Blood Canticle

by Rice, Anne

And finally we came upon an immense amount of material on Rowan herself-her career, her achievements in research, her personal plans for the Center, her pet projects, her attitudes, her goals.

  We couldn't possibly cover it all.

  We decided we had to take the microprocessor with us. No choice really. Had to take Oberon's as well. No traces of the tragedy would be left for strangers.

  Rowan and Stirling were first off the plane, Rowan in jeans and plain white shirt and Stirling in a tweed suit. Immediately they reacted to the spectacle of the three Taltos, in fact, Rowan appeared to go into a silent shock.

  I presented Rowan with the microprocessors from the two computers, which she entrusted to an assistant who put them safely on the plane. Lorkyn watched all this with eyes as unreadable as Rowan's, though they looked much softer, perhaps part of a very sweet mask. She had been absolutely silent all during the wait and she showed no change now.

  Miravelle was weeping. Oberon, having relieved himself of the bandanna and brushed his hair, looked beyond handsome, and deigned to give Rowan a slight nod of his head.

  Then Rowan said to Mona:

  "Where are the bodies?"

  Out of the plane as if on cue came a crew of men in white scrubs, on down the metal stair carrying what looked like a giant sleeping bag. They had other equipment I couldn't decipher or describe.

  We went back to the freezer.

  All this time Lorkyn made no protest, though Quinn held her tightly, but she kept her large exquisite eyes on Rowan, except for occasional glances at Oberon who never stopped staring at her with a look of pure venom.

  Rowan stepped cautiously inside the freezer as I'd done before. She examined the bodies minutely. She touched the stains of frozen fluid on the floor. She studied patches of discoloration on their skin. Her hands returned to their heads. Then finally she withdrew and let the team do its work of taking the bodies to the plane.

  She looked at Mona:

  "They're dead," she said. "They died a long time ago. Most likely right after they first lay down together here."

  "Perhaps not!" said Mona desperately. "Maybe they can survive temperatures that we can't." She looked frail and worn in her black feathered dress, her mouth shuddering.

  "They're gone," Rowan said. Her voice was not cruel. It was solemn. She was fighting her own tears and I knew it.

  Miravelle began to cry again. "Oh Mother, oh Father. . . ."

  "There's evidence of widespread decay," Rowan said. "The temperature was not consistently maintained. They didn't suffocate. They fell asleep as people do in the snow. They were probably warm at the end, and they died peacefully."

  "Oh, that is so lovely," said Miravelle with the purest sincerity. "Don't you think, Mona? It's so very pretty. Lorkyn, darling, don't you think it is very sweet?"

  "Yes, Miravelle, dear," said Lorkyn softly. "Don't worry anymore about them. Their intent has been fulfilled."

  She had not spoken in so long that this warmth took me by surprise.

  "And what was their intent?" I asked.

  "That Rowan Mayfair know of their fate," said Lorkyn calmly. "That the Secret People not vanish."

  Rowan sighed. Her face was indescribably sad.

  She opened wide her arms and shepherded us out of the kitchen, a doctor leading us away from a deathbed.

  We went out into the warm air, and the landscape seemed peaceful and given over to the rhythm of the waves and the breeze-cleansed by violence and mercilessness.

  I looked beyond the lighted buildings to the huge mass of hovering jungle. I scanned again for any presence, human or Taltos. The dense growth was too thick with living things for me to detect any one creature.

  I felt soul sick and empty. At the same time the three Taltos were worrying me in the extreme. What precisely was going to happen to them?

  The crew with the frozen bodies ran past us to board the plane, and we made our way slowly to the metal steps on the tarmac.

  "Did Father really ask for this, this freezing?" Oberon wanted to know. He had lost all of his scornful manner. "Did he go willingly to this death?" he asked sincerely.

  "That's what Rodrigo always said," replied Miravelle, who was now in Stirling's arms, weeping piteously. "Father had told me to hide from the bad men, so I wasn't with him. They didn't find me until the next day. Lorkyn and I were together, hiding in the little house by the tennis courts. We didn't see what happened. We never saw Father and Mother again."

  "I don't want to board this plane as a prisoner," said Lorkyn very politely. "And I'd like to know where I'm going. It's unclear to me, the source of authority here. Dr. Mayfair, would you please explain?"

  "You're the victim of concern right now, Lorkyn," said Rowan in the same mild tone that Lorkyn had used with her.

  Rowan reached into her pants pocket, pulled out a syringe and, as Lorkyn stared in horror and desperately struggled, sank a needle into the arm by which Quinn held her. Lorkyn went down clawing at Quinn and then finally totally collapsed, all hips, knees and spidery hands, kitten face asleep.

  Oberon watched with narrow eyes and a chilling smile.

  "You should have slit her throat, Dr. Rowan Mayfair," he said, with the rise of one eyebrow. "As a matter of fact, I think I can break all the bones in her neck if you'll kindly allow me to try it."

  Miravelle spun around out of Stirling's loving grip and glared at Oberon: "No, no, you can't do such a horrible thing to Lorkyn. It's not Lorkyn's fault she's wise and knowing! Oberon, you can't do mean things to her, not now."

  Mona gave a short bitter laugh. "Maybe you've got your prize specimen, Rowan," she said in her frail voice. "Hook her up to every machine known to science, vivisect her, freeze her in fragments and on slides, make her lactate the marvelous Taltos milk!"

  Rowan stared so icily at Mona it was difficult to tell if she heard the words. She called for help from inside the plane.

  The sleeping Lorkyn was placed on a stretcher with restraints and taken on board as we waited in silence.

  Stirling followed with Miravelle, who was still weeping for Mother and Father. "If only Father had called Rowan Mayfair when he wanted to. But Mother was so jealous. She knew Father loved Rowan Mayfair. Oh, if only Father had not listened. And now the Secret People are just us three."

  Rowan caught those words, glanced at me and then at Mona. Mona registered them too with a dark flashing glance at Rowan. The darkness overcame Rowan.

  Oberon stood quite free, the picture of relaxation, with his weight on one hip, thumbs in his back pockets, studying Rowan in detail, his huge eyes half-mast again and his cheeks still wet from weeping.

  "Don't tell me," he drawled, his head thrown back, "you want me to get in that plane too and go back with you to your Center of Medical Marvels."

  "Where else are you going to go?" asked Rowan with a coolness that matched his own. "You're going to leave Miravelle and Lorkyn?"

  "Rowan's your kin," said Mona, her voice strained and impatient, "she's your family, she'll take care of you, Oberon. If you have an ounce of sense let it override your crushing sarcasm and caustic wit, and get on the plane, and behave yourself. You might just discover you belong to an extremely rich clan of remarkably generous people."

  "Your optimism touches me," he tossed off to Mona. "Shall we assume that it was devotion to the remarkable generous clan that drove you to run away with a couple of Blood Hunters and allow them to transform you into what you are?"

  "Oberon," I said. "I set you free, did I not?"

  "Here it comes," he said, rolling his eyes, "for the sake of Saint Juan Diego, will I please behave for Rowan Mayfair, the only human being Father ever truly loved, and will I not blind Lorkyn with my thumbs first chance I get, or something even more deliciously cruel?"

  "Precisely," I said. "Cooperate with Rowan in every respect. You have nothing to lose by it. And don't jump Miravelle and make a baby. Okay? And when you're tempted to do otherwise, remember Saint Juan Diego."

  Oberon gave a s
hort laugh, threw up his hands, then lowered them and turned them out, then went up the

  metal steps to the open door.

  "This must be one hell of a saint," said Rowan under her breath.

  "On board," I said, "Oberon can tell you all about him."

  "Wait, I'm forgetting the statue!" Oberon cried out at the top of the stairs. "How could I do such a thing?"

  "I promise to bring it to you," I said. "Besides, the Mayfairs will buy you whatever you want. Go on,

  board."

  He did as I told him to do, then appeared again:

  "But remember, that's the statue connected to the miracle! You have to get it!"

  "I have no intention of forgetting it," I said. He disappeared.

  Now only Rowan was left, standing there with Mona and Quinn and me.

  "Where are you going now?" asked Rowan.

  "Blackwood Farm," said Quinn. "We three, we stick together."

  Rowan looked at me. No one has ever looked at me in quite the same way that Rowan does.

  She nodded.

  She turned to go, then turned back and put her arms around me, a warm bundle of life entrusted to me.

  Every barrier inside me collapsed.

  We kissed as if no one was there to see it, over and over, until it was a little language of its own, her

  breasts very hot against my chest, my hands clutching her hips, my eyes closed, my mind mute for once

  as if my body had driven it back, or so inundated it with sensation that it could not tell me what to do. And at last, she pulled away, and I turned my back. The blood thirst was paralyzing me. The want was paralyzing me. And then there broke loose the love, the pure love.

  I stood motionless, realizing it for what it was. Pure love. And connecting it suddenly and helplessly with the love I'd felt when I'd kissed Patsy's phantom at the edge of the swamp: pure love.

  And my mind cast back over the centuries, like the mechanism of conscience determined to ferret out sin, only it searched for moments of pure love. And I knew them, secret, silent, few, splendid. Splendid in their own power, whether the loved one ever knew it or not, splendid to have loved-.

  Flash on the couple in each other's arms, Ash and Morrigan, the white mist rising from them. Emblem of pure love.

  The awareness dissolved. Quinn moved me away from the roar of the jet engines. We walked off the tarmac.

  We were silent in the noise of the departing plane. At last it made its smooth ascent. And was gone into the clouds.

  The age-old mystery of the Caribbean unfolded-another tiny island soaked in blood-that this most glorious part of the world should bear witness to so many tales of violence.

  Mona stood looking out to sea. The breeze lifted her full red hair. Her eyes were beyond tears. She was the very picture of mourning.

  Could she begin now? Really begin, my perfect one?

  I drew close to her. I didn't want to intrude on this bereavement. But she reached out with her left arm and brought me in, and let her weight rest against me.

  "This was my search," she said, eyes faraway, "this was my dream, my dream that overleapt the Dark Blood-the dream that carried me through all the pain that preceded it."

  "I know," I said. "I understand you."

  "That I would find my Morrigan," she said, "that I would find them living in happiness, that I would know her again with all her madness and we would talk the long nights away, exchanging kisses, our lives touching and then parting. And now . . . it's all ruin."

  I waited, out of respect for what she'd said. Then I spoke: "They did live in happiness for a very long time," I said. "Oberon described it to us. They lived for years as the Secret People." I reminded her as best I could of what Oberon had told us.

  Slowly she yielded to a nod, her eyes on the placid and warm sea. It made no impression upon her. "They should have let us help!" she whispered. "Michael and Rowan would have helped! Oh, the folly of it! To think that Morrigan wouldn't let him call Rowan. Because she was jealous! Oh, Rowan, Rowan."

  I held my thoughts to myself.

  "Come home to Blackwood Farm," said Quinn. "There's time to mourn and time to know Miravelle and Oberon and even Lorkyn."

  She shook her head.

  "No," she said. "These Taltos are not for me, not now. Miravelle is some pure and lithesome thing without my fire, without her mother's fire. The link is broken. Morrigan went down in pain. They'll care for Miravelle. Poor tender creature, salvaged from the ancient one and a mutant birth. I have nothing to give to Miravelle. As for Oberon, he's too dark for me, and what can I give him? He'll kill Lorkyn sooner or later, don't you think? And how will Rowan justify the keeping of Lorkyn? It's not my concern. It's not my passion. I want to be with you, you are my people."

  "Don't try to decide these things now," I said. I felt so sorry for her. And in my heart I felt a burning concern for the tasks that lay ahead of Rowan.

  "Maharet's words are clear." She went on in the same torn voice, her eyes never turning to me or to Quinn. "It was nature taking its course. It was inevitable."

  "Perhaps, perhaps not," said Quinn. "But it is finished."

  I turned, and looked at the distant villa with all its lighted windows. I looked at the broad mass of rocky jungle rising behind the brashly illuminated beach. I scanned. I caught the small beasts of the wild place, the tamarinds, the birds, perhaps a wild boar deep in there. I couldn't tell.

  Yet I was reluctant to leave. I wasn't sure why.

  I wanted to move through the jungles. The jungles I had not searched, and they were thick. Only this was not the time.

  We bid the island good-bye. Quinn took Mona in his arms, and they made for the clouds.

  I went back for the statue of my beloved saint, and was soon on my way to the safe refuge of Blackwood Farm.

  I STOPPED at the flat, stripped off the leather clothes, put on a lavender dress shirt, purple tie, black linen three-piece suit, new boots, cut out for Blackwood Farm, dived into Aunt Queen's bed and went sound asleep.

  (Saint Juan Diego was on the bedside table right beside me.)

  Vague memory of Mona coming in before sunrise and telling me she'd E-mailed to "the mysterious Maharet" an account of the entire event. I said: "Bravo. I love you. Get out of here."

  At sunset, when I awoke, I went out into the house to discover Stirling Oliver had come. He'd had an early supper with Tommy and Nash, who had gone into New Orleans for the evening, and was now waiting for me on the "wicker terrace" on the east side of the house.

  I was so comforted by every aspect of Blackwood Farm and its unsuspecting humans that I could have wept, but I didn't. I made a little circuit of the big rooms. No sign of Julien's ghost. Why was he letting me off the hook? I rejoiced, whatever his reasons. Here at Blackwood Farm, the island of St. Ponticus seemed remote, the horrors of last night imagined.

  The Dazzling Duo had not risen yet.

  I took the statue of Saint Juan Diego and I headed outdoors.

  The wicker terrace had been created by Quinn out of all the antique wicker furniture he'd found in the attic of Blackwood Farm when he was still a teenager, and he'd had it all restored and put out here, and it was quite atmospheric and charming.

  The floodlights weren't on. There were just a couple of hurricane lamps flickering away, and Stirling, in a light tweed Norfolk jacket, was smoking a cigarette. His neatly trimmed gray hair was ruffled a bit by the breeze. But otherwise he was the picture of dignity. And the picture of a mortal with whom I could be at ease and talk as if I wasn't a monster.

  I sat down in the chair opposite him, with Saint Juan Diego out of sight at my side.

  There was that Fall bite in the air. I resigned myself to it, and breathed in the pure freshness of the breeze, and let my eyes linger on the pearly clouds and the frightening and inevitable little stars that soon shone through them.

  "So hit me with it, baby," I said.

  "Well," he said, his youthful eyes at once alert. "A plane of our peop
le descended on the island as swiftly as could be managed, and collected the laptops and every other computer they could find in the mezzanine library that Oberon described to us, remnants of the Secret People that Oberon wanted saved, and they were about to take their leave when a boatload of the unsavory characters arrived. We had an escort of five or six soldiers of fortune, you might call them, not members of the Talamasca you understand, but quite loyal in their work for us, so there was a parley of sorts. The unsavory individuals deemed it prudent to depart. Very quickly in fact. I would say that they surmised that their time on the island had ended. Our plane took off without mishap. Chalk it up to poise and persuasion on the part of our soldiers.

  "Meanwhile, the firm of Mayfair and Mayfair traced the entire history of the island, finding a clear chain of title revealing the transfer from Lost Paradise Resorts to The Secret Isle Corp., only officer and stock holder Ash Templeton. Attorneys for the Corporation in New York notified other attorneys, who then notified other attorneys who were the true managers of Ash's affairs.

  "They flew down this afternoon. Saw his body at Mayfair Medical. Revealed Last Will and Testament executed four years ago, leaving everything to Michael Curry and Rowan Mayfair, with some sort of trust arrangement for Ash's children. That was years after Ash left New Orleans with Morrigan. There was a bundle of accompanying letters. 'To be given to Michael Curry and Rowan Mayfair should I die or become incapacitated.' They've been given to Michael and Rowan."

  "I don't quite get it," I said.

  "Ash was taking steps," said Stirling. "He knew the Secret People were in trouble. He simply didn't take the steps fast enough. Communication was always sporadic. The estate lawyers didn't know the location of the Secret People or their name. Communication broke off two years ago. Ash should have given one of the firms a timetable and a course of action: 'If you don't hear from me every six months, etc.' "

  "I see," I answered. "Any clue as to what was in the letters?"

  "From what Michael told me, the letters are full of polite warnings, observations and requests that Rowan and Michael and the Mayfair family care for his children. Ash was immensely wealthy. The money in essence passes to Rowan and Michael in trust for Oberon, Lorkyn and Miravelle.