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 nine o’clock. Rita had cried herself to sleep down there.

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

FIVE 114

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 Canal Street. There was a red glow over Canal Street.

All New Orleans was having fun out there, and Rita was locked up, with a nun

sleeping behind a curtain at either end of the dormitory. What would she do

if she didn’t have Deirdre?

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 Mayfair emerald necklace, though Rita

had not heard of it then. "Course Deirdre had not worn it at school. You

couldn’t wear jewelry at all at St Ro’s. And no one would have worn a big

old-fashioned necklace like that anyway, except to a Mardi Gras ball perhaps.

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 115

"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 Europe years and years ago. It

belonged to a great-great-great-great-grandmother back then."

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 116

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 117

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 First Street only five blocks down from Rita’s

house but it might as well have been across the world. It wasn’t the Irish

Channel there. It was the Garden District. And the Mayfair house was a

mansion.

Then Rita got into a terrible fight with Sandy. Sandy said Deirdre had been

crazy. "You know what she did at night? I’ll tell what she did. When

everybody was asleep she pushed the covers off and she moved her body just

like somebody was kissing her! I saw her, she’d open her mouth and she’d move

on the bed you know, move just like, you know, she was really feeling

it!"

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 118

"Shut your filthy mouth!" Rita screamed. She tried to slap Sandy. Everybody

got on Rita. But Liz Conklin took Rita aside and told her to calm down. She

said that Deirdre had done worse than meet that man in the garden.

"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 Mayfair women, were going to make her give up her

baby.

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 119

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 120

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 Magazine Street that on top of everything else, her hair

torn to pieces and the tears streaming down her face. She was a sight all

right.

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!"

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 121

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 122

Another year passed before Rita saw Deirdre again. The baby was long gone.

Some cousins out in California took it. Nice people, everybody said, rich

people. The man was a lawyer like Miss Carl. That baby would be looked after.

Sister Bridget Marie at St Alphonsus told Jerry the nuns at Mercy Hospital

said the baby was a beautiful little girl with blond hair. Not like Deirdre’s

black curls at all. And Father Lafferty had put the baby in Deirdre’s arms

and said to Deirdre, "Kiss your baby," then taken it away from her.

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 Magazine Street.

Rita went up there to the ten o’clock Mass, thinking, Well I’ll just pass by

the Mayfair house on the way back. But she didn’t have to, because Deirdre

was there at Mass, sitting between her great-aunts Miss Belle and Miss

Millie. Thank the Lord no Miss Carlotta.

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 123

Deirdre was back at the sanitarium before long. She’d been walking barefoot

on Jackson Avenue talking out loud to herself. Then they said she was in a

mental hospital in Texas, and after that Rita only heard that Deirdre Mayfair

was "incurably ill" and was never coming home again.

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 Mayfair

tomb a big affair with twelve oven-size vaults inside. The little iron

fence ran all the way around it, enclosing a tiny strip of grass. And the two

marble vases stuck to the front step were full of fresh-cut flowers.

"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 Mayfair’s daughter. He was Miss

Carl’s uncle, and he died at First Street, but that was before my time. I

remember Julien Mayfair, however. He was what you call unforgettable, Julien

was. Till the day he died, he was a fine-looking man. And so was Cortland,

his son. You see, Cortland died that year that Deirdre had that little baby.

Now I didn’t bury Cortland. Cortland’s family lived in Metairie. They say it

was all that ruckus over the baby that killed Cortland. But that don’t

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 124

matter. You can see that Cortland was eighty years old besides. Old Miss

Belle was Miss Carl’s older sister. But Miss Nancy, well, she is Antha’s

sister. It will be Miss Millie next, you mark my words."

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

Mayfair name. Why don’t they take the names of the men they marry?"

"Can’t," Mr. Lonigan said. "If they do, then they don’t get the Mayfair

money. That’s the way it was set up long ago. You have to be a Mayfair to get

Mayfair money. Cortland Mayfair knew it; knew all about it; he was a fine

lawyer; never worked for anybody except the Mayfair family; I remember once

he told me. It was legacy, he said."

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 First Street in 1976, a mindless idiot,

they said, on account of the shock treatments.

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 125

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."

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 126

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 127

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."

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 128

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 129

"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

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 130

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."

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 131

"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

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 132

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

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 133

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 134

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."

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 135

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

TheWitchingHour

FIVE 136

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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 137

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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 138

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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 139

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 "

TheWitchingHour

SIX 140

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

TheWitchingHour

SIX 141

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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 142

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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 143

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

TheWitchingHour

SIX 144

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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 145

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. I 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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 146

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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 147

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

TheWitchingHour

SIX 148

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

TheWitchingHour

SIX 149

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 I 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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 150

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

TheWitchingHour

SIX 151

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!"

TheWitchingHour

SIX 152

"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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 153

"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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 154

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

TheWitchingHour

SIX 155

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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 156

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

TheWitchingHour

SIX 157

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,

TheWitchingHour

SIX 158

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

TheWitchingHour

SIX 159

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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 160

"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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 161

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"

TheWitchingHour

SIX 162

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

TheWitchingHour

SIX 163

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

TheWitchingHour

SIX 164

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

TheWitchingHour

SIX 165

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?"

TheWitchingHour

SIX 166

"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."

TheWitchingHour

SIX 167

"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."

TheWitchingHour

SIX 168

"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."

TheWitchingHour

SIX 169

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

SIX 170

"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."

TheWitchingHour

SIX 171

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

TheWitchingHour

SIX 172

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 I 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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 173

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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 174

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.

TheWitchingHour

SIX 175

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!

TheWitchingHour

SEVEN 176

"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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVEN 177

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVEN 178

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVEN 179

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."

TheWitchingHour

SEVEN 180

"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

TheWitchingHour

EIGHT 181

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 naivet, 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

TheWitchingHour

EIGHT 182

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

TheWitchingHour

EIGHT 183

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

TheWitchingHour

EIGHT 184

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.

TheWitchingHour

EIGHT 185

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.

TheWitchingHour

EIGHT 186

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

TheWitchingHour

EIGHT 187

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

TheWitchingHour

NINE 188

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.

TheWitchingHour

NINE 189

"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.

TheWitchingHour

NINE 190

"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."

TheWitchingHour

NINE 191

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.

TheWitchingHour

NINE 192

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.

TheWitchingHour

NINE 193

"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."

TheWitchingHour

NINE 194

"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

TheWitchingHour

NINE 195

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."

TheWitchingHour

NINE 196

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

NINE 197

"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

TheWitchingHour

NINE 198

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 I 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."

TheWitchingHour

NINE 199

"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."

TheWitchingHour

NINE 200

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."

TheWitchingHour

NINE 201

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

NINE 202

"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."

TheWitchingHour

NINE 203

"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

TheWitchingHour

NINE 204

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

TheWitchingHour

NINE 205

"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."

TheWitchingHour

NINE 206

"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

TheWitchingHour

TEN 207

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."

TheWitchingHour

TEN 208

"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

TheWitchingHour

TEN 209

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."

TheWitchingHour

TEN 210

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."

TheWitchingHour

TEN 211

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"

TheWitchingHour

TEN 212

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

TheWitchingHour

TEN 213

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 clichs "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,

TheWitchingHour

TEN 214

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

TheWitchingHour

ELEVEN 215

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.

TheWitchingHour

ELEVEN 216

"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.

TheWitchingHour

ELEVEN 217

"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.

TheWitchingHour

ELEVEN 218

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.

TheWitchingHour

ELEVEN 219

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."

TheWitchingHour

TWELVE 220

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

TheWitchingHour

PART TWO The Mayfair Witches 221

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 222

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 223

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 224

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 225

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 226

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 227

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 228

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 229

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 230

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 231

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 232

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 233

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 234

"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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 235

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 236

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 237

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 238

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 239

In a soothing voice I tried to tell her in English that she was safe with me,

that I 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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 240

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 241

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 242

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!"

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 243

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 244

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 245

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 exceedingly 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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 246

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 247

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 248

"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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 249

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 250

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 251

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 252

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 253

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 254

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 daughter 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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 255

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 256

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"

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 257

"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 for me."

"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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 258

"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 I 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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 259

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 260

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 261

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTEEN 262

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, I 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

TheWitchingHour

FOURTEEN 263

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

TheWitchingHour

FOURTEEN 264

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!"

TheWitchingHour

FOURTEEN 265

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.

TheWitchingHour

FOURTEEN 266

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. I 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.

TheWitchingHour

FOURTEEN 267

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.

TheWitchingHour

FOURTEEN 268

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.

TheWitchingHour

FOURTEEN 269

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

TheWitchingHour

FOURTEEN 270

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,

TheWitchingHour

FOURTEEN 271

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.

TheWitchingHour

FOURTEEN 272

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

TheWitchingHour

FOURTEEN 273

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.

TheWitchingHour

FOURTEEN 274

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

TheWitchingHour

FOURTEEN 275

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 on?

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 mountainfolk that anyone

could believe such a thing. She has offered a Mass for the repose of the soul

of the unfortunate Com" sse.

TheWitchingHour

FOURTEEN 276

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 Paris? And who can hope

to obtain favor or advancement if he or she is not in attendance upon the

king?

That is all that I have time to write We sail within the hour.

Stefan, must I make it more plain to you? I 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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 277

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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 278

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 279

This afternoon, when I grew tired of my meanderings, 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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 280

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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 281

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 282

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 283

"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!"

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 284

"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 I 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 so?"

"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."

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 285

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 286

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 287

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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 288

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 289

"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 I 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?

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 290

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 291

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 292

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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 293

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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 294

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!"

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 295

"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?

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 296

"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 me?" 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 evil!" 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 not? But come now, such pleasures

await you," she told me.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 297

"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 pleasures?" 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 you?" 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,

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 298

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 299

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 300

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 me?" 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?"

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 301

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, I 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 I 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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 302

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,

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 303

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 304

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 I 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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 305

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 306

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."

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 307

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 308

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. I 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."

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 309

"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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 310

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,

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 311

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 312

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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 313

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTEEN 314

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

TheWitchingHour

SIXTEEN 315

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."

TheWitchingHour

SIXTEEN 316

"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 I 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

TheWitchingHour

SIXTEEN 317

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

TheWitchingHour

SIXTEEN 318

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.

TheWitchingHour

SIXTEEN 319

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 illusion! 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

him! 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 waked? Did Charlotte stay his hand?

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 glass! but I refused to raise my

eyes to it, and finally the image faded away.

TheWitchingHour

SIXTEEN 320

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 I

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 live? What could I do for it that

it would cease its evil tricks7 And what had Charlotte commanded it to do?

TheWitchingHour

SIXTEEN 321

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

TheWitchingHour

SIXTEEN 322

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

TheWitchingHour

SIXTEEN 323

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.

TheWitchingHour

SIXTEEN 324

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 325

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 326

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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 327

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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 328

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 1700s 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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 329

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 330

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 main 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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 331

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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 332

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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 333

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 fiance’ 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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 334

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 335

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

convulsion.

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,

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 336

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 337

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,

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 338

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 339

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 1600s."

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,

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 340

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 1880s

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

1950s, 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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 341

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 342

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 1870s and 1880s.

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 343

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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 344

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

1600s. 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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 345

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 346

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 347

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 348

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 bisexuality. 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 1850s.

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 1880s, 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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 349

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 350

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 351

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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 352

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 outshined

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."

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 353

"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,

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 354

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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 355

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 356

"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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 357

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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 358

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 wonderful!

"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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 359

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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 360

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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 361

"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 I 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, I feel

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 362

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

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 363

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, Uncle 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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 364

"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.

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 365

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?"

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 366

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."

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 367

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

SEVENTEEN 368

"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.

TheWitchingHour

EIGHTEEN 369

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.

TheWitchingHour

EIGHTEEN 370

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.

TheWitchingHour

EIGHTEEN 371

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 372

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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 373

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 374

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 375

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 376

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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 377

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 378

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 379

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 380

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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 381

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 382

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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 383

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 384

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 I? 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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 385

"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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 386

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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 387

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 388

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 1840s, 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 1830s, 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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 389

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 legally!" 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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 390

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 391

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

father?

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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 392

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 393

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 394

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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 395

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 to? 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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 396

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 397

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 398

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 1920s 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 man? 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."

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 399

"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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 400

Mary Beth continued to enjoy her three main 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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 401

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 402

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 Mayfairs (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."

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 403

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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 404

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 405

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 1920s, 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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 406

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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 407

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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 408

"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 Lasher? 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

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 409

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 parlor 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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 410

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 1920s 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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 411

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 explanation 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 sance 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).

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 412

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 much? 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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 413

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 imagine?

And you ask me do I know the meaning of the words, ’the man’?

"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 it?

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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 414

"It was a sance 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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 415

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.

TheWitchingHour

NINETEEN 416

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 reexamine, 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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 417

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 418

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 419

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 1840s, 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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 420

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 421

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 422

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 discarnate

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 423

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, I 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 Sisters? 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 hole! 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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 424

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 425

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 him!" 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."

"Yes! 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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 426

"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 sances 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 you! That’s just the point

Look, come around eight o’clock, will you? 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 frightened? 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 son! 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?

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 427

"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 do? 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 afraid? 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 child? 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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 428

"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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 429

"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 it!

Then the inevitable happened, the image begin to fade "Stuart!" 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.’

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 430

"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 moldering 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 house! Yet

he was imploring me to leave here! 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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 431

"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, spirit?" 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 modeled 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 much?"

"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.

I 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 you?" she said.

She seemed on the edge of hysteria "You can tell them you saw that!"

"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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 432

"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 me? Can’t you tell that I’m speaking the truth?"

"All right. What do you want me to do?"

"Just help me! 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 time! 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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 433

"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.

I 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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 434

"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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 435

"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 me! 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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY 436

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 cruelly, 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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-ONE 437

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-ONE 438

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 439

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 440

"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 anything! 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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 441

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 dead!"

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 442

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 443

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 all? 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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 444

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 reaction? And if we were going to give this history to Carlotta, why

not give it also to Cortland and his brothers? 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?

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 445

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,

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 446

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 447

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 448

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 449

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 450

"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 I 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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 451

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 452

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 coin 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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 453

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 454

"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 "Cortland 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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 455

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 New 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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 456

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 457

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 458

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 459

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 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 her!" Carlotta said

"What in the name of God was I expected to do!" 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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 460

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

days? 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,

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 461

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 462

"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 Witches? 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 service? No one had ever asked these questions before

Fingerprints? 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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 463

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 period? 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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 464

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 crying 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 deliverymen 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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 465

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 466

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 467

"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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 468

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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 469

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 470

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!"

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-TWO 471

"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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 472

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 473

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 474

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,

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 475

"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 treatment! 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 disappeared!" 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. Lightner, 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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 476

"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 job. 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 1600s, 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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 477

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 478

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 479

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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 480

"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!

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 481

"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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 482

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 483

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 484

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 uncomfortable 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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 485

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 1600s. 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 my 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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 486

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 487

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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 488

"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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 489

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. I 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, Angelique, 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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 490

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 491

"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 reevaluation. 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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 492

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 493

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 494

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 495

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 496

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 497

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 1, 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!"

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 498

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?"

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 499

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 500

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 501

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 502

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-THREE 503

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FOUR 504

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FOUR 505

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FOUR 506

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FOUR 507

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?

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FOUR 508

"- 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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FOUR 509

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FOUR 510

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FOUR 511

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FOUR 512

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FOUR 513

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 514

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,

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 515

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 516

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 517

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 518

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 519

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 520

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 521

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 522

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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 523

"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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 524

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 525

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 526

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 527

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 528

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 529

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 530

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?

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 531

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 532

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-FIVE 533

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.-I 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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-SIX 534

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-SIX 535

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?"

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-SIX 536

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-SEVEN 537

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-SEVEN 538

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-SEVEN 539

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-SEVEN 540

"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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-SEVEN 541

"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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-SEVEN 542

"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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 543

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 544

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:

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 545

"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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 546

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 547

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 548

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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 549

"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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 550

"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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 551

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 552

"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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 553

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 554

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 555

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 556

"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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 557

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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 558

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 559

"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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 560

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. "Turn 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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 561

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?"

"I 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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 562

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 563

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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 564

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 565

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 566

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 567

"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, waiting, 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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-EIGHT 568

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 569

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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 570

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

I 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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 571

"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, unchallengingly.

"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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 572

"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.

"I 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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 573

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"

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 574

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 575

"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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 576

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 577

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 578

"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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 579

"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 get here. 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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 580

"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."

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 581

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 582

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 583

"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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 584

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 585

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 586

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 587

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.

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 588

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

TheWitchingHour

TWENTY-NINE 589

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 590

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!

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 591

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 592

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 593

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 594

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 595

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 596

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 597

"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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 598

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?"

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 599

"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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 600

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 601

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 602

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 603

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 604

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 605

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 606

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 607

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 608

"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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY 609

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 610

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 611

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 612

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 613

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 614

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 615

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 616

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 617

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 618

"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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 619

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 620

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,

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 621

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 622

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 623

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 624

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 625

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 626

"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. I

shall be flesh when you are dead.

"He’s speaking to me, the devil’s speaking to me! You hear it?"

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 627

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 628

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 629

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 630

"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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 631

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 632

"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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 633

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 634

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 Christmas 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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 635

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-ONE 636

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 637

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 638

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 639

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 640

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 641

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 642

"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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 643

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 644

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 645

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 646

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 647

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 648

"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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 649

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 650

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?"

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 651

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-TWO 652

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

TheWitchingHour

PART THREE Come into my Parlor 653

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-THREE 654

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 1970s and early 1980s 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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-THREE 655

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-THREE 656

"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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-THREE 657

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-THREE 658

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"

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-THREE 659

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-THREE 660

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-THREE 661

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-FOUR 662

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-FOUR 663

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-FOUR 664

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-FOUR 665

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-FIVE 666

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-FIVE 667

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 clich goes."

He nodded. "I see what you’re saying," he responded. "But are they going to

give you trouble?"

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-FIVE 668

"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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-FIVE 669

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-FIVE 670

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-FIVE 671

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-FIVE 672

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-FIVE 673

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-SIX 674

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-SIX 675

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-SIX 676

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?"

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-SIX 677

"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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-SIX 678

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-SEVEN 679

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-SEVEN 680

"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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-SEVEN 681

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-SEVEN 682

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-SEVEN 683

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 fianc 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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-EIGHT 684

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-EIGHT 685

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-EIGHT 686

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-EIGHT 687

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. "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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-EIGHT 688

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-EIGHT 689

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-EIGHT 690

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-EIGHT 691

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-EIGHT 692

"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,

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-EIGHT 693

"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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-EIGHT 694

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-EIGHT 695

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-EIGHT 696

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 697

"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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 698

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 699

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 700

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 701

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.?’) 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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 702

"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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 703

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 704

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 705

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 706

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 707

"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 am I!"

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 708

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 709

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, "Carlotta 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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 710

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 711

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 712

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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 713

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 714

"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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 715

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 716

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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 717

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 718

"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

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 719

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?

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 720

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."

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 721

"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.

TheWitchingHour

THIRTY-NINE 722

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 Devil’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.

TheWitchingHour

PART FOUR The Devil’sBride 723

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

TheWitchingHour

FORTY 724

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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY 725

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY 726

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

TheWitchingHour

FORTY 727

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

TheWitchingHour

FORTY 728

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

TheWitchingHour

FORTY 729

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY 730

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

TheWitchingHour

FORTY 731

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY 732

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY 733

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY 734

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?"

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-ONE 735

"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 Christopher 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?

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-ONE 736

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-ONE 737

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-ONE 738

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-ONE 739

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-ONE 740

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-ONE 741

"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

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 742

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 743

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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 744

"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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 745

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 746

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 747

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 748

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 749

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 750

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 751

"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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 752

"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. I 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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 753

"Very well," he said. "Talk of the future always brings unhappiness 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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 754

"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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 755

"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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 756

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 757

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 758

"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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 759

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 760

"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

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 761

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 I 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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 762

"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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 763

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

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 764

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

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 765

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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 766

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 767

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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-TWO 768

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-THREE 769

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-THREE 770

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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-THREE 771

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-THREE 772

"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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-THREE 773

"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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-THREE 774

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

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-THREE 775

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-FOUR 776

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-FOUR 777

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-FOUR 778

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-FOUR 779

"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, I 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?"

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-FOUR 780

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-FOUR 781

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?"

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-FOUR 782

"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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-FIVE 783

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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-FIVE 784

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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-FIVE 785

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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-FIVE 786

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-FIVE 787

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-FIVE 788

"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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-SIX 789

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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-SIX 790

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

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-SEVEN 791

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?"

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-SEVEN 792

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-SEVEN 793

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-EIGHT 794

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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-EIGHT 795

"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

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-EIGHT 796

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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-EIGHT 797

"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?"

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-EIGHT 798

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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-EIGHT 799

"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."

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-EIGHT 800

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

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-NINE 801

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 beginning

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FORTY-NINE 802

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY 803

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY 804

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."

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY 805

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY 806

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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY 807

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."

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY 808

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY 809

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY 810

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-ONE 811

"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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-ONE 812

"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."

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-ONE 813

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! I 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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-ONE 814

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."

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-ONE 815

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-ONE 816

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-ONE 817

"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."

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-TWO 818

"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."

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-TWO 819

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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-TWO 820

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."

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-TWO 821

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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-TWO 822

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-TWO 823

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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-TWO 824

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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-TWO 825

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"

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-TWO 826

"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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-TWO 827

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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-TWO 828

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.

TheWitchingHour

EPILOGUE 829

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-THREE 830

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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-THREE 831

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 shriveled 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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-THREE 832

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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-THREE 833

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 I walk

around, and I want it softened, obscured, drenched in green, the way the

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-THREE 834

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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-THREE 835

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-mch 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.

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-THREE 836

"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 First Street, and

watching the last stragglers from the avenue pass the iron fence. I think I

was wondering if I could chance a cigarette out here with no one to catch me

and stop me, and then I realized that of course I didn’t have any, that Aaron

and Aunt Viv, on the doctor’s orders, had thrown them all away.

"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 First Street, and the pattern of it and the irony of it made me laugh and

laugh.

"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

TheWitchingHour

FIFTY-THREE 837

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."