The witching hour

Twenty-six

ON AND ON it went, exotic and dreamlike still in its strangeness, a ritual from another country, quaint and darkly beautiful, as the whole party spilled out into the warm air and then into a fleet of limousines which drove them silently through narrow, crowded, treeless little streets.

Before a high brick church-St. Mary’s Assumption-the long lumbering shiny cars stopped, one after another, oblivious to the derelict school buildings with their broken windows, and the weeds rising triumphant from every fissure and crack.

Carlotta stood on the church steps, tall, stiff, her thin spotted hand locked on the curve of her gleaming wooden cane. Beside her an attractive man, white-haired and blue-eyed, and not much older than Michael perhaps, whom the old woman dismissed with a brittle gesture beckoning for Rowan to follow her.

The older man stepped back with young Pierce, after quickly clasping Rowan’s hand. There was something furtive in the way he whispered his name, “Ryan Mayfair,” glancing anxiously at the old woman. Rowan understood he was young Pierce’s father.

And into the immense nave they all moved, the entire assemblage following the coffin on its rolling bier. Footfalls echoed softly and loudly under the graceful Gothic arches, light striking brilliantly the magnificent stained-glass windows and the exquisitely painted statues of the saints.

Seldom even in Europe had she seen such elegance and grandeur. Faintly Michael’s words came back to her about the old parish of his childhood, about the jam-packed churches which had been as big as cathedrals. Could this have been the very place?

There must have been a thousand people gathered here now, children crying shrilly before their mothers shushed them, and the words of the priest ringing out in the vast emptiness as if they were a song.

The straight-backed old woman beside her said nothing to her. In her wasted, fragile-looking hands, she held with marvelous capability a heavy book, full of bright and lurid pictures of the saints. Her white hair, drawn back into a bun, lay thick and heavy against her small head, beneath her brimless black felt hat. Aaron Lighter 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 unselfconsciously on Rowan.

By the hundreds they rose to take Holy Communion, the old, the young, the little children. Carlotta refused assistance as she made her way to the front and then back again, her rubber-tipped cane thumping dully, then sank down into the pew, with her head bowed, as she said her prayers. So thin was she that her dark gabardine suit seemed empty, like a garment on a hanger, with no contour of a body at all within it, her legs like sticks plunging to her thick string shoes.

The smell of incense rose from the silver censer as the priest circled the coffin. At last the procession moved out to the waiting fleet in the treeless street. Dozens of small black children-some barefoot, some shirtless-watched from the cracked pavements before a shabby, neglected gymnasium. Black women stood with bare arms folded, scowling in the sun.

Can this really be America?

And then through the dense shade of the Garden District the caravan plunged, bumper to bumper, with scores of people walking on either side of it, children skipping ahead, all advancing through the deep green light.

The walled cemetery was a veritable city of peaked-roof graves, some with their own tiny gardens, paths running hither and thither past this tumbling down crypt or this great monument to fire fighters of another era, or the orphans of this or that asylum, or to the rich who had had the time and money to etch these stones with poetry, words now filled with dust and wearing slowly away.

The Mayfair crypt itself was enormous, and surrounded by flowers. A small iron fence encircled the little building, marble urns at the four corners of its gently sloping peristyle roof. Its three bays contained twelve coffin-sized vaults, and from one of these the smooth marble stone had been removed, so that it gaped, dark and empty, for the coffin of Deirdre Mayfair to be placed inside like a long pan of bread.

Urged politely to the front ranks, Rowan stood beside the old woman. The sun flashed in the old woman’s small round silver-rimmed glasses, as grimly she stared at the word “Mayfair” 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 sitting 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 goodbye, the heat once again making her sick. Rita Mae Lonigan murmured a sad farewell to her. Hundreds said their goodbyes 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?” “Goodbye, Aunt Carl. You took care of her.” “We’ll see you soon, Aunt Carl. You have to come out to Metairie.” “Aunt Carl, I’ll telephone you next week.” “Aunt Carl, are you all right?”

At last the street stood empty except for the steady stream of bright noisy indifferent traffic and a few well-dressed people wandering out of the obviously fancy restaurant and squinting in the sudden bright light.

“I don’t want to go in,” said the old woman. She gazed coldly at the blue and white awnings.

“Oh, come on, Aunt Carl, please, just for a little while,” said Beatrice Mayfair. Another slender young man, Gerald was his name, held the old woman’s arm. “Why don’t we go for a few minutes?” he said to Carlotta. “Then I’ll take you home.”

“I want to be alone now,” said the old woman. “I want to walk home alone.” Her eyes fixed on Rowan. Unearthly their ageless intelligence flashing out of the worn and sunken face. “Stay with them as long as you wish,” she said as if it were an order, “and then come to me. I’ll be waiting. At the First Street house.”

“When would you like for me to come?” Rowan asked carefully.

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.”