The witching hour

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 deliciously scratchy. “How do you feel?” he whispered.

“I’m fine now,” she said. She reached out and touched the little gold crucifix tangled in the dark hair of his chest. “It was bad for about half an hour. Probably it will come again. I’ll sleep when it does. I’d love to get to Destin in time to walk on the beach in the sunshine.”

“But what about seeing a doctor before we leave?”

“I am a doctor,” she said with a smile. “And remember the special sense? It’s doing just fine in there.”

“Does the special sense tell you if he’s a boy or a girl?” he asked.

“If he is a boy or a girl?” She laughed. “I wish it did. But then maybe I want to be surprised. What about you?”

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were twins?”

“Yes, that would be great,” she said.

“Rowan, you’re not … unhappy about the baby, are you?”

“No, God no! Michael, I want the baby. I’m just a little sick still. It comes and goes. Look, I don’t want to tell the others just yet. Not until we come back from Florida. The honeymoon will be ruined if we do.”

“Agreed.” Tentatively, he placed his warm hand on her belly. “It’s awhile 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 clubby 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?

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 fingers 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 one who can do it. Tell Michael or Aaron and he will retreat. You’ve got to deceive with a purpose and do it.

Four A.M. She must have slept. The irresistible hunk was lying there against her, his big heavy arm cradling her, his hand 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 clearheaded was a gift from the gods.

He didn’t speak to her again. He didn’t show himself. When she thought of him, she imagined her anger like a withering heat, striking the mysterious and unclassifiable cells of his form, and drying them up like so many minuscule husks. But most of all when she thought of him she was fearful.

Meantime life went on because she kept the secret locked inside her.

By phone she made an appointment with an obstetrician back in New Orleans, who arranged to have the early blood work done right here in Destin, with the results to be sent on. Everything was normal as she expected.

But who could expect them to understand that with her diagnostic sense she would have known if the little tucker was in trouble?

The warm days were few and far between, but she and Michael had the dreamlike beach almost to themselves. And the pure silence of the isolated house above the dunes was magical. When the air was warm, she sat for hours on the beach beneath a big glamorous white umbrella, reading her medical journals and the various materials which Ryan sent out to her by messenger.

She read the baby books, too, that she could find in the local bookstores. Sentimental and vague, but fun nevertheless. Especially the pictures of babies, with their tiny expressive faces, fat wrinkly necks, and adorable little feet and hands. She was dying to tell the family. She and Beatrice spoke almost every other day. But it was best to keep the secret. Think of the hurt to her and Michael if something were to go wrong, and if the others knew, that would only make the loss worse for everyone.

They walked on the beach for hours, on those days when it was too cold to swim. They shopped and bought little things for the house. They loved its bare white walls and sparse furnishings. It was like a place to play after the seriousness of First Street, said Michael. He liked doing the cooking with Rowan-chopping, shredding, stir frying, barbecuing steaks. It was all easy and fun.

They dined at all the fine restaurants and took drives into the pine woods, and explored the big resorts with their tennis courts and golf courses. But mostly they were happy in the house, with the endless sea so very near them.

Michael was pretty anxious about his business-he had a team working on the shotgun cottage on Annunciation Street, and he had opened up his new Great Expectations on Magazine, and he was having to handle all the little emergencies by phone. And of course there was the painting still going on at home, up in Julien’s old room, and the roof repairs in the back. The brick parking area behind the house wasn’t finished yet, and the old garçonnière was still being renovated-an excellent caretaker’s cottage, they figured-and he was antsy not being there himself.

He didn’t need a long honeymoon right now, that was perfectly obvious-especially not a honeymoon that was being extended day after day by Rowan.

But he was so agreeable. Not only did he do what she wanted, he seemed to have an endless capacity to make the most of the moment, whether they were strolling on the beach hand in hand, or enjoying a hasty seafood meal in a little tavern, or visiting the boats for sale in the marina, or reading in their various favorite corners of the spacious house, on their own.

Michael was a contented person by nature. She’d known that when she first met him; she’d understood why the anxiety was so terrible for him. And now it endeared him to her so much to see him lost in his own projects, drawing designs for the renovation of the little Annunciation Street cottage, clipping out pictures from magazines of little things he meant to do.

Aunt Viv was doing fine back in New Orleans. Lily and Bea gave her no peace, according to their own admission, and Michael felt it was the best thing in the world for her.

“She sounds so much younger when I talk to her,” he said. “She’s joined some garden club, and some committee to protect the oak trees. She’s actually having fun.”

So loving, so understanding. Even when Rowan didn’t want to go back to town for Thanksgiving, he gave in. Aunt Viv went to dinner at Bea’s, of course. And everybody forgave the wedding couple for staying in Florida, for it was their honeymoon after all, and they could take as long as they wished.

They had their own quiet Thanksgiving dinner on the deck over the beach. Then that night a cold, blustering lightning storm hit Destin. The wind shook the glass doors and windows. Up and down the coast, the power went out. It was an utterly divine and natural darkness.

They sat for hours by the fire, talking of Little Chris and which room would be the nursery, and how Rowan would not let the Medical Center interfere in the first couple of years; she’d spend every morning with the baby, not going to work until twelve o’clock, and of course they’d get all the help they needed to make things run smoothly.

Thank God he did not ask directly whether or not she’d “seen that damn thing.” She did not know what she would do if forced to tell a deliberate lie. The secret was locked inside a little compartment in her mind, like Bluebeard’s secret chamber, and the key had been thrown down the well.

The weather was getting colder. Soon there wouldn’t be an excuse for remaining here. She knew they ought to go back.

What was she doing not telling Michael, and not telling Aaron? Running away like this, to hide?

But the longer she remained here, the more she began to understand her conflicts and her reasons.

She wanted to talk to the being. The memory of him in the kitchen flooded her with a powerful sense of him, all the more particular because she had heard the tender quality of his voice. Yes, she wanted to know him! It was exactly as Michael had predicted it that first awful night when the old woman had just died. What was Lasher? Where had he come from? What secrets lay beyond that flawless and tragic face? What would Lasher say about the doorway and the thirteen witches?

And all she had to do was call him, like Prospero calling to Ariel. Keep the secret, and say his name.

Oh, but you are a witch, she said to herself as her guilt deepened. And they all knew it. They knew it that afternoon you spoke to Gifford; they knew by the stark silvery power that came from you, what everybody thinks is coldness and cunning, but was never anything but unwelcome strength. The old man, Fielding, was right in his warnings. And Aaron knows, doesn’t he? Of course he knows.

Everybody but Michael, and Michael is so easy to deceive.

But what if she decided that she wouldn’t deceive anyone, that she wouldn’t play along? Maybe she was searching for the courage to make that decision. Or maybe she was simply resisting. Maybe she was making the demon thing wait the way he had made her wait.

Whatever the case, she no longer felt that aversion for him, that awful dislike which had followed the incident on the plane. She felt the anger still, but the curiosity and the ever increasing attraction were greater …

It was the first really cold day, when Michael came out on the beach and sat down beside her and told her he had to go back. She was enjoying the brisk air, actually, sunbathing in a heavy cotton sweater and long pants, the way she might have done in California on her windy deck.

“Look, this is what’s going down,” he said. “Aunt Viv wants her things from San Francisco and you know how old people can be. And, Rowan, there’s nobody to close up Liberty Street except me. I have to make some decisions about my old store out there, too. My accountant just called me again about somebody wanting to rent it, and I have to get back there and go through the inventory myself.”

He went on, about selling a couple of pieces of California property, shipping certain things, renting out his house, that sort of thing. And the truth was, he was needed in New Orleans. His new business on Magazine Street needed him. If this thing was going to work.…

“Truth is, I’d rather fly out there now than later. It’s almost December, Rowan. Christmas is coming. You realize it?”

“Sure, I understand. We’ll drive back tonight.”

“But you don’t have to, babe. You can stay here in Florida till I come back, or as long as you want.”

“No, I’ll come with you,” she said. “I’ll come up and pack in a little while. Besides, it’s time to be leaving. It’s warm now but it was really chilly this morning when I first came out.”

He nodded. “Didn’t you hate it?”

She laughed. “Still not as cold as any summer day back in California,” she said.

He nodded. “I have to tell you something. It’s going to get even colder. A lot colder. Winter in the South is going to surprise you. They’re saying this may be a bad winter all over the southern states. In a way I just love it. First the dizzying heat and then the frost on the windows.”

“I know what you mean.” And I love you. I love you more than anyone I’ve ever loved.

She sat back in the wooden beach chair as he walked away, and she let her head roll to the side. The Gulf was now a dull silver blaze before her, as often happened when the sun was at its height. She let her left hand fall down into the soft, sugary sand. She pushed her fingers into it, and picked up a handful of it, letting it run through her fingers. “Real,” she whispered. “So real.”

But wasn’t it just too neat that he had to leave now, and she’d be alone at First Street? Wasn’t it just like somebody had arranged things that way? And all this time she thought that she’d been calling the shots.

“Don’t overreach, my friend,” she whispered into the cool Gulf breeze. “Don’t hurt my love, or I’ll never forgive you. See that he comes back to me, safe and sound.”

They didn’t leave till the following morning.

As they drove away, she felt the tiniest stab of excitement. In a flash, she pictured his face again as it had been in the darkened kitchen; she heard the soft resonant flow of his words. A caress. But she couldn’t bear to think of that part of it. Only after Michael had arrived safely in California, only when she was alone in the house …