Lasher

Forty

THE MORNING LIGHT woke him up. He was sitting in her room, by the bed, and she was staring at the light just as if she could see it. He didn’t remember falling asleep.

Sometime during the night he had told her the whole story. Everything. He had told Lasher’s story and how he’d killed Lasher and how he’d slammed the hammer right into the soft spot in the top of Lasher’s head. He didn’t even know if he’d been talking loud enough for her to hear. He thought so. He had told it in a monotone. He had thought, She would want to know. She would want to know that it’s finished and what happened. She had told the man in the truck that she was coming home.

Then he’d fallen quiet. When he closed his eyes he heard Lasher’s soft voice in his memory, talking of Italy and the beautiful sunshine, and the Baby Jesus; he wondered how much Rowan had known.

He wondered if Lasher’s soul was up there, if it was true that St. Ashlar would come again. Where would it be next time? At Donnelaith? Or here in this house? Impossible to know.

“I’ll be dead and gone by then, that’s for certain,” he said softly. “It took him a century to come to Suzanne. But I don’t think he’s here any longer. I think he found the light. I think Julien found it. Maybe Julien helped him find it. Maybe Evelyn’s words were true.”

He said the poem over to her softly, stopping before the last verse. Then he said it:

Crush the babes who are not children Show no mercy to the pure Else shall Eden have no Springtime. Else shall our kind reign no more.

He waited a moment, then he said, “I felt sorry for him. I felt the horror. I felt it. But I had to do what I did. I did it for the small reasons, if the love of one’s wife and child can be called small. But there were the great reasons, and I knew the others wouldn’t do it; I knew he would seduce and overcome all of them; he had to. That was the horror of it. He was pure.”

After that he’d fallen asleep. He thought he had dreamed of England, of snowy valleys and great cathedrals. He figured he would dream these dreams for some time. Maybe for always. It was raining right through the sunshine. Good thing.

“Honey, do you want me to sing to you?” he asked softly. Then he laughed. “I only know about twenty-five old Irish songs.” But then he lost his nerve. Or maybe he thought about Lasher’s face when Lasher had told about singing to the people, the big innocent blue eyes. He thought of the smooth black beard and the hair on the upper lip, and the great childlike vivacity in him, and the way he had sung sotto voce to show them what the melody had been.

Dead, I killed it. He shuddered all over! Morning. Don’t worry. Get up.

Hamilton Mayfair had come into the room.

“Want some coffee? I’ll sit with her for a while. She looks so…pretty this morning.”

“She always looks pretty,” said Michael. “Thanks, I will go down for a while.”

He went out and down the steps.

The house was full of light, and the rain sparkled on the clear panes of the windows.

He could still smell the fire in the house, which Mona had made last night in the bedroom fireplace when she burnt his clothes.

It made him want to make a real big fire in the living room and drink his coffee there, with the sun and the fire to make him warm.

He crossed the parlor to the first fireplace, his favorite of the two, with its flowers carved in marble, and he sat down, folded his legs Indian style and leaned back against the stone. He hadn’t the energy to make a cup of coffee, or to get the kindling and the wood. He didn’t know who was in the house. He didn’t know what he would do.

He closed his eyes. Dead, it’s dead, you killed it. It’s finished.

He heard the front door open and close, and Aaron came into the room. He didn’t see Michael at first, and then when he did he gave a little start.

Aaron was freshly shaved, and wore a pale gray wool Norfolk jacket and a clean white shirt and tie. His thick white hair was beautifully combed, and his eyes were rested and clear.

“I know you’ll never forgive me,” said Michael. “But I had to do it. I had to. That’s the only reason I was ever here.”

“Oh, there’s no question of my forgiving you,” said Aaron in a deliberately comforting voice. “Don’t think of this, not even for a moment. Put it out of your mind as though it were something harmful to you to think about. Put it away. It’s just-I couldn’t help you. I couldn’t have done it myself.”

“Why? Was it the mystery of the thing or did you feel sorry for it, or was it love?”

Aaron pondered. He glanced about, to make certain perhaps that no one else was near. He came forward slowly, then sank down on the edge of the needlepoint chair.

“I honestly don’t know,” he said, looking gravely at Michael. “I couldn’t have killed it.” His voice dropped so low Michael could scarcely hear him as he went on. “I couldn’t have done it.”

“And the Order? What about them?”

“I have no answers when it comes to the Order. I have messages-to call Amsterdam, to call London. To come back. I won’t go. Yuri will find the answer. Yuri left this morning. It took wild horses to drag him from Mona, but he had to go. He has promised to call us both every night. He is so smitten with Mona that only this mission could distract him. But he has to seek an audience with the Elders. He is determined to discover what really happened, if Stolov and Norgan were sent to bring it back, and if so, were the Elders the ones who directed them in what they did.”

“And you? What do you think, or should I say suspect?”

“I honestly don’t know. Sometimes I think I’ve spent my life being the dupe of others. I think they will come soon and I will die, just the way the two doctors did. And you mustn’t do anything if that should happen. There is nothing you can do. At other times I don’t believe the Order is anything but a group of old scholars, gathering information that others would destroy. I cannot believe it had an occult purpose! I cannot. I believe we will discover that Stolov and Norgan made the decision to breed the being. That when the medical information fell into their hands, they saw something they couldn’t resist. Must have been rather like it was for Rowan. Seeing this medical miracle. Must have been what she felt when she took the being out of this house. ‘Scholars will but nourish evil. Scientists would raise it high.’

“Yes, perhaps so. They happened upon a dangerous and useful discovery. They broke faith with the others. They lied to the Elders. I don’t know. I’m not part of it anymore. I’m outside. Whatever is discovered, it won’t be made known to me.”

“But Yuri? Could they hurt him?”

Aaron gave a discouraged sigh.

“They’ve taken him back. Or so they say. He isn’t afraid of them, that’s certain. He has gone back to London to face them. I think he thinks he can care for himself.”

Michael thought of Yuri-of their brief acquaintance-not in terms of one picture, but many, and an overall impression of innocence and shrewdness and strength.

“I am not so worried,” said Aaron. “Mainly because of Mona. He wants to come back to Mona. Therefore he’ll be more careful. For her sake.”

Michael smiled and nodded. “Makes sense.”

“I hope he finds the answer. It’s his obsession now, the Order, the mystery of the Elders, the purpose. But then maybe Mona will save him. As Beatrice saved me. Strange, isn’t it, the power of this family? The power that they possess that has nothing whatsoever to do with…him.”

“And Stolov and Norgan? Will someone come looking for them?”

“No. Put that out of your mind too. Yuri will take care of it. There is no evidence here of either man. No one will come looking, asking. You’ll see.”

“You seem very resigned but you’re not happy,” said Michael.

“Well, I think it’s a bit early to be happy,” said Aaron softly. “But I’m a damned sight happier than I was before.” He thought for a moment. “I am not ready to sweep away all the beliefs of a lifetime because two men did evil things.”

“Lasher told you,” said Michael. “He told you it was the purpose of the Order.”

“Ah, he did. But that was long long ago. That was in another time when men believed in things that they do not believe in now.”

“Yes, I suppose it was.”

Aaron sighed and gave a graceful shrug.

“Yuri will find out. Yuri will come back.”

“But you’re not really afraid they’ll hurt you, if they are the bad guys, I mean.”

“No,” said Aaron. “I don’t think they will bother. I do know them…somewhat…after all these years.”

Michael made no answer.

“And I know I am no longer a part of them,” Aaron continued, “in any conceivable way. I know that this is my home. I know I am married and I will stay with Bea and this is my family. And perhaps…perhaps…as for the rest of it…the Talamasca, its secrets, its purposes…perhaps…I don’t care. Perhaps I stopped caring on Christmas when Rowan lost the first round of her battle. Perhaps I ceased to care altogether and for certain when I saw Rowan on the stretcher, and her face blank, her mind gone. I don’t care. And when I don’t care about something, in an odd way, I can be as determined about it as about anything else.”

“Why didn’t you call the police about Stolov and Norgan?”

Aaron seemed surprised. “You know the answer,” he said. “I owed you that much, don’t you think? Let me give you some of my serenity. Besides, Mona and Yuri made the decision, really. I was a bit too dazed to take credit. We did the simpler thing. As a rule of thumb, always do the simpler thing.”

“The simpler thing.”

“Yes, what you did to Lasher. The simpler thing.”

Michael didn’t answer.

“There is so much to be done,” said Aaron. “The family doesn’t realize that it is safe, but it soon will. There will be many subtle changes as people come to realize that it’s finished. That the blinds are really open and the sun can really come in.”

“Yes.”

“We will get doctors for Rowan. We will get the best. Ah, I meant to bring a tape with me, the Canon by Pachelbel. Bea said Rowan loved it, that one day they had played it when Rowan was at Bea’s. Bea’s. I’m speaking of my own home.”

“Did you believe all he said-about the Taltos, about the legends and the little people?”

“Yes. And no.”

Aaron thought for a long moment, then he added:

“I want no more mysteries or puzzles.” He seemed amazed at his own calm. “I want only to be with my family. I want for Deirdre Mayfair to forgive me for not helping her; for Rowan Mayfair to forgive me for letting this happen to her. I want you to forgive me for letting you be hurt, for letting the burden of the killing fall upon you. And then I want, as they say, to forget.”

“The family won,” said Michael. “Julien won.”

“You won,” said Aaron. “And Mona has just begun her victories,” he said with a little smile. “Quite a daughter you have in Mona. I think I’ll walk uptown to see Mona. She says she is so in love with Yuri that if he doesn’t call by midnight, she may go mad! Mad as Ophelia went mad. I have to see Vivian and visit with Ancient Evelyn. Would you like to come? It’s a beautiful walk up the Avenue, just the right length, about ten blocks.”

“Not now. A little later perhaps. You go on.” There was a pause.

“They want you up at Amelia Street,” said Aaron. “Mona is hoping you will guide the restorations. The place hasn’t been tampered with in many a year.”

“It’s beautiful. I’ve seen it.”

“It needs you.”

“Sounds like something I can handle. You go on.”

The rain came again the next morning. Michael was sitting under the oak outside, near the freshly turned earth, merely looking at it, looking at the torn-up grass.

Ryan came out to talk to him, staying carefully to the path not to get mud on his shoes. Michael could see it was nothing urgent. Ryan looked rested. It was as if Ryan could sense that things were over. Ryan ought to know.

Ryan didn’t even glance at the big patch of earth above the grave. It all looked like the moist and sparse earth around the roots of a big tree where grass would not grow.

“I have to tell you something,” said Michael.

He saw Ryan stop-a sudden revelation of weariness and fear-then catch up with himself and very slowly nod.

“There’s no danger anymore,” Michael said. “From anyone now. You can pull off the guards. One nurse in the evenings. That is all we require. Get rid of Henri too, if you would. Pension him off or something. Or send him up to Mona’s place.”

Ryan said nothing, then he nodded again.

“I leave it to you, how you tell the others,” said Michael. “But they should know. The danger’s past. No more women will suffer. No more doctors will die. Not in connection with this. You may hear again from the Talamasca. If you do, you can send them to me. I don’t want the women to go on being frightened. Nothing will happen. They are safe. As for those doctors who died, I know nothing that would help. Absolutely nothing at all.”

Ryan seemed about to ask a question, but then he thought better of it, obviously, and he nodded again.

“I’ll take care of it,” Ryan said. “You needn’t worry about any of those things. I’ll take care of the question of the doctors. And that is a very good suggestion, regarding Henri. I will send him uptown. Patrick will just have to put up with it. He’s in no condition to argue, I suppose. I came out to see how you were. Now I know that you are all right.”

It was Michael’s turn to nod. He gave a little smile.

After lunch, he sat again by Rowan’s bed. He had sent the nurse away. He couldn’t stand her presence any longer. He wanted to be here alone. And she had hinted heavily that she needed to visit her own sick mother at Touro Infirmary, and he said, “Things are just fine around here. You go on. Come back at six o’clock.”

She’d been so grateful. He stood by the window watching her walk away. She lit a cigarette before she reached the corner, then hurried off to catch the car.

There was a tall young woman standing out there, gazing at the house, her hands on the fence. Reddish-golden hair, very long, kind of pretty. But she was like so many women now, bone-thin. Maybe one of the cousins, come to pay her respects. He hoped not. He moved away from the window. If she rang the bell, he wouldn’t answer. It felt too good to be alone at last.

He went back to the chair and sat down.

The gun lay on the marble-top table, big and sort of ugly or beautiful, depending on how one feels about guns. They were no enemy to him. But he didn’t like it there, because he had a vision of taking it and shooting himself with it, and then he stared at Rowan, and thought: “No, not as long as you need me, honey, I won’t. Not before something happens…” He stopped.

He wondered if she could sense anything, anything at all.

The doctor had said this morning she was stronger; but the vegetative state was unchanged.

They had given her the lipids. They had worked her arms and legs. They had put the lipstick on her. Yes, look at it, very pink, and they had brushed her hair.

And then there’s Mona, he thought. “Yuri or no Yuri, she needs me too. Oh, it’s not really that she does,” he said aloud to the silence. “It’s that anything more would hurt her. It would hurt them all. I have to be here on St. Patrick’s Day, don’t I? To greet them at the door. To shake their hands. I am the keeper of the house until such time as…”

He lay back against the chair thinking of Mona, whose kisses had been so chaste since Rowan came home. Beautiful little Mona. And that dark, clever Yuri. In love.

Maybe Mona was already working out the scheme for Mayfair Medical. Maybe she and Pierce were working on it now uptown.

“Now, we are not handing the family fortune over to this juvenile delinquent!” Randall had said in a booming voice last night, when arguing with Bea outside Rowan’s door.

“Oh, do be quiet,” Bea had answered. “That’s ridiculous. It’s like royalty, you old idiot. She is a symbol. That’s all.”

He sat back, legs outstretched under the bedskirt, hands clasped on his chest, staring at the gun-staring at its silver-gray trigger, so inviting, and its fat gray cylinder full of cartridges, and the sheath of black synthetic closed over the barrel, oddly like a hangman’s noose.

No, sometime later, perhaps, he thought. Although he didn’t think he would ever do it that way. Maybe just drink something strong, something that crept through you and poisoned you slowly, and then crawl in bed beside her and hold onto her, and go to sleep with her in his arms.

When she dies, he thought. Yes. That’s exactly what I’ll do.

He had to remember to take the gun away and put it someplace safe. With all the children, you never knew what would happen. They had brought children to see Rowan this morning-and St. Patrick’s Day would draw the children, as well. Big parade on Magazine Street only two blocks away. Floats. People throwing potatoes and cabbages-all the makings of an Irish stew. The family loved it; they’d told him. He would love it too.

But move the gun. Do that. One of the children might see it.

Silence.

The rain falling. The house creaking as if it were populated when it was not. A door slamming somewhere as if in the wind. Maybe a door of a car outside, or the door of another house. Sound could play tricks on you like that.

Rain tapping on the granite windowsills, a sound peculiar to this octagonal and ornate room.

“I wish…I wish there was someone to whom I could…confess,” he said softly. “The main thing for you to know is that you never have to worry anymore. It’s finished, the way I think you wanted it finished. I just wish there was some kind of final absolution. It’s strange. It was so bad when I failed at Christmas. And now somehow it’s harder, that I’ve won. There are some battles you don’t want to fight. And winning costs too much.”

Rowan’s face remained unchanged.

“You want some music, darling?” he asked. “You want to hear that old gramophone? I frankly find it a comforting sound. I don’t think anybody else is listening to it now but you, and me. But I’d like to play it. Let me go get it.”

He stood up and bent down to kiss her. Her soft mouth gave no resistance. Taste of lipstick. High school. He smiled. Maybe the nurse had put on the lipstick. He could barely see it. She looked past him. She looked pale and beautiful and plain.

In the attic room, he found the gramophone. He gathered it up, along with the records of La Traviata. He stood still, holding this light burden, once again entranced by the simple combination of rain and sun.

The window was closed.

The floor was clean.

He thought of Julien again, the instantaneous Julien standing in the front doorway, blocking Lasher’s path. “And I haven’t even thought of you since that moment,” he said. “I guess I hope and pray you’ve gone on.”

The moments ticked by. He wondered if he could ever use this room again. He stared at the window, at the edge of the porch roof. He remembered that flashing glimmer of Antha gesturing for Lasher to come. “Make the dead come back to witness,” he whispered. “That you did.”

He walked down the steps slowly, stopping quite suddenly, in alarm, before he knew exactly why. What was this sound? He was holding the gramophone and the records, and now he set them carefully down and out of the way.

A woman was crying, or was it a child? It was a soft heartbroken crying. And it wasn’t the nurse. She wouldn’t be back for hours. No. And the crying came from Rowan’s room.

He didn’t dare to hope it was Rowan! He didn’t dare, and he knew as well as he knew anything else that it wasn’t Rowan’s voice.

“Oh, darling dear,” said the crying voice. “Darling dear, I love you so much. Yes, drink it, drink the milk, take it, oh, poor Mother, poor darling dear.”

His mind could find no explanation; it was empty and consumed with silent fear. He went down the steps, careful not to make a sound, and, turning, peered through the bedroom door.

A great tall girl sat on the side of the bed, a long willowy white thing, tall and thin as Lasher had been, with reddish-golden locks falling down her long graceful back. It was the girl he had glimpsed below in the street! In her arms the girl held Rowan, Rowan, who was sitting up and clinging to her, actually clinging to her, and nursing from the girl’s bare right breast.

“That’s it, dear Mother, drink it, yes,” said the girl, and the tears splattered right out of her big green eyes and down her cheeks. “Yes, Mother, drink, oh, it hurts but drink it! It’s our milk. Our strong milk.” And then the giant girl drew back and tossed her hair, and gave Rowan the left breast. Frantically, Rowan drank from it, her left hand rising, groping, as if to catch hold of the girl’s head.

The girl saw him. Her tear-filled eyes opened wide. Just like Lasher’s eyes, so big and wide! Her face was a perfect oval. Her mouth a cherub’s mouth.

A muted sound came from Rowan, and then suddenly Rowan’s back straightened, and her left hand caught the girl’s hair tight. She drew back away from the breast and out of her mouth came a loud and terrible scream:

“Michael, Michael, Michael!”

Rowan shrank back against the headboard, drawing up her knees, and staring and pointing to the girl, who had leapt up and put her hands over her ears.

“Michael!”

The tall thin girl wept. Her face crumpled like that of a baby, her big green eyes squeezing shut. “No, Mother, no.” Her long white spidery fingers covered her white forehead and her wet trembling mouth. “Mother, no.”

“Michael, kill it!” screamed Rowan. “Kill it. Michael, stop it.”

The girl fell back against the wall sobbing, “Mother, Mother, no…”

“Kill it!” Rowan roared.

“I can’t,” cried Michael. “I can’t kill it. For the love of God.”

“Then I will,” cried Rowan, and she reached out and picked up the gun from the night table, and, holding it in both her trembling hands, and blinking as she pulled the trigger, she shot three bullets into the girl’s face. The room stank of smoke and burning.

The girl’s face went to pieces. The blood welled from within as if through broken bits of china, a bleeding and shattered oval mask.

The long thin body slumped and fell heavily and noisily to the floor, the hair spreading out on the rug.

Rowan dropped the gun. She was sobbing now, sobbing as the girl had been, and her left hand was up to gag her sobs as she slipped from the bed, and stood shakily, reaching out for the post.

“Close the door,” she said in a rough, choking voice, her shoulders heaving. She seemed about to collapse.

Yet she stumbled forward, her entire body trembling with the effort, and then, beside the girl’s body, she sank down on her knees.

“Oh, Emaleth, oh, baby, oh, little Emaleth,” she sobbed.

The girl lay dead, her arms out, her shirt open, face a soft mass of blood. Once again, the hair was all tangled in it, fine and beautiful, as Lasher’s hair had been, and there was no face left. The long thin hands lay open like the thin delicate branches of a tree in winter, and the blood oozed down upon the floor.

“Oh, my baby, my poor darling,” said Rowan.

And then she closed her mouth again on the girl’s breast.

The room was still. No sound but the sound of suckling. Rowan drank from the left breast and then moved to the other, sucking as ravenously as before.

Michael stared, speechless.

At last she sat back, wiping her mouth, and a low sad groan came from her, and another deep sob.

Michael knelt down beside her. Rowan was staring at the dead girl. Then she deliberately blinked her eyes as if trying to clear her vision. A tiny bit of milk remained on the girl’s right nipple. She reached out and took it on her fingertip and put it to her lips.

The tears came down from her eyes, but then she looked deliberately at Michael, deliberately as if she wanted him to know that she knew. She knew everything that had happened, she was here now. She was Rowan. She was healed.

And suddenly, the tears spilling down her face, she took his hands to try to comfort him, though her own hands were trembling and cold.

“Don’t worry anymore, Michael,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’ll take her out there under the tree. No one will ever think of it. I will do it. I’ll put her with him. You’ve done enough, you leave my daughter to me.”

She sat back crying in a soft, raw muffled way. Her eyes closed and her head slipped to the side. Fiercely she patted Michael’s hands. “Don’t worry,” she said again. “My darling, my baby, my Emaleth. I’ll take her down. I’ll put her in the earth myself.”

10 p.m.

August 5, 1992