Taltos

by Anne Rice

  "Right you are," said Mona. "That's Old English. I have at one time or another looked up the derivation of every single word that pertains to witches and witchcraft."

  "Yeah, so have I. Warlock, right you are. Or it means, don't tell me, it means somebody who knows the truth all the time, right?"

  "And to think it was Oncle Julien who wanted me to do this, that's the puzzle, but then a ghost knows his own business and Oncle Julien maybe didn't know. The dead don't know everything. The evil people do, whether they're dead or alive, or at least they know enough to tangle us up in such a web we can never escape. But Julien didn't know that Michael was his descendant. I know he didn't. He wouldn't have told me to come."

  "To come where, Mona?"

  "To this house on Mardi Gras night, to sleep with Michael, to make this baby that only Michael and I could have made, or maybe you too could have made it with Michael, perhaps, because you can smell that smell coming up out of these boxes, that smell of him?"

  "Yeah, maybe I could, Mona. You never know."

  "Right, sweets, you never know. But I got him first. I got Michael while the door was open before Rowan came home. Just slipped through the cracks, and wham! This baby, this marvelous little baby."

  Mona turned over and lifted her head, resting her chin on her hands, elbows on the carpet.

  "Mary Jane, you have to know everything."

  "Yeah, I do," said Mary Jane. "I want to. I'm kind of worried about you."

  "Me? Don't worry. I couldn't be better. I'm thirsty for some more milk, but otherwise, I'm fine. Look, I can still lie on my belly, well, actually no." She sat up. "That wasn't so comfortable, guess I have to kiss that goodbye for a while, you know, sleeping on your stomach?"

  Mary Jane's brows had gone together in a very serious expression. She looked so cute! No wonder men were so damned patronizing to women. Did Mona look cute this way?

  "Little witches!" said Mona in a hissing whisper, and she made her fingers flutter beside her hair.

  Mary Jane laughed. "Yeah, little witches," she said. "So it was the ghost of Oncle Julien told you to come up here and sleep with Michael, and Rowan was nowhere around."

  "Exactly, nowhere around. And Oncle Julien had more than a heavy hand in it, I tell you. The thing is, I fear he has gone to heaven and left us to our own devices, but then that is fine. I wouldn't want to have to explain this to him."

  "Why wouldn't you?"

  "It's a new phase, Mary Jane. You might say it's witchcraft in our generation. It's got nothing to do with Julien or Michael or Rowan and the way that they would have solved things. It's something else altogether."

  "Yeah, I see."

  "You do, don't you?"

  "Yep. You're really sleepy. I'm going to go get you some milk."

  "Oh, that would be divine."

  "You just lie down and go on to sleep, darlin'. Your eyes look really bad. Can you see me at all?"

  "Sure, I can, but you're right. I'm just going to sleep right here. And, Mary Jane, take advantage of the situation."

  "Oh, you're too young for that, Mona."

  "No, silly, I didn't mean that," said Mona, laughing. "Besides, if I'm not too young for men, I'm not too young for girls either. As a matter of fact, I'm curious about doing it with a girl, or a woman perhaps, a beautiful woman like Rowan. But what I meant was, the boxes are opened. Take advantage of that fact, and read what you can out of them."

  "Yeah, maybe I'll do that. I can't really read his handwriting, but I can read hers. And she's got stuff here."

  "Yeah, read it. If you're going to help me, you have to read it. And down in the library, Mary Jane, the file on the Mayfair witches. I know you said you read it, but did you really read it?"

  "You know, Mona? I'm not sure I really did."

  Mona turned over on her side, and closed her eyes.

  And as for you, Morrigan, let's go back, way, way back, none of this foolishness about invaders and Roman soldiers, way back to the plain, and tell me how it all began. Who is the dark-haired one that everyone so loves? "Good-night, Mary Jane."

  "Listen, before you fly away here, darlin', who would you say is your very best trusted next of kin?"

  Mona laughed. She almost forgot the question, then woke with a start.

  "Aaah, you are, Mary Jane."

  "Not Rowan and Michael?"

  "Absolutely not. They must now be perceived as the enemy. But there are things I have to ask Rowan, I have to know from her, but she doesn't have to know what's going on with me. I have to think out the purpose for my questions. As for Gifford and Alicia, they're dead, and Ancient Evelyn is too sick, and Ryan is too dumb. And Jenn and Shelby are too innocent. And Pierce and Clancy are simply hopeless, and why ruin normal life for them? Have you ever put much of a premium on normal life?"

  "Never."

  "I guess I'm depending upon you, then, Mary Jane. 'Bye now, Mary Jane."

  "Then what you're saying is, you don't want me to call Rowan or Michael in London and ask their advice."

  "Good heavens, no." Six circles had formed, and the dance was beginning. She didn't want to miss it. "You mustn't do that, Mary Jane. You absolutely mustn't. Promise me you won't, Mary Jane. Besides, it's the middle of the night in London and we don't know what they're doing, do we? God help them. God help Yuri."

  Mona was floating away. Ophelia, with the flowers in her hair, moving steadily downstream. The branches of the trees came down to stroke her face, to touch the water. No, she was dancing in the circle, and the dark-haired one was standing in the very center and trying to tell them, but everyone was laughing and laughing. They loved him, but they knew he had a habit of going on and on, with such foolish worries....

  "Well, I am worried about you, Mona, I should tell you ..."

  Mary Jane's voice was very far away. Flowers, bouquets of flowers. That explains everything, why I have dreamed gardens all my life, and drawn pictures of gardens with crayons. Why are you always drawing gardens, Mona, Sister Louise asked me. I love gardens, and First Street's garden was so ruined until they cleared it and changed it, and now, all clipped and kept, it harbors the worst secret of all.

  No, Mother, don't ...

  No, the flowers, the circles, you talk! This dream was going to be as good as the last one. "Mona?"

  "Let me go, Mary Jane."

  Mona could barely hear her; besides, it didn't make any difference what she said.

  And that was a good thing, too, because this was what came out of Mary Jane's mouth, far, far away ... before Mona and Morrigan began to sing.

  "... you know, Mona Mayfair, I hate to tell you this, but that baby's grown since you went to sleep out by the tree!"

  Eighteen

  "I THINK WE should leave now," said Marklin.

  He lay on Tommy's bed, his head resting on his clasped hands, studying over and over the knots in the wood of the bed's coffered canopy.

  Tommy sat at the desk, feet crossed on the black leather ottoman. This room was larger than Marklin's, with a southern exposure, but he had never resented it. He had loved his own room. Well, he was ready now to get out of it. He had packed everything of importance in one suitcase, and hidden it under his own bed.

  "Call it a premonition. I don't want to stay here," he said. "There's no reason to stay longer."

  "You're being fatalistic and a bit silly," said Tommy.

  "Look, you've wiped the computers. Stuart's quarters are absolutely impenetrable, unless we want to risk breaking in the doors, and I don't like being under a curfew."

  "The curfew is for everyone, may I remind you, and if we were to leave now, we wouldn't make it to the door without a dozen questions. Besides, to walk out before the memorial service would be blatantly disrespectful."

  "Tommy, I can't endure some tenebrious ceremony in the small hours of the morning, with a lot of preposterous speeches about Anton and Aaron. I want to go now. Customs; rituals. These people are fools, Tommy. It's too late to be anything but frank. There are b
ack stairs; there are side stairs. I'm for leaving here immediately. I have things on my mind. I have work to do."

  "I want to do what they asked us to do," said Tommy, "which is what I intend to do. Observe the curfew they have asked us to observe. And go down when the bell is sounded. Now, please, Marklin, if you have nothing insightful or helpful to say, be quiet, will you?"

  "Why should I be quiet? Why do you want to stay here?"

  "All right, if you must know, we may have a chance during the memorial, or whatever it is, to find out where Stuart is keeping Tessa."

  "How could we find out that?"

  "Stuart's not a rich man, Marklin. He's bound to have a home somewhere, a place we've never seen, some ancestral manse or something. Now, if we play our cards right, we can ask a few questions about this subject, out of concern, of course, for Stuart. Have you got a better idea?"

  "Tommy, I don't think Stuart would hide Tessa in a place that was known to be his home. He's a coward, perhaps, a melodramatic lunatic even, but he's not stupid. We are not going to find Stuart. And we are not going to find Tessa."

  "Then what do we do?" asked Tommy. "Abandon everything? With what we know?"

  "No. We leave here. We go back to Regent's Park. And we think. We think about something far more important to us now than anything the Talamasca can offer."

  "Which is?"

  "We think, Tommy, about the Mayfair witches. We go over Aaron's last fax to the Elders. And we study the File, we study it closely for every clue as to which of the clan is most useful for our purposes."

  "You're going too fast," said Tommy. "What do you mean to do? Kidnap a couple of Americans?"

  "We can't discuss it here. We can't plan anything. Look, I'll wait till the damned ceremony starts, but then I'm leaving. I'm stepping out at the first opportunity. You can come later if you like."

  "Don't be stupid," said Tommy. "I don't have a car. I have to go with you. And what if Stuart's at the ceremony? Have you thought of that?"

  "Stuart's not coming back here. He has better sense. Now, listen, Tommy. This is my final decision. I'll stay for the beginning of the ceremony, I'll pay my respects, chat with a few of the members, that sort of thing. And then I'm out of here! And on, on to my rendezvous with the Mayfair witches, Stuart and Tessa be damned."

  "All right, I'll go with you."

  "That's better. That's intelligent. That's my practical Tommy."

  "Get some sleep then. They didn't say when they'd call us. And you're the one who's going to drive."

  Nineteen

  THE TOPMOST ROOM of the tower. Yuri sat at the round table, looking down into the cup of steaming Chinese tea before him.

  The condemned man himself had made the tea. Yuri didn't want to touch it.

  All his life in the Talamasca, he had known Stuart Gordon. He had dined countless times with Gordon and Aaron. They had strolled the gardens together, gone to the retreats in Rome together. Aaron had talked so freely with Gordon. The Mayfair witches and the Mayfair witches and the Mayfair witches. And now it was Gordon.

  Betrayed him.

  Why didn't Ash kill him now? What could the man give that would not be contaminated, not perverted by his madness? It was almost a certainty that his helpers had been Marklin George and Tommy Monohan. But the Order would discover the truth on that score. Yuri had reached the Motherhouse from the phone booth in the village, and the mere sound of Elvera's voice had brought him to tears. Elvera was faithful. Elvera was good. Yuri knew that the great chasm that had opened between him and the Talamasca had already begun to close. If Ash was right, that the conspiracy had been small, and indeed that seemed to be the case--that the Elders were not involved--then Yuri must be patient. He must listen to Stuart Gordon. Because Yuri had to take back to the Talamasca whatever he learned tonight.

  Patience. Aaron would want it thus. Aaron would want the story known, and recorded for others to know. And Michael and Rowan, were they not entitled to the facts? And then there was Ash, the mysterious Ash. Ash had uncovered Gordon's treachery. If Ash had not appeared in Spelling Street, Yuri would have accepted Gordon's pretense of innocence, and the few foolish lies Gordon had told while they sat in the cafe.

  What went on in Ash's mind? He was overwhelming, just as Yuri had told them. Now they knew. They saw for themselves his remarkable face, the calm, loving eyes. But they mustn't forget that he was a menace to Mona, to any of the Mayfair family--

  Yuri forced himself to stop thinking about this. They needed Ash too much just now. Ash had somehow become the commander of this operation. What would happen if Ash withdrew and left them with Gordon? They couldn't kill Gordon. They couldn't even scare him, at least Yuri didn't think so. It was impossible to gauge how much Rowan and Michael hated Gordon. Unreadable. Witches. He could see that now.

  Ash sat on the other side of the circle, his monstrous hands clasped on the edge of the old, unfinished wood, watching Gordon, who sat to his right. He did hate Gordon, and Yuri saw it by the absence of something in Ash's face, the absence of compassion, perhaps? The absence of the tenderness which Ash showed to everyone, absolutely everyone else.

  Rowan Mayfair and Michael Curry sat on either side of Yuri, thank God. He could not have endured to be close to Gordon. Michael was the wrathful one, the suspicious one. Rowan was taken with Ash. Yuri had known she would be. But Michael was taken with no one just yet.

  Yuri could not touch this cup. It might as well have been filled with the man's urine.

  "Out of the jungles of India," said Stuart, sipping his own tea, in which he had poured a large slug of whiskey. "I don't know where. I don't know India. I know only that the natives said she'd been there forever, wandering from village to village, and that she'd come to them before the war, and that she spoke English and that she didn't grow old, and the women of the village had become frightened of her."

  The whiskey bottle stood in the middle of the table. Michael Curry wanted it, but perhaps he could not touch the refreshments offered by Gordon either. Rowan Mayfair sat with her arms folded. Michael Curry had his elbows on the table. He was closer to Stuart, obviously trying to figure him out.

  "I think it was a photograph, her undoing. Someone had taken a picture of the entire village, together. Some intrepid soul with a tripod and a wind-up camera. And she had been in that picture. It was one of the young men who uncovered it among his grandmother's possessions when the grandmother died. An educated man. A man I'd taught at Oxford."

  "And he knew about the Talamasca."

  "Yes, I didn't talk much to my students about the Order, except for those who seemed as if they might want to ..."

  "Like those boys," said Yuri.

  He watched the light jump in Stuart's eye, as if the lamp nearby had jumped, and not Stuart.

  "Yes, well, those boys."

  "What boys?" asked Rowan.

  "Marklin George and Tommy Monohan," said Yuri.

  Stuart's face was rigid. He lifted the mug of tea with both hands and drank deeply.

  The whiskey smelled medicinal and sickening.

  "Were they the ones who helped you with this?" asked Yuri. "The computer genius and the Latin scholar?"

  "It was my doing," said Stuart, without looking at Yuri. He was not looking at any of them. "Do you want to hear what I have to say, or not?"

  "They helped you," said Yuri.

  "I have nothing to say on the subject of my accomplices," Gordon said, looking coldly at Yuri now, and then back again into empty space, or the shadows along the walls.

  "It was the two young ones," said Yuri, though Michael was gesturing to him to hold back. "What about Joan Cross, or Elvera Fleming, or Timothy Hollingshed?"

  Stuart made an impatient and disgusted gesture at the mention of these names, hardly realizing how this might be interpreted in relation to the boys.

  "Joan Cross doesn't have a romantic bone in her body," Stuart said suddenly, "and Timothy Hollingshed has always been overrated due simply to his aristocratic bac
kground. Elvera Fleming is an old fool! Don't ask me these questions anymore. I won't be made to speak of my accomplices. I won't be made to betray them. I'll die with that secret, be assured."

  "So this friend," said Ash, his expression patient but surprisingly cold, "this young man in India, he wrote to you, Mr. Gordon."

  "Called me, as a matter of fact, told me he had a mystery for me. He said he could get her to England, if I'd take over once she arrived. He said that she couldn't really fend for herself. She seemed mad, and then not mad. No one could quite analyze her. She spoke of times unknown to the people around her. And when he'd made inquiries, with a view to sending her home, he found she was a legend in that part of India. I have a record of it all. I have our letters. They are all here. There are copies in the Motherhouse as well. But the originals are here. Everything I value is in this tower."

  "You knew what she was when you saw her?"

  "No. It was extraordinary. I found myself enchanted by her. Some selfish instinct dominated my actions. I brought her here. I didn't want to take her to the Motherhouse. It was most peculiar. I couldn't have told anyone what I was doing or why, except for the obvious fact that I was so charmed by her. I had only lately inherited this tower from my mother's brother, an antiquarian who had been my family mentor. It seemed the perfect place.

  "The first week, I scarcely left at all. I had never been in the company of such a person as Tessa. There was a gaiety and simplicity in her which gave me inexpressible happiness."

  "Yes, I'm sure," said Ash softly, with a trace of a smile. "Please go on with your story."

  "I fell in love with her." He paused, eyebrows raised, as if amazed by his own words. He seemed excited by the revelation. "I fell completely in love with her."

  "And you kept her here?" asked Yuri.

  "Yes, she's been here ever since. She never goes out. She's afraid of people. It's only when I've been here a long while that she'll talk, and then she tells her amazing tales.

  "She's seldom coherent, or I should say chronological. The little stories always make sense. I have hundreds of recordings of her talking, lists of Old English words and Latin words which she has used.

  "You see, what became clear to me almost immediately was that she was speaking of two different lives, a very long one which she was living now, and a life she'd lived before."