice stared intently at Fielding, her head wagging ever so
slightly because she was drunk. ‘My great-grandfather was painted in
front of the doorway,’ said Pierce. ‘That portrait’s inside.
They were always in front of that doorway.’
‘And why shouldn’t
they stand on the front porch of the house in these pictures?’ asked
Ryan. ‘They lived there. We have to remember, before Carlotta it was our
great-great-grandfather’s house.’
‘That’s it,’
Michael murmured. ‘That’s where I saw the door. In the pictures.
God, I should have taken a closer look at those pictures…"
Ryan glanced at him. Rowan
reached out for him, gestured for him to come to her, and Ryan’s eyes
followed as Michael came around to the back of Rowan’s chair. Pierce was
talking again as Michael slipped down on the grass beside Rowan, so that she
could rest her hand on his shoulder. Aaron now stood quite close by.
‘But even in the old
photos,’ Pierce was saying, ‘they’re in front of the door.
Always a keyhole door. Either the front door or one of the doors…’
‘Yes, the door,’
said Lily. ‘And the door’s on the grave. The same keyhole doorway
carved right above the crypts. And nobody even knows who had it done.’
‘Well, it was Julien,
of course,’ said Randall in a low stentorian voice. They all paid a quick
heed to him. ‘And Julien knew what he was doing, because the doorway had
a special meaning for him, and for all of them back then.’
‘If you tell her all
this craziness,’ said Anne Marie, ‘she isn’t going to…’
‘Oh, but I want to
know,’ said Rowan. ‘And besides, nothing could prevent us from
moving into that house.’
‘Don’t be so
sure of that,’ said Randall solemnly.
Lauren threw him a cold
disapproving glance. ‘This is no time for scary tales,’ she
whispered.
‘Do we have to drag up
all this dirt!’ cried Gifford. The woman was clearly upset. Rowan could
see Pierce’s concern. But he was on the very opposite side of the little
gathering from his mother. Ryan was close to her. Ryan took her arm, and
whispered something in her ear.
She’s going to try to
break this up, Rowan thought. ‘What does the doorway mean?’ Rowan
asked. ‘Why did they always stand in front of it?’
‘I don’t like to
talk about it,’ Gifford cried. ‘I don’t see why we have to dig
up the past every time we get together. We ought to be thinking about the
future.’
‘We are talking about
the future,’ said Randall. ‘The young woman ought to know certain
things.’
‘I’d like to
know about the door,’ said Rowan.
‘Well, go on, all of
you, old mossbacks,’ said Felice. ‘If you mean to tell something
finally after all these years of acting like the kitten who got the
cream…’
‘The doorway had to do
with the pact and the promise,’ said Fielding. ‘And it was a secret
handed down in each generation all the way from the very earliest times.’
Rowan glanced down at
Michael, who sat with knees up and his arms resting on them, merely looking up
at Fielding. But even from above, she could see the expression of dread and
confusion in his face, the same damned expression that came over him every time
he talked of the visions. The expression was so uncharacteristic that he looked
like someone else.
‘I never heard them
speak of any promise,’ said Cecilia. ‘Or pact, or any doorway, for
that matter.’
Peter Mayfair now joined
them, bald as Fielding, and with the same sharp eyes. In fact, all of them were
gathering in a circle, three and four deep. Isaac and Wheatfield crowded in
behind Pierce.
‘That’s because
they didn’t speak of it,’ said Peter in a quavering and slightly
theatrical voice. ‘It was their secret, and they didn’t want anyone
to know.’
‘But who do you mean,
they?’ asked Ryan. ‘Are you talking about my grandfather?’
His voice was slightly slurred from his drinking. He took a hasty swallow. ‘You
are talking about Cortland, aren’t you?’
‘I don’t want
to… ’ whispered Gifford, but Ryan gestured for her to be silent.
Fielding also motioned for
Gifford to be quiet. In fact, the glance he threw her was vicious.
‘Cortland was one of
them, of course,’ said Fielding, looking up at bald-headed Peter, ’and
everybody knew he was.’
‘Oh, that’s a
dreadful thing to say,’ said Magdalene angrily. ‘I loved Cortland.’
‘Many of us loved
Cortland,’ said Peter angrily. ‘I would have done anything for
Cortland, but Cortland was one of them. He was. And so was your father, Ryan.
Big Pierce was one of them as long as Stella was living, and so was Randall’s
father. Isn’t that so?’
Randall gave a weary nod,
taking a slow sip of his bourbon, the dark’faced servant going unnoticed
as he refilled Randall’s glass and quietly poured splashes of golden
bourbon in others.
‘What do you mean, one
of them?’ Pierce demanded. ‘I’ve been hearing this all my
life, one of them, not one of them, what does it mean?’
‘Nothing,’ said
Ryan. ‘They had a club, a social club.’
The hell they did,’
said Randall.
‘That all died with
Stella,’ said Magdalene. ‘My mother was close to Stella, she went
to those parties, there were no thirteen witches! That was all bunk.’
‘Thirteen witches?’
asked Rowan. She could feel the tenseness in Michael. Through a small break in
the circle she could see Aaron, who had turned his back to the tree and was
looking up at the sky as if he couldn’t hear them, but she knew that he
could.
‘Part of the legend,’
said Fielding, coldly, firmly, as if to distinguish himself from those around
him, ’part of the story of the doorway and the pact.’
‘What was the story?’
asked Rowan.
‘That they would all
be saved by the doorway and the thirteen witches,’ said Fielding, looking
up once more at Peter. ‘That was the story, and that was the promise.’
Randall shook his head. ‘It
was a riddle. Stella never knew for sure what it meant.’
‘Saved?’ asked
young Wheatfield. ‘You mean like a Christian being saved?’
‘Saved! Hallelujah!’
said Margaret Ann, and downed her drink, spilling a few drops of it on her
dress. ‘The Mayfairs are going to heaven. I knew with all this money,
somebody would work something out!’
‘You’re drunk,
Margaret Ann,’ whispered Cecilia. ‘And so ami!’
They touched their glasses
in a toast.
‘Stella was trying to
get together the thirteen witches at those parties?’ asked Rowan.
‘Yes,’ said
Fielding. ‘That was exactly what she was trying to do. She called herself
a witch, and so did Mary Beth, her mother, she never made any bones about it,
she said she had the power, and she could see the man.’
‘I’m not going
to allow this… ’ said Gifford, her voice rising hysterically.
‘Why? Why is it so
scary?’ asked Rowan softly. ‘Why isn’t it just old legends?
And who is the man!’
Silence. They were all
studying her, each waiting perhaps for the other to speak. Lauren looked almost
angry as she stared at Rowan. Lily looked faintly suspicious. They knew she was
deceiving them.
‘You know it’s
not old legends,’ said Fielding under his breath.
‘Because they believed
it!’ said Gifford, her chin raised, her lip trembling. ‘Because
people have done bad things in the name of believing this old foolishness.’
‘But what bad things?’
asked Rowan. ‘You mean what Carlotta did to my mother?’
‘I mean the things
that Cortland did,’ said Gifford. She was shaking now, clearly on the
edge of hysterics. ‘That’s what I mean.’ She glared at Ryan,
and then at her son, Pierce, and then back at Rowan. ‘And yes, Carlotta
too. They all betrayed your mother. Oh, there are so many things you don’t
know.’
‘Shhhh, Gifford, too
much to drink,’ whispered Lily.
‘Go inside, Gifford,’
said Randall.
Ryan took his wife by the
arm, bending to whisper in her ear. Pierce left his place and came around to
assist. Together they drew Gifford away from the group.
Felice was whispering
anxiously to Magdalene, and someone on the edge of the circle was trying to
gather up all the children and get them to come away. A little girl in a
pinafore was saying, ‘I want to know…"
‘I want to know,’
said Rowan. ‘What did they do?’
‘Yes, tell us about
Stella,’ said Beatrice, glancing uneasily at Gifford, who was now crying
against Ryan’s shoulder as he tried to lead her further away.
‘They believed in
Black Magic, that’s what they did,’ said Fielding, ’and they
believed in the thirteen witches and the doorway, but they never figured out
how to make it all work.’
‘Well, what did they
think it meant?’ asked Beatrice. ‘I think all this is fascinating.
Do tell.’
‘And you’ll tell
it to the whole country club,’ said Randall, ’just the way you
always have.’
‘And why shouldn’t
I?’ said Beatrice. ‘Is somebody going to come burn one of us at the
stake!’
Gifford was being forced
into the house by Ryan. Pierce closed the French doors behind them.
‘No, I want to know,’
said Beatrice, stepping forward and folding her arms. ‘Stella didn’t
know the meaning? Well, who did?’
‘Julien,’ said
Peter. ‘My grandfather. He knew. He knew and he told Mary Beth. He left
it in writing, but Mary Beth destroyed the written record, and she told it to Stella
but Stella never really understood.’
‘Stella never paid
attention to anything,’ said Fielding.
‘No, never to anything
at all,’ said Lily sadly. ‘Poor Stella. She thought it was all
parties, and bootleg liquor and her crazy friends.’
‘She didn’t
believe it all really,’ said Fielding. ‘That was the problem right
there. She wanted to play with it. And when something went wrong, she became
afraid, and drowned her fears in her bootleg champagne. She saw things that
would have convinced anyone, but still she didn’t believe in the doorway
or the promise or the thirteen witches until it was too late and Julien and
Mary Beth were both gone.’
‘So she broke the
chain of information?’ Rowan asked. ‘That’s what you’re
saying. They’d given her secrets along with the necklace and everything
else?’
‘The necklace was
never all that important,’ said Lily, ‘Car-lotta made a big fuss
about the necklace. It’s just that you can’t take the necklace
away… well, you’re not supposed to take the necklace from the one
who inherits it. It’s your necklace and Carlotta had the idea that if she
locked up the necklace, she’d put an end to all the strange goings-on,
and she made that another one of her useless little battles.’
‘And Carlotta knew,’
said Peter, glancing a little contemptuously at Fielding. ‘She knew what
the doorway and the thirteen witches meant.’
‘How do you know that?’
It was Lauren speaking from a slight distance. ‘Carlotta certainly never
talked of anything like that.’
‘Of course not, why
would she?’ said Peter. ‘I know because Stella told my mother.
Carlotta knew and Carlotta wouldn’t help her. Stella was trying to
fulfill the old prophecy. And it had nothing to do, by the way, with salvation
or hallelujahs. That wasn’t the point at all.’
‘Says who?’
demanded Fielding.
‘Says I, that’s
who.’
‘Well, what do you
know about it?’ asked Randall softly with a little touch of sarcasm in
his voice. ‘Cortland himself told me that when they brought the thirteen
witches together, the doorway would open between the worlds.’
‘Between the worlds!’
Peter scoffed. ‘And what has that got to do with salvation I’d like
to know? Cortland didn’t know anything. Any more than Stella. With
Cortland it was all after the fact. If Cortland had known he would have helped
Stella. Cortland was there. So was I.’
‘There when?’
asked Fielding scornfully.
‘You don’t mean
Stella’s parties,’ asked Lily.
‘Stella was trying to
discover the meaning when she held the parties,’ said Peter. ‘And I
was there.’
‘I never knew that,’
said Magdalene. ‘I never knew you went.’
‘How could you have
been there?’ asked Margaret Ann. ‘That was a hundred years ago.’
‘Oh, no it wasn’t.
It was 1928, and I was there,’ said Peter. ‘I was twelve years old
when I went, and my father was furious with my mother for allowing it, but I was
there. And so was Lauren. Lauren was four years old.’
Lauren gave a little subdued
nod of her head. Her eyes seemed dreamy, as if she remembered, but she did not
share the drama of the moment.
‘Stella picked
thirteen of us,’ said Peter, ’and it was based on our powers
— you know, the old psychic gifts — to read minds, to see spirits,
and to move matter.’
‘And I suppose you can
do all that,’ scoffed Fielding. ‘And that’s why I always beat
you at poker.’
Peter shook his head. ‘There
wasn’t anyone who could do it like Stella. Except Cortland, perhaps, but
even he was weaker than Stella. And then there was Big Pierce, he had the
touch, he really did, but he was young and entirely under Stella’s domination.
The rest of us were merely the best she could muster. That’s why she had
to have Lauren. Lauren had a strong touch of it, and Stella didn’t want
to waste even that much of a chance. And we were all gathered together in that
house, and the purpose was to open the doorway. And when we formed our circle
and we began to envision the purpose, he would appear, and he was to
come through and be there with us. And he wouldn’t be a ghost anymore. He’d
be entering into this very world.’
A little hush fell over
them. Beatrice stared at Peter as if he himself were a ghost. Fielding too
studied Peter with seeming incredulity and maybe even a sneer.
Randall’s face was
impassive, behind its massive wrinkles.
‘Rowan doesn’t
know what you’re talking about,’ said Lily.
‘No, and I think we
should stop all this,’ said Anne Marie.
‘She knows,’
said Randall looking directly at Rowan.
Rowan looked at Peter. ‘What
do you mean that he would come into this very world?’ she asked.
‘He wouldn’t be
a spirit any longer, that’s what I mean. Not just to appear but to
remain, to be… physical.’
Randall was studying Rowan,
as if there was something he couldn’t quite determine.
Fielding gave a dry little
laugh, a superior laugh. ‘Stella must have made up that part. That wasn’t
what my father told me. Saved, that’s what he said. All those who were part
of the pact would be saved. I remember hearing him tell my mother.’
‘What else did your
father tell you?’ Rowan asked.
‘Oh, you don’t
believe all this!’ asked Beatrice. ‘Good Lord, Rowan.’
‘Don’t take it
seriously, Rowan!’ said Anne Marie.
‘Stella was a sad
case, my dear,’ said Lily.
Fielding shook his head. ‘Saved,
that’s what my father said. They’d all be saved when the doorway
was opened. And it was a riddle, and Mary Beth didn’t know the real
meaning any more than anyone else. Carlotta swore she’d figured it out,
but that wasn’t true. She only wanted to torment Stella. I don’t
even think Julien knew.’
‘Do you know the words
of the riddle?’ Michael asked.
Fielding turned to the left
and glanced down at him. And suddenly they all appeared to notice Michael, and
to focus upon him. Rowan slipped her hand closer to his neck, clasping it
affectionately and drawing her legs closer to him, as if embracing him and
declaring him part of her.
‘Yes, what were the
words of the riddle?’ Rowan asked.
Randall looked at Peter, and
they both looked at Fielding.
Again Fielding shook his
head. ‘I never knew. I never heard there were any special words. It was
just that when there were thirteen witches, the doorway would be opened at
last. And the night that Julien died, my father said, "They’ll never
get the thirteen now, not without Julien."’
‘And who told them the
riddle?’ asked Rowan. ‘Was it the man?’
They were all staring at her
again. Even Anne Marie appeared apprehensive and Beatrice at a loss, as if
someone had made a fearful breach of etiquette. Lauren was gazing at her in the
strangest way.
‘She doesn’t
even know what this is all about,’ declared Beatrice.
‘I think we should
forget it,’ said Felice.
‘Why? Why should we
forget it?’ asked Fielding. ‘You don’t think the man will
come to her as he came to all the others? What’s changed?’
‘You’re scaring
her!’ declared Cecilia. ‘And frankly you’re scaring me.’
‘Was it the man who
gave them the riddle?’ Rowan asked again.
No one spoke.
What could she say to make
them start talking again, to make them yield up what they possessed. ‘Carlotta
told me about the man,’ Rowan said. ‘I’m not afraid of him.’
How still the garden seemed.
Every single one of them was gathered into the circle except for Ryan, who had
taken Gifford away. Even Pierce had returned and stood just behind Peter. It
was almost twilight. And the servants had vanished, as if they knew they were
not wanted.
Anne Marie picked up a
bottle from the nearby table, and with a loud gurgling noise filled her glass.
Someone else reached for a bottle. And then another. But the eyes of all
remained fixed upon Rowan.
‘Do you all want me to
be afraid?’ Rowan asked.
‘No, of course not,’
said Lauren.
‘Indeed not!’
said Cecilia. ‘I think this sort of talk could ruin everything.’
‘… in a big
shadowy old house like that.’
‘… nonsense if
you ask me.’
Randall shook his head;
Peter murmured no, but Fielding merely looked at her.
Again the silence came,
blanketing the group, as if it were snow. A rustling darkness seemed to be
gathering under the small trees. A light had gone on across the lawn, behind
the small panes of the French windows.
‘Have any of you ever
seen the man?’ Rowan asked.
Peter’s face was
solemn and unreadable. He did not seem to notice when Lauren poured the bourbon
in his glass.
‘God, I wish I could
see him,’ said Pierce, ’just once!’
‘So do I!’ said
Beatrice. ‘I wouldn’t think of trying to get rid of him. I’d
talk to him…"
‘Oh shut up, Bea!’
said Peter suddenly. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying. You
never do!’
‘And you do, I suppose,’
said Lily sharply, obviously protective of Bea. ‘Come here, Bea, sit down
with the women. If it’s going to be war, be on the right side.’
Beatrice sat down on the
grass beside Lily’s chair. ‘You old idiot, I hate you,’ she
said to Peter. ‘I’d like to see what you’d do if you ever saw
the man.’
He dismissed her with a
raised eyebrow, and took another sip of his drink.
Fielding sneered, muttering
something under his breath.
‘I’ve gone up
there to First Street,’ said Pierce, ’and hung around that iron
fence for hours on end trying to see him. If only I’d ever caught one
glimpse.’
‘Oh, for the love of
heaven!’ declared Anne Marie. ‘As if you didn’t have anything
better to do.’
‘Don’t let your
mother hear that,’ Isaac murmured.
‘You all believe in
him,’ Rowan said. ‘Surely some of you have seen him.’
‘What would make you
think that!’ Felice laughed.
‘My father says it’s
a fantasy, an old tale,’ said Pierce.
‘Pierce, the best
thing you could do,’ said Lily, ’is stop taking every word that
falls from your father’s lips as if it were gospel because it is not.’
‘Have you seen him,
Aunt Lily?’ Pierce asked.
‘Indeed, I have,
Pierce,’ Lily said in a low voice. ‘Indeed I have.’
The others registered
undisguised surprise, except for the three elder men, who exchanged glances.
Fielding’s left hand fluttered, as if he wanted to gesture, speak, but he
didn’t.
‘He’s real,’
said Peter gravely. ‘He’s as real as lightning; as real as wind is
real.’ He turned and glared at young Pierce and then back at Rowan, as if
demanding their undivided attention and belief in him. Then his eyes settled on
Michael. ‘I’ve seen him. I saw him that night when Stella brought
us together. I’ve seen him since. Lily’s seen him. So has Lauren.
You, too, Felice, I know you have. And ask Carmen. Why don’t you speak
up, Felice? And you, Fielding. You saw him the night Mary Beth died at First
Street. You know you did. Who here hasn’t seen him? Only the younger ones.’
He looked at Rowan. ‘Ask, they’ll all tell you.’
A loud murmuring ran through
the outer edges of the gathering because many of the younger ones - Polly and
Clancy and Tim and others Rowan did not know - hadn’t seen the ghost, and
didn’t know whether to believe what they were hearing. Little Mona with
the ribbon in her hair suddenly pushed to the front of the circle, with the
taller Jennifer right behind her.
‘Tell me what you saw,’
said Rowan, looking directly at Peter. ‘You’re not saying that he
came through the door the night that Stella gathered you together.’
Peter took his time. He
looked around him, eyes lingering on Margaret Ann, and then for a moment on
Michael, and then on Rowan. He lifted his drink. He drained the glass, and then
spoke:
‘He was there - a
blazing shimmering presence, and for those few moments, I could have sworn he
was as solid as any man of flesh and blood I’ve ever seen. I saw him
materialize. I felt the heat when he did it. And I heard his steps. Yes, I
heard his feet strike the floor of that front hallway as he walked towards us.
He stood there, just as real as you or me, and he looked at each and every one
of us.’ Again, he lifted his glass, took a swallow and lowered it, his
eyes running over the little assembly. He sighed. ‘And then he vanished,
just as he always had. The heat again. The smell of smoke, and the
breeze rushing through the house, tearing the very curtains off the windows.
But he was gone. He couldn’t hold it. And we weren’t strong enough
to help him hold it. Thirteen of us, yes, the thirteen witches, as Stella
called us. And Lauren four years old! Little Lauren. But we weren’t of
the ilk of Julien or Mary Beth, or old Grandmere Marguerite at Riverbend. And
we couldn’t do it. And Carlotta, Carlotta who was stronger than Stella -
and you mark my words, it was true - Carlotta wouldn’t help. She lay on
her bed upstairs, staring at the ceiling, and she was saying her rosary aloud,
and after every Hail Mary, she said, "Send him back to hell, send him back
to hell!" - and then went on to the next Hail Mary.’
He pursed his lips and
scowled down into the empty glass, shaking it soundlessly so that the ice cubes
revolved. Then again, his eyes ran over the circle, taking in everyone, even
little red-haired Mona.
‘For the record, Peter
Mayfair saw him,’ Peter declared, pulling himself up, eyebrow raised
again. ‘Lauren and Lily can speak for themselves. So can Randall. But for
the record, I saw him, and that you may tell
to your grandchildren.’
A pause again. The darkness
was growing dense; and from far away came the grinding cry of the cicadas. No breeze
touched the yard. The house was now full of yellow light, in all its many small
neat windows.
‘Yes,’ said Lily
with a sigh. ‘You might as well know it, my dear.’ Her eyes fixed
on Rowan as she smiled. ‘He is there. And we’ve all seen him many a
time since, though not perhaps the way we saw him that night, or for so long,
or so clearly.’
‘You were there, too?’
Rowan asked.
‘I was,’ said
Lily. ‘But it wasn’t only then, Rowan. We’ve seen him on that
old screen porch with Deirdre.’ She looked up at Lauren. ‘We’ve
seen him when we’ve passed the house. We’ve seen him sometimes when
we didn’t want to.’
‘Don’t be
frightened of him, Rowan,’ said Lauren contemptuously.
‘Oh, now you tell her
that,’ declared Beatrice. ‘You superstitious monsters!’
‘Don’t let them drive
you out of the house,’ said Magdalene quickly.
‘No, don’t let
us do that,’ said Felice. ‘And you want my advice, forget the
legends. Forget the old foolishness about the thirteen witches and the doorway.
And forget about him! He’s just a ghost, and nothing more, and you may
think that sounds strange, but truly it isn’t.’
‘He can’t do
anything to you,’ said Lauren, with a sneer.
‘No, he can’t,’
said Felice. ‘He’s like the breeze.’
‘He’s a ghost,’
said Lily. ‘That’s all he is and all he’ll ever be.’
‘And who knows?’
asked Cecilia. ‘Maybe he’s no longer even there.’
They all stared at her.
‘Well, nobody’s
seen him since Deirdre died.’
A door slammed. There was a
tinkling sound, of glass falling, and a commotion on the edge of the circle.
People shifted, stepped aside. Gifford pushed her way to the center, her face
wet and stained, her hands shaking.
‘Can’t do
anything! Can’t hurt anyone! Is that what you’re telling her! Can’t
do anything! He killed Cortland, that’s what he did! After Cortland raped
your mother! Did you know that, Rowan!’
‘Hush, Gifford!’
Fielding roared.
‘Cortland was your
father,’ Gifford screamed. ‘The hell he can’t do anything!
Drive him out, Rowan! Turn your strength on him and drive him out! Exorcise the
house! Burn it down if you have to… Burn it down!’
A roar of protest came from
all directions, and vague expressions of scorn or outrage. Ryan had appeared
and was trying once more to restrain Gifford. She turned and slapped his face.
Gasps came from all around. Pierce was obviously mortified and helpless.
Lily rose and left the
group, and so did Felice, who almost fell in her haste. Anne Marie struggled to
her feet, and helped Felice to get away. But the others stood firm, including
Ryan, who simply wiped his face with his handkerchief, as if to regain his
composure while Gifford stood with her fists clenched, lips trembling. Beatrice
was clearly desperate to help but didn’t know what to do.
Rowan rose and went towards
Gifford.
‘Gifford, listen to me,’
said Rowan. ‘Don’t be afraid. It’s the future we care about,
not the past.’ She took Gifford by both arms, and reluctantly Gifford
looked up into her face. ‘I will do what’s good,’ said Rowan,
’and what’s right, and what’s good and right for the family.
Do you understand what I’m saying?’
Gifford broke into sobs, her
head bent again as if her neck were too weak to hold it. Her hair fell down
into her eyes. ‘Only evil people can be happy in that house,’ she
said. ‘And they were evil — Cortland was evil!’ Both Pierce
and Ryan had their arms around her. Ryan was becoming angry. But Rowan hadn’t
let her go.
‘Too much to drink,’
said Cecilia. Someone had thrown on the yard lights.
Gifford appeared to collapse
suddenly, but still Rowan held her.
‘No, listen to me,
please, Gifford,’ Rowan said, but she was really speaking to the others.
She saw Lily standing only a short distance away, and Felice beside her. She
saw Beatrice’s eyes fixed on her. And Michael was standing, watching her,
as he stood behind Fielding’s chair.
‘I’ve been
listening to you all,’ said Rowan, ’and learning from you. But I
have something to say. The way to survive this strange spirit and his
machinations is to see him in a large perspective. Now, the family, and life
itself, are part of that perspective. And he must never be allowed to shrink
the family or shrink the possibilities of life. If he exists as you say he
does, then he belongs in the shadows.’
Randall and Peter were
watching her intently. So was Lauren. Aaron stood very near to Michael, and he
too was listening. Only Fielding seemed cold, and sneering, and did not look at
Rowan. Gifford was staring at her in a daze.
‘I think Mary Beth and
Julien knew that,’ said Rowan. ‘I mean to follow their example. If
something appears to me out of the shadows at First Street, no matter how
mysterious it might be, it won’t eclipse the greater scheme, the greater
light. Surely you follow my meaning.’
Gifford seemed almost
spellbound. And very slowly Rowan realized how peculiar this moment had become.
She realized how strange her words seemed; and how strange she must have
appeared to all of them, making this unusual speech while she held this frail,
hysterical woman by both arms.
Indeed they were all staring
at her as if they too had been spellbound.
Gently she let Gifford go.
Gifford stepped backwards, and into Ryan’s embrace, but her eyes remained
large, empty, and fixed on Rowan.
‘I’m frightening
you, aren’t I?’ asked Rowan.
‘No, no everything is
all right now,’ said Ryan.
‘Yes, everything’s
fine,’ said Pierce.
But Gifford was silent. They
were all confused. When Rowan looked at Michael she saw the same dazed
expression, and behind it the old dark turbulent distress.
Beatrice murmured some
little apology for all that had happened; she stepped up and led Gifford away.
Ryan went with them. And Pierce remained, motionless, struck dumb.
Lily looked around,
apparently confused for a moment, and then called to Hercules to please find
her coat.
Randall, Fielding, and Peter
remained in the stillness. Others lingered in the shadows. The little girl with
the ribbon stared from a distance, her round sweet young face like a flame in
the dark. The taller child, Jenn, appeared to be crying.
Suddenly Peter clasped Rowan’s
hand.
‘You’re wise in
what you said. You’d waste your life if you got caught up in it.’
‘That’s correct,’
said Randall. ‘That’s what happened to Stella. Same thing with
Carlotta. She wasted her life! Same thing.’ But he was anxious, and only
too ready to withdraw. He turned and slipped off without a farewell.
‘Come on, young man,
help me up,’ said Fielding to Michael. ‘The party’s over, and
by the way, my congratulations on the marriage. Maybe I’ll live long
enough to see the wedding. And please, don’t invite the ghost.’
Michael looked disoriented.
He glanced at Rowan, and then down at the old man, and then very gently he
helped the old man to his feet. Then he looked at Rowan again. The confusion
and dread were there as before.
Several of the young ones
approached, to tell Rowan not to be discouraged by all this Mayfair madness.
Anne Marie begged her to go on with her plans. A light breeze came at last with
just a touch of coolness to it.
‘Everybody will be
heartbroken if you don’t move into the house,’ said Margaret Ann.
‘You’re not
giving it up?’ demanded Clancy.
‘Of course not,’
said Rowan with a smile. ‘What an absurd idea.’
Aaron stood watching Rowan
impassively. And Beatrice came back now with a flood of apologies on behalf of
Gifford, begging Rowan not to be upset.
The others were coming back;
they had their raincoats, purses, whatever they had gone to gather. It was full
dark now; and the air was cool, deliciously cool. And the party was over.
For thirty minutes, the
cousins said their good-byes, all issuing the same warnings. Stay, don’t
go. Restore the house. Forget all the old talk.
And Ryan apologized for
Gifford and for the awful things she’d said. Surely Rowan must not take
Gifford’s words as truth. Rowan waved it away.
‘Thank you, thank you
very much for everything,’ said Rowan. ‘And don’t worry. I
wanted to know the old stories. I wanted to know what the family was saying.
And now I do.’
‘There’s no
ghost up there,’ said Ryan, looking her directly in the eye.
Rowan didn’t bother to
answer.
‘You’re going to
be happy at First Street,’ said Ryan. ‘You’ll change the
image.’ As Michael appeared at her side, he shook Michael’s hand.
Turning to take her leave,
Rowan saw that Aaron was at the front gate, talking with Gifford of all people,
and Beatrice. Gifford seemed entirely comforted.
Ryan waited, patiently, a
silhouette in the front door.
‘Not to worry about
anything at all,’ Aaron was saying to Gifford, in his seductive British
accent.
Gifford flung her arms
around him suddenly. Graciously he returned her embrace and kissed her hand as
he withdrew. Beatrice was only slightly less effusive. Then they both stood
back, Gifford white-faced and weary-looking, as Aaron’s black limousine
lumbered to the curb.
‘Don’t worry
about anything, Rowan,’ said Beatrice cheerily. ‘Lunch tomorrow, don’t
forget. And this shall be the most beautiful wedding!’
Rowan smiled. ‘Don’t
worry, Bea.’
Rowan and Michael slipped
into the long backseat, while Aaron took his favorite place, with his back to
the driver. And the car slowly pulled away.
The flood of ice-cold air
was a blessing to Rowan. The lingering humidity and the atmosphere of the
twilight garden were clinging to her. She closed her eyes for a moment, and
took a deep breath.
When she looked up again,
she saw they were on Metairie Road, speeding past the newer cemeteries of the
city which looked grim and without romance through the dark tinted glass. The
world always looked so ghastly through the tinted windows of a limousine, she
thought. The worst shade of darkness imaginable. Suddenly it pierced her
nerves.
She turned to Michael, and
seeing that awful expression on his face again, she felt impatient. She had
only been excited by what she had found out. Her resolves were the same. In
fact, she had found the whole experience fascinating.
Things haven’t changed,’
she said. ‘Sooner of later he’ll come, he’ll wrestle with me
for what he wants, and he’ll lose. All we did was get more information
about the number and the door, and that’s what we wanted.’ Michael
didn’t answer her. ‘But nothing’s changed,’ she
insisted. ‘Nothing at all.’
Still Michael didn’t
respond.
‘Don’t brood on
it,’ Rowan said sharply. ‘You can be certain I’ll never bring
together any coven of thirteen witches. I have much more important things to do
than that. And I didn’t mean to frighten anybody back there. I think I
said the wrong thing. I think I used the wrong words.’
They misunderstand,’
said Michael in a half murmur. He was staring at Aaron, who sat impassively
watching them both. And she could tell by Michael’s voice that he was
extremely upset.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nobody has to gather
thirteen witches,’ said Michael, his blue eyes catching the light of the
passing cars as he looked at her. That wasn’t the point of the riddle.
They misunderstood because they don’t know their own history.’
‘What are you talking
about?’
She had never seen him so
anxious since the day he’d smashed the jars. She knew if she took hold of
his wrist, she’d feel his pulse racing again. She hated this. She could
see the blood pumping in his face.
‘Michael, for Christ’s
sake!’
‘Rowan, count your
ancestors! The thing has waited for thirteen witches, from the time of Suzanne
to the present, and you are the thirteenth. Count them. Suzanne, Deborah, and
Charlotte; Jeanne Louise, Angelique, and Marie Claudette; followed in Louisiana
by Marguerite, Katherine, and Mary Beth. Then come Stella, Antha, Deirdre. And
finally you, Rowan! The thirteenth is simply the strongest, Rowan, the one who
can be the doorway for this thing to come through. You are the
doorway, Rowan. That is why there were twelve crypts, and not thirteen, in the
tomb. The thirteenth is the doorway.’
‘All right,’ she
said, straining for patience. She put up her hands in a gentle plea. ‘And
we knew this before, didn’t we? And so the devil predicted it. The devil
sees far, as he said to you, he sees the thirteen. But the devil doesn’t
see everything. He doesn’t see who I am.’
‘No, those weren’t
his words,’ said Michael. ‘He said that he sees to the finish! And
he also said that I couldn’t stop you, and I couldn’t stop him. His
said his patience was like the patience of the Almighty.’
‘Michael,’ Aaron
interrupted. ‘This being has no obligation to speak the truth to you! Don’t
fall into this trap. It plays with words. It’s a liar.’
‘I know, Aaron. The
devil lies. I know! I heard it from the time I was that high. But God, what is
he waiting for? Why are we being allowed to go along day after day, while he
bides his time? It’s driving me crazy.’
Rowan reached for his wrist,
but as soon as he realized she was feeling his pulse he pulled away. ‘When
I need a doctor, I’ll tell you, OK?’
She was stung, and drew
back, turning away from him. She was angry with herself that she couldn’t
be patient. She hated it that he was this upset. And she hated herself for
being anguished and afraid.
It crossed her mind that every
time he responded in this way, he played into the hands of the unseen forces
that were striving to control them, that maybe they had picked him for their
games because he was so easily controlled. But it would be awful to say such a
thing to him. It would insult him and hurt him and she couldn’t stand to
see him hurt. She couldn’t stand to see him weakened.
She sat defeated, looking
down at her hands resting limp in her lap. And the spirit had said, ‘I
shall be flesh when you are dead.’ She could all but hear Michael’s
heart pounding. Even though his head was turned away from her, she knew he was
feeling dizzy, even sick. When you are dead. Her sixth sense had told
her he was sound, strong, as vigorous as a man half his age, but there it was
again, the unmistakable symptoms of enormous stress, playing havoc with him.
God, how awful it had turned
out, the whole experience. How terribly the secrets of the past had poisoned
the whole affair. Not what she wanted, no, the very opposite. Maybe it would
have been better if they had said nothing at all. If Gifford had had her way
and they had gone on in their airy sunlighted dream, talking of the house and
the wedding.
‘Michael,’ said
Aaron in his characteristically calm voice. ‘He taunts and he lies. What
right has he to prophesy? And what purpose could he have other than to try
through his lies to make his prophecies come true?’
‘Where the hell is he?’
demanded Michael. ‘Aaron, maybe I’m grasping at straws. But that
first night when I went to the house, would he have spoken to me if you hadn’t
been there? Why did he show himself only to vanish like so much smoke?’
‘Michael, I could give
you several explanations for every single appearance he has made. But I don’t
know that I’m right. The important thing is to maintain a sane course, to
realize he’s a trickster.’
‘Exactly,’ said
Rowan.
‘God, what kind of a
game is it?’ whispered Michael. ‘They give me everything I ever
wanted - the woman I love, my home again, the house I dreamed of when I was a
little boy. We want to have a child, me and Rowan! What kind of a game is it?
He speaks and the others who came to me are silent. God, if only I could lose
the feeling that it’s all planned, like Townsend said in your dream, all
planned. But who’s planning it?’
‘Michael, you’ve
got to get a grip on yourself,’ Rowan said.
‘Everything is going
beautifully, and we are the ones who made it that way. It has gone beautifully
since the day after the old woman died. You know, there are times when I think I’m
doing what my mother would have wanted. Does that sound crazy? I think I’m
doing what Deirdre dreamed of all those years.’
No answer.
‘Michael, didn’t
you hear what I said to the others?’ she asked. ‘Don’t you
believe in me?’
‘Just promise me this,
Rowan,’ he said. He grabbed her hand and slipped his fingers between
hers. ‘Promise me if you see that thing, you won’t keep it secret.
You’ll tell me. You won’t keep it back.’
‘God, Michael, you’re
acting like a jealous husband.’
‘Do you know what that
old man said?’ Michael asked. ‘When I helped him to the car?’
‘You’re talking
about Fielding?’
‘Yeah. This is what he
said. "Be careful, young man." What the hell did he mean by that?’
‘The hell with him for
saying that,’ she whispered. She was suddenly in a rage. She pulled her
hand free from Michael. ‘Who the hell does he think he is, the old
bastard! How dare he say that to you. He doesn’t come to our wedding. He
doesn’t come through the front gate - ’ She stopped, choking on the
words. The anger was too bitter. Her trust in the family had been so total, she’d
been just lapping it all up, the love, and now she felt as if Fielding had
stabbed her, and she was crying again, goddamn it, and she didn’t have a
handkerchief. She felt like… like slapping Michael. But it was the old
man she’d like to belt. How dare he?
Michael tried to take her
hand again. She pushed him away. For a moment, she was so angry, she couldn’t
think at all. And she was furious that she was crying.
‘Here, Rowan, please,’
Aaron said. He put his handkerchief into her hand.
She was barely able to
whisper thank you. She used the handkerchief to cover her eyes.
‘I’m sorry,
Rowan,’ Michael whispered.
‘The hell with you
too, Michael!’ she said. ‘You’d better stand up to them. You’d
better stop spinning like a goddamned top every time another piece of the
puzzle falls into place! It wasn’t the Blessed Virgin Mary you saw out
there in your visions! It was just them and all their tricks.’
‘No, that’s not
true.’
He sounded sad and contrite,
and really raw. It broke her heart to hear it, but she wouldn’t give in.
She was afraid to say what she really thought — Listen, I love you, but
did it ever occur to you that your role in this was only to see that I
returned, that I remained, and that I have a child to inherit the legacy? This
spirit could have staged your drowning, your rescue, the visions, the whole
thing. And that was why Arthur Langtry came to you, that was why he warned you
to get away before it was too late.
She sat there holding it in,
poisoned by it, and hoping it wasn’t true, and afraid.
‘Please, don’t
go on with this,’ Aaron said gently. ‘The old man was a little bit
of a fool, Rowan.’ His voice was like soothing music, drawing the tension
out of her. ‘Fielding wanted to feel important. It was a boasting match
among the three of them - Randall, Peter, and Fielding. Don’t be
harsh with him. He’s simply… too old. Believe me, I know. I’m
almost there myself.’
She wiped her nose and
looked up at Aaron. He was smiling and she smiled too.
‘Are they good people,
Aaron? What do you think?’ She was deliberately ignoring Michael for the
moment.
‘Fine people, Rowan.
Far better than most, my dear. And they love you. They love you. The old man
loves you. You’re the most exciting thing that’s happened to him in
the last ten years. They don’t invite him out much, the others. He was
basking in the attention. And of course, for all their secrets, they don’t
know what you know.’
‘You’re right,’
she whispered. She felt drained now, and miserable. Emotional outbursts for her
were never cathartic. They always left her shaky and unhappy.
‘All right,’ she
said. ‘I’d ask him to give me away at the wedding, damn it, except
I have another very dear friend in mind.’ She wiped her eyes again with
the folded handkerchief, and blotted her lips. ‘I’m talking about
you, Aaron. I know it’s late notice. But will you walk up the aisle with
me?’
‘Darling, I’d be
honored,’ he said. ‘Nothing would give me greater happiness.’
He clasped her hand tightly. ‘Now, please, please don’t think abut
that old fool anymore.’
‘Thank you, Aaron,’
she said. She sat back, and took a deep breath before she turned to Michael. In
fact she had been deliberately leaving him out. And suddenly she felt terribly
sorry. He looked so dejected and so gentle. She said: ‘Well, have you
calmed down or have you had a heart attack? You’re awfully quiet.’
He laughed under his breath,
warming at once. His eyes were so brilliantly blue when he smiled. ‘You
know, when I was a kid,’ he said, taking her hand again, ‘I used to
think that having a family ghost would be wonderful! I used to wish I could see
a ghost! I used to think, ah, to live in a haunted house, wouldn’t that
be great!’
He was his old self again,
cheerful and strong, even if he was a little ragged at the edges. She leaned
over and pressed her lips against his roughened cheek. ‘I’m sorry I
got angry.’
‘I’m sorry, too,
honey. I’m really sorry. That old man didn’t mean any harm. He’s
just crazy. They all have a little craziness. I guess it’s their Irish
blood. I haven’t been around lace curtain Irish very much. I guess they’re
as crazy as all the others.’
There was a little smile on
Aaron’s lips as he watched them, but they were all shaken now, and tired.
And this conversation had sapped their last bit of vigor.
It seemed to Rowan that the
gloom was descending again. If only this glass were not so dark.
She slumped back, letting
her head rest against the leather, and watched the glum shabby city roll by,
the outlying streets of wooden double shotgun cottages with their fretwork and
long wooden shutters, and the low sagging stucco buildings that seemed somehow
not to belong among the ragged oaks and high weeds. Beautiful, all beautiful.
The veneer of her perfect California world had cracked, and she’d been
thrown into the real true texture of life at last.
How could she let them both
know that it was all going to work, that she knew in the end she would triumph,
that no temptation conceivable could lure her away from her love, and her
dreams, and her plans?
The thing would come, and
the thing would work its charm — like the devil and the old women of the
village — and she would be expected to succumb, but she would not, and
the power within her, nurtured through twelve witches, would be sufficient to
destroy him. Thirteen is bad luck, you devil. And the door is the door to hell.
Ah, yes, that was it
exactly, the door was the door to hell.
But only when it was over
would Michael believe.
She said no more.
She remembered those roses
again in the vase on the hall table. Awful things, and that iris with the dark
black shivering mouth. Horrid. And worse than all the rest, the emerald around
her neck in the dark, cold and heavy against her naked skin. No, don’t
ever tell him about that. Don’t talk anymore about any of it.
He was brave and good as
anyone she’d ever known. But she had to protect him now, because he couldn’t
protect her, that was plain. And she realized for the first time - that when
things really did start to happen, she’d probably be completely alone in
it. But hadn’t that always been inevitable?
PART
FOUR
The Devil1’sBride
FORTY
WOULD SHE REMEMBER this
afterwards, she wondered, as one of the happiest days of her life? Weddings
must work their magic on everyone. But she was more susceptible than most, she
figured, because it was so very exotic, because it was Old World, and
old-fashioned, and old-fangled, and coming as she did from the world of the
cold and the alone, she wanted it so much!
The night before, she’d
come here to church to pray alone. Michael had been surprised. Was she really
praying to someone?
‘I don’t know,’
she said. She wanted to sit in the dark church, which was readied for the
wedding with the white ribbons and bows and the red carpet down the aisle, and
talk to Ellie, to try to explain to Ellie why she had broken her vow, why she
was doing this, and how it was all going to work out.
She explained about the
white wedding dress and how the family had wanted it, and so she had given in
happily to the yards and yards of white silk lace and the full shimmering veil.
And she explained about the bridesmaids — Mayfairs all, of course —
and Beatrice, the matron of honor, and how Aaron was going to give her away.
She explained and she
explained. She even explained about the emerald. ‘Be with me, Ellie,’
she said. ‘Extend to me your forgiveness. I want this so much.’
Then she had talked to her
mother. She had talked simply and without words, feeling close to her mother.
And she had tried to blot all memory of the old woman out of her mind.
She had thought of her old
friends from California, whom she had called in the last few weeks, and with
whom she had had wonderful conversations. They were so happy for her, though
they did not fully grasp how rich and vital this old-fashioned world here
really was. Barbara wanted to come but the term had already begun at
Princetown, and Janie was leaving for Europe, and Mattie was going to have a
baby any day. They had sent such exquisite presents though of course she had
forbidden it. And she had the feeling they would see each other in the future,
at least before her real work on the dream of the Mayfair Medical Center began.
Finally, she had ended her
prayers in a strange way. She had lighted candles for her two mothers. And a
candle for Antha. And even one for Stella. It was such a soothing ritual, to
see the little wicks ignite, to see the fire dance before the statue of the
Virgin. No wonder they did such things, these wise old Catholics. You could
almost believe that the graceful flame was a living prayer.
Then she’d gone out to
find Michael, who was having a wonderful time in the sacristy reminiscing about
the parish with the kindly old priest.
Now at one o’clock,
the wedding was at last beginning.
Stiff and still in her white
raiment, she stood waiting, dreaming. The emerald lay against the lace that
covered her breast, its burning glint of green the only color touching her.
Even her ashen hair and gray eyes had looked pale in the mirror. And the jewel
had reminded her, strangely, of the Catholic statues of Jesus and Mary with the
exposed hearts, like the one she’d smashed so angrily in her mother’s
bedroom.
But all those ugly thoughts
were very far away from her now. The huge nave of St Mary’s Assumption
was packed. Mayfairs from New York and Los Angeles and Atlanta and Dallas had
come. There were over two thousand of them. And one by one to the heavy strains
of the organ, the bridesmaids -Clancy, Cecilia, Marianne, Polly, and Regina
Mayfair - were moving up the aisle. Beatrice looked more splendid even than the
younger ones. And the ushers, all Mayfairs too of course, and what a comely
crew they were, stood ready to take the arms of the maids, one by one. But now
had come the moment —
It seemed to her that she
would forget how to put one foot before the other. But she didn’t.
Quickly she adjusted the long full white veil. She smiled at Mona, her little
flower girl, lovely as always with the usual ribbon in her red hair. She took
Aaron’s arm, and together they followed Mona, in time with the stately
music, Rowan’s eyes moving dimly over the hundreds of faces on either
side of her, and dazzled, through the haze of whiteness, by the tiers of lights
and candles at the altar ahead.
Would she remember this
always? The bouquet of white flowers in her hand, Aaron’s soft radiant
smile as he looked at her, and her own feeling of being beautiful the way
brides must always be beautiful?
When at last she saw
Michael, so perfectly adorable in his gray cutaway and ascot, she felt the
tears rise to her eyes. How truly splendid he was, her lover, her angel,
beaming at her from his place beside the altar, his hands - without the awful
gloves - clasped before him, his head bowed slightly as if he had to shelter
his soul from the bright light that shone on him, though his own blue eyes were
the most brilliant light of all to her.
He stepped up beside her. A
lovely calm descended on her as she turned towards Aaron, and he lifted her
veil and gracefully threw it back over her shoulders, bringing it softly down
behind her arms. A shiver ran through her. Her life had never included any such
time-honored gesture. And it was not the veil of her virginity or her modesty,
but the veil of her loneliness that had been lifted away. He took her hand; he
placed it in Michael’s.
‘Be good to her
always, Michael,’ he whispered. She closed her eyes, wanting this pure
sensation to endure forever, and then slowly looked up at the resplendent altar
with its row after row of exquisite wooden saints.
As the priest began the
traditional words, she saw that Michael’s eyes were glazed with tears also.
She could feel him trembling, as his grip tightened on her hand.
She feared that her voice
might fail her. She had been faintly sick that morning, perhaps with worry, and
she experienced a touch of dizziness again.
But what struck her in a
moment of quiet and detachment was that this ceremony itself conveyed immense
power, that it wrapped about them some invisible protective force. How her old
friends had scoffed at such things, how she herself had once found them
unimaginable. And now, in the very center of it, she savored it and opened her
heart to receive all the grace that it could give.
Finally the language of the
old Mayfair legacy, imposed upon the ceremony and reshaping it, was now being
recited:
‘… now and
forever, in public and in private, before your family and all others, without
exception, and in all capacities, to be known only by the name of Rowan
Mayfair, daughter of Deirdre Mayfair, daughter of Antha Mayfair, though your
lawful husband shall be called by his own name…"
‘I do.’
‘Nevertheless, and
with a pure heart, do you take this man, Michael James Timothy
Curry…"
‘I do…’
At last it was done. The
final utterances had echoed under the high arched ceiling. Michael turned and
took her in his arms as he’d done a thousand times in the secret darkness
of their hotel bedroom; yet how exquisite now was this public and ceremonial
kiss. She yielded to it completely, her eyes lowered, the church dissolved into
silence. And then she heard him whisper:
‘I love you, Rowan
Mayfair.’
She answered, ‘I love
you, Michael Curry, my archangel.’ And pressing close to him, in all his
stiff finery, she kissed him again.
The first notes of the
wedding march sounded, loud and sharp and full of triumph. A great rustling
noise swept through the church. She turned, facing the enormous assembly and
the sun pouring through the stained-glass windows, and taking Michael’s
arm she commenced the long quick walk down the aisle.
On either side she saw their
smiles, their nods, the irresistible expressions of the same excitement, as if
the entire church were infused with the simple and overwhelming happiness she
felt.
Only as they climbed into
the waiting limousine, the May-fairs showering them with rice in an exuberant
chorus of cheers, did she think of the funeral in this church, did she remember
that other cavalcade of shining black cars.
And now through these same
streets, she thought, nestled with the white silk all around her and Michael
kissing her again, kissing her eyes and her cheeks. He was murmuring all those
silly wonderful things to her that husbands ought to murmur to brides, that she
was beautiful, that he adored her, that he’d never been happier, that if
this wasn’t the most perfect day of his life, he couldn’t imagine
what it possibly was. And the greatest part was not what he said, but how happy
he was himself.
She sank back and against
his shoulder, smiling, her eyes closed, thinking quietly and deliberately of
all the landmark moments, her graduation from Berkeley, the first day she’d
entered the wards as an intern, the first day she’d walked into an
Operating Room, the first time she’d heard the words at the end of the
operation, Well done, Dr Mayfair, you can close.
‘Yes, the happiest day,’
she whispered. ‘And it’s only just begun.’
Hundreds milled over the grass,
under the great white tents which had been erected to cover the garden, the
pool, and the back lawn before the garqonniere. The outdoor buffet
tables, draped in white linen, sagged beneath their weight of sumptuous
southern dishes — crawfish etouffee, shrimp Creole, pasta jambalaya,
baked oysters, blackened fish, and even the humble and beloved red beans and
rice. Liveried waiters poured the champagne into the tulip glasses; bartenders
fixed cocktails to order at the well-stocked bars in the parlor, the dining
room, and beside the pool. Fancily dressed children of all sizes played tag
among the adults, hiding behind the potted palms which had been stationed
through the ground floor, or rushed in gangs up and down the stairway shrieking
— to the utter mortification of various parents — that they had
just seen ‘the ghost!’
The Dixieland band played
furiously and joyously under its white canopy before the front fence, the music
swallowed from time to time by the noisy animated conversation.
For hours Michael and Rowan,
their backs to the long mirror at the First Street end of the parlor, received
one visiting Mayfair after another, shaking hands, extending thanks, listening
patiently to lineages and the tracing of connections and interconnections.
Many of Michael’s old
high-school chums had come, thanks to the diligent efforts of Rita Mae Lonigan,
and they formed their own noisy and cheerful constituency, telling old football
stories, very nearby. Rita had even located a couple of long-lost cousins, a
nice old woman named Amanda Curry whom Michael remembered fondly, and a
Franklin Curry who had gone to school with Michael’s father.
If there was anyone here
enjoying all this more than Rowan, it was Michael, and he was far less reserved
than she. Beatrice came to hug him exuberantly at least twice in every half
hour, always wringing a few embarrassed tears from him, and he was clearly
touched by the affection with which Lily and Gifford took Aunt Vivian under
their wing.
But it was a time of high
emotions for all. Mayfairs from various other cities embraced cousins they hadn’t
seen in years, vowing to return to New Orleans more often. Some made
arrangements to stay over a week or two with this or that branch of the family.
Flashbulbs went off continuously; big black hulking video cameras slowly poked
their way through the glittering press.
At last the receiving was
over; and Rowan was free to roam from one little group to another, and to feel
the success of the gathering, and approve the performance of the caterers and
the band, as she felt bound to do.
The day’s heat had
lifted completely, thanks to a gentle breeze. Some guests were taking an early
leave; the pool was full of half-naked little creatures, screaming and
splashing each other, some swimming in underpants only, and a few drunken
adults who had jumped in fully clothed.
More food was being heaped
into the heated carafes. More cases of champagne were opened. The hard-core
five hundred or so Mayfairs, whom Rowan had already come to know personally,
were milling about quite at home, sitting on the staircase to talk, or
wandering around in the bedrooms admiring the marvelous changes, or hovering
about the huge and gaudy display of expensive gifts.
Everywhere people admired
the restoration: the soft peach color of the parlor walls, and the beige silk
draperies; the dark somber green of the library, and the glowing white woodwork
throughout. They gazed at the old portraits, cleaned and refrained and
carefully hung throughout the hallway and the lower rooms. They gathered to
worship at the picture of Deborah, hanging now above the library fireplace. It
was Lily and Beatrice who assisted Fielding on the entire tour, taking him
upstairs in the old elevator, so that he might see each and every room.
Peter and Randall settled in
the library with their pipes, arguing about the various portraits and their
approximate dates, and which had been done by whom. And what would the cost be,
if Ryan were to try to acquire this ’alleged’ Rembrandt?
With the first gust of rain,
the band moved indoors to the back end of the parlor, and the Chinese carpets
were rolled back as the young couples, some kicking off their shoes in the
mayhem, began to dance.
It was the Charleston. And
the very mirrors rattled with the stormy din of the trumpets and the constant
thunder of stomping feet.
Surrounded again and again
by groups of eager and enthusiastic faces, Rowan lost track of Michael. There
was a moment when she fled to the small powder room off the library with a
passing wave to Peter, who now remained alone, and seeming half asleep.
She stood there silent, the
door locked, her heart pounding, merely staring at herself in the glass.
She seemed faded now,
crushed, rather like the bouquet which she would have to toss later from the
railing of the stairs. Her lipstick was gone, her cheeks looked pallid, but her
eyes were shining like the emerald. Tentatively she touched it, adjusted it
against the lace. She closed her eyes and thought of the picture of Deborah.
Yes, it was right to have worn it. Right to have done everything the way they
wanted. She stared at herself again, clinging to the moment, trying forever to
save it, like a precious snapshot tucked in the pages of a diary. This day,
among them, everyone here.
It did not mar her happiness
to come on Rita Mae Lonigan crying softly next to Peter when she opened the
library door. She was more than content to press Rita’s hand and say, ‘Yes,
I have thought of Deirdre often today, myself.’ Because that was true.
And she had liked thinking of Deirdre and Ellie, and even Antha, and extracting
them from the tragedies that ensnared them, and holding them to her heart.
Perhaps in some cold
reasoning part of her mind, she understood why people had fled family and
tradition to seek the brittle, chic world of California in which she had grown
up. But she felt sorry for them, sorry for anyone who had never known this
strange intimacy with so many of the same name and clan. Surely Ellie would
understand.
Drifting back into the
parlor, and back into the din of the band and the dancers, she searched for
Michael, and suddenly saw him quite alone against the second fireplace staring
all the way down the length of the crowded room. She knew that look on his
face, the flush, and the agitation - she understood the way that his eyes had
locked on some distant seemingly unimportant point.
He barely noticed her as she
came up beside him. He didn’t hear her as she whispered his name. She
followed the line of his gaze. All she saw were the dancing couples, and the
glittering sprinkle of rain on the front windows.
‘Michael, what is it?’
He didn’t move. She
tugged on his arm, then lifting her right hand, she very gently turned his face
towards her and stared at him, repeating his name clearly again. Roughly he
turned away from her, looking again to the front of the room. Nothing this
time. It was gone, whatever it was. Thank God.
She could see the droplets
of sweat on his forehead and his upper lip. His hair was moist as though he’d
been outside, when of course he hadn’t. She drew close to him, leaning
her head against his chest.
‘What was it?’
she said.
‘Nothing,
really…’ he murmured. He couldn’t quite catch his breath. ‘I
thought I saw… it doesn’t matter. It’s gone.’
‘But what was it?’
‘Nothing.’ He
took her by the shoulders, kissing her a little roughly. ‘Nothing’s
going to spoil this day for us, Rowan.’ His voice caught in his throat as
he went on. ‘Nothing crazy and strange on this day.’
‘Stay with me,’
she said, ‘don’t leave me again.’ She drew him after her out
of the parlor and back into the library and into the powder room, where they
could be alone. His heart was still speeding as she held him quietly, her arms
locked around him, the noise and the music muffled and far away.
‘It’s OK, darlin’,’
he said finally, his breathing easier now, ’honestly it is. The things I’m
seeing, they don’t mean anything. Don’t worry, Rowan. Please. It’s
like the images; I’m catching impressions of things that happened long
ago, that’s all. Come on, honey, look at me. Kiss me. I love you and this
is our day.’
The party moved on
vigorously and madly into the evening. The couple finally cut the wedding cake
in a tempest of flashing cameras and drunken laughter. Trays of sweets were
passed. Urns of coffee were brewing. Mayfairs in long heartfelt conversations
with one another had settled in various corners, and onto couches, and gathered
in clusters around tables. The rain came down hard outside. The thunder came
and went with occasional booming violence. And the bars stayed open, for most of
the gathering continued to drink.
Finally, because Rowan and
Michael weren’t going to Fierida for their honeymoon until the next day,
it was decided that Rowan should throw her bouquet from the stairway ’now.’
Climbing halfway, and staring down at a sea of upturned faces, ranging in both
directions and back into the parlor, Rowan closed her eyes and threw the
bouquet up in the air. There was a great deal of cordial screaming and even
pushing and scuffling. And suddenly
beautiful young Clancy Mayfair held up the bouquet, amid shouts of approbation.
And Pierce threw his arms around her, obviously declaring to the whole world
his particular and selfish delight in her good luck.
Ah, so it’s Pierce and
Clancy, is it? thought Rowan quietly, coming back down. And she had not seen it
before. She had not even guessed. But there seemed little doubt of it as she
watched them slip away. Far off against the second fireplace, Peter stood
smiling on, while Randall argued heatedly, it seemed, with Fielding, who had
been planted there some time ago in a tapestried chair.
The new band of the evening
had just arrived. It began to play a waltz; everyone cheered at the sound of
the sweet, old’ fashioned music, and someone dimmed the chandeliers until
they gave off a soft, rosy light. Older couples rose to dance. Michael at once
took Rowan and led her to the middle of the parlor. It was another flawless
moment, as rich and tender as the music that carried them along. Soon the room
around them was crowded with dancing couples. Beatrice was dancing with
Randall. And Aunt Vivian with Aaron. All of the old ones were dancing, and then
even the young ones were drawn into it, little Mona with the elderly Peter, and
Clancy with Pierce.
If Michael had seen any
other awful unwelcoming thing, he gave no sign of it. Indeed, his eyes were
fixed steadily and devotedly on Rowan.
As nine o’clock
sounded, certain Mayfairs were crying, having reached some point of crucial
confession or understanding in a conversation with a long-lost cousin; or
simply because everybody had drunk too much and danced too long and some people
felt they ought to cry. Rowan didn’t exactly know. It just seemed a
natural thing for Beatrice as she sat bawling on the couch with Aaron hugging
her, and for Gifford, who for hours had been explaining something of seeming
importance to a patient and wide-eyed Aunt Viv. Lily had gotten into a loud
quarrel with Peter and Randall, deriding them as the ‘I remember Stella’
crowd.
Rita Mae Lonigan was still
crying when she left with her husband, Jerry. Amanda Curry, along with Franklin
Curry, also made a tearful farewell.
By ten o’clock the
crowd had dwindled to perhaps two hundred. Rowan had taken off her white satin
high heels. She sat in a wing chair by the first fireplace of the parlor, her
long sleeves pushed up, smoking a cigarette, with her feet curled under her,
listening to Pierce talk about his last trip to Europe. She could not even
recall when or where she had taken off her veil. Maybe Bea had taken it when
she and Lily had gone to ’prepare the wedding chamber,’ whatever
that meant. Her feet hurt worse than they did after an eight-hour operation.
She was hungry, and only the desserts were left. And the cigarette was making
her sick. She stubbed it out.
Michael and the old gray-haired
priest from the parish were in fast conversation before the mantel at the other
end of the room. The band had moved from Strauss to more recent sentimental
favorites. Here and there voices broke out in time with the strains of ‘Blue
Moon’ or The Tennessee Waltz.’ The wedding cake, except for a piece
to be saved for sentimental reasons, had been devoured down to the last crumb.
A group of Gradys,
connections of Cortland, delayed on their journey from New York, flooded
through the front door, full of apologies and exclamations. Others rushed to
greet them. Rowan apologized for being shoeless and disheveled as she received
their kisses. And in the back dining room, a large party which had come
together for a series of photographs began to sing ‘My Wild Irish Rose.’
At eleven, Aaron kissed
Rowan good-bye, as he left to take Aunt Vivian home. He would be at the hotel
if needed, and he wished them a safe trip to Destin in the morning.
Michael walked with Aaron
and his aunt to the front door. Michael’s old friends went off at last to
continue their drinking at Parasol’s bar in the Irish Channel, after
extracting the promise from Michael that he would meet with them for dinner in
a couple of weeks. But the stairway was still blocked with couples in fast
conversation. And the caterers were ’rustling up something’ in the
kitchen for the New York Gradys.
At last, Ryan rose to his
feet, demanded silence, and declared that this party was over! Everyone was to
find his or her shoes, coat, purse, or what have you, and get out and leave the
wedding couple alone. Taking a fresh glass of champagne from a passing tray, he
turned to Rowan.
‘To the wedding couple,’
he announced, his voice easily carrying over the hubbub. ‘To their first
night in this house.’
Cheers once more. Everyone
reaching for a last drink, and there were a hundred repeats of the toast as
glasses clinked together. ‘God bless all in this house!’ declared
the priest, who just happened to be going out the door. And a dozen different
voices repeated the prayer.
‘To Darcy Monahan and
Katherine,’ someone cried.
‘To Julien and Mary
Beth… to Stella…’
The leave-taking, as was the
fashion in this family, took over a half hour, what with the kissing, and the
promises to get together, and the renewed conversations halfway out of the
powder room and halfway off the porch and halfway out the gate.
Meantime the caterers swept
through the rooms, silently retrieving every last glass and napkin, righting
pillows, and snuffing candles, and scattering the arrangements of flowers which
had been grouped on the banquet tables, and wiping up the last spills.
At last it was over. Ryan
was the last one to go, having paid the caterers and seen to it that everything
was perfect. The house was almost empty!
‘Good night, my dears,’
he said, and the high front door slowly closed.
For a long moment Rowan and
Michael looked at each other, then they broke into laughter, and Michael picked
her up and swung her around in a circle, before he set her gently back on her
feet. She fell against him, hugging him the way she’d come to love, with
her head against his chest. She was weak from laughing.
‘We did it, Rowan!’
he said. ‘The way everybody wanted it, we did it! It’s over, it’s
done.’
She was still laughing
silently, deliciously exhausted and pleasantly excited at the same time. But
the clock was striking, ‘Listen,’ she whispered. ‘Michael, it’s
midnight.’
He took her by the hand, hit
the wall button to shut off the light, and together they hurried up the
darkened stairs.
Only one room on the second floor
gave a light into the hallway, and it was their bedroom. They moved silently to
the threshold.
‘Rowan, look what they’ve
done,’ Michael said.
The room had been
exquisitely prepared by Bea and Lily. A huge fragrant bouquet of pink roses
stood on the mantel between the two silver candelabra.
On the dressing table, the
champagne waited in its bucket of ice with two glasses beside it, on a silver
tray.
The bed itself was ready,
the lace coverlet turned down, the pillows fluffed, and the soft white bed curtains
brought back and tied to the massive posts at the head.
A pretty nightgown and
peignoir of white silk lay folded on one side of the bed and a pair of white
cotton pajamas on the other. A single rose lay against the pillows, with a bit
of ribbon tied to it, and another single candle stood on the small table to the
right of the bed.
‘How sweet of them to
think of it,’ Rowan said.
‘And so it’s our
wedding night, Rowan,’ Michael said. ‘And the clock’s just
stopped chiming. It’s the witching hour, darlin’, and we have it
all to ourselves.’
Again, they looked at each
other, and both began to laugh softly, feeding each other’s laughter, and
quite unable to stop. They were too tired to do more than fall into bed beneath
the covers, and they both knew it.
‘Well, we ought to
drink the champagne at least,’ Rowan said, ’before we collapse.’
He nodded, throwing aside
the cutaway coat and tugging at the ascot. ‘I’ll tell you, Rowan,
you have to love somebody to dress up in a suit like this!’
‘Come on, Michael,
everybody here does this sort of thing. Here, the zipper, please.’ She
turned her back to him, and then felt the hard shell of the bodice released at
last, the gown falling loosely down around her feet. Carelessly, she unfastened
the emerald and laid it on the end of the mantel.
At last everything was
gathered away, and hung up, and they sat in bed together drinking the
champagne, which was very cold and dry and delicious, and had foamed all over
the glasses, as it ought to do. Michael was naked, but he loved caressing
through the silk nightgown, so she kept it on. Finally, no matter how tired
they were, they were caught up in the deliciousness of the new bed, and the
soft candlelight, and their usual heat was rising to a boil.
It was swift and violent,
the way she loved it, the giant mahogany bed sturdy as if it were carved out of
stone.
She lay against him
afterwards, dozing and contented, and listening to the steady rhythm of his
heart. Finally she sat up, straightened out the wrinkled nightgown, and drank a
long cool sip of the champagne.
Michael sat up beside her,
naked, one knee crooked, and lighted a cigarette, his head rolling against the
high headboard of the bed.
‘Ah Rowan, nothing
went wrong, you know, absolutely nothing. It was the perfect day. God, that a
day could be so perfect.’
Except that you saw
something that scared you. But she didn’t say
it. Because it had been perfect, even with that strange little moment. Perfect!
Nothing to spoil it at all.
She took another little
drink of the champagne, savoring the taste and her own tiredness, realizing
that she was still too wound up to close her eyes.
A wave of dizziness came
over her suddenly, with just a touch of the nausea she’d felt in the
morning. She waved the cigarette smoke away.
‘What’s the
matter?’
‘Nothing, just nerves
I think. Walking up that aisle was sort of like lifting a scalpel or something
for the first time.’
‘I know what you mean.
Let me put this out.’
‘No, it’s not
that, cigarettes don’t bother me. I smoke now and then myself.’ But
it was the cigarette smoke, wasn’t it? Same thing earlier. She got up,
the light silk nightgown feeling like nothing as it fell around her, and went
barefoot into the bath.
No Alka-Seltzer, the one
that that always worked at such moments. But she had brought some over, she
remembered. She had put it in the kitchen cabinet along with aspirin and
Band-Aids and all the other household supplies. She came back and put on her
bedroom slippers and peignoir.
‘Where are you going?’
he asked.
‘Downstairs, for
Alka-Seltzer. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I’ll be
right back.’
‘Wait a minute, Rowan,
I’ll go.’
‘Stay where you are.
You’re not dressed. I’ll be back in two seconds. Maybe I’ll
take the elevator, what the hell.’
The house was not really
dark. A pale light from the garden came in through the many windows,
illuminating the polished floor of the hallway, and the dining room, and even
the butler’s pantry. It was easy to make her way without switching on a
light.
She found the Alka-Seltzer
in the cabinet, and one of the new crystal glasses she had bought on a shopping
spree with Lily and Bea. She filled the glass at the little sink on the island
in the middle of the kitchen, and stood there drinking the Alka-Seltzer and
then closed her eyes.
Yes, better. Probably purely
psychological, but better.
‘Good. I’m glad
you feel better.’
‘Thank you,’ she
said, thinking what a lovely voice, so soft and with a touch of a Scottish
accent, wasn’t it? A beautiful melodious voice.
She opened her eyes, and
with a violent start, stumbled backwards against the door of the refrigerator.
He was standing on the other
side of the counter. About three feet away. His whisper had been raw,
heartfelt. But the expression on his face was a little colder, and entirely
human. Slightly hurt perhaps, but not imploring as it had been that night in
Tiburon. No, not that at all.
This had to be a real man.
It was a joke of some kind. This was a real man. A man standing here in the
kitchen, staring at her, a tall, brown-haired man with large dark eyes, and a
beautifully shaped sensuous mouth.
The light through the French
doors clearly revealed his shirt, and the rawhide vest he wore. Old, old
clothing, clothing made with hand stitches and uneven seams, and big full
sleeves.
‘Well? Where is your
will to destroy me, beautiful one?’ he whispered, in the same low,
vibrant, and heartbroken voice. ‘Where is your power to drive me back
into hell?’
She was shaking
uncontrollably. The glass slipped out of her wet fingers and struck the floor
with a dull noise and rolled to one side. She gave a deep, ragged sigh, and
kept her eyes focused upon him. The reasoning part of her observed that he was
tall, perhaps over six feet, that he had heavily muscled arms and powerful
hands. That his face was perfect in its proportions, and that his hair was
softly mussed, as if by a wind. Not that delicate androgynous gentleman she’d
seen on the deck, no.
The better to love you,
Rowan!’ he whispered. ‘What shape would you have me take? He is not
perfect, Rowan, he is human but not perfect. No.’
For a moment her fear was so
great that she felt a tight squeezing inside of her as if she were going to
die. Moving against it, defiant and enraged, she came forward, legs trembling,
and reached out across the counter, and touched his cheek.
Roughened, like Michael’s.
And the lips silky. God! Once again, she stumbled backwards, paralyzed, and
unable to move or speak. Tremors moved through her limbs.
‘You fear me, Rowan?’
he said, lips barely moving as she focused on them. ‘Why? Leave your friend,
Aaron, alone, you commanded me, and I did as you commanded, did I not?’
‘What do you want?’
‘Ah, that would be a.
very long time in the telling,’ he answered, the Scottish accent
thickened. ‘And he waits for you, your lover, and your husband, on this
your wedding night. And he grows anxious that you do not come.’
The face softened, torn
suddenly with pain. How could an illusion be this vital?
‘Go, Rowan, go back to
him,’ he said sadly, ’and if you tell him I am here, you will make
him more miserable than even you know. And I shall hide from you again, and the
fear and the suspicion will eat at him, and I will come only when I want to
come.’
‘All right. I won’t
tell him,’ she whispered. ‘But don’t you harm him. Don’t
you bring the slightest fear or worry to him. And the other tricks, stop them!
Don’t plague him with tricks! Or I swear to you, I will never never speak
to you. And I will drive you away.’
The beautiful face looked
tragic, and the brown eyes grew soft and infinitely sad.
‘And Aaron, you’re
never to harm Aaron. Never. Never to harm anyone, do you hear me?’
‘As you say, Rowan,’
he said, the words flowing like music, full of sorrow and quiet strength. ‘What
is there in all the world for me, but pleasing Rowan? Come to me when he
sleeps. Tonight, tomorrow, come when you will. There is no time for me. I am
here when you say my name. But keep faith with me, Rowan. Come alone to me, and
in secret. Or I will not answer. I love you, my beautiful Rowan. But I have a
will. I do.’
The figure suddenly shimmered
as if a sourceless light had struck it; it brightened and a thousand tiny
details of it were suddenly visible. Then it became transparent, and a gust of
warm air struck her, frightening her, and then leaving her alone in the
darkness, with nothing there.
She put her hand to her
mouth. The nausea came again. She stood waiting it out, shivering, and on the
verge of screaming, when she heard Michael’s soft but unmistakable tread
coming through the pantry and into the kitchen. She forced herself to open her
eyes.
He had slipped into his
jeans, and his chest and his feet were bare.
‘What’s wrong,
honey?’ he whispered. He saw the glass gleaming in the dark, against the
bottom of the refrigerator. He bent down, past her, and picked it up and put it
in the sink. ‘Rowan, what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing, Michael,’
she said thickly, trying to control the trembling, the tears springing to her
eyes. ‘I’m sick, just a little sick. It happened this morning, and
this afternoon and yesterday too actually. I don’t know what it is. It
was the cigarette just now. I’ll be OK, Michael, honestly. I’ll be
fine.’
‘You don’t know
what it is?’ he asked her.
‘No, I just… I
guess it’s… cigarettes never did that to me before…’
‘Dr Mayfair,’ he
said. ‘You sure you don’t know?’
She felt his hands on her
shoulders. She felt his hair brush her cheek gently as he bent to kiss the tops
of her breasts. She started to cry, her hands clasping his head, feeling the
silkiness of his hair.
‘Dr Mayfair,’ he
said. ‘Even I know what it is.’
‘What are you talking
about?’ she whispered. ‘I just need to sleep, to go upstairs.’
‘You’re
pregnant, honey. Go look at yourself in the mirror.’ And very gently he
touched her breasts again, and she herself felt the plumpness, the slight
soreness, and she knew, knew absolutely from all the other little unnoticed
signs, that he was right. Absolutely right.
She dissolved into tears.
She let him pick her up and tumble her against him, and carry her slowly
through the house. Her body ached from the tension of the awful moments in the
kitchen, and her sobs were coming dry and painfully from her throat. She didn’t
think it was possible for him to carry her up that long stairway, but he did
it, and she let him do it, crying against his chest, her fingers tight around
his neck.
He set her down on the bed,
and kissed her. In a daze she watched him blow out the candles, and come back
to her.
‘I love you so much,
Rowan,’ he said. He was crying too. ‘I love you so much. I’ve
never been so happy… it comes in waves, and each time I think it’s
the pinnacle, and then it comes again. And this of all nights to know…
God, what a wedding gift, Rowan. What did I ever do to deserve this happiness,
I wish I knew.’
‘I love you, too, my
darling. Yes… so happy.’ As he climbed under the covers, she turned
away, tucking herself against him, and feeling his knees draw up under hers.
She cried against the pillow, taking his hand and folding it over her breasts.
‘Everything is so
perfect,’ he whispered.
‘Nothing to spoil it,’
she whispered, ’not a single thing.’
FORTY-ONE
SHE WOKE before he did.
After the first round of nausea, she packed the suitcases quickly, with all the
prefolded bundles of clothes. Then she went downstairs into the kitchen.
Everything clean and quiet
in the sunlight. No sign of what had taken place last night. And the pool
sparkling out there beyond the screened porch. And the sun filtering down
softly through the screens onto the white wicker furniture.
She examined the counter.
She examined the floor. She could detect nothing. Then, filled with revulsion
and anger, she made the coffee as quickly as she could, so as to get out of the
room, and she brought it up to Michael.
He was just opening his
eyes.
‘Let’s take off
now,’ she said.
‘I thought we wouldn’t
leave till this afternoon,’ he said sleepily. ‘But sure, we can go
now, if you want to.’ Ever her agreeable hero. He gave her a soft kiss on
the cheek, his unshaven beard deliriously scratchy. ‘How do you feel?’
he whispered.
‘I’m fine now,’
she said. She reached out and touched the little gold crucifix tangled in the
dark hair of his chest. ‘It was bad for about half an hour. Probably it
will come again. I’ll sleep when it does. I’d love to get to Destin
in time to walk on the beach in the sunshine.’
‘But what about seeing
a doctor before we leave?’
‘I am a doctor,’
she said with a smile. ‘And remember the special sense? It’s doing
just fine in there.’
‘Does the special
sense tell you if he’s a boy or a girl?’ he asked.
‘If he is a boy or a girl?’ She laughed.
‘I wish it did. But then maybe I want to be surprised. What about you?’
‘Wouldn’t it be
wonderful if it were twins?’
‘Yes, that would be
great,’ she said.
‘Rowan, you’re
not… unhappy about the baby, are you?’
‘No, God no! Michael,
I want the baby. I’m just a little sick still. It comes and goes. Look, I
don’t want to tell the others just yet. Not until we come back from
Florida. The honeymoon will be ruined if we do.’
‘Agreed.’
Tentatively, he placed his warm hand on her belly. ‘It’s a while
yet before you feel it in there, isn’t it?’
‘It’s a quarter
of an inch long,’ she said, smiling again. ‘It doesn’t weigh
an ounce. But I can feel it. It’s swimming in a state of bliss, with all
its tiny cells multiplying.’
‘What does it look
like now?’
‘Well, it’s like
a tiny sea being. It could stretch out on your thumbnail. It has eyes, and even
chubby little hands, but no real fingers or even arms yet. Its brain is already
there, at least the rudiments of the brain, already divided into two halves.
And for some reason which nobody on earth can divine, all its tiny cells know
what to do — they know exactly where to go to continue forming the organs
which are already there, and only have to perfect themselves. Its tiny heart
has been beating inside me for over a month now.’
He gave a deep, satisfied
sigh. ‘What are we going to name it?’
She shrugged. ‘What
about Little Chris? Would that be… too hard for you?’
‘No, that would be
great. Little Chris. And it will be Christo-pher if it’s a boy, and
Christine if it’s a girl. How old will it be at Christmas?’ He
started to calculate.
‘Well, it’s
probably six to seven weeks now. Maybe eight. As a matter of fact, it could
very well be eight. So that means… four months. It will have all its
parts, but its eyes will still be closed. Why? You’re wondering whether
it would prefer a red fire engine to a baseball bat?’
He chuckled. ‘No, it’s
just that it’s the greatest Christmas gift I could ever have dreamed of.
Christmas has always been special to me, special in almost a pagan way. And
this is going to be the grandest Christmas I ever had, that is, until next year
when she’s walking around and banging her little fire engine with her
baseball bat.’
He looked so vulnerable, so
innocent, so completely trusting in her. When she looked at him, she could
almost forget what had happened last night. She could almost forget everything.
She gave him a quick kiss, slipped into the bathroom, and stood against the
locked door with her eyes closed.
You devil, she whispered, you’ve
really timed it well, haven’t you? Do you like my hate? Is it what you’ve
been dreaming of?
Then she remembered the face
in the darkened kitchen, and the soft heartbroken voice, like fingers touching
her. What is there in all the world for me, but pleasing Rowan?
They got away at about ten o’clock.
Michael drove. And she felt better by that time, and managed to go to sleep for
a couple of hours. When she opened her eyes, they were already in Florida,
driving down through the dark pine forest from the interstate to the road that
ran along the beach. She was clearheaded and refreshed, and when she caught the
first glimpse of the Gulf, she felt safe, as if the dark kitchen in New Orleans
and its apparition no longer existed.
The weather was cool, but no
more so than any bracing summer day in northern California. They put on their
heavy sweaters and strolled on the deserted beach. At sunset, they ate their
supper by the fire, with the windows open to the Gulf breeze.
Some time around eight o’clock,
she went to work on the plans for Mayfair Medical, continuing her study of the
great ’for profit’ chains of hospitals, in comparison to the ’not
for profit’ models which interested her more keenly.
But her mind was wandering.
She couldn’t really concentrate on the dense articles about profit and
loss, and abuses within the various systems.
At last she made a few notes
and went to bed, lying for hours in the darkened bedroom while Michael worked
on his restoration plans in the other room, listening to the great roar of the
Gulf through the open doors, and feeling the breeze wash over her.
What was she going to do?
Tell Michael and Aaron, as she had sworn to do? And then he would retreat, and
play his little tricks perhaps, and the tension would increase with every
passing day.
She thought of her little
baby again, her ringers lying on her stomach. Probably conceived right after she’d
asked Michael to marry her. She’d always been highly irregular in her
seasons, and she felt that she knew the very night it had happened. She’d
dreamed of a baby that night. But she couldn’t really remember.
Was it dreaming inside her?
She pictured the tiny circuitry of its developing brain. No longer embryo by
now, but an entire fetus. She closed her eyes, listening, feeling. All
right. And then her own strong telepathic sense began to frighten her.
Had she the power within her
to hurt this child? The thought was so terrifying that she couldn’t bear
it. And when she thought of Lasher again, he too seemed a menace to this frail
and busy little being, because he was a threat to her, and she was her baby’s
entire world.
How could she protect it
from her own dark powers, and from the dark history that sought to ensnare it?
Little Chris. You will not grow up with curses and spirits, and things that go
bump in the night. She cleared her mind of dark and turbulent thoughts; she
envisioned the sea outside, crashing endlessly on the beach, no one wave like
another, yet all part of the same great monotonous force, full of sweet and
lulling noise and incalculable variation.
Destroy Lasher. Seduce him,
yes, as he is trying to seduce you. Discover what he is and destroy him! And you’re
the only own who can do it. Tell Michael or Aaron and he will retreat. You’ve
got to deceive with a purpose and do it.
Four a.m. She must have
slept. The irresistible hunk was lying there against her, his big heavy arm
cradling her, his head hugging her breasts. And a dream was just winking out,
all full of misery and those Dutchmen in their big black hats, and a mob
outside screaming for the blood of Jan van Abel.
‘I describe what I see!’
he had said. ‘I am no heretic! How are we to learn if we do not throw out
the dogmas of Aristotle and Galen?’
Right you are. But it was
gone now, along with that body on the table with all the tiny organs inside
like flowers.
Ah, she hated that dream!
She rose and walked across
the thick carpet, and out on the wooden deck. Oh, was ever a sky more vast and
clear, and full of tiny twinkling stars. Pure white the foam of the black
waves. As white as the sand which glowed in the moonlight.
But far down on the beach
stood a lone figure, a lean tall man, looking towards her. Damn you.
She saw the figure slowly thin and then vanish.
Bowing her head, she stood
trembling with her hands on the wooden rail.
You’ll come
when I call you.
I love you, Rowan.
With horror she realized the
voice came from no direction. It was a whisper inside of her, all around her,
intimate and audible only to her.
I wait only for you,
Rowan.
Leave me, then. Don’t
speak another word or show yourself again, or I’ll never call for you.
Angry, bitter, she turned
and went back into the darkened bedroom, the warm carpet soft under her feet,
and climbed into the low bed beside Michael. She clung to him in the darkness,
her fingers tight around his arm. Desperately she wanted to wake him, to tell
him what had happened.
But this she had to do
alone. She knew it. She’d always known.
And an awful fatality
gripped her.
Just give me these last days
before the battle, she prayed. Ellie, Deirdre, help me.
She was sick every morning
for a week. Then the nausea left her, and the days after were glorious, as if
mornings had been rediscovered, and being clear-headed was a gift from the
gods.
He didn’t speak to her
again. He didn’t show himself. When she thought of him, she imagined her
anger like a withering heat, striking the mysterious and unclassifiable cells
of his form, and drying them up like so many minuscule husks. But most of all
when she thought of him she was fearful.
Meantime life went on
because she kept the secret locked inside her.
By phone she made an
appointment with an obstetrician back in New Orleans, who arranged to have the
early blood work done right here in Destin, with the results to be sent on.
Everything was normal as she expected.
But who could expect them to
understand that with her diagnostic sense she would have known if the little
tucker was in trouble?
The warm days were few and
far between, but she and Michael had the dreamlike beach almost to themselves.
And the pure silence of the isolated house above the dunes was magical.
"When the air was warm, she sat for hours on the beach beneath a big
glamorous white umbrella, reading her medical journals and the various
materials which Ryan sent out to her by messenger.
She read the baby books,
too, that she could find in the local bookstores. Sentimental and vague, but
fun nevertheless. Especially the pictures of babies, with their tiny expressive
faces, fat wrinkly necks, and adorable little feet and hands. She was dying to
tell the family. She and Beatrice spoke almost every other day. But it was best
to keep the secret. Think of the hurt to her and Michael if something were to
go wrong, and if the others knew, that would only make the loss worse for
everyone.
They walked on the beach for
hours, on those days when it was too cold to swim. They shopped and bought
little things for the house. They loved its bare white walls and sparse
furnishings. It was like a place to play after the seriousness of First Street,
said Michael. He liked doing the cooking with Rowan - chopping, shredding, stir
frying, barbecuing steaks. It was all easy and fun.
They dined at all the fine
restaurants and took drives into the pine woods, and explored the big resorts
with their tennis courts and golf courses. But mostly they were happy in the
house, with the endless sea so very near them.
Michael was pretty anxious
about his business — he had a team working on the shotgun cottage on
Annunciation Street, and he had opened up his new Great Expectations on
Magazine, and he was having to handle all the little emergencies by phone. And
of course there was the painting still going on at home, up in Julien’s
old room, and the roof repairs in the back. The brick parking area behind the
house wasn’t finished yet, and the old gflrconniere was still being renovated
— an excellent caretaker’s cottage, they figured — and he was
antsy not being there himself.
He didn’t need a long
honeymoon right now, that was perfectly obvious - especially not a honeymoon
that was being extended day after day by Rowan.
But he was so agreeable. Not
only did he do what she wanted, he seemed to have an endless capacity to make
the most of the moment, whether they were strolling on the beach hand in hand,
or enjoying a hasty seafood meal in a little tavern, or visiting the boats for sale
in the marina, or reading in their various favorite corners of the spacious
house, on their own.
Michael was a contented
person by nature. She’d known that when she first met him; she’d
understood why the anxiety was so terrible for him. And now it endeared him to
her so much to see him lost in his own projects, drawing designs for the
renovation of the little Annunciation Street cottage, clipping out pictures
from magazines of little things he meant to do.
Aunt Viv was doing fine back
in New Orleans. Lily and Bea gave her no peace, according to their own
admission, and Michael felt it was the best thing in the world for her.
‘She sounds so much
younger when I talk to her,’ he said.
‘She’s joined
some garden club, and some committee to protect the oak trees. She’s
actually having fun.’
So loving, so understanding.
Even when Rowan didn’t want to go back to town for Thanksgiving, he gave
in. Aunt Viv went to dinner at Bea’s, of course. And everybody forgave
the wedding couple for staying in Florida, for it was their honeymoon after
all, and they could take as long as they wished.
They had their own quiet
Thanksgiving dinner on the deck over the beach. Then that night a cold,
blustering lightning storm hit Destin. The wind shook the glass doors and
windows. Up and down the coast, the power went out. It was an utterly divine
and natural darkness.
They sat for hours by the
fire, talking of Little Chris and which room would be the nursery, and how
Rowan would not let the Medical Center interfere in the first couple of years;
she’d spend every morning with the baby, not going to work until twelve o’clock,
and of course they’d get all the help they needed to make things run
smoothly.
Thank God he did not ask
directly whether or not she’d’seen that damn thing.’ She did
not know what she would do if forced to tell a deliberate lie. The secret was
locked inside a little compartment in her mind, like Bluebeard’s secret
chamber, and the key had been thrown down the well.
The weather was getting
colder. Soon there wouldn’t be an excuse for remaining here. She knew
they ought to go back.
What was she doing not
telling Michael, and not telling Aaron? Running away like this, to hide?
But the longer she remained
here, the more she began to understand her conflicts and her reasons.
She wanted to talk to the
being. The memory of him in the kitchen flooded her with a powerful sense of
him, all the more particular because she had heard the tender quality of his
voice. Yes, she wanted to know him! It was exactly as Michael had predicted in
that first awful night when the old woman had just died. What was Lasher? Where
had he come from? What secrets lay beyond that flawless and tragic face? What
would Lasher say about the doorway and the thirteen witches?
And all she had to do was
call him, like Prospero calling to Ariel. Keep the secret, and say his name.
Oh, but you are a witch, she
said to herself as her guilt deepened. And they all knew it. They knew it that
afternoon you spoke to Gifford; they knew by the stark silvery power that came
from you, what everybody thinks is coldness and cunning, but was never anything
but unwelcome strength. The old man, Fielding, was right in his warnings. And
Aaron knows, doesn’t he? Of course he knows.
Everybody but Michael, and
Michael is so easy to deceive.
But what if she decided that
she wouldn’t deceive anyone, that she wouldn’t play along? Maybe
she was searching for the courage to make that decision. Or maybe she was
simply resisting. Maybe she was making the demon thing wait the way he had made
her wait.
Whatever the case, she no
longer felt that aversion for him, that awful dislike which had followed the
incident on the plane. She felt the anger still, but the curiosity and the ever
increasing attraction were greater…
It was the first really cold
day, when Michael came out on the beach and sat down beside her and told her he
had to go back. She was enjoying the brisk air, actually, sunbathing in a heavy
cotton sweater and long pants, the way she might have done in California on her
windy deck.
‘Look, this is what’s
going down,’ he said. ‘Aunt Viv wants her things from San Francisco
and you know how old people can be. And, Rowan, there’s nobody to close
up Liberty Street except me. I have to make some decisions about my old store
out there, too. My accountant just called me again about somebody wanting to
rent it, and I have to get back there and go through the inventory myself.’
He went on, about selling a
couple of pieces of California property, shipping certain things, renting out
his house, that sort of thing. And the truth was, he was needed in New Orleans.
His new business on Magazine Street needed him. If this thing was going to
work…
‘Truth is, I’d
rather fly out there now than later. It’s almost December, Rowan.
Christmas is coming. You realize it?’
‘Sure, I understand. We’ll
drive back tonight.’
‘But you don’t
have to, babe. You can stay here in Florida till I come back, or as long as you
want.’
‘No, I’ll come
with you,’ she said. ‘I’ll come up and pack in a little
while. Besides, it’s time to be leaving. It’s warm now but it was
really chilly this morning when I first came out.’
He nodded. ‘Didn’t
you hate it?’
She laughed. ‘Still
not as cold as any summer day back in California,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘I have to
tell you something. It’s going to get even colder. A lot colder. Winter
in the South is going to surprise you. They’re saying this may be a bad
winter all over the southern states. In a way I just love it. First the
dizzying heat and then the frost on the windows.’
‘I know what you mean.’
And I love you. I love you more
than anyone I’ve ever loved.
She sat back in the wooden
beach chair as he walked away, and she let her head roll to the side. The Gulf
was now a dull silver blaze before her, as often happened when the sun was at
its height. She let her left hand fall down into the soft, sugary sand. She
pushed her fingers into it, and picked up a handful of it, letting it run
through her fingers. ‘Real,’ she whispered. ‘So real.’
But wasn’t it just too
neat that he had to leave now, and she’d be alone at First Street? Wasn’t
it just like somebody had arranged things that way? And all this time she
thought that she’d been calling the shots.
‘Don’t
overreach, my friend,’ she whispered into the cool Gulf breeze. ‘Don’t
hurt my love, or I’ll never forgive you. See that he comes back to me,
safe and sound.’
They didn’t leave till
the following morning.
As they drove away, she felt
the tiniest stab of excitement. In a flash, she pictured his face again as it
had been in the darkened kitchen; she heard the soft resonant flow of his
words. A caress. But she couldn’t bear to think of that part of it. Only
after Michael had arrived safely in California, only when she was alone in the
house…
FORTY-TWO
TWELVE O‘CLOCK. Why
did that seem the right time? Maybe because Pierce and Clancy had stayed so
late, and she had needed this hour of quiet? It was only ten o’clock in
California, but Michael had already called, and, worn out after the long
flight, he had probably already fallen asleep.
He’d sounded so
excited about the fact that everything looked so unappetizing and he was so
eager to come home. Excruciating to miss him so much already, to be lying alone
in this large and empty bed.
But the other waited.
As the soft chimes of the
clock died away, she got up, put on the silk peignoir over her nightgown, and
the satin bedroom slippers, and went out and down the long stairs.
And where do we meet, my
demon lover?
In the parlor amid the giant
mirrors, with the draperies drawn over the light from the street? Seemed a
better place than most.
She walked softly over the
polished pine floor, her feet sinking into the Chinese carpet as she moved
towards the first fireplace. Michael’s cigarettes on the table. A
half-drunk glass of beer. Ashes from the fire she had made earlier, on this her
first bitter cold night in the South.
Yes, the first of December,
and the baby had its little eyelids now inside her, and its ears have started
to form.
No problems at all, said the
doctor. Strong healthy parents, disease-free, and her body in excellent
condition. Eat sensibly and by the way what do you do for a living?
Tell lies.
Today she’d overheard
Michael talking to Aaron on the phone. ‘Just fine. I mean surprisingly
well, I guess. Completely peaceful. Except of course for seeing that awful
vision of Stella the day of the wedding. But I could have imagined that. I was
drunk on all that champagne. [Pause] No. Nothing at all.’
Aaron could see through the
lie, couldn’t he? Aaron knew. But the trouble with these dark inhuman powers
was that you never knew when they were working. They failed you when you most
counted upon them. After all the random flashing and decidedly unwelcome
insights into the thoughts of others, suddenly the world was filled with wooden
faces and flat voices. And you were alone.
Maybe Aaron was alone. He
had found nothing helpful in the old notebooks of Julien’s. Nothing in
the ledgers in the library, except the predictable economic records of a
plantation. He had found nothing in the grimoires and de-monologies collected
over the years, except the published information on witchcraft which anyone
could obtain.
And now the house was
beautifully finished, without dark or unexplored corners. Even the attics were
shining clean. She and Michael had gone up to approve the last work, before he
left for the airport. Everything in order. Julien’s room just a pretty
workroom now for Michael, with a drawing table and files for blueprints and the
shelves full of his many books.
She stood in the center of
the Chinese carpet. She was facing the fireplace. She had bowed her head and
made a little steeple with her hands, and pressed her fingers to her lips. What
was she waiting for? Why didn’t she say it: Lasher. Slowly she
looked up and into the mirror over the mantel.
Behind her, in the keyhole
doorway, watching her, the light from the street all she needed to see him as
it shone through the glass on either side of the front door.
Her heart was pounding, but
she didn’t move to turn around. She gazed at him through the mirror -
calculating, measuring, defining - trying to grasp with all her powers, human
and inhuman, what this creature was made of, what this body was.
‘Face me, Rowan.’
Voice like a kiss in the darkness. Not a command, or a plea. Something intimate
like the request from a lover whose heart will be broken if he is refused.
She turned around. He was
standing against the door frame, his arms folded. He wore an old-fashioned dark
suit, much like the ones Julien wore in the portraits of the 1890s, with the
high white collar and silk tie. A beautiful picture. And in such lovely
contrast were his strong hands, like Michael’s, and the large, strong
features of his face. The hair was streaked with blond, and the skin slightly
darker. She thought of Chase, her old policeman lover, when she looked at him.
‘Change what you will,’
he said gently.
And before she could
respond, she saw the figure altering itself, saw it like a soundless boiling in
the shadows, as the hair grew even lighter, more completely blond, and
the skin took on the bronzed quality of Chase’s skin. She saw the eyes
brighten; Chase for one instant, perfectly realized; then another strain of
human characteristics infused it, altering it again, until it was the same man
who had appeared to her in the kitchen - possibly the same man who had appeared
to all of them over the centuries - except that he was taller, and still had
Chase’s high dramatic coloring.
She realized she had moved
closer. She was standing only a few feet away. She was not afraid so much as
powerfully excited. Her heart was still pounding, but she wasn’t
trembling. She reached out as she had that night in the kitchen and felt his
face.
Stubble of beard, skin, but
it wasn’t skin. The keen diagnostic sense told her it was not, and there
were no bones inside this body; no internal organs. This was a shell for an
energy field.
‘But in time there
will be bones, Rowan, in time, all miracles can be performed.’
The lips had barely moved
with the words; and the creature was already losing its shape. It had exhausted
itself.
She stared hard at it,
striving to hold it, and she saw it grow solid again.
‘Help me smile,
beautiful one,’ said the voice, with no movement of the lips this time. ‘I
would smile on you and your power if I could.’
Now she was
trembling. With every fiber of her body she concentrated upon it, upon infusing
the facial features with life. She could almost feel the energy flowing from
her, feel it gathering the strange material substance and shaping it; it was
purer and finer than her conception of electricity. And a great warmth
enveloped her as she saw the lips begin to smile.
Serene, subtle, like the
smile of Julien in the photographs. The large green eyes were filled with
light. The hands rose and they reached out for her now, and she felt a
delicious warmth as they came closer, almost touching the sides of her face.
Then the image shimmered,
and suddenly disintegrated, and the blast of heat was so great she stepped
backwards, her arm up to shield her eyes as she turned away.
The room was seemingly
empty. The draperies had moved and they were still dancing soundlessly. And
only very gradually did the room grow cold again.
She felt cold all over
suddenly. She felt exhausted. And when she looked at her hand, she realized it
was still shaking. She went over to the fireplace, and sank down on her knees.
Her mind was swimming. For a
moment she was almost dizzy and unable to locate herself in relation to what
had just happened. Then gradually her head cleared.
She laid some kindling into
the small grate, and put a few sticks and a small log on top of it, then struck
a long match and lighted the fire. In a second, the kindling was popping and
snapping. She stared down into the flames.
‘You’re here,
aren’t you?’ she whispered, staring into the fire as it grew
stronger and brighter, tongues of flame licking at the dried bark of the log.
‘Yes, I’m here.’
‘Where?’
‘Near you, around you.’
‘Where is your voice
coming from? Anyone could hear you now. You’re actually speaking.’
‘You will understand
how this is done better than I.’
‘Is that what you want
of me?’
He gave a long sigh. She
listened. No sound of breathing, merely the sound of a presence. Think of all
the times you’ve known someone else was near you, and it’s not
because you heard a heartbeat or a footfall or a breath. You heard something
softer, more subtle. This is the sound.
‘I love you,’ he
said.
‘Why?’
‘Because you are
beautiful to me. Because you can see me. Because you are all the things in a
human being which I myself desire. Because you are human and warm and soft. And
I know you, and have known the others before you.’
She said nothing. He went
on:
‘Because you are
Deborah’s child, and the child of Suzanne, and Charlotte, and all the
others whose names you know. Even if you will not take the emerald which I gave
to my Deborah, I love you. I love you without it. I have loved you since the
first time I knew of your coming. I see far. I saw you coming from afar. I
loved you in probability.’
The fire was blazing
strongly now, the delicious aroma comforting her, as the big thick log was
engulfed in bright orange flames. But she was in a form of delirium. Even her
own breathing seemed slow to her and strange. And she wasn’t sure now
that the voice was audible, or would be to others if they were here.
It was clear to her,
however, and richly seductive.
Slowly she sat down on the
warm floor beside the hearth and leaned against the marble, which was also
warming, and she peered into the shadows beneath the arch in the very center of
the room.
‘Your voice is
soothing to me, it’s beautiful.’ She sighed.
‘I want it to be
beautiful for you. I want to give you pleasure. That you hated me made me sad.’
‘When?’
‘When I touched you.’
‘Explain it all to me,
everything.’
‘But there are many
possible explanations. You shape the explanation by the question you ask. I can
talk to you of my own volition, but what I tell you will have been shaped by what
I have been taught through the questions of others over the centuries. It is a
construct. If you want a new construct, ask.’
‘When did you begin?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Who first called you
Lasher?’
‘Suzanne.’
‘Did you love her?’
‘I love Suzanne.’
‘She still exists.’
‘She is gone.’
‘I’m beginning
to see,’ she said. ‘There is no physical necessity in your world,
and consequently no time. A mind without a body.’
‘Precisely. Clever.
Smart.’
‘One of those words
will do.’
‘Yes,’ he said
agreeably, ’but which one?’
‘You’re playing
with me.’
‘No. I don’t
play.’
‘I want to get to the
bottom of this, to understand you, your motives, what you want.’
‘I know. I knew before
you spoke,’ he said in the same kind, seductive manner. ‘But you
are clever enough to know that in the realm in which I exist there is no bottom.’
He paused and then went on slowly as before. ‘If you prod me to speak to you
in complete and sophisticated sentences, and to allow for your persistent
misconceptions, mistakes, or crude distinctions, I can do it. But what I say
may not be as near the truth as you might like.’
‘But how will you do
it?’
‘Through what I’ve
learned of human thinking from other humans, of course. What I am saying is,
choose - begin at the beginning with me if you want pure truth. You will
receive enigmatic and cryptic answers. And they may be useless. But they will
be true. Or begin in the middle and you will receive educated and sophisticated
answers. Either way, you will know of me what I learn of myself from you.’
‘You’re a spirit?’
‘What you call a
spirit, I am.’
‘What would you call
yourself?’
‘I do not.’
‘I see. In your realm
you have no need of a name.’
‘No understanding even
of a name. But in truth just no name.’
‘But you have wants.
You want to be human.’
‘I do.’
Something like a sigh followed, eloquent of sadness.
‘Why?’
‘Wouldn’t you
want to be human if you were me, Rowan?’
‘I don’t know,
Lasher. I might want to be free.’
‘I crave it in pain,’
said the voice, speaking slowly and sorrowfully. ‘To feel heat and cold;
to know pleasure. To laugh — ah, what would it be to laugh? To dance and
sing, and to see clearly through human eyes. To feel things. To exist in
necessity and in emotions and in time. To have the satisfaction of ambition, to
have distinct dreams and ideas.’
‘Ah, yes, I’m
understanding it all right.’
‘Don’t be too
sure.’
‘You don’t see
clearly.’
‘Not the same.’
‘When you looked through
the eyes of the dead man, did you see clearly?’
‘Better, but not
clear, and death was on me, hanging on me, around me, and moving fast. Finally
I went blind inside.’
‘I can imagine. You
went into Charlotte’s father-in-law while he lived.’
‘Yes. He knew I was
there. He was weak, but happy to walk, and to lift things with his hands again.’
‘Interesting. What we
call possession.’
‘Correct. I saw
distinct things through his eyes. I saw brilliant colors and smelled flowers
and saw birds. I heard birds. I touched Charlotte with a hand. I knew Charlotte.’
‘You can’t hear
things now? You can’t see the light of this fire?’
‘I know all about it.
But I do not see or hear or feel it the way you do, Rowan. Though when I draw
near to you, I can see what you see, I know you and your thoughts.’
She felt a sharp throb of
fear. ‘I’m getting the hang of it.’
‘You think you are.
But it’s bigger and longer.’
‘I know. I really do.’
‘We know. We are. But
from you we have learned to think in a line, and we have learned time. We have
also learned ambition. For ambition one must know concepts of past and present
and future. One must plan. And I speak only of those of us who want. Those of
us who do not want, do not learn, for why should they? But to say
"us" is to approximate. There is no "us" for me because I
am alone and turned away from the others of me and see only you and your kind.’
‘I understand. When
you were in the dead bodies… the heads in the attic…"
‘Yes.’
‘Did you change the
tissues of those heads?’
‘I did. I changed the
eyes to brown. I changed the hair in streaks. This took great heat from me and
concentration. Concentration is the key to all I do. I draw together.’
‘And in your natural
state?’
‘Large, infinite.’
‘How did you change
the pigment?’
‘Went into the particles
of flesh, altered the particles. But your understanding of this is greater than
mine. You would use the word mutation. I know no better words, you know
scientific words. Concepts.’
‘What stopped you from
taking over the entire organism?’
‘It was dead. It
gradually finished and was heavy and I was blind and dumb. I could not bring
the spark of life back to it.’
‘I see. In Charlotte’s
father-in-law, did you change his body?’
‘That I could not do.
I did not know to try to do it. And I cannot do it now if I were there then.
You see?’
‘Yes, I do. You’re
constant, yet we’re in time. I see. But you are saying that you cannot
change living tissue?’
‘Not of that man. Not
of Aaron when I am in him.’
‘When you are in Aaron?’
‘When he sleeps. That
is the only time I can get in.’
‘Why do you do it?’
‘To be human. To be
alive. But Aaron is too strong for me; Aaron organizes and commands the tissues
of Aaron. Same with Michael. Same with almost all. Even the flowers.’
‘Ah, yes, the flowers.
You mutated the roses.’
‘I did. For you,
Rowan. To show you my love and my power.’
‘And to show me your
ambition?’
‘Yes…’
‘I don’t want
you ever to go into Aaron. I don’t want you ever to hurt him or Michael.’
‘I will obey you, but
I would like to kill Aaron.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Aaron is finished,
and Aaron has much knowledge and Aaron lies to you.’
‘How so, finished?’
‘He has done what I
saw that he would do and wanted for him to do. So I say finished. Now he may do
what I can see and do not want him to do, which goes against my ambition. I
would kill him, if it would not make you bitter and full of hate for me.’
‘You can feel my
anger, can’t you?’
‘It hurts me deeply,
Rowan.’
‘I would be in a rage
of pain and anger if you hurt Aaron. But let’s talk further about Aaron.
I want you to spell this out for me. What did you want Aaron to do that he’s
done?’
‘Give you his
knowledge. His words written in a straight line of time.’
‘You’re speaking
of the Mayfair chronology.’
‘Yes. The history. You
said spell it out so I didn’t use the word "chronology."’
She laughed softly. ‘You
don’t have to spell it out that much,’ she said. ‘Go on.’
‘I wanted you to read
this history from him. Petyr saw my Deborah burn, my beloved Deborah. Aaron saw
my Deirdre weep in the garden, my beautiful Deirdre. Your responses and
decisions are inestimably assisted by such history. But this task of Aaron has
been completed.’
‘Yes, I see.’
‘Beware.’
‘Of thinking I
understand?’
‘Precisely. Keep
asking. Words like "responses" and "inestimably" are vague.
I would keep nothing from you, Rowan.’
She heard him sighing again,
but it was long, and soft, and became slowly a different sound. It was like the
wind sighs. She continued to rest against the fireplace, basking in the heat of
the fire, her eyes wide as she stared into the shadows. It seemed she had been
here forever speaking to him, this disembodied yet softly resonant voice. The
sound of the sigh had almost touched her all over like the wind.
She gave a little soft laugh
of delight. She could see him in the room if she tried, see a rippling in the
air, something swelling and filling the room.
‘Yes…" he
said. ‘I love your laughter. I cannot laugh.’
‘I can help you learn
to do it.’
‘I know.’
‘Am I the doorway?’
‘You are.’
‘Am I the thirteenth
witch?’
‘You are.’
‘Then Michael was correct
in his interpretation.’
‘Michael is seldom
ever wrong. Michael sees clearly.’
‘Do you want to kill
Michael?’
"No. I love Michael. I
would walk and talk with Michael.’
‘Why, why Michael of
all people?’
‘I do not know.’
‘Oh, you must know.’
‘To love is to love.
Why do you love Michael? Is the answer the truth? To love is to love. Michael
is bright and beautiful. Michael laughs. Michael has much of the invisible
spirit in him, infusing his limbs and his eyes and voice. Do you see?’
‘I think I do. It’s
what we call vitality.’
‘Exactly,’ he
said.
But had the word ever been
said with such meaning?
He went on.
‘I saw Michael from
the beginning. Michael was a surprise. Michael sees me. Michael came to the
fence. Also Michael has ambition and is strong. Michael loved me. Now Michael
fears me. You came between me and Michael, and Michael fears that I will come
between him and you.’
‘But you won’t
hurt him.’
No answer.
‘You won’t hurt
him.’
‘Tell me not to hurt
him and I will not hurt him.’
‘But you said you didn’t
want to! Why do you make it go like this in a circle?’
‘This is no circle. I
told you I didn’t want to kill Michael. Michael may be hurt. What am I to
do? Lie? I do not lie. Aaron lies. I do not lie. I do not know how.’
‘That I don’t
believe. But maybe you believe it.’
‘You hurt me.’
‘Tell me how this will
end.’
‘What?’
‘My life with you, how
will it end?’
Silence.
‘You won’t tell
me.’
‘You are the doorway.’
She sat very still. She
could feel her mind working. The fire gave off its low crackling, and the
flames danced against the bricks, and the motion seemed entirely too slow to be
real. Again the air shimmered. She thought she saw the long crystal teardrops
of the chandelier moving, turning, gathering tiny fragments of light.
‘What does it mean to
be the doorway?’
‘You know what it
means.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘You can mutate
matter, Dr Mayfair.’
‘I’m not sure
that I can. I’m a surgeon. I work with precise instruments.’
‘Ah, but your mind is
ever more precise.’
She frowned; it was bringing
back that strange dream, the dream of Leiden…
‘In your time you have
stanched bleeding,’ he said, taking his time with his soft, slow words. ‘You
have closed wounds. You have made matter obey you.’
The chandelier gave off a
low tinkling music in the silence. It caught the glint of the dancing flames.
‘You have slowed the
racing hearts of your patients; you have opened the clogged vessels of their
brains.’
‘I wasn’t always
aware…’
‘You have done it. You
fear your power but you possess it. Go out into the garden in the night. You
could make the flowers open. You can make them grow longer as I did.’
‘Ah, but you did it
with dead flowers only.’
‘No. I have done it
with the living. With the iris you saw, thought this exhausted me and hurt me.’
‘And then the iris
died and fell from its stem.’
‘Yes. I did not mean
to kill it.’
‘You took it to its
limits, you know. That’s why it died.’
‘Yes. I did not know
its limits.’
She turned to the side; she
felt she was in a trance, yet how perfectly clear was his voice, how precise
his pronunciation.
‘You did not merely
force the molecules in one direction or another,’ she said.
‘No. I pierced the
chemical structure of the cells, just as you can do it. You are the doorway.
You see into the kernel of life itself.’
‘No, you overestimate
my knowledge. No one can do it.’
The atmosphere of the dream
came back, everyone gathered at the windows of the University of Leiden. What
was that mob in the street? They thought Jan van Abel was a heretic.
‘You don’t know
what you’re saying,’ she said.
‘I know. I see far.
You have given me the metaphors and the terms. Through your books, I too have
absorbed the concepts. I see to the finish. I know. Rowan can mutate matter.
Rowan can take the thousands upon thousands of tiny cells and reorganize them.’
‘And what is the
finish? Will I do what you want?’
Again, he sighed.
Something rustling in the
corners of the room. The draperies swayed violently. And the chandelier sang
softly again, glass striking glass. Was there a layer of vapor rising to the
ceiling, stretching out to the pale peach-colored walls? Or just the firelight
dancing in the corner of her eye?
‘The future is a
fabric of interlacing possibilities,’ he said. ‘Some of which
gradually become probabilities, and a few of which become inevitabilities, but
there are surprises sewn into the warp and the woof, which can tear it apart.’
‘Thank God for that,’
she said. ‘So you can’t see to the finish.’
‘I do and do not. Many
humans are entirely predictable. You are not predictable. You are too strong.
You can be the doorway if you choose.’
‘How?’
Silence.
‘Did you drown Michael
in the sea?’
‘No.’
‘Did anyone do it?’
‘Michael fell off a
rock into the sea because he was careless. His soul ached and his life was
nothing. All this was written in his face, and in his gestures. It would not
take a spirit to see it.’
‘But you did see it.’
‘I saw it long before
it happened, but I did not make it happen. I smiled. Because I saw you and
Michael come together. I saw it when Michael was small and saw me and looked at
me through the garden fence. I saw the death and rescue of Michael by Rowan.’
‘And what did Michael
see when he drowned?’
‘I don’t know.
Michael was not alive.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He was dead, Dr
Mayfair. You know what dead is. Cells cease to divide. The body is no longer
under one organizing force or one intricate set of commands. It dies. Had I
gone into his body, I could have lifted his limbs and heard through his ears,
because his body was fresh, but it was dead. Michael had vacated the body.’
‘You know this?’
‘I see it now. I saw
it before it happened. I saw it when it occurred.’
‘Where were you when
it occurred?’
‘Beside Deirdre, to
make Deirdre happy, to make her dream.’
‘Ah, so you do see far.’
‘Rowan, that is
nothing. I mean I see far in time. Space is not a straight line for me, either.’
She laughed softly again. ‘Your
voice is beautiful enough to embrace.’
‘I am beautiful,
Rowan. My voice is my soul. Surely I have a soul. The world would be too cruel
if I did not.’
She felt so sad hearing this
that she could have cried. She was staring at the chandelier again, at the
hundreds of tiny reflected flames in the crystal. The room seemed to swim in
warmth.
‘Love me, Rowan,’
he said simply. ‘I am the most powerful being imaginable in your realm
and there is but one of me for you, my beloved.’
It was like a song without
melody; it was like a voice made up of quiet and song, if such a thing can be
imagined.
‘When I am flesh I
shall be more than human; I shall be something new under the sun. And far
greater to you than Michael. 1 am infinite mystery. Michael has given you all
that he can. There will be no great mystery any longer with your Michael.’
‘No, that can’t
be true,’ she whispered. She realized that she’d closed her eyes;
she was so drowsy. She forced herself to look at the chandelier again. ‘There
is the infinite mystery of love.’
‘Love must be fed,
Rowan.’
‘You are saying I have
to choose between you and Michael?’
Silence.
‘Did you make the
others choose?’ She thought of Mary Beth in particular, and Mary Beth’s
men.
‘I see far as I told
you. When Michael stood at the gate years ago in your time, I saw that you
would make a choice.’
‘Don’t tell me
any more of what you saw.’
‘Very well,’ he
said. ‘Talk of the future always brings unhap-piness to humans. Their
momentum is based upon the fact that
they cannot see far. Let us talk about the past. Humans like to understand the
past.’
‘Do you have another
tone of voice other than this beautiful soft tone? Could you have spoken those
last few words sarcastically? Is that how they were meant to sound?’
‘I can sound any way
that I like, Rowan. You hear what I feel. I do feel in my thoughts, in what I
am, pain and love. Emotions.’
‘You’re speeding
up your words a little.’
‘I am in pain.’
‘Why?’
‘To end your
misunderstandings.’
‘You want me to make
you human?’
‘I want to have flesh.’
‘And I can give you
flesh?’
‘You have the power.
And once such a thing is achieved, other such things may be achieved. You are
the thirteenth, you are the door.’
‘What do you mean,
"other such things"?’
‘Rowan, we are talking
of fusion; of chemical change; the structural reinvention of cells, of matter
and energy in a new relationship.’
‘I know what you mean.’
‘Then you know, as
with fission, if it is achieved once, it can be achieved again.’
‘Why couldn’t
anyone else do it before me? Julien was powerful.’
‘Knowledge, Rowan.
Julien was born too soon. Allow me once more to use the word fusion and in a
slightly different fashion. We have spoken so far of fusion within cells. Let
me now talk of a fusion between your knowledge of life, Rowan, and your innate
power. That is the key, that is what enables you to be the doorway.
‘The knowledge of your
era was unimaginable even to Julien, who saw in his time inventions that seemed
purely magical. Could Julien have foreseen a heart opened on an operating
table? A child conceived in a test tube? No. And there will come after you
those whose knowledge is great enough even to define what I am.’
‘Can you define
yourself to me?’
‘No, but I am
certainly definable, and when I am defined by mortals, then I shall be able to
define myself. I learn all things from you which have to do with such
understanding.’
‘Ah, but you know
something of yourself which you can tell me now in precise language.’
’- that I am immense;
that I must concentrate to feel my strength; that I can exert force; that I can
feel pain in the thinking part of me.’
‘Ah, yes, and what is
that thinking part? And whence comes the force you exert? Those are the
pertinent questions.’
‘I do not know. When
Suzanne called to me I came together. I drew myself up small as if to pass
through a tunnel. I felt my shape, and spread out like the five-pointed star of
the pentagram which she drew, and each one of these points I elongated. I made
the trees shiver and the leaves fall, and Suzanne called me her Lasher.’
‘And you liked what
you did.’
‘Yes, that Suzanne saw
it. And that Suzanne liked it. Or else I would never have done it again and not
even remembered it.’
‘What is there in you
that is physical, apart from energy?’
‘I do not know!’
The voice was soft yet full of despair. ‘Tell me, Rowan. Know me. And my
loneliness.’
The fire was dying in the
grate, but the warmth had spread all through the room, and it surrounded her
and held her like a blanket. She felt drowsy but sharply alert.
‘Let’s return to
Julien. Julien had as much power as I have.’
‘Almost, my beloved.
But not quite. And there was in Julien a playful and blasphemous soul that
danced back and forth in the world, and liked to destroy as much as to build.
You are more logical, Rowan.’
‘That is a virtue?’
‘You have an
indomitable will, Rowan.’
‘I see. Not broken
with humor as Julien’s will could be broken.’
‘Pree-cisely, Rowan!’
She laughed again under her
breath. Then she fell quiet, staring at the shimmering air.
‘Is there a God,
Lasher?’
‘I do not know, Rowan.
In time I have formed an opinion and it is yes, but it fills me with rage.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I am in pain
and if there is a God, he made this pain.’
‘Yes, that I
understand perfectly, Lasher. But he made love, too, if he exists.’
‘Yes. Love. Love is
the source of my pain,’ he said. ‘It is the source of all my moving
into time and ambition and plans. All my desires spring from love. You might
say that what I was -when I was only what I am - that I was poisoned by love,
that in the call of Suzanne I was awakened to love, and to the nightmare of
want. But I saw. And I loved. And I came.’
‘You make me sad,’
she said suddenly.
‘Love mutated me,
Rowan. It created my first dissatisfaction.’
‘Yes.’
‘And now I seek to
mutate into flesh, and that shall be the consummation of my love. I have waited
so long for you. I have seen such suffering before you, and if I had tears to
shed, they would have been shed. God knows, for Langtry I made an illusion of
myself weeping. It was a true image of my pain. I wept not merely for Stella,
but for all of them — my witches. When Julien died, I was in agony. So
great was my pain then, that I might have moved away, back to the realm of the
moon and the stars and the silence. But it was too late for me. I could not
bear my loneliness. When Mary Beth called, I came back to her. Quickening. I
looked into the future. And I saw the thirteenth again. I saw the ever
increasing strength of my witches.’
She had closed her eyes
again. The fire was gone out. The room was full of the spirit of Lasher. She
could feel him against her skin though he did not move, and the fabric of him
lay as lightly as the air itself.
‘When I am truly flesh,’
he said, ‘the tears and the laughter will come from me by reflex, as they
come in you, or in Michael. I shall be a complete organism.’
‘But not human.’
‘Better than human.’
‘But not human.’
‘Stronger, more
enduring, for I shall be the organizing intelligence, and I have great power,
greater than the power inside any existing human. I shall be a new thing, as I
told you. I shall be the species which as of now does not exist.’
‘Did you kill Arthur
Langtry?’
‘Not necessary. He was
dying. What he saw hastened his death.’
‘But why did you show
yourself to him?’
‘Because he was strong
and he could see me, and I wanted to draw him in so that he might save Stella,
for I knew Stella was in danger. Carlotta was the enemy of Stella. Carlotta was
as strong as you are, Rowan.’
‘Why didn’t
Arthur help Stella?’
‘You know the history.
It was too late. I am as a child at such moments in time. I was defeated by
simultaneity because I was acting in time.’
‘I don’t follow.’
‘While I appeared to
Langtry, the shots were fired into the brain of Stella, and brought about
instant death. I see far, but I cannot see all the surprises.’
‘You didn’t know.’
‘And Carlotta tricked
me. Carlotta misled me. I am not infallible. In fact, I am confused with
amazing ease.’
‘How so?’
‘Why should I tell
you? So you may all the better control me? You know how. You are as powerful a
witch as Carlotta. It was through emotions. Carlotta conceived of the killing
as an act of love. She schooled Lionel in what he was to think as he took the
gun and fired at Stella. I was not alerted by hatred, or malice. I paid no
attention to the love thoughts of Lionel. Then Stella lay dying, calling to me
silently, with her eyes open, wounded beyond hope of repair. And Lionel fired
the second shot which drove the spirit of Stella up and out of the body forever.’
‘But you killed
Lionel. You drove him to his death.’
‘I did.’
‘And Cortland? You
killed Cortland.’
‘No. I fought with
Cortland. I struggled with him, and he sought to use his strength against me,
and he failed, and fell in his struggle. I did not kill your father.’
‘Why did you fight?’
‘I warned him. He
believed he could command me. He was not my witch. Deirdre was my witch. You
are my witch. Not Cortland.’
‘But Deirdre didn’t
want to give me up. And Cortland was defending her wishes.’
‘For his own aims.’
‘Which were what?’
‘This is old now,
unimportant. You went to freedom, so that you could be strong when you
returned. You were freed from Carlotta.’
‘But you saw to it,
and this was against the wishes of both Deirdre and Cortland.’
‘For your sake, Rowan.
I love you.’
‘Ah, but you see, there’s
a pattern here, isn’t there? And you don’t want me to understand
it. Once the child is born, you are for the child and not the mother. That’s
what happened with Deborah and Charlotte, isn’t it?’
‘You misjudge me. When
I act in time, sometimes I do what is wrong.’
‘You went against the
wishes of Deirdre. You saw to it I was taken away. You advanced the plan of the
thirteen witches, and that was for your own aims. You have always worked for
your own aims, haven’t you?’
‘You are the thirteenth
and the strongest. You have been my aim, and I will serve you. Your aims and my
aims are identical.’
T think not.’
She could feel his pain now,
feel the turbulence in the air, feel the emotion as if it were the low strum of
a harp string, playing upon her unconscious ear. Song of pain. The draperies
swayed again in a warm draft and both of the chandeliers of the double parlors
danced in the shadows, full of splinters of white light, now that the fire had
died and taken with it the colors.
‘Were you ever a
living human being?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you remember the
first time you ever saw human beings?’
‘Yes.’
‘What did you think?’
‘That it was not
possible for spirit to come from matter, that it was a joke. What you would
call preposterous or a blunder.’
‘It came from matter.’
‘It did indeed. It
came out of the matter when the organization reached the appropriate point for
it to emerge, and we were surprised by this mutation.’
‘You and the others
who were already there.’
‘In timelessness
already there.’
‘Did it draw your
attention?’
‘Yes. Because it was a
mutation and entirely new. And also because we were called to observe.’
‘How?’
‘The newly emerging
intelligences of man, locked in matter, nevertheless perceived us, and thereby
caused us to perceive ourselves. Again, this is a sophisticated sentence and
therefore partially inaccurate. For millennia, these human spiritual
intelligences developed; they grew stronger and stronger; they developed
telepathic powers, they sensed our existence; they named us and talked to us
and seduced us; if we took notice we were changed; we thought of ourselves.’
‘So you learned
self-consciousness from us.’
‘All things from you.
Self-consciousness, desire, ambition. You are dangerous teachers. And we are
discontent.’
‘Then there are others
of you with ambition.’
‘Julien said,
"Matter created man and man created the gods." That is partially
correct.’
‘Did you ever speak to
a human being before Suzanne?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. I
saw and heard Suzanne. I loved Suzanne.’
‘I want to go back to
Aaron. Why do you say Aaron tells lies?’
‘Aaron does not reveal
the whole purpose of the Talamasca.’
‘Are you certain of
this?’
‘Of course. How can
Aaron lie to me? I knew of Aaron’s coming before there was Aaron. Arthur
Langtry’s warnings were for Aaron, when he did not even know about Aaron.’
‘But how does Aaron
lie? When, and in regard to what, did he lie?’
‘Aaron has a mission.
So do all the brothers of the Talamasca. They keep it secret. They keep much
knowledge secret. They are an occult order, to use words you would understand.’
‘What is this secret
knowledge? This mission?’
‘To protect man from
us. To make sure there are no more doorways.’
‘You mean there have
been doorways before now?’
‘There have. There
have been mutations. But you are the greatest of all doorways. What you can
achieve with me shall be unparalleled.’
‘Wait a minute. You
mean other discarnate entities have come into the realm of the material?’
‘Yes.’
‘But who? What are
they?’
‘Laughter. They
conceal themselves very well.’
‘Laughter. Why did you
say that?’
‘Because I am laughing
at your question, but I don’t know how to make the sound of laughter. So
I say it. I laugh at you that you don’t think this would have happened
before. You, a mortal, with all the stories of ghosts and monsters of the
night, and other such horrors. Did you think there was not even a kernel of
truth to these old tales? But it is not important. Our fusion shall be more
nearly perfect than any in the past.’
‘Aaron knows this, that’s
what you’re saying, that others have come through.’
‘Yes.’
‘And why does he want
to stop me from being the doorway?’
‘Why do you think?’
‘Because he believes
you’re evil.’
‘Unnatural, that is
what he would say, which is foolish, for I am as natural as electricity, as natural
as the stars, as natural as fire.’
‘Unnatural. He fears
your power.’
‘Yes. But he is a fool.’
‘Why?’
‘Rowan, as I have told
you before, if this fusion can be achieved once, it can be achieved again. Do
you not understand me?’
‘Yes, I understand
you. There are twelve crypts in the graveyard and one door.’
‘Aye, Rowan. Now you
are thinking. When you first read your books of neurology, when you first
stepped into the laboratory, what was your sense? That man had only begun to
realize the possibilities of the present science, that new beings might be
created by means of transplants, grafts, in vitro experimentation with genes
and cells. You saw the scope of the possibilities. Your mind was young, your
imagination enormous; you were what men fear - the doctor with the vision of a
poet. And you turned your back on your visions, Rowan. In the laboratory of
Lemle, you could have created new beings from the parts of existent beings. You
reached for brutal tools because you feared what you could do. You hid behind
the surgical microscope and substituted for your power the crude micro tools of
steel with which you severed tissues, rather than creating them. Even now you
act from fear. You will build hospitals where people are to be cured, when you
could create new beings, Rowan.’
She sat still and quiet. No
one had ever spoken to her about her innermost thoughts with greater accuracy.
She felt the heat and size of her own ambition. She felt the amoral child in
her who had dreamed of brain grafts and synthetic beings, before the adult put
out the light.
‘Haven’t you a
heart to understand why, Lasher?’
‘I see far, Rowan. I
see great suffering in the world. I see the way of accident and blundering, and
what it has created. I am not blinded by illusions. I hear the cries everywhere
of pain. And I know my own loneliness. I know my own desire.’
‘But what will you
give up when you become flesh and blood? What’s the price for you?’
‘I do not shrink from
the price. A fleshly pain could be no worse than what I have suffered these
three centuries. Would you be what I am, Rowan? Drifting, timeless, and alone,
listening to the carnal voices of the world, apart, and thirsting for love and
understanding?’
She couldn’t answer.
‘I have waited for all
eternity to be incarnate. I have waited beyond the scope of memory. I have
waited until the fragile spirit of man has finally attained the knowledge so
that the barrier can come down. And I shall be made flesh, and it shall be
perfect.’
Silence.
‘I see why Aaron is
afraid of you,’ she said.
‘Aaron is small. The
Talamasca is small. They are nothing!’ The voice grew thin with anger.
The air in the room was warm and moving like the water in a pot moves before it
boils. The chandeliers moved yet they made no sound, as if the sound were
carried away by the currents in the air.
‘The Talamasca has
knowledge,’ he said, ‘they have power to open doorways, but they
refuse to do so for us. They are the enemy of us. They would keep the world’s
destiny in the hands of the suffering and the blind. And they lie. All of them
lie. They have maintained the history of the Mayfair Witches because it is the
history of Lasher, and they fight Lasher. That is their avowed purpose. And
they trick you with their attention to the witches. It is Lasher whose name
should be emblazoned on the covers of their precious leather-bound files. The
file is in a code. It is the history of the growing power of Lasher. Can you
not see through the code?’
‘Don’t harm
Aaron.’’
‘You love unwisely,
Rowan.’
‘You don’t like
my goodness, do you? You like the evil.’
‘What is evil, Rowan?
Is your curiosity evil? That you would study me as you have studied the brains
of human beings? That you would learn from my cells all that you could to
advance the great cause of medicine? I am not the enemy of the world, Rowan. I
merely wish to enter into it!’
‘You’re angry
now.’
‘I am in pain. I love
you, Rowan.’
‘To want is not to
love, Lasher. To use is not to love.’
‘No, don’t speak
these words to me. You hurt me. You wound me.’
‘If you kill Aaron, I
will never be your doorway.’
‘Such a small thing to
affect so much.’
‘Lasher, kill him and
I will not be the doorway.’
‘Rowan, I am at your
command. I would have killed him already were I not.’
‘Same with Michael.’
‘Very well, Rowan.’
‘Why did you tell
Michael that he couldn’t stop me?’
‘Because I hoped that
he could not and I wanted to frighten him. He is under the spell of Aaron.’
‘Lasher, how am I to
help you come through?’
‘I will know when you
know, Rowan. And you know. Aaron knows.’
‘Lasher, we don’t
know what life is. Not with all our science and all our definitions do we know
what life is, or how it began. The moment when it sprang into existence from
inert materials is a complete mystery.’
‘I am already alive,
Rowan.’
‘And how can I make
you flesh? You’ve gone into the bodies of the living and the dead. You can’t
anchor there.’
‘It can be done, Rowan.’
His voice had become as soft as a whisper. ‘With my power and your power,
and with my faith, for I must yield to achieve the bond, and only in your hands
is the full merging possible.’
She narrowed her eyes,
trying to see shapes, patterns in the airy dark.
‘I love you, Rowan,’
he said. ‘You are weary now. Let me soothe you, Rowan. Let me touch you.’
The resonance of the voice deepened.
‘I want -1 want a happy
life with Michael and our child.’
Turbulence in the air,
something collecting, intensifying. She felt the air grow warmer.
‘I have infinite
patience. I see far. I can wait. But you will lose your taste for others now
that you have seen and spoken to me.’
‘Don’t be so
certain, Lasher. I’m stronger than the others. I know much more.’
‘Yes, Rowan.’
The shadowy turbulence was growing denser, like a great wreath of smoke, only
there was no smoke, circling the chandelier, moving out. Like cobwebs caught in
a draft.
‘Can I destroy you?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘Rowan, you torture me.’
‘Why can’t I
destroy you?’
‘Rowan, your gift is
to transmute matter. I have no matter in me for you to attack. You may destroy
the matter I bring into organization to make my image, but then I do this
myself when I disintegrate. You have seen it. You could hurt my transitory
image at such a moment of materialization, and you have already done so. When I
first appeared to you. When I came to you near the water. But you cannot
destroy me. I have always been here. I am eternal, Rowan.’
‘And suppose I told
you it was finished now, Lasher, that I would never recognize you again. That I
would not be the doorway. That I am the doorway for the Mayfairs into the
future centuries, the doorway for my unborn child, and for things of which I
dream with my ambition.’
‘Small things, Rowan.
Nothing compared to the mysteries and possibilities which I offer you. Imagine,
Rowan, when the mutation is complete and I have a body, infused with my
timeless spirit, what you can learn from this.’
‘And if it’s
done, Lasher, if the doorway is opened, and the fusion is effected, and you
stand before me, flesh and blood, how will you treat me then?’
‘I would love you
beyond all human reason, Rowan, for you would be my mother and my creator, and
my teacher. How could I not love you? And how tragic my need of you will be. I
will cleave to you to learn how to move with my new limbs, how to see, how to
speak and laugh. I will be as a helpless infant in your hands. Can’t you
see? I would worship you, my beloved Rowan. I would be your instrument in
anything that you wished, and twenty times as strong as I am now. Why do you
cry? Why are there tears in your eyes?’
‘It’s a trick, it’s
a trick of sound and light, the spell you induce.’
‘No. I am what I am,
Rowan. It’s your reason which weakens you. You see far. You always have.
Twelve crypts and one doorway, Rowan.’
‘I don’t
understand. You play with me. You confuse me. I can’t follow anymore.’
Silence and that sound
again, as if the whole air were sighing. Sadness, sadness enveloping her like a
cloud, and the undulating layers of smoky shadow moving the length of the room,
weaving through and around the chandeliers, filling the mirrors with darkness.
‘You’re all
around me, aren’t you?’
‘I love you,’ he
said, and his voice was low again as a whisper and close to her. She thought
she felt lips touch her cheek. She stiffened, but she had become so drowsy.
‘Move away from me,’
she said. ‘I want to be left alone now. I have no obligation to love you.’
‘Rowan, what can I
give you, what gift can I bring?’
Again, something brushed her
face, something touched her, bringing the chills up over her body. Her nipples
were hard beneath the silk of the nightgown, and a low throbbing had started
inside her, a hunger she could feel all through her throat and her chest.
She tried to clear her
vision. It was dark in here now. The fire had burnt down. But only moments ago
it had been a blaze.
‘You’re playing
tricks on me.’ The air seemed to be touching her all over. ’‘You’ve
played tricks on Michael.’
‘No.’ It was a
soft kiss against her ear.
‘When he was drowned,
the visions. You made them!’
‘No, Rowan. He was not
here. I could not follow him to where he went. I am of the living only.’
‘Did you make the
ghosts he saw when he was alone here that night, when he went alone into the
pool?’
‘No.’
She shivered all over, her
hands up to brush away the sensations as if she’d been caught in cobwebs.
‘Did you see the
ghosts Michael saw?’
‘Yes, but through
Michael’s eyes, I saw them.’
‘What were they?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why don’t you
know?’
‘They were images of
the dead, Rowan. I am of this earth. I do not know the dead. Do not talk to me
of the dead. I do not know of God or of anything which is not of the earth.’
‘God! But what is the
earth?’ Something touching the back of her neck, gently lifting the
tendrils of her hair.
‘Here, Rowan, the
realm in which you exist and the realm in which I exist, parallel and
intermingled yet separate, in the physical world. I am physical, Rowan —
natural as anything else which is of the earth. I burn for you, Rowan, in a
purity in which fire has no end, in this our world.’
‘The ghosts Michael
saw on our wedding night,’ she said, ’in this very room. You made
him see them.’
‘No.’
‘Did you see them?’
Like a feather stroking her cheek.
‘Through Michael’s
eyes. I do not have all the answers you demand of me.’
Something touching her
breasts, something stroking her breasts and her thighs. She curled her legs
back under her. The hearth was cold now.
‘Get away from me!’
she whispered. ‘You are evil.’
‘No.’
‘Do you come from hell?’
‘You play with me. I
am in hell, desiring to give you pleasure.’
‘Stop. I want to get
up now. I’m sleepy. I don’t want to stay here.’
She turned and looked at the
blackened fireplace. There were no embers anymore. Her eyes were heavy and so
were her limbs. She struggled to her feet, clinging to the mantel. But she knew
she could not possibly reach the steps. She turned, and sank down again on her
knees and stretched out on the soft Chinese rug. Like silk beneath her, and the
hardness and the cool air felt so good to her. She felt she was dreaming when
she looked up into the chandelier. The white plaster medallion appeared to be
moving, its acanthus leaves curling and writhing.
All the words she’d
heard were suddenly swimming in her brain. Something touching her face. Her
nipples throbbed and her sex throbbed. She thought of Michael miles and miles
away from her, and she felt anguish. She had been so wrong to underestimate
this being.
‘I love you, Rowan.’
‘You’re above
me, aren’t you?’ She stared up into the shadows, thankful for the
coolness, because she was burning as if she’d absorbed all the heat of
the fire. She could feel the moisture pumping between her legs, and her body was
opening like a flower. Stroking the inside of her thighs where the skin was
always softest and had no down, and her legs were turning outward like petals
opening.
‘I’m telling you
to stop, that I’ll hate it.’
‘Love you, my darling.’
Kissing her ears, and her lips, and then her breasts. The sucking came hard,
rhythmic, teeth grazing her nipples.
T can’t stand it,’
she whispered, but she meant the very opposite, that she could cry out in agony
if it stopped.
Her arms were flung out and
the nightgown was being lifted off her. She heard the silk tearing and then the
cloth was loose and she was sweetly, deliciously naked lying there, the hands
stroking her sex, only they weren’t hands. It was Lasher, Lasher sucking
her and stroking her, lips on her ears, on her eyelids, all of his immense
presence wrapped around her, even under her, stroking the small of her back and
parting her backside and stroking the nether mouth.
Yes, opening, like the dark
purple iris in the garden. Like the roses exploding on the ends of their
coarsened and darkened stems and the leaves with so many points and tiny veins
to them. She tossed and twisted on the carpet.
And when she writhed
like a cat in heat… Go away, old woman, you are
not here! This is my time now.
‘Yes, your time, our
time.’
Tongues licked her nipples,
lips closing on them, pulling them, teeth scratching her nipples.
‘Harder, rougher. Rape
me, do it! Use your power.’
He lifted her so that her
head fell backwards, her hair tumbling down beneath her, her eyes closed, hands
parting her sex, parting her thighs.
‘Come in to me, hard,
make yourself a man for me, a hard man!’
The mouths drew harder on
her nipples, the tongues lapping at her breasts, her belly, the fingers pulling
at her backside and scratching at her thighs. ‘The cock,’ she
whispered, and then she felt it, enormous and hard, driving into her. ‘Yes,
do it, tear me, do it! Override me, do it!’ Her senses were flooded with
the smell of clean, hard flesh and clean hair, as the weight bore down on her
and the cock slammed into her, yes, harder, make it rape. Glimpse of a face,
dark green eyes, lips. And then a blur as the lips opened her lips.
Her body was pinned to the
carpet, and the cock burned her as it drove inside her, scraping her clitoris,
plunging deeper into her vagina. I can’t stand it, I can’t bear it.
Split me apart, yes. Laid waste. The orgasm flooded through her, her mind blank
except for the raging flow of colors like waves as the rollicking sensation
washed up through her belly, and her breast and her face, and down through her
thighs, stiffening her calves, and through the muscles of her feet. She heard
her own cries, but they were far away, unimportant, flowing out of her mouth in
a divine release, her body pumping and helpless and stripped of will and mind.
Again and again, it exploded
in her, scalding her. Over and over, until all time, all guilt, all thought was
burnt away. Morning. Was there a baby crying? No. Only the phone ringing.
Unimportant.
She lay on the bed, beneath
the covers, naked. The sun was streaming in the windows on the front of the
house. The memory of it came back to her, and a hurtful throbbing started in
her. The phone, or was it a baby crying? A baby somewhere far off in the house.
Half in dream she saw its little limbs working, bent knees, chubby little feet.
‘My darling,’ he
whispered.
‘Lasher,’ she
answered.
The sound of the crying had
died away. Her eyes closed on the vision of the shining windowpanes and the
tangle of the oak limbs over the sky.
"When she opened them
again, she stared up into his green eyes, into his dark face, exquisitely
formed. She touched the silk of his lip with her finger, all his hard weight
pressed down on her, his cock between her legs.
‘God, yes, God, you
are so strong.’
‘With you, my beauty.’
The lips revealed the barest glint of white teeth as the words were formed. ‘With
you, my divine one.’
Then came the blast of heat,
the hot wind blowing her hair back and the whirlwind scorching her.
And in the clean silence of
the morning, in the light of the sun pouring through the glass, it was
happening all over again.
At noon, she sat outside by
the pool. Steam was rising from the water into the cold sunlight. Time to turn
off the heater. Winter was truly here.
But she was warm in her wool
dress. She was brushing her hair.
She felt him near her; and
she narrowed her eyes. Yes, she could see the disturbance in the air again,
very clearly actually, as he surrounded her like a veil being slowly wound
around her shoulders and arms.
‘Get away from me,’
she whispered. The invisible substance clung to her. She sat upright, and
hissed the words at it this time. ‘Away, I told you!’
It was the shimmer from a
fire in sunlight, what she saw. And then the chill afterwards as the air
regained its normal density, as the subtle fragrances of the garden returned.
‘I’ll tell you
when you may come,’ she said. ‘I will not be at the mercy of your
whims or your will.’
‘As you wish, Rowan.’
It was that interior voice she’d heard once before in Destin, the voice
that sounded like it was inside her head.
‘You see and hear
everything, don’t you?’ she asked.
‘Even your thoughts.’
She smiled, but it was a
brittle, fierce smile. She pulled the long loose hairs out of the hairbrush. ‘And
what am I thinking?’ she asked.
‘That you want me to
touch you again, that you want me to surround you with illusions. That you
would like to know what it is to be a man, and for me to take you as I would a
man.’
The blood rose to her
cheeks. She matted up the little bit of blond hair from the brush and dropped
it into the ferny garden beside her, where it vanished among the fronds and the
dark leaves.
‘Can you do that?’
she asked.
‘We can do it
together, Rowan. You can see and feel many things.’
‘Talk to me first,’
she said.
‘As you wish. But you
hunger for me, Rowan.’
‘Can you see Michael?
Do you know where he is?’
‘Yes, Rowan, I see
him. He is in his house, sorting through his many possessions. He is swimming
in memories and in anticipation. He is consumed with the desire to return to
you. He thinks only of you. And you think of betraying me, Rowan. You think of
telling your friend Aaron that you have seen me. Your dream of treachery.’
‘And what’s to
stop me if I want to speak to Aaron? What can you do?’
‘I love you, Rowan.’
‘You couldn’t
stay away from me now, and you know it. You’ll come if I call you.’
‘I want to be your
slave, Rowan, not your enemy.’
She stood up, staring up
into the soft foliage of the sweet olive tree, at the bits and pieces of pale
sky. The pool was a great rectangle of steaming blue light. The oak beyond
swayed in the breeze, and once again she felt the air changing.
‘Stay back,’ she
said.
There came the inevitable
sigh, so eloquent of pain. She closed her eyes. Somewhere very far away a baby was
crying. She could hear it. Had to be coming from one of these big silent
houses, which always seemed so deserted in the middle of the day.
She went inside, letting her
heels sound loudly on the floor. She took her raincoat from the front hall
closet, all the protection she needed against the cold, and she went out the
front door.
For an hour she walked
through the quiet empty streets. Now and then a passerby nodded to her. Or a
dog behind a fence would approach to be petted. Or a car would roar past.
She tried merely to see
things — to focus upon the moss that grew on the walls, or the color of
the jasmine twined still around a fence. She tried not to think or to panic.
She tried not to want to go back into the house. But at last her steps took her
back that way, and she was standing at her own gate.
Her hand was trembling as
she put the key in the lock. At the far end of the hall, in the door to the
dining room, he stood watching her.
‘No! Not until I say!’
she said, and the force of her hate went before her like a beam of light. The
image vanished; and a sudden acrid smell rose to her nostrils. She put her hand
over her mouth. All through the air she saw the faint wave-like movement. And
then nothing, and the house was still.
That sound came again, the
baby crying.
‘You’re doing it,’
she whispered. But the sound was gone. She went up the stairs to her room. The
bed was neatly made now, her night things put away. The draperies drawn.
She locked the door. She
kicked off her shoes, and lay down on the counterpane beneath the white canopy,
and closed her eyes. She couldn’t fight it any longer. The thought of
last night’s pleasure brought a deep charring heat to her, an ache, and
she pressed her face into the pillow, trying to remember and not to remember,
her muscles flexing and then letting go.
‘Come then,’ she
whispered. At once the soft eerie substance enclosed her. She tried to see what
she was feeling, tried to understand. Something gossamer and immense, loosely
constructed or organized to use its own word, and now it was gathering itself,
making itself dense, the way steam gathers itself when it turns to water, and
the way water gathers itself when it turns to ice.
‘Shall I take a shape
for you? Shall I make illusions?’
‘No, not yet,’
she whispered. ‘Be as you are, and as you were before with all your power.’
She could already feel the stroking on her insteps, and on the undersides of
her knees. Delicate fingers sliding down into the tender spaces between her
toes, and then the nylon of her hose snapping, and torn loose, pulled off her
and the skin breathing and tingling all over on her naked legs.
She felt her dress opening,
she felt the buttons slipped out of the holes.
‘Yes, make it rape
again,’ she said. ‘Make it rough and hard, and slow.’
Suddenly she was flung over
on her back, her head was forced to one side against the pillow; the dress was
ripping and the invisible hands were moving down her belly. Something like
teeth grazed her naked sex, fingernails scraping her calves.
‘Yes,’ she
cried, her teeth clenched. ‘Make it cruel.’
FORTY-THREE
How MANY days and nights had
passed? She honestly did not know. Unopened mail stacked on the hall table. The
phone, now and then ringing - to no avail.
‘Yes, but who are you?
Underneath it all. Who is there?’
‘I told you, such
questions mean nothing to me. I can be what you want me to be.’
‘Not good enough.’
‘What was I? A
phantom. Infinitely satisfied. I don’t know whence came the capacity to
love Suzanne. She taught me what death was when she was burnt. She was sobbing
when they dragged her to the stake; she couldn’t believe they could do it
to her. This was a child, my Suzanne, a woman with no understanding of human
evil. And my Deborah was forced to watch it. And had I made the storm, they
would have burnt them both.
‘Even in her agony,
Suzanne stayed my hand, for Deborah’s sake. She went mad, her head
banging against the stake. Even the villagers were terrified. Crude, stupid
mortals come there to drink wine and laugh as she was burned. Even they could
not bear the sound of her screaming. And then I saw the beautiful flesh and
blood form which nature had given her ravaged by fire, like a corn husk in a
burning field. I saw her blood pouring down on the roaring logs. My Suzanne. In
the perfection of her youth, and in her strength, burnt like a wax candle for a
stupid pack of villagers who gathered in the heat of the afternoon.
‘Who am I? I am the
one who wept for Suzanne when no one wept. I am the one who felt an agony
without end, when even Deborah stood numb, staring at the body of her mother
twisting in the fire.
‘I am the one who saw
the spirit of Suzanne leave the pain-racked body. I saw it rise upwards, freed,
and without care. Do I have a soul that it could know such joy — that
Suzanne would suffer no more? I reached out for her spirit, shaped still in the
form of her body, for she did no know yet that such a form was not required of
her, and I tried to penetrate and to gather, to take unto myself what was now
like unto me.
‘But the spirit of
Suzanne went past me It took no more notice of me than of the burning husk in
the fire. Upwards it went away from me and beyond me, and there was no more
Suzanne.
‘Who am I? I am
Lasher, who stretched himself out over the whole world, threaded through and
through with the pain of the loss of Suzanne. I am Lasher, who drew himself
together, made tentacles of his power, and lashed at the village till the
terrified villagers ran for cover, once my beloved Deborah was taken away. I
laid waste the village of Donnelaith. I chased the witch judge through the
fields, pounding him with stones. There was no one left to tell the tale when I
finished. And my Deborah gone with Petyr van Abel, to silks and satins, and
emeralds, and men who would paint her picture.
‘I am Lasher, who
mourned for the simpleton, and carried her ashes to the four winds.
‘This was my awakening
to existence, to self-consciousness, to life and death, to paying attention.
‘I learned more in
that interval of twenty days than in all the gracious aeons of watching mortals
grow upon the face of the earth, like a breed of insect, mind springing from
matter but snared in it, meaningless as a moth with its wing nailed to a wall.
‘Who am I? I am
Lasher, who came down to sit at the feet of Deborah and learn how to have
purpose, to obtain ends, to do the will of Deborah in perfection so that
Deborah would never suffer; Lasher, who tried and failed.
‘Turn your back on me.
Do it. Time is nothing. I shall wait for another to come who is as strong as
you are. Humans are changing. Their dreams are filled with the forecast of these
changes. Listen to the words of Michael. Michael knows. Mortals dream
ceaselessly of immortality, as their lives grow longer. They dream of unimpeded
flight. There will come another who will break down the barriers between the
carnate and discarnate. I shall pass through. I want this too much, you see,
for it to fail, and I am too patient, too cunning in my learning, and too
strong.
‘The knowledge is here
now. The full explanation for the origin of material life is at hand.
Replication is possible. Look back with me if you will to Marguerite’s
bedroom on the night that I took her in the body of a dead man, and willed my
hair to grow the color that I would have for myself. Look back on that
experiment. It is closer in time to the painted savages who lived in caves and
hunted with spears than it is to you in your hospital, and in your laboratory.
‘It is your knowledge
which sharpens your power. You understand the nucleus, and the protoplasm. You
know what are chromosomes, what are genes, what is DNA.
‘Julien was strong.
Charlotte was strong. Petyr van Abel was a giant among men. And there is
another kind of strength in you. A daring, and a hunger, and aloneness. And
that hunger and aloneness I know, and I kiss with the lips I do not have; I
hold with the arms I do not have; I press to the heart in me that isn’t
there to beat with warmth.
‘Stand off from me.
Fear me. I wait. I will not hurt your precious Michael. But he cannot love you
as I can, because he cannot know you as I know you.
‘I know the insides of
your body and your brain, Rowan. I would be made flesh, Rowan, fused with the
flesh and superhuman in the flesh. And once this is done, what metamorphosis
may be yours, Rowan? Think on what I say.
‘I see this, Rowan. As
I have always seen it — that the thirteenth would be the strength to open
the door. What I cannot see is how to exist without your love.
‘For I have loved you
always, I have loved the part of you that existed in those before you. I have
loved you in Petyr van Abel, who of all was most like you. I have loved you
even in my sweet crippled Deirdre, powerless, dreaming of you.’
Silence.
For an hour there had been
no sound, no vibrations in the air. Only the house again, with the winter cold
outside it, crisp and windless and clean.
Eugenia was gone. The phone
rang again in the emptiness.
She sat in the dining room,
arms resting on the polished table, watching the bony crepe myrtle, scraping,
leafless and shining, at the blue sky.
At last she stood up. She
put on her red wool coat, and locked the door behind her, and went out the open
gate and up the street.
The cold air felt good and
cleansing. The leaves of the oaks had darkened with the deepening of winter,
and shrunken, but they were still green.
She turned on St Charles and
walked to the Pontchartrain Hotel.
In the little bar, Aaron was
already waiting at the table, a glass of wine before him, his leather notebook
open, his pen in his hand.
She stood in front of him,
conscious of the surprise in his face when he looked at her. Was her hair mussed?
Did she look tired?
‘He knows everything I
think, what I feel, what I have to say.’
‘No, that’s not
possible,’ said Aaron. ‘Sit down. Tell me.’
‘I cannot control him.
I can’t drive him away. I think… I think I love him,’ she
whispered. ‘He’s threatened to go if I speak to you or to Michael.
But he won’t go. He needs me. He needs me to see him and be near him; he’s
clever, but not that clever. He needs me to give him purpose and bring him
closer to life.’
She was staring at the long
bar, and the one small bald-headed man at the end of it, fleshly being with a
slit of a mouth, and at the pale anemic bartender polishing something as
bartenders always do. Rows of bottles full of poison. Quiet in here. Dim
lights.
She sat down and turned and
looked at Aaron.
‘Why did you lie to me?’
she asked. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that you were sent here to stop
him?’
‘I have not been sent
here to stop him. I’ve never lied.’
‘You know that he can
come through. You know it’s his purpose, and you are committed to
stopping it. You have always been.’
‘I know what I read in
the history, the same as you know it. I gave you everything.’
‘Ah, but you know it’s
happened before. You know there are things in the world like him that have
found a doorway.’
No answer.
‘Don’t help him,’
Aaron said.
‘Why didn’t you
tell me?’
‘Would you have
believed me if I had? I didn’t come to tell you fables. I didn’t
come to induct you into the Talamasca. I gave you the information I had about
your life, your family, what was real to you.’
She didn’t answer. He
was telling a form of truth as he knew it, but he was concealing things.
Everyone concealed things. The flowers on the table concealed things. That all
life was ruthless process. Lasher was process.
‘This thing is a giant
colony of microscopic cells. They feed off the air the way a sponge feeds from
the sea, devouring such minuscule particles that the process is continuous and
goes utterly unnoticed by the organism or organelle itself or anything in its
environment. But all the basic ingredients of life are there - cellular
structure most certainly, amino acids and DN A, and an organizing force that
binds the whole regardless of its size and which responds now perfectly to the
conscious’ ness of the being which can reshape the entire entity at will.’
She stopped, searching his
face to divine whether or not he understood her. But did it matter? She
understood now, that was the point.
‘It is not invisible;
it is simply impossible to see. It isn’t supernatural. It is merely
capable of passing through denser matter because its cells are far smaller. But
they are eukaryote cells. The same cells that make up your body or mine. How
did it acquire intelligence? How does it think? I can’t tell you any more
than I can tell you how the cells of an embryo know to form eyes and fingers
and liver and heart and brain. There isn’t a scientist on earth who knows
why a fertilized egg makes a chicken, or why a sponge, crushed to powder,
reassembles itself perfectly — each cell doing exactly what it should
— over a period of mere days.
‘When we know that, we
will know why Lasher has intellect, because his is a similar organizing force
without a discernible brain. It is sufficient to say now that he is Precambrian
and self-sufficient, and if not immortal, his life span could be billions of
years. It is conceivable that he absorbed consciousness from mankind, that if
consciousness gives off a palpable energy, he has fed upon this energy and a
mutation has created his mind. He continues to feed upon the consciousness of
the Mayfair Witches and their associates, and from this springs his learning,
and his personality, and his will.
‘It is conceivable as
well that he has begun a rudimentary process of symbiosis with higher forms of
matter, able to attract more complex molecular structures to him when he
materializes, which he then effectively dissolves before his own cells are
hopelessly bonded with these heavier particles. And this dissolution is
accomplished in a state bordering on panic. For he fears an imperfect union,
from which he can’t be freed.
‘But his love of the
flesh is so strong he is willing now to risk anything to be warm-blooded and
anthropomorphic.’
Again, she stopped. ‘Maybe
all of life has a mind,’ she said, her eyes roving over the small room,
over the empty tables. ‘Maybe the flowers watch us. Maybe the trees think
and hate us that we can walk. Or maybe, just maybe they don’t care. The
horror of Lasher is that he began to care!’
‘Stop him,’ said
Aaron. ‘You know what he is now. Stop him. Don’t let him assume human
form.’
She said nothing. She looked
down at the red wool of her coat, startled suddenly by the color. She did not
even remember taking it out of the closet. She had the key in her hand but no
purse. Only their conversation was real to her and she was aware of her own
exhaustion, of the thin layer of sweat on her hands and on her face.
‘What you’ve
said is brilliant,’ said Aaron. ‘You’ve touched it and
understood it. Now use the same knowledge to keep it out.’
‘He’s going to
kill you,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘I know he is. He wants
to. I can hold him off, but what do I bargain with? He knows I’m here.’
She gave a little laugh, eyes moving over the ceiling. ‘He’s with
us. He knows every trick at my command. He’s everywhere. Like God. Only he’s
not God!’
‘No. He doesn’t
know everything. Don’t let him fool you. Look at the history. He makes
too many mistakes. And you have your love to bargain with. Bargain with your
will. Besides, why should he kill me? What can I do to him? Persuade you not to
help him? Your moral sense is stronger and finer even than mine.’
‘What in the world
would make you think that?’ she said. ‘What moral sense?’ It
struck her that she was near to collapse, that she had to get out of here, and
go home where she could sleep. But he was there, waiting for her. He would be
anywhere she went. And she’d come here for a reason - to warn Aaron. To
give Aaron a last chance.
But it would be so nice to
go home, to sleep again, if only she didn’t hear that baby crying. She
could feel Lasher wrapping his countless arms around her, snuggling her up in
airy warmth.
‘Rowan, listen to me.’
She waked as if from a
dream.
‘All over the world
there are human beings with exceptional powers,’ Aaron was saying, ’but
you are one of the rarest because you have found a way to use your power for
good. You don’t gaze into a crystal ball for dollar bills, Rowan. You
heal. Can you bring him into that with you? Or will he take you away from it
forever? Will he draw your power off into the creation of some mutant monster
that the world does not want and cannot abide? Destroy him, Rowan. For your own
sake. Not for mine. Destroy him for what you know is right.’
‘This is why he’ll
kill you, Aaron. I can’t stop him if you provoke him. But why is it so
wrong? Why are you against it? Why did you lie to me?’
‘I never lied. And you
know why it mustn’t happen. He would be a thing without a human soul.’
‘That’s
religion, Aaron.’
‘Rowan, he would be
unnatural. We need no more monsters. We ourselves are monstrous enough.’
‘He is as natural as
we are,’ she said. ‘This is what I’ve been trying to tell you.’
‘He is as alien from
us as a giant insect, Rowan. Would you make such a thing as that? It isn’t
meant to happen.’
‘Meant. Is mutation
meant? Every second of every minute of every day, cells are mutating.’
‘Within limits. Upon a
predictable path. A cat cannot fly. A man cannot grow horns. There is a scheme
to things, and we can spend our lives studying it and marveling at it, that it
is such a magnificent scheme. He is not part of the scheme.’
‘So you say, but what
if there is no scheme? What if there is just process, just cells multiplying,
and his metamorphosis is as natural as a river changing course and devouring
farmland and houses and cattle and people? As a comet crashing into the earth?’
‘Would you not try to
save human beings from drowning? Would you not try to save them from the comet’s
fire? All right. Say he is natural. Let us postulate that we are better than
natural. We aim for more than mere process. Our morals, our compassion, our
capacity to love and to create an orderly society, make us better than nature.
He has no reverence for that, Rowan. Look what he has done to the Mayfair
family.’
‘He created it, Aaron!’
‘No, I can’t
accept that. I can’t.’
‘You’re still
talking religion, Aaron. You’re talking an obdurate morality. There is no
secure logical ground for condemning him.’
‘But there is. There
has to be. Pestilence is natural, but you wouldn’t let the bacillus out
of the tube to destroy millions. Rowan, for the love of God, our consciousness
was educated by the flesh from which it evolved. What would we be without the
capacity to feel physical pain? And this creature, Lasher, has never bled from
the smallest wounds. He’s never been chastened by hunger or sharpened by
the need to survive. He is an immoral intelligence, Rowan, and you know this.
You know it. And that is what I call unnatural, for want of a better word.’
‘Pretty moral poetry,’
she said. ‘You disappoint me. I was hoping you would give me arguments in
exchange for my warning. I was hoping you would fortify my soul.’
‘You don’t need
my arguments. Look into your own soul. You know what I’m trying to tell
you. He’s a laser beam with ambition. He’s a bomb that can think
for itself. Let him in and the world will pay for it. You will be the mother of
a disaster.’
‘Disaster,’ she
whispered. ‘What a lovely word.’ How frail he looked. She was
seeing his age for the first time in the heavy lines of his face, in the soft
pockets of flesh around his pale, imploring eyes. He seemed so weak to her
suddenly, so without his usual eloquence and grace. Just an old man with white
hair, peering at her, full of childlike wonder. No lure at all.
‘You know what it
could really mean, don’t you?’ she asked wearily. ‘When you
strip away the fear?’
‘He’s lying to
you; he’s taking over your conscience.’ ‘Don’t say that
to me!’ she hissed. ‘That isn’t courage on your part, it’s
stupidity.’ She settled back trying to calm herself. There had been a
time when she loved this man. Even now she didn’t want him harmed. ‘Can’t
you see the inevitable end of it?’ she asked, reasonably. ‘If the
mutation is successful, he can propagate. If the cells can be grafted and
replicate themselves in other human bodies, the entire future of the human race
can be changed. We are talking about an end to death.’
The age-old lure,’
Aaron said bitterly. ‘The age-old lie.’ She smiled to see his
composure stripped away. ‘Your sanctimoniousness tires me,’ she
said. ‘Science has always been the key. Witches were nothing but
scientists, always. Black magic was striving to be science. Mary Shelley saw
the future. Poets always see the future. And the kids in the third row of the
theater know it when they watch Dr Frankenstein piece the monster together, and
raise the body into the electrical storm.’
‘It is a horror story,
Rowan. He’s mutated your conscience.’ ‘Don’t insult me
like that again,’ she said, leaning once more across the table. ‘You’re
old, you don’t have many years left. I love you for what you’ve
given me, and I don’t want to hurt you. But don’t tempt me and don’t
tempt him. What I’m telling you is the truth.’
He didn’t answer her.
He had dropped into a baffling state of calm. She found his small hazel eyes
suddenly quite unreadable, and she marveled at his strength. It made her smile.
‘Don’t you believe what I’m telling you? Don’t you want
to write it in the file? I saw it in Lemle’s laboratory when I saw that
fetus connected to all those little tubes. You never knew why I killed Lemle,
did you? You knew I did it, but you didn’t know the cause. Lemle was in
control of a project at the Institute. He was harvesting cells from live
fetuses and using them in transplants. It’s going on in other places. You
can see the possibilities, but imagine experiments involving Lasher’s
cells, cells that have endured and transported consciousness for billions of
years.’
‘I want you to call
Michael, to ask Michael to come home.’
‘Michael can’t
stop him. Only I can stop him. Let Michael be where he’s out of danger.
Do you want Michael to die too?’
‘Listen to me. You can
close your mind to this being. You can veil your thoughts from it by a simple
act of will. There are techniques as old as the oldest religions on earth for
protecting ourselves from demons. It reads in your mind only what you project
towards it. It’s not different from telepathy. Try and you’ll see.’
‘And why should I do
that?’
‘To give yourself
time. To give yourself a safe place for a moral decision.’
‘No, you don’t
understand how powerful he is. You never did. And you don’t know how well
he knows me. That’s the key, what he knows of me.’ She shook her
head. ‘I don’t want to do what he wants,’ she said. ‘I
really don’t. But it’s irresistible, don’t you see?’
‘What about Michael?
What about your dreams of Mayfair Medical?’
‘Ellie was right,’
she said. She sat back against the wall and gazed off again, the lights of the
bar blurring slightly. ‘Ellie knew. She had Cortland’s blood in her
and she could see the future. Maybe it was only dim shapes and feelings, but
she knew. I should never have come back. He used Michael to see to it that I
came back. I knew Michael was in New Orleans, and like a randy bitch, I came
back for that reason!’
‘You’re not
talking the truth. I want you to come upstairs and stay with me.’
‘You’re such a
fool. I could kill you here and now and no one would ever know it. No one but your
brotherhood and your friend Michael Curry. And what could they do? It’s
over, Aaron. I may fight, and I may dance back a few steps, and I may gain an
occasional advantage. But it’s over. Michael was meant to bring me back
and keep me here and he did.’
She started to rise, but he
caught her hand. She looked down at his fingers. So old. You can always tell
age by a person’s hands. Were people staring at them? Didn’t matter.
Nothing mattered in this little room. She started to pull away.
‘What about your
child, Rowan?’
‘Michael told you?’
‘He didn’t have
to tell me. Michael was sent to love you so that you would drive that thing
away, once and forever. So that you wouldn’t fight this battle alone.’
‘You knew that without
being told also?’
‘Yes. And so do you.’
She pulled her hand free.
‘Go away, Aaron. Go
far away. Go hide in the Motherhouse in Amsterdam or London. Hide. You’re
going to die if you don’t. And if you call Michael, if you call him back
here, I swear, I’ll kill you myself.’
FORTY-FOUR
ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING had
gone wrong. The roof at Liberty Street had been leaking when he arrived and
somebody had broken into the Castro Street store for a pitiful handful of cash
in the drawer. His Diamond Street property had also been vandalized, and it had
taken four days to clean it out before he could put it up for sale. Add to that
a week to crate Aunt Viv’s antiques, and to pack all her little
knickknacks so that nothing would be broken. And he was afraid to trust the
movers with these things. Then he’d had to sit down with his accountant
for three days to put his tax records in order. December 14 already and there
was still so much work to be done.
About the only good thing
was that Aunt Viv had received the first two boxes safely and called to say how
delighted she was to have her cherished objects with her at last. Did Michael
know she’d joined a sewing circle with Lily, in which they did petit
point and listened to Bach? She thought it was the most elegant thing. And now
that her furniture was on the way, she could invite all the lovely Mayfair
ladies over to her place at last. Michael was a darling. Just a darling.
‘And I saw Rowan on
Sunday, Michael, she was taking a walk, in this freezing weather, but do you
know she has finally started to put on a little weight. I never wanted to say
it before, but she was so thin and so pale. It was wonderful to see her with a
real bloom in her cheeks.’
He had to laugh at that, but
he missed Rowan unbearably. He had never planned to be gone so long. Every
phone call only made it worse, the famous butterscotch voice driving him out of
his mind.
She was understanding about
all the unforeseen catastrophes but he could hear the worry behind her
questions. And he couldn’t sleep after the calls, smoking one cigarette
after another, and drinking too much beer, and listening to the endless winter
rain.
San Francisco was in the wet
season now, and the rain hadn’t stopped since his arrival. No blue skies,
not even over the Liberty Street hill, and the wind ripped right through his
clothes when he stepped outside. He was wearing his gloves all the time just to
keep warm.
But now at last the old
house was almost empty. Nothing but the last two boxes in the attic, and in a
strange way, these little treasures were what he had come to retrieve and take
with him to New Orleans. And he was eager to finish the job.
How alien it all looked to
him, the rooms smaller than he remembered, and the sidewalks in front so dirty.
The tiny pepper tree he’d planted seemed about to give up the ghost.
Impossible that he could have spent so many years here telling himself he was
happy.
And impossible that he might
have to spend another back-breaking week, taping and labeling boxes at the
store, and going through tax receipts, and filling out various forms. Of course
he could have the movers do it, but some of the items weren’t worth that
kind of trouble. And then the sorting was the nightmare, with all the little
decisions.
‘It’s better now
than later,’ Rowan had said this afternoon when he called. ‘But I
can hardly stand it. Tell me, have you had any second thoughts? I mean about
the whole big change? Are there moments when you’d just like to pick up
where you left off, as if New Orleans never happened?’
‘Are you crazy? All I
think about is coming back to you. I’m getting out of here before
Christmas. I don’t care what’s going on.’
‘I love you, Michael.’
She could say it a thousand times and it always sounded spontaneous. It was an
agony not to be able to hold her. But was there a darker note to her voice,
something he hadn’t heard before?
‘Michael, burn
anything that’s left. Just make a bonfire in the backyard, for heaven’s
sakes. Hurry.’
He’d promised her he’d
finish in the house by tonight if it killed him.
‘Nothing’s
happened, has it? I mean you’re not scared there, are you, Rowan?’
‘No. I’m not
scared. It’s the same beautiful house you left. Ryan had a Christmas tree
delivered. You ought to see it, it reaches the ceiling. It’s just waiting
there in the parlor for you and me to decorate it. The smell of the pine
needles is all through the house.’
‘Ah, that’s
wonderful. I’ve got a surprise for you… for the tree.’
‘All I want is you,
Michael. Come home.’
Four o’clock. The house
was really truly empty now and hollow and full of echoes. He stood in his old
bedroom looking out over the dark shiny rooftops, spilling downhill to the
Castro district, and beyond, the clustered steel-gray skyscrapers of downtown.
A great city, yes, and how
could he not be grateful for all the wonderful things it had given him? A city
like no other perhaps. But it wasn’t his city anymore. And in a way it
never had been.
Going home.
But he’d forgotten
again. The boxes in the attic, the surprise, the things he wanted most of all.
Taking the plastic wrapping
material and an empty carton with him, he went up the ladder, stooping under
the sloped roof, and snapped on the light. Everything clean and dry now that
the leak had been patched. And the sky the color of slate beyond the front
window. And the four remaining boxes, marked ‘Christmas’ in red
ink.
The tree lights he’d
leave for the guys who were renting the place. Surely they could use them.
But the ornaments he would
now carefully repack. He couldn’t bear the thought of losing a single
one. And to think, the tree was already there.
Dragging the box over under
the naked overhead bulb, he opened it and discarded the old tissue paper. Over
the years he’d collected hundreds of these little porcelain beauties from
the specialty shops around town. Now and then he’d sold them himself at
Great Expectations. Angels, wise men, tiny houses, carousel horses, and other
delicate trinkets of exquisitely painted bisque. Real true Victorian ornaments
could not have been more finely fashioned or fragile. There were tiny birds
made of real feathers, wooden balls skillfully painted with lavish old roses,
china candy canes, and silver-plated stars.
Memories came back to him of
Christmases with Judith and with Elizabeth, and even back to the time when his
mother had been alive.
But mostly he remembered the
last few Christmases of his life, alone. He had forced himself to go through
with the old rituals. And long after Aunt Viv had gone to bed, he’d sat
by the tree, a glass of wine in his hand, wondering where his life was going
and why.
Well, this Christmas would
be utterly and completely different. All these exquisite ornaments would now
have a purpose, and for the first time there would be a tree large enough to
hold the entire collection, and a grand and wonderful setting in which they
truly belonged.
Slowly he began work,
removing each ornament from the tissue, re-wrapping it in plastic, and putting
it in a tiny plastic sack. Imagine First Street on Christmas Eve with the tree in
the parlor. Imagine it next year when the baby was there.
It seemed impossible
suddenly that his life could have experienced such a great and wondrous change.
Should have died out there in the ocean, he thought.
And he saw, not the sea in
his mind suddenly, but the church at Christmas when he was a child. He saw the
crib behind the altar, and Lasher standing there, Lasher looking at him when
Lasher was just the man from First Street, tall and dark-haired and
aristocratically pale.
A chill gripped him. What
am I doing here. She’s there alone. Impossible that he hasn’t shown
himself to her.
The feeling was so dark, so
full of conviction, that it poisoned him. He hurried with the packing. And when
at last he was finished, he cleaned up, threw the trash down the steps, took
the box of ornaments with him, and closed up the attic for the last time.
The rain had slacked by the
time he reached the Eighteenth Street post office. He’d forgotten what it
meant to crawl through this dense traffic, to move perpetually among crowds on
grim, narrow, treeless streets. Even the Castro, which he had always loved,
seemed dismal to him in the late afternoon rush.
He stood in line too long to
mail the box, bristled at the routine indifference of the clerk - an abruptness
he had not once encountered in the South since his return - then hurried off in
the icy wind, towards his shop up on Castro.
She wouldn’t lie to
him. She wouldn’t. The thing was playing its old game. Yet why that
visitation on that long-ago Christmas? Why that face, beaming at him over the
crib? Hell, maybe it meant nothing.
After all, he had seen the
man that unforgettable night when he first heard the music of Isaac Stern. He
had seen the man a hundred times when he walked on First Street.
But he couldn’t stand this
panic. As soon as he reached the shop and had locked the door behind him, he
picked up the phone and dialed Rowan.
No answer. It was
midafternoon in New Orleans, and it was cold there, too. Maybe she’d
taken a nap. He let it ring fifteen times before he gave up.
He looked around. So much
work still to be done. The entire collection of brass bath fixtures had to be
disposed of, and what about the various stained-glass windows stacked against
the back wall? Why the hell didn’t the thief who broke in steal this
stuff!
At last he decided to box up
the papers in the desk, trash and all. No time to sort things. He unbuttoned
his cuffs, rolled up his sleeves, and began to shove the manila folders into
the cardboard cartons. But no matter how quickly he worked, he knew he wouldn’t
get out of San Francisco for another week at best.
It was eight o’clock
when he finally quit, and the streets were wet still from the rain, and crowded
with the inevitable Friday night foot traffic. The lighted shopfronts looked
cheerful to him, and he even liked the music thundering out of the gay bars.
Yeah, he did now and then miss this bustle of the big city, that he had to
admit. He missed the gay community of Castro Street and the tolerance of which
its presence was proof.
But he was too tired to
think much about it, and with his head bowed against the wind, he pushed his
way uphill to where he’d left his car. For a moment he couldn’t
believe what he saw - both front tires were gone off the old sedan, and the
trunk was popped, and that was his goddamned jack under the front bumper.
‘Rotten bastards,’
he whispered, stepping out of the flow of pedestrians on the sidewalk. ‘This
couldn’t be worse if somebody had planned it.’
Planned it.
Someone brushed his
shoulder. ‘Eh bien,
Monsieur, another little disaster.’
‘Yeah, you’re
telling me,’ he muttered under his breath, not even bothering to look up,
and barely noticing the French accent.
‘Very bad luck,
Monsieur, you’re right. Maybe somebody did plan it.’
‘Yeah, that’s
just what I was thinking myself,’ he said with a little start.
‘Go home, Monsieur.
That’s where you’re needed.’
‘Hey!’
He turned, but the figure
was already traveling on. Glimpse of white hair. In fact, the crowd had almost
swallowed him. All Michael saw was the back of his head moving swiftly away and
what looked like a dark suit coat.
He rushed after the man.
‘Hey!’ he
shouted again. But as he reached the corner of Eighteenth and Castro, he couldn’t
see the guy anywhere. People streamed across the intersection. And the rain had
started up again. The bus, just pulling away from the curb, gave a belch of
black diesel smoke.
Despairing, Michael’s
eyes passed indifferently over the bus, as he turned to retrace his steps, and
only by chance did he see in a flash through the back window a familiar face
staring back at him. Black eyes, white hair.
… with the
simplest and the oldest tools at your command, for through these you
can win, even when it seems the odds are impossible…
‘Julien!’
… unable to
believe your senses, but trust what you know to be the truth and what you know
to be right, and that you have the power, the simple human power…
‘Yes, 1 will, I
understand …"
With a sudden violent motion
he was jerked off his feet; he felt an arm around his waist, and a person of
great strength dragging him backwards. Before he could reason or begin to
resist, the bright red fender of a car bumped over the curb, smashing with a
deafening crunch into the light pole. Someone screamed. The windshield of the
car appeared to explode, silver nuggets of glass flying in all directions.
‘Goddamn!’ He
couldn’t regain his balance. He tumbled back on top of the very guy who’d
pulled him out of the way. People were running toward the car. Somebody was
moving inside. The glass was still falling out all over the pavement.
‘You OK?’
‘Yeah, yeah, I’m
OK. There’s somebody trapped in there.’
The flashing light of a
police car dazzled him suddenly. Someone shouted to the policeman to call an
ambulance.
‘Boy, she nearly got
you,’ said the one who’d pulled him away - big powerfully built
black man in a leather coat, shaking his grizzled head. ‘Didn’t you
see that car coming straight at you?’
‘No. You saved my
life, you know it?’
‘Hell, I just pulled
you out of the way. It was nothing. Didn’t even think about it.’ Dismissive
wave of his hand as he went on, eyes lingering for a moment on the red car, and
on the two men trying to free the woman inside, who was screaming. The crowd
was growing, and a policewoman was shouting for everyone to get back.
A bus was now blocking the
intersection, and another police car had pulled up. Newspapers were lying all
over the sidewalk from the overturned box, and the glass was sparkling in the
rain like so many scattered diamonds.
‘Look, I don’t
know how to thank you,’ Michael called out.
But the black man was
already far away, loping up Castro, with just a glance over his shoulder and a
last casual wave of his hand.
Michael stood shivering
against the wall of the bar. People pushed past those who had stopped to stare.
There was that squeezing in his chest, not quite a pain but a tightening, and
the pounding pulse, and a numbness creeping through the fingers of his left
hand.
Christ, what actually
happened? He couldn’t get sick here, had to get back to the hotel.
He moved clumsily out into
the street, and past the policewoman who asked him suddenly if he’d seen
the car hit the light pole. No, he had to confess, he sure hadn’t. Cab
over there. Get the cab.
The driver could get him out
of here if he backed up on Eighteenth and made a sharp right onto Castro.
‘Gotta get to the St
Francis, Union Square,’ he said.
‘You OK?’
‘Yeah. Just barely.’
It had been Julien who had
spoken to him, no doubt about it. Julien whom he’d seen through the bus
window! But what about that damned car?
Ryan could not have been
more obliging. ‘Of course, we could have helped you with all this before,
Michael. That’s what we’re here for. I’ll have someone there
tomorrow morning to inventory and crate the entire stock. I’ll find a
qualified real estate agent and we can discuss the listing price when you get
here.’
‘I hate to bother you,
but I can’t reach Rowan and I have this feeling that I have to get back.’
‘Nonsense, we’re
here to take care of things for you, large and small. Now, do you have your
plane reservation? Why don’t you let me handle that? Stay right where you
are and wait for my call.’
He lay on the bed
afterwards, smoking his last Camel cigar-ette, staring at the ceiling. The
numbness in his left hand was gone, and he felt all right now. No nausea or dizziness
or anything major, as far as he was concerned. And he didn’t care. That
part wasn’t real.
What was real was the face
of Julien in the bus window. And then that fragment of the visions catching
hold of him, as powerfully as ever.
But had it all been planned,
just to get him to that dangerous corner? Just to dazzle him and plant him
motionless in the path of that careening car? The way he’d been planted
in the path of Rowan’s boat?
Oh, so engulfing that
fragment of memory. He closed his eyes, saw their faces again, Deborah and
Julien, heard their voices.
… that you have
the power, the simple human power…
I do, I have it. I believe
in you! It’s a war between you and him, and once again, you reached down
and you touched me at the very moment of his contrivance, as his carefully
orchestrated calamity was taking place.
I have to believe that.
Because if I don’t I’ll go out of my mind. Go home, Monsieur.
That’s where you’re needed.
He was lying there, his eyes
closed, dozing, when the phone rang.
‘Michael?’ It
was Ryan.
‘Yeah.’
‘Listen, I’ve
arranged for you to come back by private plane. It’s much simpler that
way. It’s the Markham Harris Hotels plane, and they’re more than
delighted to assist us. I have someone coming to pick you up. If you need help
with your bags…"
‘No, just tell me the
time, I’ll be ready.’ What was that smell? Had he put his cigarette
out?
‘How about an hour
from now? They’ll call you from the lobby. And Michael, please, from now
on, don’t hesitate to ask us for anything, anything at all.’
‘Yeah, thanks, Ryan,
yeah, I really appreciate it.’ He was staring at the smoldering hole in
the bedspread where he’d dropped the cigarette when he fell asleep. God,
the first time in his life he’d ever done anything like this! And the
room was already full of smoke. ‘Thanks, Ryan, thanks for everything!’
He hung up, went into the
bathroom, and filled the empty ice bucket with water, splashing it quickly onto
the bed. Then he pulled the burnt spread away, and the sheet, and poured more
water into the dark, smelly hole in the mattress. His heart was tripping again.
He went to the window, struggled with it, realized it wasn’t going to
open, and then sat down heavily in a chair and watched the smoke gradually
drift away.
When he was all packed, he
tried Rowan again. Still no answer. Fifteen rings, no answer. He was just about
to give up when he heard her groggy voice.
‘Michael? Oh, I was
asleep, I’m sorry, Michael.’
‘Listen to me, honey. I’m
Irish, and I’m a very superstitious guy, as we both know.’
‘What are you talking
about?’
‘I’m having a
string of bad luck, very bad luck. Do a little Mayfair witchcraft for me, will
you, Rowan? Throw a white light around me. Ever hear of that?’
‘No, Michael, what’s
happening?’
‘I’m on my way
home, Rowan. Now just imagine it, honey, a white light around me protecting me
from everything bad in this world until I get there. You see what I’m
saying? Ryan’s arranged a plane for me. I’ll be leaving within the
hour.’
‘Michael, what’s
going on?’
Was she crying?
‘Do it, Rowan, about
the white light. Just trust me on this. Work on protecting me.’
‘A white light,’
she whispered. ‘All around you.’
‘Yeah. A white light.
I love you, honey. I’m coming home.’
FORTY-FIVE
‘On, this is the very
worst winter,’ said Beatrice. ‘You know they’re even saying
we might have snow?’ She stood up and put her wineglass on the cart. ‘Well,
darling, you’ve been very patient. And I was so worried. Now that I see
you’re all right, and that this great big house is so deliciously warm
and cheerful, I’ll be going.’
‘It was nothing, Bea,’
said Rowan, merely repeating what she had already explained. ‘Just
depressed because Michael has been gone so long.’
‘And what time do you
expect him?’
‘Ryan said before
morning. He was supposed to leave an hour ago but San Francisco International
is fogged in.’
‘Winter, I hate it!’
she said.
Rowan didn’t bother to
explain that San Francisco International was often fogged in during the summer.
She simply watched Beatrice put on her cashmere cape, drawing the graceful hood
up over her beautifully groomed gray hair.
She walked Beatrice to the
door.
‘Well, don’t
retreat in your shell like this, it worries us too much. Call me when you’re
down, I’ll cheer you up.’
‘You’re
wonderful,’ said Rowan.
‘We just don’t
want you to be frightened here. Why, I should have come over before now.’
‘I’m not
frightened. I love it. Don’t worry. I’ll call you some time
tomorrow. Soon as Michael gets in, everything will be fine. We’ll
decorate the tree together. You must come and see it, of course.’
She watched Beatrice go down
the marble steps, and out the gate, the cold air gusting into the hallway. Then
she shut the front door.
She stood quiet for a long
time, her head bowed, letting the warmth seep around her, and then she walked
back in the parlor and stared at the enormous green tree. Just beyond the arch
it stood, touching the ceiling. A more perfectly triangular Christmas tree she’d
never seen. It filled the whole window to the side porch. And only a small
sprinkling of needles lay beneath it on the polished floor. Wild, it looked,
primitive, like part of the woods come inside.
She went to the fireplace,
knelt down, and placed another small log on the blaze.
‘Why have you tried to
hurt Michael?’ she whispered, staring into the flames.
‘I have not tried to
hurt him.’
‘You are lying to me.
Have you tried to hurt Aaron too?’
‘I do as you command
me to do, Rowan.’ The voice was soft and deep as always. ‘My world
is pleasing you.’
She rested back on her
heels, arms folded, eyes misting, so that the flames were softened into a great
flickering blur.
‘He is not to suspect
anything, do you hear me?’ she whispered.
‘I always hear you,
Rowan.’
‘He is to believe
everything is as it was.’
‘That is my wish,
Rowan. We are in accord. I dread his enmity because it will make you unhappy. I
will do only as you wish.’
But it couldn’t go on
forever, and suddenly the fear that gripped her was so total that she couldn’t
speak or move. She couldn’t attempt to disguise her feelings. She could
not retreat into an inner sanctum of her mind as Aaron had told her to do. She
sat there, shivering, staring at the flames.
‘How will it end,
Lasher? I don’t know how to do what you want of me.’
‘You know, Rowan.’
‘It will take years of
study. "Without a deeper understanding of you, I can’t hope to begin.’
‘Oh, but you know all
about me, Rowan. And you seek to deceive me. You love me but you do not love
me. You would lure me into the flesh if you knew how in order to destroy me.’
‘Would I?’
‘Yes. It is an agony
to feel your fear and your hatred, when I know what happiness waits for both of
us. When I can see so far.’
‘What would you have?
The body of a man already alive? With consciousness knocked out of him through
some sort of trauma, so that you could begin your fusion unimpeded by his mind?
That’s murder, Lasher.’
Silence.
‘Is that what you
want? For me to commit murder? Because we both know it could be done that way.’
Silence.
‘And I won’t
commit that crime for you. I won’t kill one single living being so that
you can live.’
She closed her eyes. She
could actually hear him gathering, hear the pressure building, hear the
draperies rustling as he moved against them, writhing and filling the room
around her, and brushing against her cheeks and her hair.
‘No. Let me alone,’
she sighed. ‘I want to wait for Michael.’
‘He will not be enough
for you now, Rowan. It causes me pain to see you weep. But I am speaking the
truth.’
‘God, I hate you,’
she whispered. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. Through the
blur of her tears she looked at the huge green tree.
‘Ah, but you don’t hate me,
Rowan,’ he said. Fingers caressing her hair, stroking it back away from
her forehead, tiny fingers stroking her neck.
‘Leave me alone now,
Lasher,’ she pleaded. ‘If you love me, leave me alone.’
Leiden. She knew it was the
dream again and she wanted to wake up. Also the baby needed her. She could hear
it crying. I want to leave the dream. But they were all gathered at the
windows, horrified by what was happening to Jan van Abel, the mob tearing him limb
from limb.
‘It wasn’t kept
secret,’ said Lemle. ‘It’s impossible for ignorant people to
understand the importance of experimentation. What you do when you keep it
secret is merely take the responsibility on yourself.’
‘In other words,
protecting them,’ said Larkin.
He pointed to the body on
the table. How patiently the man lay there, with his eyes open and all the tiny
budlike organs shivering inside. Such little arms and legs.
‘I can’t think
with the baby crying.’
‘You have to see the
larger picture, the greater gain.’
‘Where is Petyr? Petyr
must be frantic after what’s happened to Jan van Abel.’
‘The Talamasca will
take care of him. We’re waiting for you to begin.’
Impossible. She stared at
the little man with the truncated arms and legs and the tiny organs. Only the
head was normal. That is a normal-sized head.
‘One fourth of the
size of the body, to be exact.’
Yes, the familiar
proportion, she thought. Then the horror seized her as she stared down at it.
But they were breaking the windows. The mob was streaming into the corridors of
the University of Leiden, and Petyr was running towards her.
‘No, Rowan. Don’t
do it.’
She woke up with a start.
Footsteps on the stairs.
She climbed out of the bed. ‘Michael?’
‘I’m here, honey.’
Just a big shadow in the
darkness, smelling of the winter cold, and then his warm trembling hands on
her. Roughened and tender, and his face pressed against her.
‘Oh, God, Michael, it’s
been forever. Why did you leave me?’
‘Rowan, honey…’
‘Why?’ She was
sobbing. ‘Don’t let me go, Michael, please. Don’t let me go.’
He cradled her in his arms.
‘You shouldn’t
have gone, Michael. You shouldn’t have.’ She was crying and she
knew he couldn’t even understand what she was saying, and that she shouldn’t
say it, and finally she just covered him with kisses, savoring the saltiness
and roughness of his skin, and the clumsy gentleness of his hands.
‘Tell me what’s
the matter, what’s really the matter?’
‘That I love you. That
when you’re not here, it’s… it’s like you aren’t
real.’
She was half awake when he
slipped away. She didn’t want that dream to come back. She’d been
lying next to him, snuggled against his chest, spoon fashion, holding tight to
his arm, and now as he got out of bed, she watched almost furtively as he
pulled on his jeans, and brought the tight long-sleeved rugby shirt down over
his head.
‘Stay here,’ she
whispered.
‘It’s the
doorbell,’ he said. ‘My little surprise. No, don’t get up. It’s
nothing really, just something that I brought with me from San Francisco. Why
don’t you go on and sleep?’
He bent to kiss her, and she
tugged at his hair. She brought him down close to her with insistent fingers,
until she could smell the warm skin of his forehead, and kiss him on that
smoothness, the bone underneath like a hard stone. She didn’t know why
that felt so good to her, his skin so moist and warm and real. She kissed him
hard on the mouth.
Even before his lips left
her, the dream returned.
I don’t want to see
that manikin on the table. ‘What is it? It can’t be alive.’
Lemle was gowned and masked
and gloved for the surgery. He peered at her from under his mossy eyebrows. ‘You’re
not even sterile. Get scrubbed, I need you.’ The lights were like two
merciless eyes trained on the table.
That thing with its tiny
organs and its big eyes.
Lemle held something in his
tongs. And the little body split open in the steaming incubator beside the
table was a fetus, slumbering on with its chest gaping. That was a heart in the
tongs, wasn’t it? You monster, that you would do that. ‘We’re
going to have to work fast while the tissue is at its optimum…’
‘It’s very hard
for us to come through,’ said the woman.
‘But who are you?’
she asked.
Rembrandt was sitting by the
window, so tired in his old age, his nose rounded, his hair in wisps. He looked
up at her sleepily when she asked him what he thought, and then he took her
hand in his fingers, and he placed it on her own breast.
‘I know that painting,’
she said,’the young bride.’
She woke up. The clock had
struck two. She had waited in her sleep, thinking there would be more chimes,
perhaps ten in number, which meant she’d slept late; but two? That was so
late.
She heard music from far
away. A harpsichord was playing and a low voice was singing, a slow mournful
carol, an old Celtic carol about a child laid in the manger. Smell of the
Christmas tree, sweetly fragrant, and of the fire burning. Delicious in the
warmth.
She was lying on her side,
looking at the window, at the crust of frost forming on the panes. Very slowly
a figure began to take shape - a man, with his back to the glass and his arms
folded.
She narrowed her eyes,
observing the process - the darkly tanned face coming into focus, billions of
tiny cells forming it, and the deep glistening green eyes. The perfect replica
of jeans and a shirt. Detailed like a Richard Avedon photograph in which every
hair of the head is distinct and shining. He relaxed his arms and came toward
her. She could hear and see the movement of his garments. As he bent over her,
she saw the pores in his skin.
So we are jealous, are we?
She touched his cheek, touched his forehead the way she had touched Michael,
and felt a throb beneath it, like a body really there.
‘Lie to him,’ he
said in a low voice, the lips barely moving. ‘If you love him, lie to him.’
She could almost feel breath
against her face. Then she realized she was seeing through the face, seeing the
window behind it.
‘No, don’t let
go,’ she said. ‘Hold on.’
But the whole image
convulsed; then it wavered like a paper cutout caught in a draft. She felt his
panic in spasms of heat.
She reached out to take his
wrist, but her hand closed on nothing. The hot draft swept over her and over
the bed, and the draperies ballooned for a moment, and the frost rose and
turned white on the panes.
‘Kiss me,’ she
whispered, closing her eyes. Like wisps of hair across her face and her lips. ‘No.
That’s not enough. Kiss me.’ Only slowly did the density increase,
and the touch become more palpable. He was tired from the materialization.
Tired and slightly frightened. His cells and the other cells had almost
undergone a molecular fusion. There must be a residue somewhere, or the
minuscule bits of matter had been scattered so finely that they had penetrated
the walls and the ceiling the same way he penetrated them. ‘Kiss me!’
she demanded. She felt him struggling. And only now did he make invisible lips
with which to do it, pushing an unseen tongue into her mouth.
Lie to him.
Yes, of course. I love you
both, don’t I?
He didn’t hear her
come down the steps. The draperies were all closed and the hallway was dark and
hushed and warm. The fire was lighted in the front fireplace of the parlor. And
the only other illumination came from the tree, which was now strung with
countless tiny, twinkling lights.
She stood in the doorway
watching him as he sat on the very top of the ladder, making some little
adjustment, and whistling softly to himself with the recording of the old Irish
Christmas song.
So mournful. It made her
think of a deep, ancient wood in winter. And his whistling was such a small,
easy, almost unconscious sound. She’d known that carol once. She had some
dim memory of listening to it with Ellie, and it had made Ellie cry.
She leaned against the door
frame, merely looking at the immense tree, all speckled with its tiny lights
like stars, and breathing its deep woodsy perfume.
‘Ah, there she is, my
sleeping beauty,’ he said. He gave her one of those utterly loving and
protective smiles that made her feel like rushing into his arms. But she didn’t
move. She watched as he came down off the ladder with quick easy movements, and
approached her. ‘Feel better now, my princess?’ he asked.
‘Oh, it’s so
very beautiful,’ she said. ‘And that song is so sad.’
She put her arm around his
waist and leaned her head on his shoulder as she looked up at the tree. ‘You’ve
done a perfect job.’
‘Ah, but now comes the
fun part,’ he said, giving her a peck on the cheek and drawing her into
the room and towards the small table by the windows. A cardboard box stood
open, and he gestured for her to look inside.
‘Aren’t they
lovely!’ She picked up a small white bisque angel with the faintest blush
to its cheeks, and gilded wings. And here was the most beautiful detailed
little Father Christmas, a tiny china doll dressed in real red velvet. ‘Oh,
they’re exquisite. Wherever did they come from?’ She lifted the
golden apple, and a lovely five-pointed star,
‘Oh, I’ve had
them for years. I was a college kid when I started collecting them. I never
knew they were for this tree and this room, but they were. Here, you choose the
first one. I’ve been waiting for you. I thought we’d do it together.’
‘The angel,’ she
said. She lifted it by the hook and brought it close to the tree, the better to
see it in the soft light. It held a tiny gilded harp in its hands, and even its
little face was correctly painted with a fine reddened mouth and blue eyes. She
lifted it as high as she could reach and slipped the curved hook over the thick
part of the shivering branch. The angel quivered, the hook nearly invisible in
the darkness, and hung suspended, as if poised like a hummingbird in flight.
‘Do you think they do
that, angels, they stop in midair like hummingbirds?’ she asked in a
whisper.
‘Yeah, probably,’
he said. ‘You know angels. They’re probably show-offs, and they can
do anything they want.’ He stood behind her, kissing her hair.
‘What did I ever do
without you here?’ she said. As his arms went around her waist she
clasped them with her hands, loving the sinewy muscles, the large strong
fingers holding her so tight.
For a moment the fullness of
the tree and the lovely play of twinkling light in the deep shadowy green
branches utterly filled her vision. And the sad music of the carol filled her
ears. The moment was suspended, like the delicate angel. There was no future,
no past.
‘I’m so glad you’re
back,’ she whispered closing her eyes. ‘It was unbearable here
without you. Nothing makes any sense without you. I never want to be without
you again.’ A deep throb of pain passed through her — a fierce
terrible quaking that she locked inside her, as she turned to lay her head once
more on his chest.
FORTY-SIX
DECEMBER 23. Hard freeze
tonight. Lovely, when all the Mayfairs were expected for cocktails and carol
singing. Think of all those cars sliding on the icy streets. But it was
wonderful to have this clean cold weather for Christmas. And they were
predicting snow.
‘A white Christmas,
can you imagine?’ he said to her. He was looking out of the front bedroom
window as he put on his sweater and his leather jacket. ‘It might even
snow tonight.’
‘That would be wonderful for the
party,’ she said, ’wonderful for Christmas.’
She was snuggled up in the
chair by the gas fire, a quilt over her shoulders, and her cheeks were ruddy
and she was just a little bit softer and rounder all over. You could see it, a
woman with a baby inside her, positively radiant, as if she’d absorbed
the glow of the fire.
She had never seemed more
relaxed and cheerful. ‘It would be another gift to us, Michael,’
she said.
‘Yes, another gift,’
he said, looking out the window. ‘And you know they’re saying it’s
going to happen. And I’ll tell you something else, Rowan. It was a white
Christmas the year I left.’
He took the wool scarf out
of the dresser drawer and fitted it inside his coat collar. Then he picked up
the thick, wool-lined gloves.
‘I’ll never
forget it,’ he said. ‘It was the first time I ever saw snow. And I
went walking right down here, on First Street, and when I got home I found out
my dad was dead.’
‘How did it happen?’
How sympathetic she looked, eyes puckering slightly. Her face was so smooth
that when the slightest distress came, it fell like a shadow over her.
‘A warehouse fire on
Tchoupitoulas,’ he said. ‘I never did know the details. Seems the
chief had told them to get clear of the roof, that it was about to go. One guy
fell down or something and my dad doubled back to get him, and that’s
when the roof began to buckle. They said it just rolled like an ocean wave, and
then it fell in. Whole place just exploded. They lost three fire fighters that
day, actually, and I was walking out there in the Garden District, just
enjoying the snow. That’s why we went out to California. All the Currys
were gone - all those aunts and uncles. Everyone buried out in St Joseph’s
Cemetery. All buried from Lonigan and Sons. Every one.’
‘That must have been
so awful for you.’
He shook his head. ‘The
awful part was being so glad we were going to California, and knowing that we’d
never have been able to go if he hadn’t died.’
‘Here, come sit down
and drink your chocolate, it’s getting cold. Bea and Cecilia will be here
any minute.’
‘I have to get on the
road. Too many errands. Got to get to the shop, see if the boxes have arrived.
Oh, I have to confirm with the caterers… I forgot to call them.’
‘No need. Ryan’s
taken care of it. He says you do too many things for yourself. He says he would
have sent a plumber to wrap all the pipes.’
‘I like doing those
things,’ he said. ‘Those pipes are going to freeze anyway. Hell.
This is supposed to be the worst winter in a hundred years.’
‘Ryan says you have to
think of him more as a personal manager. He told the caterers to come at six.
That way if anyone is early…"
‘Good idea. I’ll
be back before then. O K. I’ll call you later from the store sometime. If
you need me to pick up anything…"
‘Hey, you can’t
walk out of this room without kissing me.’
’‘Course not.’
He bent down and smothered her in kisses, roughly and hastily, making her laugh
softly, and then he kissed her belly. ‘Good-bye, Little Chris,’ he
whispered. ‘It’s almost Christmas, Little Chris.’
At the door, he stopped to
pull on his heavy gloves, and then he blew her another kiss.
Like a picture she looked in
the high-back wing chair, with her feet tucked under her. Even her lips had a
soft rich color to them. And when she smiled he saw the dimples in her cheeks.
His breath made steam in the
air when he stepped outside. It was years since he’d felt cold like this,
so crisp. And the sky was such a shining blue. They were going to lose the
banana trees and he hated it, but the beautiful camellias and azaleas were
holding their own. The gardeners had put in winter grass, and the lawn looked
like velvet.
He stared at the barren
crepe myrtle for a moment. Was he hearing those Mardi Gras drums again in his
ears?
He let the van warm up for a
couple of minutes before he started. Then he headed straight for the bridge. It
would take him forty-five minutes to reach Oak Haven if he could make good time
on the river road.
FORTY-SEVEN
‘WHAT WAS the pact and
the promise?’ she asked.
She stood in the attic
bedroom, so clean and sterile with its white walls, its windows looking out on
the rooftops. No trace of Julien anymore. All the old books gone.
‘Those things are not
important now,’ he answered her. ‘The prophecy is on the verge of
fulfillment and you are the door.’
‘I want to know. What
was the pact?’
‘These are words
passed on from human lips through generation after generation.’
‘Yes, but what do they
mean?’
‘It was the covenant
between me and my witch - that I should obey her smallest command if she should
but bear a female child to inherit her power and the power to command and see
me. I should bring all riches to her; I should grant all favors. I should look
into the future so she might know the future. I should avenge all slights and
injuries. And in exchange the witch would strive to bear a female child whom I
might love and serve as I had the witch, and that child would love and see me.’
‘And that child should
be stronger than the mother, and moving towards the thirteen.’
‘Yes, in time I came
to see the thirteen.’
‘Not from the
beginning?’
‘No. In time I saw it.
I saw the power accumulating, and perfecting itself, I saw it fed through the
strong men of the family. I saw Julien with power so great that he outshone his
sister, Katherine. I saw Cortland. I saw the path to the doorway. And now you
are here.’
‘When did you tell
your witches about the thirteen?’
‘In the time of
Angelique. But you must realize how simple was my own understanding of what I
saw. I could scarce explain. Words were wholly new to me. The process of
thinking in time was new. And so the prophecy was veiled in obscurity, not by
design, but by accident. Yet it is now on the verge of being fulfilled.’
‘You promised only
your service over the centuries?’
‘Is this not enough?
Can’t you see what my service has wrought? You stand in the house which
was created by me and my service. You dream of hospitals you will build by
means of the riches brought to you by me. You yourself told Aaron that I was
the creator of the Mayfair Witches. You spoke the truth to Aaron. Look at the
many branches of this family. All of their wealth has come from me. My
generosity has fed and clothed countless men and women of the same name, who
know nothing of me. It is sufficient that you know me.’
‘You promised nothing
more?’
‘What more can I give?
When I am in the flesh, I shall be your servant as I am now. I shall be your
lover and your confidant, your pupil. No one can prevail against you when you
have me.’
‘Saved. What had being
saved to do with it — the old saying that when the door was opened the
witches would be saved?’
‘Again, you bring me
tired words, and old fragments.’
‘Ah, but you remember
everything. Trace down for me the origin of this idea - that the witches would
be saved.’
Silence.
‘The thirteen witches
would be upheld in that moment of my final triumph. In the reward of Lasher,
their faithful servant, the persecution of Suzanne and Deborah would be
avenged. When Lasher steps through the doorway, Suzanne shall not have died in
vain. Deborah shall not have died in vain.’
This was the complete
meaning of the word "saved"?’
‘You have now the full
explanation.’
‘And how is it to be
done? You tell me that when I know, you will know, and I tell you I don’t.’
‘Remember your
communication to Aaron - that I am living and of life, and that my cells can be
merged with the cells of the fleshly, and that it is through mutation, and
through surrender.’
‘Ah, but that’s
the key. You are afraid of that surrender. You are afraid of being locked in a
form from which you can’t escape. You do realize, don’t you, what
it means to be flesh and blood? That you may lose your immortality? That even
in the transmutation, you could be destroyed?’
‘No. I will lose
nothing. And when I am created in my new form, I shall open the way for you to
a new form. You’ve always known. You knew when you first heard the old
legend from your kinsmen. You knew why there were twelve crypts and one door.’
‘You are saying that I
can be immortal.’
‘Yes.’
‘This is what you see?’
‘This is what I have
always seen. You are my perfect companion. You are the witch of all witches.
You have Julien’s strength and Mary Beth’s strength. You have the
beauty of Deborah and Suzanne. All the souls of the dead are in your soul.
Traveling through the mystery of the cells, they have come down to you, shaping
you and perfecting you. You shine as bright as Charlotte. You are more
beautiful than Marie Claudette or Angelique. You have a fire in you that is
hotter than Marguerite or my poor doomed Stella; you have a vision far greater than
ever my lovely Antha or Deirdre. You are the one.’
‘Are the souls of the
dead in this house?’
‘The souls of the dead
are gone from the earth.’
‘Then what did Michael
see in this room?’
‘He saw the
impressions left behind by the dead ones. These impressions sprang to life for
him from the objects that he touched. They are like unto the grooves of a
phonograph record. Put the needle into the groove and the voice sings. But the
singer is not there.’
‘But why did they
crowd around him when he touched the dolls?’
‘As I have said, these were
impressions. Then the imagination of Michael took them up and worked them as if
they were puppets. All their animation came from him.’
‘Why did the witches
keep the dolls, then?’
‘To play the same
game. As if you kept a photograph of your mother, and when you held it to the
light, the eyes seemed to fire with being. And to believe perhaps that the dead
soul could be reached somehow, that beyond this earth lies a realm of eternity.
I see no such eternity with my eyes. I see only the stars.’
‘I think they called
to the souls of the dead through the dolls.’
‘Like praying, as I
told you. And to be warm with the impressions. Anything more is not possible.
The souls of the dead are not here. The soul of my Suzanne went past me, upwards.
The soul of my Deborah rose as if on wings when her tender body fell from the
battlements of the church. The dolls are keepsakes, nothing more. But don’t
you see? None of this matters now. The dolls, the emeralds, they are emblems.
We are passing out of this realm of emblems and keepsakes and prophecies. We go
to a new existence. Envision the door-way if you will. We shall pass through
it, out of this house and into the world.’
‘And the transmutation
can be replicated. That is what you’re leading me to believe?’
‘That is what you
know, Rowan. I read the book of life over your shoulder. All living cells
replicate. In manly form I shall replicate. And my cells can be grafted to your
cells, Rowan. There are possibilities of which we have not yet begun to dream.’
‘And I shall become
immortal.’
‘Yes. My companion.
And my lover. Immortal like me.’
‘When is it to happen?’
‘When you know I shall
know. And you will know very soon.’
‘You are so sure of
me, aren’t you? I don’t know how to do it. I’ve told you.’
‘What do your dreams
tell you?’
‘They are nightmares.
They’re full of images I don’t understand. I don’t know where
the body on the table comes from. I don’t know why Lemle is there. I don’t
understand what they want of me, and I don’t want to see Jan van Abel
struck down again. The place is meaningless to me.’
‘Calm yourself, Rowan.
Let me calm you. The dreams tell you. But more truly, you will tell yourself
finally. Out of the caldron of your own mind will come the truth.’
‘No, back away from
me. Just talk to me. That’s what I want of you now.’
Silence.
‘You are the doorway,
my beloved. I hunger for the flesh. I am weary of my loneliness. Don’t
you know the time is almost at hand? My mother, my beautiful one… This is
the season for me to be reborn.’
She closed her eyes, feeling
his lips on the back of her neck, feeling his fingers tracing the length of her
spine. There came the pressure of a warm hand clasping her sex, fingers
slipping inside her, lips against her lips. Fingers pinched her nipples
hurtfully and deliciously.
‘Let me wrap my arms
around you,’ he whispered. ‘Others will come. And you will belong
to them for hours, and I must hover hungrily at a distance, watching you,
catching the words that fall from your lips as though they were drops of water
to slake my thirst. Let me enfold you now. Give me these hours, my beautiful
Rowan…"
She felt herself being
lifted, her feet no longer touching the floor; the darkness was swirling around
her, strong hands turning her, and stroking her all over. There was no gravity
any longer; she felt his strength increasing, the heat of it increasing.
The cold wind rattled the
panes of the window. The great empty house seemed full of whispers. She was
floating in the air. She turned over, groping in the shadowy tangle of arms
supporting her, feeling her legs forced apart and her mouth opened. Yes, do it.
‘How can the time be
nearly at hand?’ she whispered.
‘Soon, my darling.’
‘I can’t do it.’
‘Oh, yes you will be
able to, my beauty. You know. You shall see…’
FORTY-EIGHT
THE DAY was darkening and
the wind was bitter as he got out of the car, but the plantation house looked
cheerful and inviting, with all its windows filled with a warm yellow light.
Aaron was waiting at the
door for him, layered with wool under his gray cardigan, neck wrapped in a
cashmere scarf.
‘Here, this is for you,’
Michael said. ‘Merry Christmas, my friend.’ He placed a small
bottle, wrapped in green Christmas paper, in Aaron’s hands. ‘It’s
not a very big surprise, I’m afraid. But it is the best brandy I could
find.’
That was very thoughtful of
you,’ Aaron said with a little smile. T’m going to enjoy it
immensely. Every drop of it. Come in out of the cold. I have a little something
for you, too. I’ll show you later. Come on, inside.’
The warm air was delicious.
And there was quite a large and full tree set up in the living room, and very
splendidly decorated with gold and silver ornaments, all of which surprised
Michael because he hadn’t known how the Talamasca would celebrate such a
feast, if they celebrated such things at all. Even the mantels were decorated
with holly. And a good fire was blazing on the large living room hearth.
‘It’s an old old
feast, Michael,’ said Aaron, anticipating his question with a little
smile. He set the gift on the table. ‘Goes back long before Christ. The
winter solstice — a time when all the forces of the earth are at their
strongest. That’s probably why the Son of God chose it as a time to be
born.’
‘Yeah, well, I could
use a little belief in the Son of God right now,’ said Michael. ‘A
little belief in the forces of the earth.’
It did feel good in here. It
had the nice cozy feel of a country place after First Street — with its
lower ceilings and simpler crown moldings, and the large deep fireplace, built
not for coal but for a real raging log fire.
Michael took off his leather
coat and his gloves, gave them over to Aaron gratefully, and stretched out his
hands to warm them over the fire. There was no one else in the main rooms as
far as he could tell, though he could hear faint sounds coming from the back
kitchen. The wind beat against the French windows. Rimmed in frost, they were
nevertheless filled with the pale green of landscape beyond.
The tray with the coffee was
waiting and Aaron gestured for Michael to take the chair to the left of the
hearth.
As soon as he sat down, he
felt the knot inside him loosen. He felt he was going to bawl. He took a deep
breath, eyes moving back and forth over everything and nothing, and then
without preamble he began.
‘It’s happening,’
he said, his voice shaky. He could scarcely believe that it had come to this,
that he was talking about her this way, yet he went on. ‘She’s
lying to me. He’s there with her, and she’s lying. She’s been
lying to me night and day since I came home.’
‘Tell me what’s
happened,’ said Aaron, his face sober and full of immediate sympathy.
‘She didn’t even
ask why I came back so quickly from San Francisco. Never even brought it up. It
was as if she knew. And I was frantic when I called her from the hotel out
there. Goddamn it, I told you on the phone what happened. I thought that thing
was trying to kill me. She never even asked me what went down.’
‘Describe it to me
again, all of it.’
‘Christ, Aaron, I know
now it was Julien and Deborah that I saw in my vision. I don’t have any
doubt anymore. I don’t know what the pact means or the promise. But I
know that Julien and Deborah are on my side. I saw Julien. I saw him looking at
me through the bus window, and it was the strangest thing, Aaron, it was as if
he wanted to speak and to move and he couldn’t. It was as if it was hard
for him to come through.’
Aaron didn’t say
anything. He was sitting with his elbow on the arm of the chair, and his finger
curled beneath his lower lip. He looked cautious, alert, and thoughtful.
‘Go on,’ he
said.
‘But the point is that
this particular flash was enough to bring it all back. Not that I remembered
everything that was said. But I recaptured the feeling. They want me to
intervene. They said something to me about "the age-old human tools at my
command." I heard those words again. I heard Deborah speaking to me. It
was Deborah. Only she didn’t look like that picture, Aaron. Aaron, I’ll
tell you the most convincing piece of evidence.’
‘Yes…’
‘What Llewellyn said
to you. Remember. He said he saw Julien in a dream, and Julien wasn’t the
same as Julien in life. Remember? Well, you see, that’s the key. In the
vision Deborah was a different being. And on that damn street corner in San
Francisco, I felt both of them, and they were as I remembered them - wise and
good, and knowing things, Aaron. Knowing that Rowan was in terrible danger and
that I had to intervene. God, when I think of Julien’s expression through
that window. It was so… urgent yet tranquil. I don’t have words to
describe it. It was concerned and yet so untroubled…’
‘I think I know what
you’re trying to say.’
‘Go home, they said,
go home. That’s where you’re needed. Aaron, why didn’t he
look directly at me on the street?’
‘There could be a lot
of reasons. It revolves around what you said. If they exist somewhere, it’s
difficult for them to come through. It isn’t difficult for Lasher. And
that is crucial to our understanding of what’s going on. But I’ll
come back to that. Go on…’
‘You can guess, can’t
you? I come home, private plane, limo, whole number all arranged by Cousin
Ryan, as if I’m a goddamned rock star, and she doesn’t even ask me
what’s been happening. Because she’s not Rowan. She’s Rowan
caught in something, Rowan smiling and pretending and staring at me with those
great big sad gray eyes. Aaron, the worst part is…’
‘Tell me, Michael.’
‘She loves me, Aaron.
And it’s like she’s silently pleading with me not to confront her.
She knows I can see through the deception. God, when I touch her I feel it! She
knows I can feel it. And silently, she’s pleading with me not to force
her into a corner, not to make her lie. It’s like she’s begging me,
Aaron. She’s desperate. I could swear she’s even afraid.’
‘Yes. She’s in
the thick of it. She’s spoken to me about it. Some sort of communication
apparently started when you left. Possibly even before you left.’
‘You knew this? Why
the hell didn’t you tell me?’
‘Michael, we’re
dealing with something that knows what we’re saying to each other even
now.’
‘Oh, God!’
There isn’t any place
we can hide from this being,’ said Aaron. ‘Except perhaps in the
sanctuary of our own minds. Rowan said many things to me. But the crux of it is
that this entire battle is now in Rowan’s hands.’
‘Aaron, there must be
something we can do. We knew it would happen; we knew it would come to this.
You knew before you ever laid eyes on me that it would come to this.’
‘Michael, that’s
just the point. She is the only one who can do anything. And in loving her, and
staying close to her, you are using the age-old tools at your command.’
That can’t be enough!’
He could hardly stand this. He stood up, paced for a minute, and then wound up
with his hands on the mantel, staring down into the fire. ‘You should
have called me, Aaron. You should have told me.’
‘Look, take your anger
out on me if it makes you feel better, but the fact is, she forbade my
contacting you with a threat. She was full of threats. Some of these threats
were made in the guise of warnings - that her invisible companion wanted to
kill me and would soon do it - but they were genuine threats.’
‘Christ, when did this
happen?’
‘Doesn’t matter.
She told me to go back to England while I still had time.’
‘She told you this?
What else did she tell you?’
‘I chose not to do it.
But what more I can do here, I don’t honestly know. I know that she
wanted you to remain in California because she felt you were safe there. But
you see, this situation has become too complicated for simple or literal
interpretation of the things she said.’
‘I don’t know
what you mean. What is a literal interpretation? What other kind of
interpretation is there? I don’t get it.’
‘Michael, she talked
in riddles. It wasn’t communication so much as a demonstration of a
struggle. Again, I have to remind you, this being, if he chooses, can be here
with us in this room. We have no safe place in which we can plot aloud against
him. Imagine a boxing match if you can, in which the opponents can read each
other’s minds. Imagine a war, where every conceivable strategy is known
telepathically from the start.’
‘It ups the stakes,
ups the excitement, but it isn’t impossible.’
‘I agree with you, but
it serves no purpose for me to tell you everything that Rowan said to me.
Suffice it to say, Rowan is the most able opponent this being has ever had.’
‘Aaron, you warned her
long ago not to let this thing take her away from us. You warned her that it
would seek to divide her from those she loved.’
‘I did. And I am sure
she remembers it, Michael. Rowan is a human being upon whom almost nothing is
lost. And believe me, I have argued with her since. I have told her in the
plainest language why she must not allow this being to mutate. But the decision
is in her hands.’
‘You’re saying
in effect that we have to just wait and let her fight this alone.’
‘I’m saying in
effect that you’re doing what you were meant to do. Love her. Stay near
her. Remind her by your very presence of what is natural and inherently good.
This is a struggle between the natural and the unnatural, Michael. No matter
what that being is made of, no matter what he comes from — it’s a
struggle between normal life and aberration. Between evolution on the one hand
and disastrous intervention on the other. And both have their mysteries and
their miracles, and nobody knows that better than Rowan herself.’
He stood up and put his hand
on Michael’s shoulder. ‘Sit down and listen to what I’m
saying,’ he said. ,
‘I have been listening,’
said Michael crossly. But he obeyed. He sat on the edge of the chair, and he
couldn’t stop himself from making his right hand into a fist and grinding
it into his left palm.
‘All her life, Rowan
has confronted this split between the natural and the aberrant,’ said
Aaron. ‘Rowan is essentially a conservative human being. And creatures
like Lasher don’t change one’s basic nature. They can only work
upon the traits which are already there. No one wanted that lovely white-dress
wedding more than Rowan did. No one wants the family more than Rowan. No one
wants that child inside her more than she.’
‘She doesn’t
even talk about the baby, Aaron. She hasn’t even mentioned its existence
since I came home. I wanted to tell the family tonight at the party, but she
doesn’t want me to do it. She says she’s not ready. And this party,
I know it’s an agony for her. She’s just going through the motions.
Beatrice put her up to it.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘I talk about the baby
all the time. I kiss her and call it Little Chris, the name I gave it, and she
smiles, and it’s like she’s not Rowan. Aaron, I’m going to
lose her and the baby if she loses her battle with him. I can’t think
past that. I don’t know anything about mutations and monsters and…
and ghosts that want to be alive.’
‘Go home, and stay
there with her. Stay near her. That’s what they told you to do.’
‘And don’t
confront her? That’s what you’re saying?’
‘You’ll only
force her to lie, if you do that. Or worse.’
‘What if you and I
were to go back there together and try to reason with her, try to get her to
turn her back on it?’
Aaron shook his head. ‘She
and I have had our little showdown, Michael. That’s why I made my excuses
for this evening to Bea. I’d be challenging her and her sinister
companion if I came there. But if I thought it would do any good, I’d
come. I’d risk anything if I thought I could help. But I can’t.’
‘But Aaron, what makes
you so certain?’
‘I’m not one of
the players now, Michael. I didn’t see the visions. You saw them. Julien
and Deborah spoke to you. Rowan loves you.’
‘I don’t know if
I can stand this.’
‘I think you can. Do
what you have to do to stand it. And remain close to her. Tell her in some way
— silent or otherwise - that you are there for her.’
Michael nodded. ‘All
right,’ he said. ‘You know it’s like she’s being
unfaithful.’
‘You mustn’t see
it like that. You mustn’t become angry.’
‘I keep telling myself
the same thing.’
‘There’s something
else I have to say to you. It probably won’t matter in the final
analysis. But I want to pass it along. If anything happens to me, well, it’s
something that I’d like you to know for what it’s worth.’
‘You don’t think
anything is going to happen?’
‘I don’t
honestly know. But listen to what I have to say. For centuries, we’ve
puzzled over the nature of these seeming discarnate entities. There isn’t
a culture on earth which doesn’t recognize their existence. But nobody
knows what they really are. The Catholic Church sees them as demons. They have
elaborate theological explanations for their existence. And they see them all
as evil and out to destroy. Now all that would be easy to dismiss, except the
Catholic Church is very wise about the behavior and the weaknesses of these
beings. But I’m straying from the point.
‘The point is, that we
in the Talamasca have always assumed that these beings were very similar to the
spirits of the earth-bound dead. We believed or took for granted that both were
essentially bodiless, possessed of intelligence, and locked in some sort of
realm around the living.’
‘And Lasher could be a
ghost, that’s what you’re saying.’
‘Yes. But more
significantly, Rowan seems to have made some sort of breakthrough in
discovering what these beings are. She claims that Lasher possesses a cellular
structure, and that the basic components of all organic life are present in him.’
‘Then he’s just
some sort of bizarre creature, that’s what you’re saying.’
‘I don’t know.
But what has occurred to me is that maybe the so-called spirits of the dead are
made of the same components. Maybe the intelligent part of us, when it leaves
the body, takes some living portion with it. Maybe we undergo a metamorphosis,
rather than a physical death. And all the age-old words - etheric body, astral
body, spirit - are just terms for this fine cellular structure that persists
when the flesh is gone.’
‘It’s over my
head, Aaron.’
‘Yes, I am being
rather theoretical, aren’t I? I suppose the point I’m trying to
make is… that whatever this being can do, maybe the dead can also do. Or
perhaps, even more important — even if Lasher possesses this structure,
he could still be a malevolent spirit of someone who once lived.’
‘That’s for your
library in London, Aaron. Some day, maybe, we can sit by the fire in London and
talk about it together. Right now I’m going to go home, and I’m
going to stay with her. I’m going to do what you’ve told me to do,
and what they’ve told me to do. Because that’s the best thing I can
do for her. And for you. I can’t believe she’s going to let that
thing hurt you, or hurt me, or hurt anyone. But like you said, the best thing I
can do is be near at hand.’
‘Yes, you’re
right,’ Aaron said. ‘But I can’t stop thinking about what
those old men said. About being saved. Such a strange legend.’
‘They were wrong about
that part. She’s the doorway. I knew it somehow or other when I saw that
family tomb.’
Aaron only sighed and shook
his head. Michael could see that he was dissatisfied, that there were more
things he wanted to consider. But what did they matter now? Rowan was alone in
that house with that being, and the being was stealing her away from Michael,
and Rowan knew all the answers now, didn’t she? The being was telling her
the meaning of everything, and Michael had to go home to her.
He watched anxiously as
Aaron rose, a little stiffly, and went to the closet for Michael’s coat
and gloves.
Michael stood in the
entranceway staring at the Christmas tree, with its lights burning brightly
even in the light of the day.
‘Why did it have to
begin so soon?’ he whispered. ‘Why now, at this time of year?’
But he knew the answer. Everything that was happening was connected, somehow.
All these gifts were connected with some final denouement, and even his
powerlessness was connected.
‘Please be very
careful,’ said Aaron.
‘Yeah, I’ll be
thinking of you tomorrow night. You know, to me Christmas Eve has always been
like New Year’s Eve. I don’t know why. Must be the Irish blood.’
‘The Catholic blood,’
said Aaron. ‘But I understand.’
‘If you break open
that brandy tomorrow night, hoist one for me.’
‘I will. You can count
on it. And Michael… if for any reason under God you and Rowan want to
come here, you know that the door is open. Night or day. Think of this as your
refuge.’
‘Thank you, Aaron.’
‘And one more thing.
If you need me, if you really want me to come and believe that I should, well,
then, I shall.’
Michael was about to
protest, to say that this was the best place for Aaron, but Aaron’s eyes
had moved away; his expression had brightened, and suddenly Aaron pointed to
the fanlight window over the front door.
‘It’s snowing,
Michael, look, it’s really snowing. I can’t believe it. It isn’t
even snowing in London, and look, it’s snowing here.’
He opened the door and they
walked out on the deep front veranda together. The snow was falling in large
flakes, drifting with impossible slowness and grace, down through the windless
air towards the earth. It was drifting down onto the black branches of the
oaks, coating them with a thick shining layer of whiteness, and making a deep
white path between the two rows of trees, all the way to the road.
It was falling on the fields
which were already blanketed in the same whiteness, and the sky above was
shining and colorless, and seemed to be dissolving into the falling snow.
‘And the day before
Christmas Eve, Aaron,’ said Michael. He tried to see the entire spectacle
- this venerable and famous avenue of old trees raising their dark knotted arms
into the tumbling and gently whirling flakes of snow. ‘What a little
miracle, that it should come now. Oh, God, it would all be so wonderful
if…’
‘May all our miracles
be little ones, Michael.’
‘Yes, the little
miracles are the best, aren’t they? Look at it, it’s not melting
when it hits the ground. It’s really staying there. It’s going to
be a white Christmas, no doubt about it.’
‘But wait a minute,’
said Aaron, ‘I almost forgot. Your Christmas present, and I have it right
here.’ He reached inside the pocket of his sweater and he took out a very
small flat package. No bigger than a half dollar. ‘Open it. I know we’re
both freezing, but I’d like it if you’d open it.’
Michael tore the thin gold
paper, and saw immediately that it was an old silver medal on a chain. ‘It’s
St Michael, the archangel,’ he said, smiling. ‘Aaron, that’s
perfect. You’re speaking to my superstitious Irish soul.’
‘Driving the devil
into hell,’ said Aaron. ‘I found it in a little shop on Magazine
Street while you were gone. I thought of you. I thought you might like to have
it.’
‘Thank you, old buddy.’
Michael studied the crude image. It was worn like an old coin. But he could see
the winged Michael with his trident over the horned devil who lay on his back
in the flames. He lifted the chain, which was long so that he didn’t have
to unclasp it, and he put it over his head, and let the medal drop down under
his sweater.
He stared at Aaron for a
moment, and then he put his arms around him, and held him close.
‘Be careful, Michael.
Call me very soon.’
FORTY-NINE
THE CEMETERY was closed for
the night but it didn’t matter. The darkness and the cold didn’t
matter. At the side gate the lock would be broken, and it would be very simple
for her to push the gate back, and then shut it behind her, and move along the
snow-covered path.
She was cold but that didn’t
matter either. The snow was so beautiful. She wanted to see the tomb covered
with snow.
‘You’ll find it
for me, won’t you?’ she whispered. It was almost full darkness now
and they would be coming soon, and she didn’t have much time.
You know where it is, Rowan,
he said in that fine subtle voice inside her head.
And she did. That was true.
She was standing in front of the tomb, and the wind was chilling her, passing
right through her thin shirt. There were twelve neat little head-stones, one
for each vault, and above was the carving of the keyhole door.
‘Never to die.’
That is the promise, Rowan,
that is the pact that exists between you and me. We are almost at the moment of
begin-ning…
‘Never to die, but
what did you promise the others? You promised them something. You’re
lying.’
Oh, no, my beloved, no one
matters now but you. They’re all dead.
All their bones lying
underneath in the frozen blackness. And the body of Deirdre, perfect still,
shot full of chemicals, cold inside the satin-lined box. Cold and dead.
‘Mother.’
She can’t hear you,
beautiful one, she’s gone. You and I are here.
‘How can I be the
doorway? Was it always meant that I would be the doorway?’
Always, my darling, and the
time has almost come. One more night you’ll spend with your angel of
flesh and blood, and then you’ll be mine forever. The stars are moving in
the heavens. They are shifting into the perfect pattern.
‘I can’t see
them. All I can see is the snow falling.’
Ah, but they are there. It
is the very deepest part of winter, when all that would be reborn sleeps safe
in the snow.
The marble felt like ice.
She put her fingers into the letters, DEIRDRE MAYFAIR. She couldn’t reach
the engraving of the keyhole door.
Come now, darling, come back
to the house and the warmth. It’s almost time. They’re all coming
— my children, the great clan of Mayfair, all my progeny - grown rich in
the warm shadow of my wing. Back to the hearth now, beloved, but tomorrow,
tomorrow, you and I shall be alone in the house. And you must drive your
archangel away.
‘And you’ll show
me how to be the doorway?’
You know, my darling. In
your dreams and in your heart you’ve always known.
She walked swiftly over the
snow, her feet wet, but it didn’t matter. The streets were empty and
shining in the gray dusk. The snow was so light now it seemed a mirage. They’d
be coming soon.
Was the tiny baby inside her
cold?
Lemle had said, ‘There
are thousands of them — millions, chucked like garbage down the drains of
the world — all those tiny brains and organs lost.’
Dark and all of them coming.
Essential to pretend that everything was normal. She was walking as fast as she
could. Her throat burned. But the cold air felt so good to her, icing her all
over, cooling the fever inside her.
And there was the house dark
and waiting. She had come back in time. She had the key in her hand.
‘What if I can’t
get him to go tomorrow?’ she whispered. She stood at the gate looking up
at the empty windows. Like that first night when Carlotta had said, Come to me.
Choose.
But you must make him leave.
By dark tomorrow, my darling. Or I’ll kill him.
‘No, you must never
never do that. You mustn’t even say it. Do you hear me? Nothing must
happen to him, ever. Do you hear me?’
She stood on the porch
talking aloud to no one. And all around her the snow came down. Snow in
paradise, pelting the frozen banana leaves, drifting past the high thick stems
of bamboo. But what would paradise have been without the beauty of snow?
‘You understand me, don’t
you? You cannot hurt him. You absolutely cannot hurt him. Promise me. Make the
pact with me. No harm comes to Michael.’
As you wish, my darling. I
do love him. But he cannot come between us on the night of all nights. The
stars are moving into the perfect configuration. They are my eternal witnesses,
old as I am, and I would have them shine down upon me at the perfect moment.
The moment of my choosing. If you would save your mortal lover from my wrath,
see that he is gone from my sight.
FIFTY
IT WAS TWO in the morning
before they all left. He had never seen so many happy people completely
oblivious to what was really going on.
But what was really going
on? It was a great warm house, full of laughter and singing, with its many
fires burning, and outside the snow floating down, covering the trees and the
shrubbery and the paths with luminous whiteness. And why shouldn’t they
all be having a wonderful time?
How they’d laughed as
they slipped on the snow-covered flags, and crunched through the ice in the
gutters. There had been enough snow even for the children to make snowballs. In
their caps and mittens they had skittered along the frozen crust that covered
the lawn.
Even Aunt Viv had loved the
snow. She had drunk too much sherry, and in those moments reminded him
frighten-ingly of his mother, though Bea and Lily, who had become her dearest
friends, did not seem to care.
Rowan had been perfect all
evening, singing carols with them at the piano, posing for the pictures before
the tree.
And this was his dream, wasn’t
it, full of radiant faces and ringing voices, people who knew how to appreciate
this moment — glasses clinked together in toasts, lips pressed to cheeks,
and the melancholy sound of the old songs.
‘So sweet of you to do
this so soon after the wedding…’
‘… All gathered
like in the old days.’
‘Christmas the way it
ought to be.’
And they had so admired his
precious ornaments, and though they had been cautioned not to, they piled their
little presents beneath the tree.
There were moments when he
couldn’t stand it. He’d gone upstairs to the third floor and
climbed out on the roof of the north bedroom and stood near the parapet wall,
looking towards downtown and the city lights. Snow on the rooftop, snow etching
windowsills and gables and chimneys, and snow falling thin and beautiful, as
far as he could see.
It was everything he’d
ever wanted, as full and rich as the wedding, and he had never been more
unhappy. It was as if that thing had its hand around his throat. He could have
put his fist through a wall in his anxiety. It was bitter, bitter as grief is
bitter.
And it seemed in the pockets
of quiet through which he wandered, upstairs away from them, that he could feel
that thing. That when he laid his naked fingers on the door frames and the
doorknobs, he caught great raging glimpses of it in the shadows.
‘You’re here,
Lasher. I know you’re here.’
Something stepped back for
him in the shadows, playing with him, sliding up the dark walls away from him,
and then dispersing so that he found himself in the upper hallway, in the dim
light, alone.
Anyone spying on him would
have thought he was a madman. He laughed. Is that how Daniel McIntyre had
seemed in his drunken, wandering old age? What about all the other eunuch
husbands who sensed the secret? They went off to mistresses - and certain
death, it seemed - or drifted into irrelevance. What the hell was going to
happen to him?
But this wasn’t the
finish. This was only the beginning, and she had to be playing for time. He had
to believe that behind her silent pleas her love waited to reveal itself in
truth again.
At last they’d gone.
The very last invitations to
Christmas dinner had been tactfully refused, and promises had been made for
future get-togethers. Aunt Viv would dine with Bea on Christmas Eve and they
weren’t to worry about her. They could have this Christmas to themselves.
Polaroid pictures had been
exchanged and sleeping children gathered up from couches, and last-minute hugs
given, and then out they all went into the clean bright cold.
Weary of the strain and sick
with worry, he’d taken his time locking up. No need to smile now. No need
to pretend anything. And God, what had the strain been like for her?
He dreaded going up the
stairs. He went through the house checking windows, checking the little green
tiny pinpoints of light on the alarm panel, and turning on the faucets to save
the pipes from the freeze.
Finally he stood in the
parlor, in front of his beautiful lighted tree.
Had there ever been a
Christmas as bitter and lonely as this one? He would have been in a rage if it
had served any purpose.
For a while he lay on the
sofa, letting the fire burn itself out in the fireplace, and talking silently
to Julien and Deborah, asking them as he had a thousand times tonight, what was
he meant to do?
At last he climbed the
stairs. The bedroom was hushed and dark. She was covered with blankets, so he
saw only her hair against the pillow, her face turned away.
How many times this evening
had he tried to catch her eye, and failed? Had anyone noticed that they spoke
not a single syllable to each other? Everyone was too certain of their
happiness. Just as he’d been so certain.
He walked silently to the
front window and pulled back the heavy damask drape so that he might look at
the falling snow for the last time. It was well after midnight - Christmas Eve
already. And tonight would come that magic moment when he would take stock of
his life and his accomplishments, when he would shape in dreams and plans the
coming year.
Rowan, it’s not going
to end like this. It’s only a skirmish. We knew at the beginning, so much
more than the others…
He turned and saw her hand
on the pillow, slender and beautiful, fingers lightly curled.
Silently he drew close to
her. He wanted to touch her hand, to feel its warmth against his fingers, to
grab hold of her as if she were floating away from him in some dark perilous
sea. But he didn’t dare.
His heart was tripping and
he felt that warm pain in his chest as he looked back out into the snowfall.
And then his eyes settled on her face.
Her eyes were open. She was
staring at him in the darkness. And her lips slowly spread in a long, vicious
smile.
He was petrified. Her face
was white in the dim light from outside, and hard as marble, and the smile was
frozen and the eyes gleamed like pieces of glass. His heart quickened and the
warm pain spread through his chest. He continued to stare at her, unable to
take his eyes off her, and then his hand shot out before he could stop it and
he grabbed her wrist.
Her entire body twisted, and
the vicious mask of her face crumpled completely and she sat up suddenly,
anxious and confused. ‘What is it, Michael?’ She stared at her
wrist, and slowly he let her go. ‘I’m glad you woke me,’ she
whispered. Her eyes were wide and her lip trembled. ‘I was having the
most terrible dream.’
‘What did you dream, Rowan?’
She sat still, peering
before her, and then she clasped her hands as if tearing at one with the other.
And he was vaguely aware that he’d once seen her in that desperate
gesture before.
‘I don’t know,’
she whispered. ‘I don’t know what it was. It was this place…
centuries ago, and these doctors were gathered together. And the body lying on
the table was so small.’ Her voice was low and full of agony and suddenly
the tears spilled down as she looked up at him.
‘Rowan.’
She put up her hand. As he
sank down on the side of the bed, she pressed her fingers against his lips.
‘Don’t say it,
Michael, please. Don’t say it. Don’t speak a word.’
She shook her head
frantically.
And sick with relief and
hurt, he merely slipped his fingers around her neck, and as she bowed her head,
he tried not to break down himself.
You know I love you, you
know all the things I want to say.
When she was calmer, he took
both of her hands and squeezed them tightly and he closed his eyes.
Trust me, Michael.
‘OK, honey,’ he
whispered. ‘OK.’ Clumsily, he stripped off his clothes, and he
climbed in under the covers beside her, catching the warm clean fragrance of
her flesh, and he lay there, eyes open, thinking that he would never rest,
feeling her shiver against him, and then gradually as the hours ticked by, as
her body softened and he saw that her eyes were closed, he slipped into uneasy
sleep.
It was afternoon when he
woke. He was alone, and the bedroom was suffocatingly warm. He showered and
dressed and went downstairs. He couldn’t find her. The lights of the tree
were burning, but the house was empty.
He went through the rooms
one by one.
He went outside in the
coldness and walked all through the frozen garden, where the snow had become a
hard glistening layer of ice over the walks and the grass. Back around the oak
tree, he searched for her, but she was nowhere to be found.
And finally, he put on his
heavy coat and he went out for a walk.
The sky was a deep still
blue. And the neighborhood was magnificent, all dressed in white, exactly as it
had been that long-ago Christmas, the last one that he was ever here.
A panic rose in him.
It was Christmas Eve and
they had made no preparations. He had his little gift for her, hidden away in
the pantry, a silver hand mirror which he’d found in his shop in San
Francisco, and carefully wrapped long before he left, but what did it matter
when she had all those jewels and all that gold, and all those riches beyond
imagination? And he was alone. His thoughts were going round in circles.
Christmas Eve and the hours
were melting away.
He went into the market on
Washington Avenue, which was jammed with last-minute shoppers, and in a daze he
bought the turkey and the other makings, rummaging in his pockets for the bills
he needed, like a drunk searching for every last penny for a bottle he couldn’t
afford. People were laughing and chatting about the snowfall. White Christmas
in New Orleans. He found himself staring at them as if they were strange
animals. And all their funny noises only made him feel small and alone. He
hefted the heavy sack into one arm, and started for home.
He’d walked only a few
steps when he saw the firehouse where his dad had once worked. It was all done
over; he scarcely recognized it now except that it was in the same place and there
was the enormous archway through which the engine had roared out into the
street when he was a boy. He and his dad sat together in straight-back chairs
out there on the sidewalk.
He must have looked like a
drunk now, for sure stranded there, staring at the firehouse, with all the fire
fighters having sense enough to be inside where it was warm. All those years
ago, at Christmas, his father dying in that fire.
When he looked up at the
sky, he realized it was the color of slate now, and the daylight was dying.
Christmas Eve and absolutely everything had gone wrong.
No one answered his call
when he came in the door. Only the tree gave off a soft glow in the parlor. He
wiped his feet on the mat and walked back through the long hallway, his hands
and face hurting from the cold. He unpacked the bag and put the turkey out,
thinking that he would go through with all the steps, he’d do it the way
he’d always done it — and tonight, at midnight, the feast would be
ready, just at that hour when in the old days they’d be crowded into the
church for Midnight Mass.
It wasn’t Holy
Communion, but it was their meal together, and this was Christmas and the house
wasn’t haunted and ruined and dark.
Go through the motions.
Like a priest who’s
sold his soul to the devil, going to the altar of God to say Mass.
He put the packages in the
cupboard. It wasn’t too soon to begin. He laid out the candles. Have to
find the candlesticks for them. And surely she was around here somewhere. She’d
gone out walking too perhaps and now she was home.
The kitchen was dark. The
snow was falling again. He wanted to turn on the lights. In fact, he wanted to
turn them on everywhere, to fill the house with light. But he didn’t
move. He stood very still in the kitchen, looking out through the French doors
over the back garden, watching the snow melt as it struck the surface of the
pool. A rim of ice had formed around the edges of the blue water. He saw it
glistening and he thought how cold that water must be, so awfully hurtfully
cold.
Cold like the Pacific on
that summer Sunday when he’d been standing there, empty and slightly
afraid. The path from that moment seemed infinitely long. And it was as if all
energy or will had left him now, and the cold room held him prisoner, and he
could not move a finger to make himself comfortable or safe or warm.
A long time passed. He sat
down at the table, lighted a cigarette and watched the darkness come down. The
snow had stopped, but the ground was covered in a fresh clean whiteness again.
Time to do something, time
to begin the dinner. He knew it, yet he couldn’t move. He smoked another
cigarette, comforted by the sight of the tiny burning red flame, and then as he
crushed it out, he merely sat still, doing nothing, the way he had for hours in
his room on Liberty Street, drifting in and out of a silent panic, unable to
think or move.
He didn’t know how
long he sat there. But at some time or other, the pool lights came on, shining
brilliantly up through the blackness of the night, making a great piece of blue
glass of the pool. The dark foliage came alive around it, spattered with the
whiteness. And the ground took on a ghostly lunar glow.
He wasn’t alone. He
knew it, and as the knowledge penetrated, he realized he had only to turn his
head and see her standing there, in the far doorway to the pantry, with her
arms folded, her head and shoulders outlined against the pale cabinets behind
her, her breath making only the smallest, the most subtle sound.
This was the purest dread he’d
ever known. He stood up, slipped the pack of cigarettes into his pocket, and
when he looked up she was gone.
He went after her, moving
swiftly through the darkened dining room and into the hallway again, and then
he saw her all the way at the far end, in the light from the tree, standing
against the high white front door.
He saw the keyhole shape
perfect and distinct around her, and how small she looked in it, and as he came
closer and closer, her stillness shocked him. He was terrified of what he’d
see when he finally drew close enough to make out the features of her face in
the airy dark.
But it wasn’t that
awful marble face he’d seen last night. She was merely looking at him,
and the soft colored illumination from the tree filled her eyes with dim
reflected light.
‘I was going to fix
our supper. I bought everything. It’s back there.’ How uncertain he
sounded. How miserable. He tried to pull himself together. He took a deep
breath and hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. ‘Look, I can
start it now. It’s just a small turkey. It will be done in a few hours,
and I have everything. It’s all there. We’ll set the table with the
pretty china. We’ve never used any of the china. We’ve never had a
meal on the table. This is… this is Christmas Eve.’
‘You have to go,’
she said.
‘I… I don’t
understand you.’
‘You have to get out
of here now.’
‘Rowan?’
‘You have to leave,
Michael. I have to be alone here now.’
‘Honey, I don’t
understand what you’re telling me.’
‘Get out, Michael.’
Her voice dropped lower, becoming harder. ‘I want you to go.’
‘It’s Christmas
Eve, Rowan. I don’t want to go.’
‘It’s my house,
Michael, I’m telling you to leave it. I’m telling you to get out.’
He stared at her for a
moment, stared at the way her face was changing, at the twist of her drawn
lips, at the way her eyes had narrowed and she had lowered her head slightly
and was looking up at him from under her brows.
‘You… you’re
not making any sense, Rowan. Do you realize what you’re saying?’
She took several steps
towards him. He braced himself, refusing to be frightened. In fact his fear was
alchemizing into anger.
‘Get out, Michael,’
she hissed at him. ‘Get out of this house and leave me here to do what I
must do.’
Suddenly her hand swung up
and forward, and before he realized what was happening, he felt the shocking
slap across his face.
The pain stung him. The
anger crested; but it was more bitter and painful than any anger he’d
ever felt. Shocked and in a fury, he stared at her.
‘It’s not you,
Rowan!’ he said. He reached out for her, and the hand came up and as he
went to block it, he felt her shove him backwards against the wall. In rage and
confusion, he looked at her. She came closer, her eyes firing in the glow from
the parlor.
‘Get out of here,’
she whispered. ‘Do you hear what I’m saying?’
Stunned, he watched as her
fingers dug into his arm. She shoved him to the left, towards the front door.
Her strength was shocking to him, but physical strength had nothing to do with
it. It was the malice emanating from her; it was the old mask of hate again
covering her features.
‘Get out of this house
now, I’m ordering you out,’ she said, her fingers releasing him,
and grabbing at the doorknob and turning it and opening the door on the cold
wind.
‘How can you do this
to me!’ he asked her. ‘Rowan, answer me. How can you do it?’
In desperation, he reached
for her and this time nothing stopped him. He caught her and shook her, and her
head fell to the side for an instant and then she turned back, merely staring
at him, daring him to continue, silently forcing him to let her go.
‘What good are you to
me dead, Michael?’ she whispered. ‘If you love me, leave now. Come
back when I call you. I must do this alone.’
‘I can’t. I won’t
do it.’
She turned her back on him
and walked down the hall, and he went after her.
‘Rowan, I’m not
going, do you hear me? I don’t care what happens, I’m not leaving
you. You can’t ask me to do that.’
‘I knew you wouldn’t,’
she said softly as he followed her into the dark library. The heavy velvet
drapes were closed and he could barely see her figure as she moved towards the
desk.
‘Rowan, we can’t
go on not talking about it. It’s destroying us. Rowan, listen to me.’
‘Michael, my beautiful
angel, my archangel,’ she said, with her back turned to him, her words
muffled. ‘You’d rather die, wouldn’t you, than trust in me?’
‘Rowan, I’ll
fight him with my bare hands if I have to.’ He came towards her. Where
were the lamps in this room? He reached out, trying to find the brass lamp
beside the chair, and then she wheeled around and bore down on him.
He saw the syringe raised.
‘No, Rowan!’
The needle sank into his arm
in the same instant.
‘Christ, what have you
done to me!’ But he was already falling to the side, just as if he had no
legs, and then the lamp went over on the floor, and he was lying beside it,
staring right at the pale sharp spike of the broken bulb.
He tried to say her name,
but his lips wouldn’t move.
‘Sleep, my darling,’
she said. ‘I love you. I love you with my whole soul.’
Far far away he heard the
sound of buttons on a phone. Her voice was so faint and the words… what
was she saying? She was talking to Aaron. Yes, Aaron…
And when they lifted him, he
said Aaron’s name.
‘You’re going to
Aaron, Michael,’ she whispered. ‘He’s going to take care of
you.’
Not without you, Rowan, he
tried to say, but he was sinking down again, and the car was moving, and he
heard a man’s voice: ‘You’ll be OK, Mr Curry. We’re
taking you to your friend. You just lie still back there. Dr Mayfair said you’re
going to be fine.’
Fine, fine, fine…
Hirelings. You don’t
understand. She’s a witch, and she’s put me under a spell with her
poison, the way Charlotte did it to Petyr, and she’s told you a damnable
lie.
FIFTY-ONE
ONLY THE TREE was lighted,
and the whole house slumbered in warm darkness, except for that soft wreath of
light. The cold tapped at the glass but couldn’t come inside.
She sat in the middle of the
sofa, her legs crossed, her arms folded, staring down the length of the room at
the long mirror, barely able to see the pale glow of the chandelier.
The hands of the grandfather
clock moved slowly towards midnight.
And this was the night that
meant so much to you, Michael. The night when you wanted us to be together. You
couldn’t be farther from me now if you were on the other side of the
world. All such simple and graceful things are far from me, and it is like that
Christmas Eve when Lemle took me through door after door into his darkened and
secret laboratory. What have such horrors to do with you, my darling?
All her life, if her life
was long or short, or almost over - all her life - she’d remember Michael’s
face when she slapped him; she’d remember the sound of his voice when he
pleaded with her; she’d remember the look of shock when she’d
jabbed the needle into his arm.
So why was there no emotion?
Why only this emptiness and this shriveling stillness inside her? Her feet were
bare, and the soft flannel nightgown hung loose around her, and the silky
Chinese rug beneath her feet was warm. Yet she felt naked and isolated, as if
nothing of warmth or comfort could ever touch her.
Something moved in the
center of the room. All the limbs of the tree shivered, and the tiny silver
bells gave off a faint barely perceptible music in the stillness. The tiny
angels with their gilded wings danced on their long threads of gold.
A darkness was gathering and
thickening.
‘We are close to the
hour, my beloved. To the time of my choosing.’
‘Ah, but you have a
poet’s soul,’ she said, listening to the faint echo of her own
voice in this big room.
‘My poetry I have
learned from humans, beloved. From those who, for thousands of years, have
loved this night of all nights.’
‘And now you mean to
teach me science, for I don’t know how to bring you across.’
‘Don’t you? Haven’t
you always understood?’
She didn’t answer. It
seemed the film of her dreams thickened about her, images catching hold and
then letting go, so that her coldness and her aloneness grew harder and more
nearly unbearable.
The darkness grew denser. It
collected itself into a shape, and in the swirling density, she thought she saw
the outline of human bones. The bones appeared to be dancing, gathering themselves
together, and then came the flesh over them, like the light from the tree
pouring down over the skeleton, and the brilliant green eyes were suddenly
peering at her from his face.
‘The time is almost at
hand, Rowan,’ he said.
In amazement she watched the
lips moving. She saw the glimmer of his teeth. She realized she’d risen
to her feet and she was standing very close to him, and the sheer beauty of his
face stunned her. He looked down at her, his eyes darkening slightly, and the
blond eyelashes golden in the light.
‘It’s nearly
perfect,’ she whispered.
She touched his face,
slowly, running her finger down the skin and stopping on the firmness of the
jawbone. She placed her left hand very gently against his chest. She closed her
eyes, listening to the heart beat. She could see the organ inside, or was it
the replica of an organ? Shutting her eyes tighter she envisioned it, its
arteries and valves, and the blood rushing through it, and coursing through the
limbs.
‘All you need to do is
surrender!’ She stood, staring at him, seeing his lips spread in a smile.
‘Let go,’ she said. ‘Don’t you see, you’ve done
it!’
‘Have I?’ he
asked, the face working perfectly, the fine muscles flexing and releasing, the
eyes growing narrow as the eyes of any human in their concentration. ‘You
think this is a body? This is a replica! It’s a sculpture, a statue. It’s
nothing, and you know it. You think you can lure me into this shell of
minuscule lifeless particles so you can have me at your command? A robot? So
that you can destroy me?’
‘What are you saying?’
She stepped backwards. ‘I can’t help you. I don’t know what
you want of me.’
‘Where are you going,
my darling?’ he asked, eyebrows lifting ever so slightly. ‘You
think you can flee from me? Look at the face of the clock, my beautiful Rowan.
You know what I want. It is Christmas Eve, my darling. The witching hour is at
hand, Rowan, when Christ was born into this world, when the Word was finally
made flesh, and I would be born, too, my beautiful witch, I am done with
waiting.’
He lunged forward, his right
hand locking on her shoulder, the other on her belly, a searing shimmer of
warmth penetrating her, sickening her, even as he held her.
‘Get away from me!’
she whispered. ‘I can’t do it.’ She called upon her anger and
her will, eyes boring into those of the thing in front of her. ‘You can’t
make me do what I won’t do!’ she said. ‘And you can’t
do it without me.’
‘You know what I want
and what I have always wanted. No more shells, Rowan, no more coarse illusions.
The living flesh inside you. What other flesh in all the world is ready for me,
plastic, and adaptable and swarming with millions upon millions of tiny cells
which it will not use in its perfection, what other organism has grown to a
thousand times its size in the first few weeks of its beginning, and is ready
now to unfurl and lengthen and swell as my cells merge with it!’
‘Get away from me. Get
away from my child! You’re a stupid, crazed thing. You won’t touch
my child! You won’t touch me!’ She was trembling as if her anger
was too great to be contained; she could feel it boiling in her veins. Her feet
were wet and slippery on the boards as she backed away, drawing on her anger,
struggling to direct it against him.
‘Did you think you
could trick me, Rowan?’ he said in that slow, patient, beautiful voice,
his handsome image holding. ‘With your little performance before Aaron
and Michael? Did you think I couldn’t see into the depths of your soul? I
made your soul. I chose the genes that went into you. I chose your parents, I
chose your ancestors, I bred you, Rowan. I know where flesh and mind meet in
you. I know your strength as no one else knows it. And you have always known
what I wanted of you. You knew when you read the history. You saw Lemle’s
fetus slumbering in that little bed of tubes and chemicals. You knew! You knew
when you ran from the laboratory what your brilliance and courage could have
done even then without me, without the knowledge that I waited for you, that I
loved you, that I had the greatest gift to bestow on you. Myself, Rowan. You
will help me, or that tiny simmering child will die when I go into it! And that
you will never allow.’
‘God. God help me!’
she whispered, her hands moving down over her belly, in a crisscross as if to
ward off a blow, eyes fixed on him. Die, you son of a bitch, die!
The hands of the clock made
their tiny click as they shifted, the little hand straight up in line with the
big hand. And the first chime of the hour sounded.
‘Christ is born, Rowan,’
he cried out, his voice huge as the image of the man dissolved in a great
boiling cloud of darkness, obscuring the clock, rising to the ceiling, turning
in on itself like a funnel. She screamed, struggling backwards against the
wall. A shock ran through the rafters, through the plaster. She could hear it
like the roar of an earthquake.
‘No, God, no!’
In sheer panic, she screamed. She turned and ran through the parlor door into
the hallway. She reached out for the knob of the front door. ‘God help
me. Michael, Aaron!’
Somebody had to hear her
screams. They were deafening in her own ears. They were ripping her apart.
But the rumbling grew
louder. She felt his invisible hands on her shoulders. She was thrown forward,
hard against the door, her hand slipping off the knob as she fell to her knees,
pain shooting up her thighs. The darkness was rising all around her, the heat
was rising.
‘No, not my child, I’ll
destroy you, with my last breath, I’ll destroy you.’ She turned in
one last desperate fury, facing the darkness, spitting at it in hate, willing
it to die, as the arms wound around her and dragged her down on the floor.
The back of her head scraped
the wood of the door, and then banged against the floorboards, as her legs were
wrenched forward. She was staring upwards, struggling to rise, her arms
flailing, the darkness bubbling over her.
‘Damn you, damn you in
hell, Lasher, die. Die like that old woman! Die!’ she screamed.
‘Yes, Rowan, your
child, and Michael’s child!’
The voice surrounded her
like the darkness and the heat. Her head was forced back again, slammed down
again, and her arms pinned, wide and helpless.
‘You my mother and
Michael my father! It is the witching hour, Rowan. The clock is striking. I
will be flesh. I will be born.’
The darkness furled again,
it coiled in upon itself and it shot downward. It shot into her, raping her,
splitting her apart. Like a giant fist it shot upwards inside her womb, and her
body convulsed as the pain caught her in a great lashing circle that she could
see, shining bright, against her closed eyes.
The heat was unbearable. The
pain came again, shock after shock of it, and she could feel the blood gushing
out of her, and the water from her womb, gushing onto the floor.
‘You’ve killed
it, you damnable evil thing, you’ve killed my baby, damn you! God help
me! God, take it back to hell!’ Her hands knocked against the wall,
struggled against the slimy wet floor. And the heat sickened her, caught her
lungs now as she gasped for breath.
The house was burning. It
had to be burning. She was burning. The heat was throbbing inside of her, and
she thought she saw the flames rising, but it was only a great lurid blast of
red light. And somehow she had managed to climb up on her hands and knees,
again, and she knew her body was empty, her child was gone, and she was
struggling now only to escape, reaching out once more, desperately and in her
fierce relentless pain, for the knob of the door.
‘Michael, Michael help
me! Oh God, I tried to trick it, I tried to kill it. Michael, it’s in the
child.’ Another shock of pain caught her, and a fresh gush of blood
poured out of her.
Sobbing, she sank down,
dizzy, unable to command her arms or legs, the heat blasting her, and a great
raw crying filled her ears. It was a baby’s crying. It was that same
awful sound she’d heard over and over in her dream. A baby’s
mewling cry. She struggled to cover her ears, unable to bear it, wailing for it
to stop, the heat suffocating her.
‘Let me die,’
she whispered. ‘Let the fire burn me. Take me to hell. Let me die.’
Rowan, help me. I am in the flesh. Help me or I
will die. Rowan, you cannot turn your back on me.
She tightened the grip on
her ears, but she couldn’t shut out the little telepathic voice that rose
and fell with the baby’s sobs. Her hand slipped in the blood and her face
fell down in it, sticky and wet under her, and she rolled over on her back, seeing
again the shimmer of the heat, the baby’s screams louder and louder as
though it was starving or in agony.
Rowan, help me! 1 am your child! Michael’s
child. Rowan, I need you.
She knew what she would see
even before she looked. Through her tears and through the waves of heat, she
saw the manikin, the monster. Not out of my body, not born from me. I didn’t…
On its back it lay, its
man-sized head turning from side to side with its cries, its thin arms
elongating even as she watched it, tiny fingers splayed and groping and
growing, tiny feet kicking, as a baby’s feet kick, working the air, the
calves stretching, the blood and mucus sliding off it, sliding down its chubby
cheeks, and off its slick dark hair. All those tiny organs like buds inside.
All those millions of cells dividing, merging with his cells, like a nuclear
explosion going on inside this flesh and blood thing, this mutant thing, this
child that had come out of her.
Rowan, I am alive, do not let me
die. Do not let me die, Rowan. Yours is the power of saving life, and
I live. Help me.
She struggled towards it,
her body still throbbing with sharp bursts of pain, her hand out for that tiny
slippery leg, that little foot pumping the air, and then as her hand closed on
that soft, slick baby flesh, the darkness came down on her, and against her
closed eyelids she saw the anatomy, saw the path of the cells, saw the evolving
organs, and the age-old miracle of the cells coming together, forming
corpuscles and subcutaneous tissue, and bone tissue, and the fibers of the
lungs and the liver and the stomach, and fused with his cells, his power, the
DN A merging, and the tiny chains of chromosomes whipping and swimming as the
nuclei merged, and all guided by her, all the knowledge inside her like the
knowledge of the symphony inside the composer, note after note and bar after
bar, and crescendo following upon crescendo.
Its flesh throbbed under her
fingers, living, breathing through its pores. Its cries grew hoarser, deeper,
echoing as she dropped down out of consciousness and rose up again, her other
hand groping in the dark and finding his forehead, finding the thick mass of
manly curls, finding his eyes fluttering under her palm, finding his mouth now
half closed with the sobs coming out of it, finding his chest, and the heart
beneath it and the long muscular arms flopping against the boards, yes, this
thing so big now that she could lay her head on its pumping chest, and the cock
between his legs,- yes, and the thighs, yes, and struggling upwards, she lay on
top of him, both hands on him, feeling the rise and fall of his breath beneath
her, the lungs enlarging, filling, the heart pumping, and dark silky hair
sprouting around his cock, and then it was a web again, a web shining in the
darkness, full of chemistry and mystery and certainty, and she sank down into
the blackness, into the quiet.
A voice was talking to her,
intimate and soft.
‘Stop the blood.’
She couldn’t answer.
‘You’re
bleeding. Stop the blood.’
‘I don’t want to
live,’ she said. Surely the house was burning. Come, old woman, with your
lamp. Light the drapes.
Lemle said, ‘I never
said it wasn’t possible, you know. The thing is that once an advance has
been envisioned, it is inevitable. Millions of cells. The embryo is the key to
immortality.’
‘You can still kill
him,’ said Petyr. He was standing over her, looking down at her.
‘They’re
figments of your imagination, of your conscience.’
‘Am I dying?’
‘No.’ He
laughed. Such a soft silky laugh. ‘Can you hear me? I am laughing, Rowan.
I can laugh now.’
Take me to hell now. Let me
die.
‘No, my darling, my
precious beautiful darling, stop the bleeding.’
The sunlight waked her. She
lay on the living room floor, on the soft Chinese rug, and her first thought
was the house had not burned. The awful heat had not consumed it. Somehow it
had been saved.
For a moment she didn’t
understand what she was seeing.
A man was sitting beside her,
looking down at her, and he had the smooth unblemished skin of a baby —
over the structure of a man’s face, but it resembled her face. She had
never seen a human being who looked this much like her. But there were definite
differences. His eyes were large and blue and fringed with black lashes, and
his hair was black like Michael’s hair. It was Michael’s hair.
Michael’s hair and Michael’s eyes. But he was slender like her. His
smooth hairless chest was narrow as her chest had been in childhood, with two shining
pink nipples, and his arms were narrow, though finely muscled, and the delicate
fingers of his hand, with which he stroked his lip thoughtfully as he looked at
her, were narrow and like her fingers.
But he was bigger than she
was, as big as a man. And the dried mucus and blood was all over him, like a
dark ruby red map covering him.
She felt a moan coming up
out of her throat, pushing against her lips. Her whole body moved with it, and
suddenly she screamed. Rising off the boards, she screamed. Louder, longer,
more wildly than she had ever screamed last night in all her fear. She was this
scream, leaving herself, leaving everything she’d seen and remembered in
total horror.
His hand came down over her
mouth, pushing her flat against the rug. She couldn’t move. The scream
was turning around inside, like vomit that could choke her. A deep convulsion
of pain moved through her. She lay limp, silent.
He leaned over her. ‘Don’t
do it,’ he whispered. The old voice. Of course, his voice, with his
unmistakable inflection.
His smooth face looked
perfectly innocent, a picture of astonishment with its flawless and radiant
cheeks, and its smooth narrow nose, and the great blue eyes blinking at her.
Snapping open and closed like the eyes of the manikin on the table in her
dreams. He smiled. ‘I need you,’ he said. ‘I love you. And I’m
your child.’
After a while, he took his
hand away.
She sat up. Her nightgown
was soaked with blood and dry and stiff with it. The smell of blood was
everywhere. Like the smell of the Emergency Room.
She scooted back on the rug
and sat forward, her knee crooked, peering at him.
Nipples, perfect, yes, cock
perfect, yes, though the real test would come when it was hard. Hair perfect,
yes, but what about inside? What about every precise little interlocking part?
She drew closer, staring at
his shoulders, watching the rise and fall of his chest with his breath, then
looking into his eyes, not seeing him look back, not caring if he did, just
studying the texture of the flesh and the lips.
She laid her hand on his
chest and listened. A strong, steady rhythm coming from him.
He didn’t move to stop
her as she laid her hands on both sides of his skull. Soft, like a baby’s
skull, able to heal after blows that would kill a man of twenty-five. God, but
how long was it going to be that way?
She put her finger against
his lower lip, opening his mouth and staring at his tongue. Then she sat back,
her hands lying limp on her folded legs.
‘Are you hurting?’
he asked her. His voice was very tender. He narrowed his eyes, and for just a
second there was a little bit of mature expression in the face, and then it
returned to baby wonder. ‘You lost so much blood.’
For a long moment she stared
at him in silence.
He waited, merely watching
her.
‘No, I’m not
hurt,’ she murmured. Again she stared at him for the longest time. ‘I
need things,’ she said finally. ‘I need a microscope. I need to
take blood samples. I need to see what the tissues really are now! God, I need
all these things! I need a fully equipped laboratory. And we’ve got to
leave here.’
‘Yes,’ he said,
nodding. ‘That should be the very next thing that we do. Leave here.’
‘Can you stand up?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, you’re
going to try.’ She climbed to her knees, and then grasping the edge of
the marble mantel, climbed to her feet.
She took his hand, nice
tight grip. ‘Come on, stand up, don’t think about it, just do it,
call on your body to know, the musculature is there, that’s what
differentiates you completely from a newborn, you have the skeleton and
musculature of a man.’
‘All right, I’ll
try,’ he said. He looked frightened and also strangely delighted.
Shuddering, he struggled to his knees first, as she had done, and then to his
feet, only to tumble backwards, catching himself from falling with one hasty
back step after another.
‘Ooooh…" He
sang it out. ‘I’m walking, I am, I’m walking…’
She rushed towards him and
wrapped her arm around him and let him cling to her. He grew quiet looking down
at her, and then raised his hand and stroked her cheek, the gesture imperfectly
coordinated, rather like a drunken gesture, but the fingers silky and tingling.
‘My beautiful Rowan,’
he said. ‘Look, the tears are rising in my eyes. Real tears. Oh, Rowan.’
He tried to stand freely and
to bend down to kiss her. She caught him and steadied him as his lips closed
over hers, and that same powerful sensual shock passed through her that had
always come with his touch.
‘Rowan,’ he
moaned aloud, crushing her against him, then slipping backwards until she
brought him up short again in her arms.
‘Come, we haven’t
much time,’ she said. ‘We have to find some place safe, some place
completely unknown…’
‘Yes, darling,
yes… but you see it’s all so new and so beautiful. Let me hold you
again, let me kiss you…’
There isn’t time,’
she said, but the silken baby lips had clamped on hers again, and she felt his
cock pressing against her sex, pressing into the soreness. She pulled away,
drawing him after her.
‘That’s it,’
she said, watching his feet,’don’t think about it. Just look at me
and walk.’
For one second, as she found
herself in the doorway, as she was conscious of its keyhole shape, and the old
discussions of its significance, all the misery and beauty of her life passed
before her eyes, all her struggles and all former vows.
But this was a new door all
right. It was the door she’d glimpsed a million years ago in her girlhood
when she’d first opened the magical volumes of scientific lore. And it
was open now, quite beyond the horrors of Lemle’s laboratory, and the
Dutchmen gathered around the table in a mythical Leiden.
She guided him slowly
through the door and up the stairs, walking patiently, step by step, at his
side.
FIFTY-TWO
HE WAS TRYING to wake up,
but every time he came near the surface, he went down again, heavy and drowsy
and sinking into the soft feathery covers of the bed. The desperation would
grip him and then it would go away.
It was the sickness that
finally woke him. It seemed forever that he sat on the bathroom floor, against
the door, vomiting so violently that a pain locked around his ribs each time he
retched. Then there was nothing more to heave up, and the nausea just lay on
him with no promise of relief.
The room was tilting. They
had finally got the lock off the door, and they were picking him up. He wanted
to say that he was sorry he’d locked it, reflex action, and he had been
trying to get to the knob to open the door, but he couldn’t make the
words come out.
Midnight. He saw the dial of
the clock on the dresser. Midnight of Christmas Eve. And he struggled to say there
was a meaning to it, but it was impossible to do more than think of that thing
standing behind the crib in the sanctuary. And he was sinking again, as his
head hit the pillow.
When next he opened his
eyes, the doctor was talking to him again, but he couldn’t recall just
when he’d seen the doctor before. ‘Mr Curry, do you have any idea
what might have been in the injection?’
No. I thought she was
killing me. I thought I was going to die. Just trying to move his lips made him
sick. He only shook his head, and that too made him sick. He could see the
blackness of night still beyond the frost on the windows.
‘… at least
another eight hours,’ said the doctor.
‘Sleep, Michael. Don’t
worry now. Sleep.’
‘Everything else
normal. Clear liquids if he should ask for something to drink. If there’s
the slightest change…’
Treacherous witch.
Everything destroyed. The man smiling at him from above the crib. Of course it
had been the time. The very time. He knew that he had lost her forever.
Midnight Mass was over. His mother was crying because his father was dead.
Nothing will ever be the same now.
‘Just sleep it off. We’re
here with you.’
I’ve failed. I didn’t
stop him. I’ve lost her forever.
‘How long have I been
here?’
‘Since yesterday
evening.’
Christmas morning. He was
staring out the window, afraid to move for fear of being sick again. ‘It’s
not snowing anymore, is it?’ he said. He barely heard the answer, that it
had stopped some time before daybreak.
He forced himself to sit up.
Nothing as bad as before. A headache yes, and a little blur to his vision.
Nothing worse than a hangover.
‘Wait, Mr Curry.
Please. Let me call Aaron. The doctor will want to see you.’
‘Yeah, that would be
fine, but I’m getting dressed.’
All his clothes were in the
closet. Nice little traveler’s kit under plastic on the bathroom vanity.
He showered, fighting an occasional bout of dizziness, shaved recklessly and
fast with the little throwaway, and then came out of the bathroom. He wanted to
sink down into the bed again, no doubt about it, but he said:
‘I gotta go back
there, find out what went down.’
‘I’m begging you
to wait,’ said Aaron, ‘to take some food, see how you feel.’
‘Doesn’t matter
how I feel. Can you give me a car? I’ll hitch if you can’t.’
He looked out the window.
Snow still on the ground. Roads would be dangerous. Had to go now.
‘Look, I can’t
thank you enough for taking care of me like this.’
‘What do you mean to
do? You don’t have any idea what you’ll find. Last night she told
me that if I cared about you, to see that you didn’t come back.’
‘Hell with what she
said. I’m going.’
‘Then I’m going
too.’
‘No, you stay here.
This is between me and her. Get me a car, now, I’m leaving.’
It was a big bulky gray
Lincoln town car, hardly his choice though the soft leather seat felt good, and
the thing really cruised when he finally reached the interstate highway. Up
until that point, Aaron had been following in the limo. But there was no sight
of him now, as Michael passed one car after another.
The snow was dirty at the
sides of the road. But the ice was gone. And the sky above was that faultless
mocking blue which made everything look clean and wide open. The headache
gripped him, throwing a curve of dizziness and nausea at him every fifteen
minutes. He just shook it off, and kept his foot on the gas pedal.
He was going ninety when he
cruised into New Orleans, going up past the cemeteries of Metairie and through
the rooftops and then past the ludicrous surreal spectacle of the Superdome
amphitheater, like a space saucer just touching down amid skyscrapers and
church steeples.
He braked too fast, nearly
skidding as he took the St Charles Avenue turnoff. Traffic crawled amid the
frozen strips of soiled snow.
Within five minutes, he made
the left turn onto First, and then the car skidded dangerously again. He braked
and crept his way over the slick asphalt, until he saw the house rising up like
a somber fortress on its dark, shady snow-covered corner.
The gate was open. He put
his key into the front door and let himself in.
For a moment, he stood
stock-still. There was blood all over the floor, smeared and streaked, and the
bloody print of a hand on the door frame. Something that looked like soot
covered the walls, thinning out to a pale grime as it reached the ceiling.
The smell was foul, like the
smell of the sickroom in which Deirdre died.
Smears of blood on the
doorway to the living room. Tracks of bare feet. Blood all over the Chinese
carpet, and some viscous mucuslike substance smeared on the boards, and the
Christmas tree with all its lights burning, like an oblivious sentinel at the
end of the room, a blind and dumb witness who could testify to nothing.
The ache was exploding in
his head, but it was nothing compared to the pain in his chest, and the rapid
knocking in his heart. The adrenaline was flooding his veins. And his right
hand was curling convulsively into a fist.
He turned around, went out
of the parlor and into the hall, and headed towards the dining room.
Without a sound, a figure
stepped into the high keyhole door, peering at him, one slender hand moving up
on the door frame.
It was a strange gesture.
Something distinctly unsteady about the figure as if it too were reeling from
shocks, and as it came forward into the light from the sun porch, Michael
stopped, studying it, straining to understand what he was seeing.
This was a man, clothed in
loose disheveled pants and shirt, but Michael had never seen a man like him.
The man was very tall, maybe six feet two inches in height and
disproportionately slender. The pants were too large, and apparently cinched
tight at the waist, and the shirt was Michael’s shirt, an old sweat
shirt. It hung like a tunic on the slender frame. He had rich black curly hair
and very large blue eyes, but otherwise he resembled Rowan. It was like looking
at a male twin of Rowan! The skin was like Rowan’s smooth and youthful
skin, only even more youthful than that, stretching over Rowan’s
cheekbones, and this was almost Rowan’s mouth, just a little fuller, and
more sensuous. And the eyes, though large and blue, had Rowan in them, and
there was Rowan in the man’s sudden thin, cold smile.
He took another step towards
Michael, and Michael could see he was unsteady on his feet. A radiance emanated
from him. And Michael realized what it was, contradicting reason and
experience, but perfectly obvious in a hideous sort of way, that the thing
looked newborn, that it had the soft resilient brilliance of a baby. Its long
thin hands were baby smooth, and its neck was baby smooth, and the face had no
stamp of character whatsoever.
Yet the expression on its
face was no baby’s expression. It was filled with wonder, and seeming
love, and a terrible mockery.
Michael lunged at it,
catching it by surprise. He held its thin powerful arms in his hands, and was
astonished and horrified by the riff of soft virile laughter that broke from
it.
Lasher, alive before,
alive again, back into the flesh, defeating you! Your child, your genes, your
flesh and her flesh, love you, defeated you, used you, thank you, my chosen
father.
In blind rage, Michael
stood, unable to move, his hands clutching the arms of the being, as it
struggled to free itself, pulling loose suddenly with a great arching gesture,
like a bird drawing back, made of rubber and steel and flexing and preening.
A low shuddering roar came
out of Michael.
‘You killed my child!
Rowan, you gave him our child!’ His cry was guttural and anguished, the
words rushing together in his own ears like noise. ‘Rowan!’
Away from him the creature
dashed, crashing awkwardly against the dining room wall, again throwing up its
hands and laughing. It thrust its arm out, its huge smooth hand slamming
Michael in the chest with ease and throwing him over the dining room table.
‘I am your child,
Father, step back. Look at me!’
Michael scrambled back onto
his feet.
‘Look at you? I’ll
kill you!’
He flew at the creature, but
it danced back into the pantry, arching its back and extending its hands as if
to tease. It waltzed backwards through the kitchen door. Its legs tangled, then
straightened as if it were a straw man. Again its laughter rose, rich and deep
and full of crazy merriment. The laughter was crazed like the eyes of the
being, full of mad and uncaring delight.
‘Oh, come on, Michael,
don’t you want to know your own child! You can’t kill me! You can’t
kill your own flesh and blood! I have your genes in me, Michael. I am you, I am
Rowan. I am your son.’
Lunging again, Michael
caught it and hurled it back against the French doors, rattling the panes. High
up on the front of the house, the alarm sounded as the glass protectors
tripped, adding its maddening peal to the mayhem.
The creature flung its long
gangly arms up, gazing down at Michael in astonishment as his hands closed on
its throat. Then it lifted its two hands in fists and slammed them into Michael’s
jaw.
Michael’s feet went
out from under him, but hitting the floor he rolled over at once on his hands
and knees. The French door was open, the alarm still screaming, and the
creature was dancing, pivoting, and frolicking with a hideous grace towards the
pool.
As he went after it, he saw
Rowan coming in the corner of his eye, rushing down the kitchen stairs. He
heard her scream.
‘Michael, stay away
from him!’
‘You did that, Rowan,
you gave him our child! He’s in our child!’ He turned, his arm
raised, but he couldn’t hit her. Frozen, he stared at her. She was the
very image of terror, her face blanched and her mouth wet and quivering.
Helpless, shuddering, the pain squeezing in his chest like a bellows, he turned
and glared at the thing.
It was skipping back and
forth on the snow covered flagstones beside the rippling blue water, pitching
its head forward and placing its hands on its knees, and then pointing to Michael.
Its voice, loud and distinct, rose over the shrilling of the alarm.
‘You’ll get over
it, as mortals say, you’ll see the light, as mortals say! You’ve
created quite a child, Michael. Michael, I am your handiwork. I love you. I
have always loved you. Love has been the definition of my ambition, they are
one and the same with me, I present myself to you in love.’
He went out the door as
Rowan rushed towards him. He went straight for the thing, sliding on the frozen
snow, tearing loose from her as she tried to stop him. She went down on the
ground as if she were made of paper, and a whipping pain stung his neck. She
had caught the St Michael medal by its chain, and she had the broken chain now
in her hands, and the medal fell into the snow. She was sobbing and begging him
to stop.
No time for her. He spun
round and his powerful left hook went up, bashing into the side of the creature’s
head. It gave another peal of laughter even as the red blood spurted from the
ruptured flesh. It tipped and spun around, slipping on the ice and careening
into the iron chairs and knocking them askew.
‘Oh, now look what you’ve
done, oh, you can’t imagine how that feels! Oh, I have lived for this
moment, this extraordinary moment!’
With a sudden pivot, it dove
for Michael’s right arm, catching it and twisting it painfully back, its
eyebrows raised, lips drawn back in a smile, pearly teeth flashing white
against its pink tongue. All new, all shining, all pristine, like a baby.
Michael drove another left
into its chest, feeling the crunch of bones.
‘Yeah, you like it,
you evil thing, you greedy son of a bitch, die!’ He spit at it, driving
his left fist into it again, even as it clung to his right wrist, like an
unfurling flag tied to him. The blood squirted out of its mouth. ‘Yeah!
You’re in the flesh -now die in it!’
‘I’m losing
patience with you!’ the creature howled, glaring down at the blood
dripping from its lip all over its shirt. ‘Oooh, look what you’ve
done, you angry father, you righteous parent!’ It jerked Michael forward,
off balance, its grip on his wrist like iron.
‘You like it?’
Michael cried. ‘You like your bleeding flesh,’ he roared, ’my
child’s flesh, my flesh!’ Wringing his right hand and unable to
free it, he closed his left fingers around the thing’s smooth throat,
jabbing his thumb into its windpipe while his knee rammed into its scrotum. ‘Oh,
she made you really complete, didn’t she, right down to the outdoor
plumbing!’
In a flash he saw Rowan
again, but it was the thing that knocked her down this time as it let go of
Michael at last. She fell against the balustrade.
The thing was shrieking in
pain, the blue eyes rolling in its head. Before Rowan could get to her feet, it
shot backwards, shoulders rising like wings, and then lowering its head, it
cried, ‘You are teaching me, Father. Oh yes, you’re teaching me
well!’ A growl overrode the words, and it ran at Michael, butting him in
the chest with its head, striking him one fine blow that hurled him off his
feet and out over the swimming pool.
Rowan gave a deafening cry,
far louder and more shrill than the siren of the alarm.
But Michael had crashed into
the icy water. He sank down, down, into the deep end, the blue surface
glittering high above him. The freezing temperature shocked the breath out of
him. He was motionless, scalded by the cold, unable even to move his arms,
until he felt his body scrape along the bottom.
Then in a desperate
convulsion he started for the top, his clothes like fingers grabbing him and
holding him down. And as his head passed through the surface into the blinding
light, he felt another thudding blow and sank again, rising, only to be held
under, his hands up in the air, free in the air, clawing futilely at the thing
that held him, his mouth swallowing gulp after gulp of cold water.
Happening again, drowning
again, this cold cold water. No, not like this, not again. He tried to close
his mouth, but the exploding pain in his chest was too great and the water
poured into his lungs. His hands could feel nothing above; and he could no
longer see either color or light, or even sense up from down. And in a flash he
saw the Pacific again, endless and gray, and the lights of the Cliff House
dimming and vanishing as the waves rose around him.
Suddenly his body relaxed;
he wasn’t struggling desperately to breathe or to rise, not clawing at
anything. In fact, he wasn’t in his body at all. He knew this feeling,
this weightlessness, this sublime freedom.
Only he wasn’t
traveling upward, not rising buoyant and free the way he had that long-ago day,
right up into the leaden gray sky and the clouds, from which he could see all
the earth down there below with its millions upon millions of tiny beings.
He was in a tunnel this
time, and he was being sucked down, and it was dark and close and there seemed
no end to the journey. In a great rush of silence, he plummeted, completely
without will, and full of vague wonder.
At last a great splashing
red light surrounded him. He had fallen into a familiar place. Yes, the drums,
he heard the drums, the old familiar Mardi Gras cadence of marching drums, the
sound of the Comus parade moving swiftly through the winter dark on the tired
dreary edge of Mardi Gras night, and the flicker of the flames was the flicker
of the flambeaux beneath the twisted elbows of the oaks, and his fear was the
all-knowing little boy’s fear of long ago, and it was all here,
everything he’d feared, happening at last, not a mere glimpse on the edge
of dream, or with Deirdre’s nightgown in his hands, but here, around him.
His feet had struck the
steaming ground, and as he tried to stand up, he saw the branches of the oaks
had gone right up through the plaster roof of the parlor, catching the
chandelier in a tangle of leaves, and brushing past the high mirrors. And this
was really the house. Countless bodies writhed in the dark. He was stepping on
them! Gray, naked shapes fornicating and twisting in the flames and in the
shadows, the smoke billowing up to obscure the faces of all those surrounding
him and looking at him. But he knew who they were. Taffeta skirts, cloth
brushing him. He stumbled and tried to get his balance but his hand just passed
right through the burning rock, his feet went down into the steaming muck.
In a circle the nuns were
coming, tall black-robed figures with stiff white wimples, nuns whose names and
faces he knew from childhood, rosaries rattling, their feet pounding on
the heart pine floor as they came, and they closed the circle around him.
Stella stepped through the circle, eyes flashing, her marcelled hair shining
with pomade, and suddenly reached for him and tugged him towards her.
‘Let him alone, he can
climb up on his own,’ said Julien. And there he was, the man himself with
his curling white hair and his small glittering black eyes, his clothes
immaculate and fine, and his hand rising as he smiled and beckoned:
‘Come on, Michael, get
up,’ he said, with the sharp French accent. ‘You’re with us
now, it’s quite finished, and stop fighting at once.’
‘Yes, get up, Michael,’
said Mary Beth, her dark taffeta skirt brushing his face, a tall stately woman,
hair shot through and through with gray.
‘You’re with us
now, Michael.’ It was Charlotte with her radiant blond hair, bosom
bulging over her taffeta decolletage, lifting him, though he struggled to get
away. His hand went right through her breast.
‘Stop it, get away
from me!’ he cried. ‘Get away.’
Stella was naked except for
the little chemise falling off her shoulder, the whole side of her head
dripping with blood from the bullet.
‘Come on, Michael
darling, you’re here now, to stay, don’t you see, it’s
finished, darling. Job well done.’
The drums were thudding
closer and closer, battering at the keening song of a Dixieland band, and the
coffin lay open at the end of the room, with the candles around it. The candles
were going to catch the drapes and burn the place down!
‘Illusion, lies,’
he cried. ‘It’s a trick.’ He tried to stand up straight, to
find some direction in which to run, but everywhere he looked he saw the
nine-paned windows, the keyhole doors, the oak branches piercing the ceiling
and the walls and the whole house like a great monstrous trap re-forming around
the struggling gnarled trees, flames reflected in the high narrow mirrors,
couches and chairs overgrown with ivy and blossoming camellias. The
bougainvillea swept over the ceiling, curling down by the marble mantels, tiny
purple petals fluttering into the smoking flames.
The nun’s hand
suddenly came down like a board against the side of his face, the pain shocking
him and maddening him. ‘What do you say, boy! Of course you’re
here, stand up!’ That bellowing coarse voice. ‘Answer me, boy!’
‘Get away from me!’
He shoved at her in panic, but his hand passed through her.
Julien was standing there
with his hands clasped behind his back, shaking his head. And behind Julien
stood handsome Cortland, with his father’s same expression and his father’s
same mocking smile.
‘Michael, it should be
perfectly obvious to you that you have performed superbly,’ said Cortland,
‘that you bedded her, brought her back, and got her with child, which is
exactly what we wanted you to do.’
‘We don’t want
to fight,’ said Marguerite, her haglike hair veiling her face as she
reached out for him. ‘We’re all on the same side, man cher.
Stand up, please, come to us.’
‘Come now, Michael, you’re
making all this confusion yourself,’ said Suzanne, her big simpleton eyes
flashing and snapping as she helped him to his feet, her breasts poking through
the filthy rags.
‘Yes, you did it, my
son,’ said Julien. ‘Eh
bien, you have been marvelous, both of you, you and Rowan, you have
done precisely what you were born to do.’
‘And now you can go
back through with us,’ said Deborah. She raised her hands for the others
to step aside, the flames rising behind her, the smoke curling over her head.
The emerald glimmered and winked against her dark blue velvet gown. The girl of
Rembrandt’s painting, so beautiful with her ruddy cheeks and her blue
eyes, as beautiful as the emerald. ‘Don’t you see? That was the
pact. Now that he’s gone through, we’re all going to go back
through! Rowan knows how to bring us back through, the same way that she
brought him through. No, Michael, don’t struggle. You want to be with us,
earthbound here, to wait your turn, otherwise you’ll simply be dead
forever.’
‘We’re all saved
now, Michael,’ said fragile Antha, standing like a little girl in her
simple flowered dress, blood pouring down her face on both sides from the
bashed-in wound on the back of her head. ‘And you can’t imagine how
long we’ve been waiting. One loses track of time here…"
‘Yes, saved,’
said Marie Claudette. She was sitting in a big four-poster bed, with Marguerite
beside her, the flames twining around the posts, eating at the canopy. Lestan
and Maurice stood behind the bed, looking on with vaguely bored expressions,
the light glimmering on their brass buttons, flames licking at the edges of
their flared coats.
‘They burned us out in
Saint-Domingue,’ said Charlotte, holding the folds of her lovely skirt
daintily. ‘And the river took our old plantation.’
‘But this house will
stand forever,’ said Maurice gravely, eyes sweeping the ceiling, the
medallions, the listing chandeliers, ‘thanks to your fine efforts at
restoration, and we have this safe and marvelous place in which to wait our
turn to become flesh again.’
‘We’re so glad
to have you, darling,’ said Stella, with the same bored air, shifting her
weight suddenly so that her left hip poked out the silk chemise. ‘Surely
you don’t want to pass up an opportunity like this.’
‘I don’t believe
you! You’re lies, figments!’ Michael spun round, head crashing
through the peach-colored plaster wall. The potted fern went over on the floor.
Couples writhing before him snarled as his foot went through them —
through the back of the man and the belly of the woman.
Stella giggled and sprinted
across the floor, pitching herself back into the satin-lined coffin and
reaching out for her glass of champagne. The drums were growing louder and
louder.
‘Why doesn’t
everything catch fire, why doesn’t it all burn?’
‘Because this is hell,
son,’ said the nun, who raised her hand to slap him again. ‘And it
just burns and burns.’
‘Stop it, let me go!’
He crashed into Julien,
falling forward, the flames flashing upward in a heated blast into his face.
But the nun had him by his
collar. She had the St Michael medal in her hand. ‘You dropped this, didn’t
you? And I told you to take care of it, didn’t I? And where did I find
it? I found it lying on the ground, that’s where I found it!’ And
wham, the slap struck him again, fierce and hurtful, and he seethed with rage.
She shook him as he slipped onto his knees, hands struggling to shove her away.
‘All you can do now is
be with us, and go back through!’ said Deborah. ‘Don’t you
understand? The doorway is open; it’s just a matter of time. Lasher and
Rowan will bring us through, Suzanne first, then I shall go and then -’
‘No, wait a minute
now, I never agreed to any such order,’ said Charlotte.
‘Neither did I,’
said Julien.
‘Who said anything
about order!’ roared Marie Claudette, kicking the quilt off her legs as
she sat forward in the bed.
‘Why are you being so
foolish!’ said Mary Beth, with a bored, matter-of-fact air. ‘My
God, everything has been fulfilled. And there is no limit to how many times the
transmutation can be effected, and you can imagine, can’t you, the
superior quality of the mutated flesh and the mutated genes. This is actually a
scientific advance of stunning brilliance.’
‘All natural, Michael,
and to understand that is to understand the essence of the world, that things
are — hmmmm, more or less predetermined,’ said Cortland. ‘Don’t
you know you were in our hands from the very beginning?’
‘That is the crucial
point for you to understand,’ said Mary Beth reasonably.
‘The fire that killed
your father,’ said Cortland, ‘that was no accident…"
‘Don’t say these
things to me!’ roared Michael. ‘You didn’t do that. I don’t
believe it. I don’t accept it!’
‘… to position
you exactly, and see to it that you had the desired combination of
sophistication and charm, so as to command her attention and cause her to let
down her guard…’
‘Don’t bother
talking to him,’ the tall nun snapped, her rosary beads jangling together
as they hung from her thick leather belt. ‘He’s incorrigible. You
just leave him to me. I’ll slap the fire out of him.’
‘It isn’t true,’
he said, trying to shield his eyes from the glare of the flames, the drums
pounding through his temples. ‘This is not the explanation,’ he
cried. ‘This is not the final meaning.’ He outshouted the drums.
‘Michael, I warned you,’
came the piteous little voice of Sister Bridget Marie, who peeped around the
side of the mean nun. T told you there were witches in those dark streets.’
‘Come here at once,
and have some champagne,’ said Stella. ‘And stop creating all these
hellish images. Don’t you see, when you’re earthbound you create
your surroundings.’
‘Yes, you are making
it so ugly here!’ said Antha.
‘There are no flames
here,’ said Stella. ‘That’s in your head. Come, let’s
dance to the drums, oh, I have grown so to love this music. I do like your
drums, your crazy Mardi Gras drums!’
He thrashed with both his
arms, his lungs burning, his chest about to burst. ‘I won’t believe
it. You’re all his little joke, his trick, his connivance —’
‘No, man cher,’
said Julien, ’we are the final answer and the meaning.’
Mary Beth shook her head
sadly, looking at him. ‘We always were.’
‘The hell you are!’
He was on his feet at last.
He twisted loose from the nun, ducking her next slap, and gliding through her,
and now he sped through Julien’s thickening form, blind for a moment, but
emerging free, ignoring the laughter, and the drums.
The nuns closed ranks but he
went through. Nothing was going to stop him. He could see the way out, he could
see the light pouring through the keyhole door. ‘I will not, I will not
believe…’
‘Darling, think back
to the first drowning,’ said Deborah, suddenly beside him, trying to
capture his hand. ‘It was what we explained to you before when you were
dead, that we needed you, and you did agree, but of course we knew you were
just bargaining for your life, lying to us, you see, and we knew that if we didn’t
make you forget, you would never never fulfill —’
‘Lies! Lasher’s
lies!’ He pulled free of her.
Only a few more feet to the
door, and he could make it. He pitched forward, stumbling again over the bodies
that littered the floor, stepping on backs and shoulders and heads, smoke
stinging his eyes. But he was getting closer to the light.
And there was a figure in
the doorway, and he knew that helmet, that long mantle, he knew that garb. Yes,
knew it, very familiar to him.
I’m coming,’ he
cried out.
But his lips had barely
moved.
He was lying on his back.
His body was shot through
and through with pain, and the frozen silence closed around him. And the sky
high above was that dizzying blue.
He heard the voice of the
man over him saying, ‘That’s right, son, breathe!’
Yes, knew that helmet and
that mantle, because it was a fire fighter’s garb, and he was lying by
the pool, sprawled on the icy cold flagstones, his chest burning, his arms and
legs aching, and it was a fireman bending over him, clapping the plastic oxygen
mask to his face and squeezing the bag beside him, a fireman with a face just
like his dad’s face, and the man said again: ‘That’s it, son,
breathe!’
The other firemen stood over
him, great shadowy shapes against the moving clouds, all familiar by virtue of
their helmets and their coats, as they cheered him on with voices so like his
father’s voice.
Each breath he took was a
raw throb of pain, but he drew the air down into his lungs, and as they lifted
him, he closed his eyes.
‘I’m here,
Michael,’ Aaron said. ‘I’m at your side.’
The pain in his chest was
enormous and pressing against his lungs, and his arms were numb. But the
darkness was clean and quiet and the stretcher felt as if it were flying as
they wheeled him along.
Argument, talk, the crackle
of those walkie-talkie things. But none of it mattered. He opened his eyes and
saw the sky flashing overhead. Ice dripping from the frozen withered
bougainvillea, as they went past, all its blossoms dead. Out the gate, wheels
bouncing on the uneven flagstones.
Somebody pressed the little
mask hard over his face as they lifted him into the ambulance. ‘Cardiac
emergency, coming in now, requesting…’ Blankets all around him.
Aaron’s voice again,
and then another:
‘He’s
fibrillating again! Damn it! Go!’
The doors of the ambulance
slammed, his body rocking to the side slightly as they pulled away from the
curb.
The fist came down on his
chest, once, twice, again. Oxygen pumping into him through the plastic mask,
like a cold tongue.
The alarm was still going,
or was it their siren singing like that, a faraway cry, like the cries of those
desperate birds in the early morning, crows cawing in the big oaks, as if
scratching at the rosy sky, at the dark deep moss-covered silence.
EPILOGUE
FIFTY-THREE
SOME TIME before nightfall,
he understood he was in the critical care unit, that his heart had stopped in
the pool, and again on the way in, and a third time in the Emergency Room. They
were regulating his pulse now with a powerful drug called lidocaine, which was
why he was in a mental fog, unable to hang on to any complete thought.
Aaron was allowed in to see
him for five minutes during every hour. At some point Aunt Vivian was there
too. And then Ryan came.
Various faces appeared over
his bed; different voices spoke to him. It was daylight again when the doctor
explained that the weakness he felt was to be expected. The good news was that
he had sustained relatively little damage to the heart muscle; in fact he was
already recovering. They would keep him on the regulating drugs, and the blood
thinners, and the drugs that dissolved the cholesterol. Rest and heal were the
last words he heard as he went under again.
It must have been New Year’s
Eve that they finally explained things to him. By then the medication had been
reduced and he was able to follow what they were saying.
There’d been no one on
the premises when the fire engine arrived. Just the alarm screaming. Not only
had the glass protectors gone off, but somebody had pushed the auxiliary
buttons for fire, police, and medical emergency. Rushing through the gate and back
the side path, the fire fighters had immediately spotted the broken glass
outside the open French doors, the overturned furniture on the veranda, and the
blood on the flagstones. Then they spotted the dark shape floating just beneath
the surface of the swimming pool.
Aaron had arrived about the
time they were bringing Michael around So had the police. They had searched the
house, but could find no one. There was unexplained blood in the house, and
evidence of some sort of fire. Closets and drawers were open upstairs, and a
half-packed suitcase was open on the bed. But there was no other evidence of a
struggle.
It was Ryan who determined,
later that same afternoon, that Rowan’s Mercedes convertible was gone,
and that her purse and any and all identification were also gone. No one could
find her medical bag, though the cousins were sure they had seen such a thing.
In the absence of any
coherent explanation of what had happened, the family was thrown into a panic.
It was too soon to report Rowan as a missing person, nevertheless police began
an unofficial search. Her car was found in the airport parking garage before
midnight, and it was soon confirmed that she had purchased two tickets to New
York earlier that afternoon, and that her plane had safely landed on schedule.
A clerk remembered her, and that she’d been traveling with a tall man.
The stewardesses remembered both parties, and that they were talking and
drinking during the entire flight. There was no evidence of coercion or foul
play. The family could do nothing but wait for Rowan to contact them, or for
Michael to explain what had happened.
Three days later, on
December 29, a wire had been received from Rowan from Switzerland, in which she
explained that she would be in Europe for some time and instructions regarding
her personal affairs would follow. The wire contained one of a series of code
words known only to the designee of the legacy and the firm of May fair and
Mayfair. And this confirmed to the satisfaction of everyone involved that the
wire had indeed come from Rowan. Instructions were received the same day for a
substantial transfer of funds to a bank in Zurich. Once again the correct code
words were used. Mayfair and Mayfair had no grounds for questioning Rowan’s
instructions.
On January 6, when Michael
was moved out of the critical care unit into a regular private room, Ryan came
to visit, apparently extremely confused and uncomfortable about the messages he
had to relay. He was as tactful as possible.
Rowan would be gone ’indefinitely.’
Her specific whereabouts were not known, but she had been in frequent touch
with Mayfair and Mayfair through a law firm in Paris.
Complete ownership of the
First Street house was to be given to Michael. No one in the family was to
challenge his full and exclusive right to the property. It was to remain in his
hands, and his hands only, until the day he died, at which time it would revert
— according to law - to the legacy.
As for Michael’s
living expenses, he was to have carte blanche to the full extent that Rowan’s
resources allowed. In other words, he was to have all the money he wanted or
ever asked for, without specified limit.
Michael said nothing when he
heard this.
Ryan assured him that he was
there to see to Michael’s smallest wish, that Rowan’s instructions
were lengthy and explicit, and that Mayfair and Mayfair was prepared to carry
them out to the smallest detail. Whenever Michael was ready to go home, every
preparation would be made for his comfort.
He didn’t even hear
most of what Ryan was saying to him. There was no need really to explain to
Ryan, or anyone else, the full irony of this turn of events, or how his
thoughts were running, day in and day out, in a druggy haze, over all the
events and turns of his life from the time of his earliest memories.
When he closed his eyes, he
saw them all again, in the flames and the smoke, the Mayfair Witches. He heard
the beat of the drums, and he smelled the stench of the flames, and he heard
Stella’s piercing laughter.
Then it would slip away.
The quiet would return, and
he would be back in his early childhood, walking up First Street that long-ago
Mardi Gras night with his mother, thinking, Ah, what a beautiful house.
Some time later, when Ryan
had stopped talking and sat patiently in the room merely studying Michael, a
load of questions obviously crowding Ryan’s brain, all of which he was
afraid to voice, Michael asked if the family hated his being in the house. If
they wanted him to relinquish it.
Ryan explained that they did
not hate it at all. That they hoped Michael would live in the house. That they
hoped Rowan would return, that some sort of reconciliation could be effected.
And then Ryan seemed at a loss. Embarrassed and obviously deeply distressed, he
said in a raw voice that the family ’just couldn’t understand what
had happened.’
A number of possible
responses ran through Michael’s mind. From a cool distance, he imagined
himself making mysterious remarks that would richly feed the old family
legends; obscure allusions to the thirteen and to the door, and to the man;
remarks that would be discussed for years to come perhaps, on lawns and at
dinners, and in funeral parlors. But it was really unthinkable to do that. In
fact, it was absolutely crucial to remain silent.
Then he heard himself say,
with extraordinary conviction, ‘Rowan will come back.’ And he didn’t
say anything after that.
Early the next day, when
Ryan came again, Michael did make one request - that his Aunt Vivian move into
the house, if she wanted to. He didn’t see any reason now for her to be
alone in her apartment on the avenue. And if Aaron could be his guest at the
house, that too would make him happy.
Ryan went into a
long-drawn-out lawyerly confirmation that the house was Michael’s house,
and that Michael need ask no one’s permission or approval to implement
his smallest or greatest wish with regard to things at First Street. To this
Ryan added his own deepest concern that Michael call upon him for ’absolutely
anything.’
Finally in the silence which
ensued, Ryan broke down. He said he couldn’t understand where he and the
family had failed Rowan. Rowan had begun shifting enormous sums of money out of
their hands. The plans for Mayfair Medical had been put on hold. He simply
couldn’t understand what had happened.
Michael said, ‘It wasn’t
your fault. You had nothing to do with it.’ And after a long time, during
which Ryan sat there, apparently ashamed of his outburst, and looking confused
and defeated, Michael said again: ‘She’ll come back. You wait and
see. It isn’t over.’
On February 10, Michael was
released from the hospital. He was still very weak, which was frustrating to
him, but his heart muscle had showed remarkable improvement. His overall health
was good. He rode uptown in a black limousine with Aaron.
The driver of the car was a
pale-skinned black man named Henri, who would be living in the back gdrconniere
behind Deirdre’s oak, and taking care of everything for Michael.
The day was clear and warm.
There had been a bitter freeze again right after Christmas, and several
inundating rains, but the weather was now like spring, and the pink and red
azaleas were blooming all over the property. The sweet olive had regained all
of its beautiful green leaves in the aftermath of the freeze, and a new bright
color was coming out on the oak trees.
Everybody was happy,
explained Henri, because Mardi Gras was ’just around the corner.’
The parades would be starting any day now.
Michael took a walk around
the garden. All the dead tropical plants had been cleared away, but the new
banana trees were already springing up from the dark freeze-killed stumps, and
even the gardenias were coming back, dropping their shriv-eled brown leaves and
breaking out in dark glossy new foliage. The bony white crepe myrtle trees were
still bare, but that was to be expected. All along the front fence the
camellias were covered with dark red blossoms. And the tulip magnolias had only
just dropped their great saucerlike blooms; the flagstones were littered with
their large pink petals.
The house itself was shining
clean and in perfect order.
Aunt Vivian had taken the
bedroom which had belonged to Carlotta, and Eugenia was still at the very far
end of the second floor, near the kitchen stairway. Aaron slept in the second
bedroom in the front, the room that had once belonged to Millie Dear.
Michael did not want to
return to the front room, and they had readied the old northside master bedroom
for him. It was quite inviting — even with the high-backed wooden bed in
which Deirdre had died, now heaped with white down comforters and pillows. He
liked in particular the small north-side front porch on which he could go out
and sit at the iron table and look out over the corner.
For days there was a
procession of visitors. Bea came with Lily, and then Cecilia and Clancy and
Pierce, and Randall came by with Ryan who had various papers to be signed, and
others dropped in, whose names he had trouble remembering. Sometimes he talked
to them; sometimes he didn’t. Aaron was very good at taking care of
things for him. Aunt Vivian was very proficient at receiving people as well.
But he could see how deeply
the cousins were troubled. They were chastened, restrained, and above all,
bewildered. They were uneasy in the house, even at times a little jumpy.
Not so Michael. The house
was empty, and clean as far as he was concerned. And he knew every little
repair that had been done; every shade of paint that had been used; every bit
of restored plaster or woodwork. It was his greatest accomplishment, right up
to the new copper gutters, and down to the heart pine floors he’d
stripped and stained himself. He felt just fine here.
‘I’m glad to see
you’re not wearing those awful gloves anymore,’ Beatrice said. It
was Sunday, and the second time she had come, and they were sitting in the
bedroom.
‘No, I don’t
need them now,’ said Michael. ‘It’s the strangest thing, but
after the accident in the pool, my hands went back to normal.’
‘You don’t see
things anymore?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘Maybe
I never used the power right. Maybe I didn’t use it in time. And so it was
taken away from me.’
‘Sounds like a
blessing,’ said Bea, trying to conceal her confusion.
‘Doesn’t matter
now,’ said Michael.
Aaron saw Beatrice to the
door. Only by chance did Michael wander past the head of the steps, and happen
to hear her saying to Aaron, ‘He looks ten years older.’ Bea was
crying, actually. She was begging Aaron to tell her how this tragedy had come
about. ‘I could believe it,’ she said, ‘that this house is
cursed. It’s full of evil. They should never have planned to live in this
house. We should have stopped them. You should make him get away from here.’
Michael went back into the
bedroom and shut the door behind him.
When he looked into the
mirror of Deirdre’s old dresser, he decided that Bea was right. He did
look older. He hadn’t noticed the gray hair at his temples. There was a
little sparkle of gray mixed in with all the rest too. And he had perhaps a few
more lines in his face than he’d had before. Maybe even a lot of them.
Especially around his eyes.
Suddenly he smiled. He hadn’t
even noticed what he put on this afternoon. Now he saw that it was a dark satin
smoking jacket, with velvet lapels, which Bea had sent to him at the hospital.
Aunt Viv had laid it out for him. Imagine, Michael Curry, the Irish Channel
boy, wearing a thing like that, he thought. It ought to belong to Maxim de
Winter at Manderley. He gave a melancholy smile at his image, with one eyebrow
raised. And the gray at his temples making him look, what? Distinguished.
‘Eh bien, Monsieur,’ he said, striving to sound to
himself like the voice of Julien he’d heard on the street in San
Francisco. Even his expression had changed somewhat. He felt he had a touch of
Julien’s resignation.
Of course this was his
Julien, the Julien he had seen on the bus, and whom Richard Llewellyn had once
seen in a dream. Not the playful smiling Julien of his portraits, or the
menacing laughing Julien of the dark hellish place full of smoke and fire. That
place hadn’t really existed.
He went downstairs, slowly,
the way the doctor recommended, and went into the library. There had never been
anything in the desk since it was cleaned out after Carlotta’s.
‘On the contrary,
Rowan not only knows I’m waiting, she wants me to wait, and that is why
she’s given the house to me. In her own way she has asked me to remain
here and continue to believe in her.
‘My worst fear,
however, is now that that greedy thing is in the flesh, it will hurt Rowan. It
will reach some point where it doesn’t need her anymore, and it will try
to get rid of her. I can only hope and pray that she destroys it before that
time comes, though the more I think things over, the more I come to realize how
hard it will be for her to do that.
‘Rowan always tried to
warn me that she had a propensity for evil that I didn’t have. Of course I’m
not the innocent that she supposed. And she isn’t really evil. But what
she is — is brilliant and purely scientific. She’s in love with the
cells of that thing, I know she is, from a purely scientific point of view, and
she’s studying them. She’s studying the whole organism and how it
performs and how it moves through the world, and concentrating on whether or
not it is indeed an improved version of a human being, and if so, what that
improvement means, and how it can eventually be used for good.
‘Why Aaron can’t
accept that, I don’t know either. He is so sympathetic but so
persistently noncommittal. The Talamasca really are a bunch of monks, and
though he keeps pleading with me to go to England, it’s just not
possible. I could never live with them; they are too passive; and much too
theoretical.
‘Besides, it is
absolutely essential that I wait here for Rowan. After all, only two months
have passed, and it may be years before Rowan can finally resolve this. Rowan
is only thirty years old, and that is really young in this day and age.
‘And knowing her as I
do, being the only one who knows her at all, I am convinced that Rowan will
move eventually towards true wisdom.
‘So that is my take on
what happened. The Mayfair Witches as an earthbound coven don’t exist and
never did, and the pact was a lie; and my initial visions were of good beings
who sent me here in the hopes of ending a reign of evil.
‘Are they angry with
me now? Have they turned away from me in my failure? Or do they accept that I
tried, using the only tools I had, and do they see perhaps, what I see, that
Rowan will return and that the story isn’t finished?
‘I can’t know.
But I do know that there is no evil lurking in this house, no souls hanging
about in its rooms. On the contrary, it feels wonderfully clean and bright,
just the way I intended it to be.
‘I’ve been
slowly going through the attics, finding interesting things. I’ve found
all of Antha’s short stories, and they are fascinating. I sit upstairs in
that third-floor room and read them by the sunlight coming in the windows, and
I feel Antha all around me - not a ghost, but the living presence of the woman
who wrote those delicate sentences, trying to voice her agony and her struggle,
and her joy at being free for such a short time in New York.
‘Who knows what else I’ll
find up there. Maybe Julien’s autobiography is tucked behind a beam.
‘If only I had more
energy, if only I didn’t have to take things so slowly, and a walk around
the place wasn’t such a chore.
‘Of course it is the
most exquisite place for walking imaginable. I always knew that.
‘The old rose garden
is coming back, gorgeously, in these warm days, and just yesterday, Aunt Viv
told me that she had always dreamed of having roses to tend in her old age, and
that she would care for them from now on, that the gardener only needed to give
her a little assistance. Seems he remembered "old Miss Belle" who had
taken care of these roses in the past, and he’s been filling her head
with the names of the various species.
‘I think it’s
marvelous, that she is so happy here.
‘I myself prefer the
wilder, less tended flowers. Last week, after they had put the screens back up
on Deirdre’s old porch and I had gotten a new rocking chair for it, I
noticed that the honeysuckle was crawling over the new wooden railing in full
force, and on up the cast iron, just the way it was when we first came here.
‘And outside, in the
flower beds, beneath the fancy camellias, the wild four o’clocks are
coming back, and so is the little lantana that we called bacon and eggs with
its orange and brown flowers. I told the gardeners not to touch those things.
To let it have its old wild look again. After all, the patterns are too
dominant at the moment.
‘I feel as if I’m
moving from diamonds to rectangles to squares when 1 walk around, and I want it
softened, obscured, drenched in green, the way the Garden District always was
in my memory.
‘Also it isn’t
private enough. Today of all days, when people were trooping through the
streets, heading for the parade route on St Charles to see Rex pass, or just to
wander in their carnival costumes, too many heads turned to peer through the
fence. It ought to be more secretive.
‘In fact, regarding
that very question, the strangest thing happened tonight.
‘But let me briefly
review the day, being that it was Mardi Gras, and the day of days.
‘The Mayfair Five
Hundred were here early, as the Rex parade passes on St Charles Avenue at about
eleven o’clock. Ryan had seen to all the arrangements, with a big buffet
breakfast set out at nine, followed by lunch at noon, and an open bar with
coffee and tea all day.
‘Perfect, especially
since I didn’t have to do a damned thing but now and then come down in
the elevator, shake a few hands, kiss a few cheeks, and then plead fatigue,
which was no lie, and go back upstairs to rest.
‘My idea of how to run
this place exactly. Especially with Aaron there to help, and Aunt Vivian
enjoying every minute of it.
‘From the upstairs
porches, I watched the children running back and forth from here to the avenue,
playing on the lawn outside, and even swimming, on account of its being just a
perfectly lovely day. I wouldn’t go near that pool for love nor money,
but it’s fun to see them splashing in it, it really is.
‘Wonderful to realize
that the house makes all this possible, whether Rowan is here or not. Whether I
am here or not.
‘But around five o’clock,
when things were winding down, and some of the children were napping, and
everyone was waiting for Comus, my lovely peace and quiet came to an end
‘I looked up from War and Peace to see Aaron and
Aunt Viv standing there before me, and I knew before they spoke what they were
going to say.
‘I ought to put on
clothes, I ought to eat something, I ought to at least sample the salt-free
dishes Henri had so carefully prepared for me. I ought to come downstairs.
‘And I ought to at
least walk up to the avenue to see Comus, said Aunt Viv, the very last parade
of Mardi Gras night.
‘As if I didn’t
know.
‘Aaron stood quiet all
this time saying nothing, and then he ventured that maybe it would be good for
me to see the parade after all these years, and sort of dispel the mystique
which had built up around it and of course he would be there with me the whole
time.
‘I don’t know
what got into me but I said yes.
‘I dressed in a dark
suit, tie, the works, combed my hair, thrilling at the sight of the gray, and
feeling uncomfortable and constrained after weeks of robes and pajamas, I went
downstairs. Lots of hugs and kisses, and warm greetings from the dozens of
Mayfairs lolling about everywhere. And didn’t I look good? And didn’t
I look much better? And all those tiresome but well-intentioned remarks.
‘Michael, the cardiac
cripple. I was out of breath from simply coming down the stairs!
‘Whatever the case, by
six thirty I started walking slowly towards the avenue with Aaron, Aunt Viv
having gone ahead with Bea and Ryan and a legion of others, and there came
those drums all right, that fierce diabolical cadence as if accompanying a
convicted witch in a tumbrel to be burned at the stake.
‘I hated it with all
my heart, and I hated the sight of the lights up there, but I knew Aaron was
right. I ought to see it. And besides, I wasn’t really afraid. Hate is
one thing. Fear is another. How completely calm I felt in my hate.
‘The crowds were
sparse since it was the very end of the day and the whole season, and there was
no problem at all finding a comfortable place to stand on the neutral ground,
in all the beaten-down grass and litter from the day-long mayhem, and I wound
up leaning against a trolley line pole, hands behind my back, as the first
floats came into view.
‘Ghastly, ghastly as
it had been in childhood, these mammoth quivering papier-mache structures
rolling slowly down the avenue beyond the heads of the jubilant crowds.
‘I remembered my dad
bawling me out when I was seven. "Michael, you’re not scared of
anything real, you know it? But you gotta get over your crazy fear of those
parades." And he was right of course. By that time, I had had a terrible
fear of them, and been a real crybaby about it, ruining Mardi Gras for him and
my mother, that was true. I got over it soon enough. Or at least I learned to
hide it as the years passed.
‘Well, what was I
seeing now, as the flambeau carriers came marching and prancing along, with
those beautiful stinking torches, and the sound of the drums grew louder with
the approach of the first of the big proud high school bands?
‘Just a mad, pretty
spectacle, wasn’t it? It was all much more brightly lighted for one
thing, with the high-powered street lamps, and the old flambeaux were included
for old times’ sake only, not for illumination, and the young boys and
girls playing the drums were just handsome and bright-faced young boys and
girls.
‘Then came the king’s
float, amid cheering and screaming, a great paper throne, high and ornate and
splendidly decorated, with the man himself quite fine in his jeweled crown,
mask, and long curling wig. What extravagance, all that velvet. And of course
he waved his scepter with such perfect composure, as if this wasn’t one
of the most bizarre sights in the world,
‘Harmless, all of it
harmless. Not dark and terrible and no one about to be executed. Little Mona
Mayfair tugged at my hand suddenly. She wanted to know if I would hold her on
my shoulders. Her daddy had said he was tired.
‘Of course, I told
her. The hard part was getting her on and then standing back up, not so good
for the old ticker — I almost died! — but I did it, and she had a
great time screaming for throws and reaching for the junk beads and plastic
cups raining upon us from the passing floats.
‘And what pretty
old-fashioned floats they were. Like the floats in our childhood, Bea
explained, with none of the new mechanical or electric gimmicks. Just lovely
intricate confections of delicate trembling trees and flowers and birds,
trimmed exquisitely in sparkling foil. The men of the krewe, masked and
costumed in satin, worked hard pitching their trinkets and junk into the sea of
upthrust hands.
‘At last it was
finished. Mardi Gras was over. Ryan helped Mona down off my shoulders, scolding
her for bothering me, and I protested that it had been fun.
‘We walked back
slowly, Aaron and I falling behind the others, and then as the party went on
inside with champagne and music, this strange thing happened, which was as follows:
‘I took my usual walk
around the dark garden, enjoying the beautiful white azaleas that were blooming
all over, and the pretty petunias and other annual flowers which the gardeners
had put into the beds. When I reached the big crepe myrtle at the back of the
lawn, I realized for the first time that it was finally coming back into leaf.
Tiny little green leaves covered it all over, though in the light of the moon
it still looked bony and bare.
‘I stood under the
tree for a few minutes, looking towards
‘Whatever the case, I
was drifting in my thoughts and loving the spring warmth, when I realized that
a mother and child were rushing by out there, and that the child, seeing me
under the tree, had pointed and said something to the mother about "that
man."
‘That man.
‘It hit me with a
sudden jolt of hilarity. I was "that man." I had switched places with
Lasher. I had become the man in the garden. I had now taken up his old station
and his old role. I was without question the dark-haired man of
‘No wonder the son of
a bitch said he loved me. He should. He stole my child, my wife and my lover,
and he left me here, planted in his place. He took my life from me, and gave me
his haunting ground in exchange. Why wouldn’t he love me for all that?
‘I don’t know
how long I stood there smiling to myself, and laughing quietly in the darkness,
but gradually I got tired. Just being on my feet for any length of time tires
me out.
‘And then a
brokenhearted sort of sadness came over me, because the pattern seemed to have
significance, and I thought maybe I’ve been wrong all along, and there are
real witches. And we are all damned.
‘But I don’t
believe that.
‘I went on with my
nocturnal wanderings, and later said good-bye to all the lovely Mayfairs,
promising to visit, yes, when I felt better, and assuring them, we’d have
another big party here on St Patrick’s Day in just a very few weeks.
‘The night grew quiet
and empty like any other night in the Garden District finally, and the Comus
parade, in retrospect, became ever more unreal in its prettiness and gaudiness,
like something that couldn’t have taken place with all that pomp and
seriousness in a grown-up world.
‘Yes, conquered that
old beast I did by going. Silenced those drums forever, I hope and pray.
‘And I don’t
believe that it was all patterned and planned and destined. I don’t.
‘Maybe Aaron in his
passivity and his dogmatic open-mindedness can entertain the idea that it was
planned — that even my father’s death was part of it, and that I
was destined just to be a stud for Rowan, and a father for Lasher. But accept
this I do not.
‘And it isn’t
only that I don’t believe it. I can’t.
‘I can’t believe
it because my reason tells me that such a system, in which anyone dictates our
every move — be it a god, or a devil, or our subconscious mind, or our
tyrannical genes - is simply impossible.
‘Life itself must be
founded upon the infinite possibility for choice and accident. And if we cannot
prove that it is, we must believe that it is. We must believe that we can
change, that we can control, that we can direct our own destinies.
‘Things could have
gone differently. Rowan could have refused to help that thing. She could have
killed it. And she may kill it yet. And behind her actions may lie the tragic
possibility that once it had come into the flesh, she couldn’t bring
herself to destroy it.
‘I refuse to judge
Rowan. The rage I felt against her is now gone.
‘And I choose of my
own free will to stay here, waiting for her, and believing in her.
‘That belief in her is
the first tenet of my credo. And no matter how enormous and intricate this web
of events seems, no matter how much it is like all the patterns of flags and
balustrades and repetitive cast iron that dominate this little plot of earth, I
maintain my credo.
‘I believe in Free
Will, the Force Almighty by which we conduct ourselves as if we were the sons
and daughters of a just and wise God, even if there is no such Supreme Being.
And by free will, we can choose to do good on this earth, no matter that we all
die, and do not know where we go when we die, or if a justice or explanation
awaits us.
‘I believe that we can
through our reason know what good is, and in the communion of men and women, in
which the forgiveness of wrongs will always be more significant than the
avenging of them, and that in the beautiful natural world that surrounds us, we
represent the best and the finest of beings, for we alone can see that natural
beauty, appreciate it, learn from it, weep for it, and seek to conserve it and
protect it.
‘I believe finally
that we are the only true moral force in the physical world, the makers of
ethics and moral ideas, and that we must be as good as the gods we’ve
created in the past to guide us.
‘I believe that
through our finest efforts, we will succeed finally in creating heaven on
earth, and we do it every time that we love, every time that we embrace, every
time that we commit to create rather than destroy, every time that we place
life over death, and the natural over what is unnatural, insofar as we are able
to define it.
‘And I suppose I do
believe in the final analysis that a peace of mind can be obtained in the face
of the worst horrors and the worst losses. It can be obtained by faith in
change and in will and in accident, and by faith in ourselves, that we will do
the right thing, more often than not, in the face of adversity.
‘For ours is the power
and the glory, because we are capable of visions and ideas which are ultimately
stronger and more enduring than we are.
‘That is my credo.
That is why I believe in my interpretation of the story of the Mayfair Witches.
‘Probably wouldn’t
stand up against the philosophers of the Talamasca. Maybe won’t even go
into the file. But it’s my belief, for what it’s worth, and it
sustains me. And if I were to die right now, I wouldn’t be afraid.
Because I can’t believe that horror or chaos awaits us.
‘If any revelation
awaits us at all, it must be as good as our ideals and our best philosophy. For
surely nature must em-brace the visible and the invisible, and it couldn’t
fall short of us. The thing that makes the flowers open and the snowflakes fall
must contain a wisdom and a final secret as intricate and beautiful as the
blooming camellia or the clouds gathering above, so white and pure in the
blackness.
‘If that isn’t
so, then we are in the grip of a staggering irony. And all the spooks of hell
might as well dance in the parlor. There could be a devil. People who burn
other people to death are fine. There could be anything.
‘But the world is
simply too beautiful for that.
‘At least it seems
that way to me as I sit here now on the screened porch, in the rocking chair,
with all the Mardi Gras noise having long ago died away, writing by the light
from the distant parlor lamp behind me.
‘Only our capacity for
goodness is as fine as this silken breeze coming from the south, as fine as the
scent of the rain just beginning to fall, with a faint roar as it strikes the
shimmering leaves, so gentle, gentle as the vision of the rain itself strung
like silver through the fabric of the embracing darkness.
‘Come home, Rowan. I’m
waiting.’