Lasher (61 page)

I gasped for breath. My curses had no syllables. The worst kind of curses. All went black.

When I awoke I was in my room.

I was in bed, and Richard, my dear young friend, was with me. And Stella too, holding my hand.

“Mamma had to burn all those old things,” she said.

I said nothing. The fact was, I had suffered a very tiny stroke, and could not for a while speak, though I myself did not know it. I thought my dreamy silence a choice. It was not until the following day when Mary Beth came to me that I realized my words were slurred and I could not find the very ones I chose to use to tell her of my anger.

It was late evening, and when she saw how it was with me she was greatly distressed and called at once for Richard to come, as if it were all his fault. He did come, and together they helped me down the stairs, as if to say, if I could get out of bed and walk, then I could not die that night.

I sat on the living room sofa.

Ah, how I loved that long double parlor. Loved it as you love it, Michael. It was a comfort to me to be there, facing the windows that looked out on the lawn, with all remnants of that brutal fire gone now.

For long hours, Mary Beth spoke. Stella came and went. The gist was that my time and my ways were gone now.

“We are coming into an age,” Mary Beth said, “when science itself may know the name of this spirit, when science will tell us what it is.” On and on she spoke of spiritualists and mediums
and séances and guides, and the scientific study of the occult, and such things as ectoplasm.

I was revolted. Ectoplasm, the thing from which mediums make their spirits material? I didn’t even answer. I was sunk into despair. Stella cuddled beside me and held my hand, and said finally:

“Mamma, do shut up. He isn’t listening to a word you say and you are boring him.”

I gave no argument one way or the other.

“I see far,” said Mary Beth. “I see a future in which our thoughts and words do not matter. I see in our clan our immortality. It will not be in our lifetime—any of us—that Lasher will have his final victory. But it will come and no one will prosper from it as greatly as we will. We shall be the mothers of this prosperity.”

“All hope and optimism,” I sighed. “What of the glen, what of the vengeful spirit? What of the wounds dealt in the olden times, from which its conscience has never healed! This thing was good. I felt its good. But now it is evil!”

And then I was ill again, very ill. They brought my pillows and covers to me there. I could not climb the stairs again until the next day, and I had not quite decided to do it, when something turned my head one last time, with hope, and that was to a final and helpless confidante.

It came about this way.

As I lay on the couch in the heat of the day, feeling the river breeze through the side windows and trying not to smell any taint of that fire in which so much had been burnt, I heard Carlotta arguing—her low sour voice growing ever more fierce as she denounced her mother.

At last she came into the room and glared down at me. She was a thin tall girl of fifteen then, I think. Though her actual birthday escapes me. I remember that she was not so terribly unattractive then, having rather soft hair and what one calls intelligent eyes.

I said nothing, as it was not my policy to be unkind to children, no matter how unkind those children were to me. I took no notice of her.

“And you fuss over that fire,” said she in a cold righteous way, “and you let them do what they have done to that child, and you know it is in fear of Mother. Of you and of Mother.”

“What are you talking about? What child?” said I.

But she was gone, angry and despairing, and stalking away. But soon Stella appeared, and I told her all these words.

“Stella, what does all this mean? What is she talking about?”

“She dared to say that to you? She knew you were ill. She knew you and Mother had quarreled.” Tears sprang to Stella’s eyes. “It’s nothing to us, it’s just those Fontevrault Mayfairs and all their own madness. You know, the Amelia Street gang. Those zombies.”

Of course I knew whom she meant—the Fontevrault Mayfairs being the descendants of my cousin Augustin, whose life I’d taken when I was only fifteen with a pistol shot. His wife and children had founded that line at Fontevrault, as I told you—their own palatial plantation in the Bayou country miles from us, and only now and then at the largest of family get-togethers deigned to pay us a call. We visited their sick. We helped them bury their dead. They did the same with us, but over the years there had been little softening.

Some of them—old Tobias and his son Walker, I believe—had built a fine house on St. Charles Avenue, at Amelia Street, only about fifteen blocks away, and I had watched it being built with interest. A whole pack of them lodged there—old women and old men, all of whom personally despised me. Tobias Mayfair was a feeble old fool who had lived too long just as I had, and as vicious a man as I have ever known, who blamed me his whole life for everything.

The others were not so bad. They were of course rich, sharing in the family enterprises with us, though they had no need of us directly. And Mary Beth with her large family fetes had been inviting them into the fold, especially the younger ones. There had always been a few star-crossed cousins marrying cousins across the dividing line, or whatever it was. Tobias in his hatred called the nuptials wedding dances on Augustin’s grave, and now it was known that Mary Beth wished all cousins to return to the fold, and Tobias was supposedly uttering curses.

I could tell you many amusing stories about him and all his various attempts to kill me. But it’s no matter now. I wanted to know what Stella was talking about, what Carlotta meant. What was all this venom?

“So what have Augustin’s children done now?” I asked, for that was all I ever called them, the whole crazy lot of them.

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel,” said Stella. “That is what it is all
about. Let down your long hair, or waste away in the attic forever.”

She positively sang out these words in her merry fashion.

“It’s Cousin Evelyn, I mean, my darling dear, and everybody’s saying she’s Cortland’s daughter.”

“I beg your pardon. You are referring to my son Cortland? You are saying he has got one of their women with child?
Those
Mayfairs?”

“Thirteen years ago, Cortland snuck off to Fontevrault drunk and got Barbara Ann with child, to be exact. You know, Walker’s daughter. The child was Evelyn, you know, you remember. Barbara Ann died when Evelyn was born. Well, guess what, darling dear? Evelyn is a witch, as powerful a witch as ever there was, and she can see into the future.”

“Says who?”

“Everyone. She has the sixth finger! She’s marked, my darling dear, and positively strange beyond imagining. And Tobias has locked her up for fear that Mother will kill her! Imagine. That you and Mother would harm her. Why, you are the girl’s grandfather! Cortland admitted it to me, though he made me swear never to tell you. ‘You know how Father hates the Fontevrault crowd,’ he said. ‘And what good can I do that girl, when everyone in the household loathes me?’ ”

“Wait a minute, child. Slow down. Do you mean to tell me Cortland took advantage of that addle-brained Barbara Ann, who died giving birth, and he deserted that baby?”

“He never took advantage of her at all,” said Stella. “She was an attic case too. Doubt she’d ever seen another human being before Cortland went up to meet the poor prisoner for himself. And I don’t know what happened. I was barely born then, you know. But don’t go getting angry at Cortland. Cortland, of all your boys, adores you. And he’ll be angry at me, and round it will go. Forget about it.”

“Forget about it! I have a granddaughter locked in an attic fifteen blocks from here? The hell I will forget about it! Her name is Evelyn? She’s the daughter of that poor idiot Barbara Ann! This is what you’re telling me? And that monster Tobias has her locked away? No wonder Carlotta is beside herself. She’s right. It’s atrocious, the whole story!”

Stella leapt up from the chair, clapping her hands. “Mother, Mother,” she cried. “Oncle Julien’s all recovered. He has no more stroke. He is himself again! We’re going to Amelia Street.”

Of course Mary Beth came rushing in. “Did Carlotta tell you about that girl?” she said. “Don’t mix in it.”

“Don’t mix in it!” I was rabid.

“Oh, Mother, really, you are worse than Queen Elizabeth,” cried Stella, “fearing the power of her poor cousin Mary Queen of Scots. That girl cannot harm us! She is no Mary Queen of Scots.”

“I didn’t say that she was, Stella,” said Mary Beth, unruffled and very calm as always. “I have no fear of the child, no matter how powerful she is. I have only pity for her.” She was towering over me. I sat on the couch, resolved to move but still curious to know more before I did so.

“Carlotta started it all, visiting up there. The girl hides in the attic.”

“Does not. Is locked in!”

“Stella, hush up. Be a witch, not a bitch, for the love of heaven.”

“Mother, she’s never been out of the house in her whole life, same story as Barbara Ann! Same reason. There are plenty of witches’ gifts in that family, Oncle Julien. Barbara Ann was sort of crazy, they say, but this girl has Cortland’s blood too, and she sees the future.”

“No one really sees the future,” Mary Beth declared, “and no one should want to see it. Julien, the girl is peculiar. She is shy. She hears voices. Sees ghosts. It’s nothing new. She is more warped and isolated than most, having been brought up by old people.”

“Cortland, how dare he not tell me this!” I said.

“He
didn’t
dare,” said Mary Beth. “He wouldn’t hurt you.”

“He doesn’t care,” said I. “Damn him, to leave a baby daughter with those cousins! And it was Carlotta who went there, to that house, to be under Tobias’s roof, Tobias who has always called me a murderer.”

“Oncle Julien, you are a murderer,” said Stella.

“Hush up once and for all,” said Mary Beth.

Stella sulked, which meant at least a temporary victory.

“Carlotta went there to ask the girl what she saw, to ask her to predict, the most dangerous of games. I forbade it, but she went. She’d heard tell of how this girl had more power than anyone ever in our family.”

“That’s such an easy claim to make,” I said with a sigh. “More power than anyone else. There was a time when I made
it myself, in a long-ago world of horses and carriages, and slaves and peaceful country. More power.”

“Ah, but you see there’s a wrinkle here. This girl has many many Mayfair ancestors. When you mixed Cortland into it, the number became fantastic!”

“Ah, I see,” I said. “Barbara Ann was the daughter of Walker and Sarah, both Mayfairs. Yes, and Sarah was from Aaron and Melissa Mayfair.”

“Yes, and so on it goes back and back. It’s hard to find any ancestor for this child who was not a Mayfair.”

“Now, that is a thought,” said I. And then I wanted my books, I wanted to write this down, to note it and ponder it, and when I remembered with a dull ache that my books were burnt, I felt such bitterness. I grew quiet, and listened to them chatter over me.

“The girl doesn’t see the future any more than anyone else,” declared Mary Beth. She sat down beside me. “Carlotta went there wishing to be upheld, that we were cursed, we were all doomed. It is her song and dance.”

“She sees probabilities as we all do,” said Stella with a melodramatic sigh. “She has strong presentiments.”

“And what happened?”

“Carlotta went up into the attic, to visit Evelyn. She went more than once. She played to the girl, drew her out, and then the girl, who almost never speaks, or does not for years on end, declared some terrible prediction.”

“Which was what?”

“That we should all perish from the earth,” said Stella, “afflicted by him who had raised us and upheld us.” I lifted my head. I looked at Mary Beth. “Julien, there is nothing in it.”

“Is this why you burned my books? Is that why you destroyed all the knowledge I had gathered?”

“Julien, Julien,” she said. “You are old and you dream. The girl said what would get her a gift, perhaps, or make Carlotta leave, for all we know. The girl’s a mute almost. The girl sits in the window all day and watches the traffic on St. Charles Avenue. The girl sings sometimes, or speaks in rhymes. She cannot lace her own shoes or brush her hair.”

“And that wicked Tobias doesn’t let her out,” said Stella.

“Damn it all, I’ve heard enough. Have my car brought round to the front.”

“You can’t go driving,” said Mary Beth, “you’re too ill. Do
you want to die on the front steps of Amelia Street? Have the courtesy to die in your bed with us.”

“I’m not ready for dying yet, my darling daughter,” I declared, “and you tell the boys to bring the car around now, or I’ll walk up there. Richard, where is Richard! Richard, get me fresh clothes, everything. I will change in the library. I cannot walk upstairs. Hurry.”

“Oh, you are really going to scare them out of their wits,” cried Stella. “They’ll think you’ve come to kill her.”

“Why would I do that!” I demanded.

“Because she’s stronger than us, don’t you see? Oncle Julien, look to the legacy, as you are always instructing me. Isn’t there a case for her claiming everything?”

“Certainly not,” said I. “Not so long as Mary Beth has a daughter, and Stella, the daughter of Mary Beth, has a daughter of her own. Not much of a case.”

“Well, they say there are provisions—having to do with power and such, and the witches’ gifts, and all. And they hide that girl so we won’t kill her.”

Richard had come with my clothes. I hastily dressed, and to the teeth, for this ceremonial visit. I sent him for my riding coat—my Stutz Bearcat was open and the roads were muddy then—for my goggles, and for my gloves, and told him once more to hurry.

“You can’t go up there,” Mary Beth said. “You’ll scare him to death and her to death too.”

“If she’s my granddaughter I’m going to get her.”

I stormed to the front porch. I was feeling entirely myself, though I alone noticed one tiny deficit. I could not quite control the movement of my left foot. It would not arch and lift properly as I walked, so I had a little to drag it. But they didn’t see it, damn them, they didn’t know. Death had given a pinch. Death was coming. But I told myself I could live another score of years with this tiny infirmity.