by Rice, Anne
A need to apologize stole over me again, perhaps because Lestat seemed lost in his judgment of the place.
“It’s so unnecessary, Blackwood Manor,” I told him. “And with Aunt Queen and me its only regular inhabitants, I have the feeling that someone will come and make us turn it over for some more sensible use. Of course there are other members of the family—and then there’s the staff, who are so damned rich in their own right that they don’t have to work for anybody.” I broke off, ashamed of rambling.
“And what would a more sensible use be?” he asked in the same comfortable manner he had adopted before. “Why should the house not be your gracious home?”
He was looking at the huge portrait of Aunt Queen when she was young—a smiling girl in a sleeveless white beaded evening gown that might have been made yesterday rather than seventy years ago, as it was; and at another portrait—of Virginia Lee Blackwood, Manfred’s wife, the first lady ever to live in Blackwood Manor.
It was murky now, this portrait of Virginia Lee, but the style was robust and faintly emotional, and the woman herself, blond with eyes of blue, was very honest to look at, and modest, and smiling, with small features and an undeniably pretty face. She was dressed ornately in the style of the 1880s, in a high-necked dress of sky blue with long sleeves puckered at the shoulders, and her hair heaped on the top of her head. She had been the grandmother of Aunt Queen, and I always saw a certain likeness in these portraits, in the eyes and the shape of the faces, though others claimed they could not. But then …
And they had more than casual associations for me, these portraits, especially that of Virginia Lee. Aunt Queen I had still with me. But Virginia Lee … I shuddered but repressed those alien memories of ghosts and grotesqueries. Too much was taking my mind by storm.
“Yes, why not your home, and the repository of your ancestors’ treasures?” Lestat remarked innocently. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, when I was growing up,” I said in answer to his question, “my grandma and grandpa were living then, and this was a sort of hotel. A bed-and-breakfast was what they called it. But they served dinner down here in the dining room as well. Lots of tourists came up this way to spend some time in it. We still have the Christmas banquet every year, with singers who stand on the staircase for the final caroling, while the guests gather here in the hall. It all seems very useful at times like that. This last year I had a midnight Easter banquet as well, just so I could attend it.”
A sense of the past shook me, frightening me with its vitality. I pressed on, guiltily trying to wring something from the earliest memories. What right had I to good times now, or memories?
“I love the singers,” I said. “I used to cry with my grandparents when the soprano sang ‘O Holy Night.’ Blackwood Manor seems powerful at such times—a place to alter people’s lives. You can tell I’m still very caught up in it.”
“How does it alter people’s lives?” he asked quickly, as if the idea had hooked him.
“Oh, there’ve been so many weddings here.” My voice caught. Weddings. A hideous memory, a recent memory overshot all, a shameful awful memory—blood, her gown, the taste of it—but I forced it out of my mind. I went on:
“I remember lovely weddings, and anniversary banquets. I remember a picnic on the lawn for an elderly man who had just turned ninety. I remember people coming back to visit the site where they’d been married.” Again came that stabbing recollection—a bride, a bride covered in blood. My head swam.
You little fool, you’ve killed her. You weren’t supposed to kill her, and look at her white dress.
I wouldn’t think of it yet. I couldn’t be crippled with it yet. I’d confess it all to Lestat, but not yet.
I had to continue. I stammered. I managed.
“Somewhere there’s an old guest book with a broken quill pen crushed in it, full of comments by those who came and went and came again. They’re still coming. It’s a flame that hasn’t gone out.”
He nodded and smiled faintly as though this pleased him. He looked again at the portrait of Virginia Lee.
A vague shimmer passed over me. Had the portrait changed? Vague imaginings that her lovely blue eyes looked down at me. But she would never come to life for me now, would she? Of course she wouldn’t. Hers had been a famous virtue and magnanimity. What would she have to do with me now?
“And these days,” I pressed on, fastening to my little narrative, “I find myself cherishing this house desperately, and cherishing as well all my mortal connections. My Aunt Queen I cherish above all. But there are others, others who must never know what I am.”
He studied me patiently, as if pondering these things.
“Your conscience is tuned like a violin,” he said pensively. “Do you really like having them here, the strangers, the Christmas and Easter guests, under your own roof?”
“It’s cheerful,” I admitted. “There’s always light and movement. There are voices and the dull vibration of the busy stairs. Sometimes guests complain—the grits is watery or the gravy is lumpy—and in the old days, my grandmother Sweetheart would cry over those complaints, and my grandfather—Pops, we all called him—would privately slam his fist down on the kitchen table; but in the main, the guests love the place …
“… And now and then it can be lonesome here, melancholy and dismal, no matter how bright the chandeliers. I think that when my grandparents died and that part of it was all over I felt a … a deep depression that seemed linked to Blackwood Manor, though I couldn’t leave it, and wouldn’t of my own accord.”
He nodded at these words as though he understood them. He was looking at me as surely as I was looking at him. He was appraising me as surely as I appraised him.
I was thinking how very attractive he was, I couldn’t stop myself, with his yellow hair so thick and long, turning so gracefully at the collar of his coat, and his large probing violet eyes. There are very few creatures on earth who have true violet eyes. The slight difference between his eyes meant nothing. His sun-browned skin was flawless. What he saw in me with his questioning gaze, I couldn’t know.
“You know, you can roam about this house,” I said, still vaguely shocked that I had his interest, the words spilling anxiously from me again. “You can roam from room to room, and there are ghosts. Sometimes even the tourists see the ghosts.”
“Did that scare them?” he asked with genuine curiosity.
“Oh, no, they’re too gung ho to be in a haunted house. They love it. They see things where there are no things. They ask to be left alone in haunted rooms.”
He laughed silently.
“They claim to hear bells ring that aren’t ringing,” I went on, smiling back at him, “and they smell coffee when there is no coffee, and they catch the drift of exotic perfumes. Now and then there was a tourist or two who was genuinely frightened, in fact there were several in the bed-and-board days who packed up immediately, but in the main, the reputation of the place sold it. And then, of course, there were those who actually saw ghosts.”
“And you, you do see the ghosts,” he said.
“Yes,” I answered. “Most of the ghosts are weak things, hardly more than vapor, but there are exceptions.…” I hesitated. I was lost for a moment. I felt my words might trigger some awful apparition, but I wanted so to confide in him. Stumbling, I went on:
“Yes, extraordinary exceptions …” I broke off.
“I want you to tell me,” he said. “You have a room upstairs, don’t you? A quiet place where we can talk. But I sense someone else in this house.”
He glanced towards the hallway.
“Yes, Aunt Queen in the back bedroom,” I said. “It won’t take more than a moment for me to see her.”
“That’s a curious name, Aunt Queen,” he remarked, his smile brightening again. “It’s divinely southern, I think. Will you take me to see her as well?”
“Absolutely,” I answered, without the hesitation of common sense. “Lorraine McQueen is her name, and
everyone hereabouts calls her Miss Queen or Aunt Queen.”
We went into the hallway together and once again he glanced up at the curving stairs.
I led him back past it, his boots sounding sharp on the marble, and I brought him to the open door of Aunt Queen’s room.
There she was, my darling, quite resplendent, and very busy, and not in the least disturbed by our approach.
She sat at her marble table just to the right of her dressing table, the whole making the L in which she was most happy. The nearby floor lamp as well as the frilly lights on the dressing table illuminated her wonderfully, and she had her dozens of cameos out before her on the marble and her bone-handled magnifying glass in her right hand.
She seemed dreadfully frail in her white quilted satin robe, with its buckled belt around her tiny waist, her throat wrapped well in a white silk scarf tucked into her lapels, over which rested her favorite necklace of diamonds and pearls. Her soft gray hair was curled naturally around her face, and her small eyes were full of an exuberant spirit as she studied the cameos at hand. Under the table, and where her robe was parted, I could see that she wore her perilous pink-sequined high-heeled shoes. I wanted to lecture. Ever a danger, those spike-heeled shoes.
Aunt Queen seemed the perfect name for her, and I felt an instinctive pride in her, that she had been the guardian angel of my life. I had no fear of her recognizing anything abnormal in Lestat, what with his tanned skin, except perhaps his excessive beauty. And I was happy with the moment beyond words.
The whole room made a lovely picture as I tried to see it the way that Lestat must see it, what with the canopied bed to the far left. It had only recently been redone in scallops of rose-colored satin, ornamented with darker braid, and it was made up already, which wasn’t always the case, with the heavy satin cover and pillow shams and other decorative pillows in a heap. The rose damask couch and scattered armchairs matched the hangings of the bed.
Jasmine was there in the shadows, our lifelong housekeeper, whose silky dark skin and fine features made her a special beauty, just as surely as Aunt Queen. She looked uncommonly sharp in her red sheath dress and high heels, with a string of pearls around her neck. I’d given her those pearls, hadn’t I?
Jasmine gave me a little wave, and then went back to straightening small items on the bedside table, and as Aunt Queen looked up and greeted me, crying “Quinn!” with a little touch of ecstasy, Jasmine stopped her work and came forward, slipping right past us out of the room.
I wanted to hug Jasmine. It had been nights since I’d seen her. But I was afraid. Then I thought, no, I’m going to do it for as long as I can do it, and I’ve fed and I’m warm. A greedy sense of goodness overcame me, that I wasn’t damned. I felt too much love. I stepped back and caught Jasmine in my arms.
She was beautifully built, and her skin was a lovely color of milk chocolate and her eyes were hazel and her hair extremely woolly, and always beautifully bleached yellow and close-cropped to her very round head.
“Ah, that’s my Little Boss,” she said as she hugged me in return. We were in the shadows of the hallway. “My mysterious Little Boss,” she went on, pressing me tight against her bosom so that her head was against my chest. “My wandering Little Boy, whom I scarcely ever see at all.”
“You’re my girlfriend forever,” I whispered, kissing the top of her head. In this close company, the blood of the dead was serving me well. And besides, I was hopeful and slightly crazy.
“You come in here, Quinn,” called out Aunt Queen, and Jasmine softly let me go and she went towards the rear door.
“Ah, you have a friend with you,” said Aunt Queen as I obeyed her, Lestat at my side. The room was warmer than the rest of the house.
Aunt Queen’s voice was ageless, if not actually youthful, and she spoke with a clear commanding diction.
“I’m so pleased you have company,” she said. “And what a fine strapling of a youth you are,” she said to Lestat, satirizing herself ever so delightfully. “Come here so I can see you. Ah, but you are handsome. Come into the light.”
“And you, my dear lady, are a vision,” Lestat said, his French accent thickening just a tiny bit as if for emphasis, and, leaning over the marble table with its random cameos, he bent to kiss her hand.
She was a vision, there was no doubt of it, her face warm and pretty for all its years. It wasn’t gaunt so much as naturally angular, and her thinning lips were neatly brightened with rose lipstick, and her eyes, in spite of the fine wrinkles around them, were still vividly blue. The diamonds and pearls on her breast were stunning, and she wore several rich diamond rings on her long hands.
The jewels as always seemed part of her power and dignity, as if age had given her strong advantage, and a sweet femininity seemed to characterize her as well.
“Over here, Little Boy,” she said to me.
I went to her side and bent down to receive her kiss on my cheek. That had been my custom ever since I’d grown to the staggering height of six foot four, and she often took hold of my head and teasingly refused to let me go. This time, she didn’t do it. She was too distracted by the alluring creature standing before her table, with his cordial smile.
“And look at your coat,” she said to Lestat, “how marvelous. Why, it’s a wide-skirted frock coat. Wherever did you get it, and the cameo buttons, how perfect. Will you come here this very minute and let me see them? You can see that I’ve a positive mania for cameos. And now as the years have gone by, I think of little else.”
Lestat came round the table as I moved away. I was frightened suddenly, very frightened, that she would sense something about him, but no sooner had this thought gripped me than I realized he had the situation entirely under his command.
Hadn’t another Blood Drinker, my Maker, charmed Aunt Queen in the same manner? Why the hell should I be so afraid?
As she examined the buttons, remarking that each was a different muse of the Grecian Nine Muses, Lestat was beaming down on her as if he were genuinely smitten, and I loved him for it. Because Aunt Queen was the person I loved most in all the world. Having the two of them together was a little more than I could bear.
“Yes, a real true frock coat,” she said.
“Well, I’m a musician, Madam,” Lestat said to her. “You know in this day and age a rock musician can wear a frock coat if he wishes, and so I indulge myself. I’m theatrical and incorrigible. A regular beast when it comes to the exaggerated and the eccentric. I like to clear all obstacles when I enter a room, and I have a perfect mania for antique things.”
“Yes, you’re so right to have it,” she said, exulting in him obviously, as he stepped back and joined me where I stood before the table. “My two handsome boys,” she remarked. “You do know that Quinn’s mother is a singer, though what kind of a singer I’m not quite prepared to say.”
Lestat didn’t know, and he gave me a curious glance and a slight teasing smile.
“Country music,” I said quickly. “Patsy Blackwood is her name. She’s got a powerful voice.”
“Very much diluted country music,” said Aunt Queen with a vague tone of disapproval. “I think she calls it country pop, and that can account for a lot. She has a good voice, however, and she writes occasional lyrics that aren’t too bad. She’s good at a sort of mournful ballad, almost Celtic, though she doesn’t know it—but you know, a little minor-key bluegrass sound is what she really likes to do, and if she did what she likes to do rather than what she thinks she ought to do she might have the very fame she so desires.” Aunt Queen sighed.
I marveled, not only at the wisdom of what she’d said, but at the curious disloyalty, because Aunt Queen was never one to criticize her own flesh and blood. But something seemed to have been stirred inside her by Lestat’s gaze. Perhaps he had worked a vague charm, and she was giving forth her deepest thoughts.
“But you, young man,” she said, “I’m your Aunt Queen from now on and forever, certainly; but what is your name?”
&nbs
p; “Lestat, Madam,” he answered, pronouncing it “Les-dot,” with the accent on the second syllable. “I’m not really very famous either. And I don’t sing anymore at all actually, except to myself when I’m driving my black Porsche madly or riding my motorcycle at a raging speed on the roads. Then I’m a regular Pavarotti—.”
“Oh, but you mustn’t go speeding!” Aunt Queen declared with a sudden attack of pure seriousness. “That’s how I lost my husband, John McQueen. It was a new Bugatti, you know what a Bugatti is” (Lestat nodded), “and he was so proud of it, his fine European sports car, and we were racing down the Pacific Coast Highway One, and on an unclouded summer day, screeching around the turns, down to Big Sur, and he lost control of the wheel and went right through the windshield. Dead like that. And I came to my senses with a crowd around me, only inches from a cliff that went sheer down into the sea.”
“Appalling,” said Lestat earnestly. “Was it very long ago?”
“Of course, decades ago, when I was foolish enough to do such things,” said Aunt Queen, “and I never remarried; we Blackwoods, we don’t remarry. And John McQueen left me a fortune, some consolation, I’ve never found another like him, with so much passion and so many happy delusions, but then I never much looked.” She shook her head at the pity of it. “But that’s a dreary subject, all that, he’s buried in the Blackwood tomb in the Metairie Cemetery; we have a large tomb there, an inspiring little chapel of a tomb, and I’ll soon be in it too.”
“Oh, my God, no,” I whispered, with a little too much fear.
“You hush now,” she said, glancing up at me. “And Lestat, my darling Lestat, tell me about your clothes, your odd and bold taste. I love it. I must confess that to picture you in that frock coat, rushing along on a motorcycle, is quite amusing, to be sure.”
“Well Madam,” he said, laughing softly, “my longing for the stage and the microphone is gone, but I won’t give up the fancy clothes. I can’t give them up. I’m the prisoner of capricious fashion and am actually quite plain tonight. I think nothing of piling on the lace and the diamond cuff links, and I envy Quinn that snappy leather coat he’s wearing. You could call me a Goth, I think.” He glanced at me very naturally, as though we were both simple humans. “Don’t they call us snappy antique dressers Goth now, Quinn?”