The Witching Hour

  In sum, she is a mindless medium; a witch rendered inoperative, and at the mercy perhaps of her familiar, who is ever at hand.

  There is another very distinct possibility. That Lasher is there to comfort her, to look out for her, and to keep her happy in ways perhaps that we do not understand.

  In 1980, over eight years ago, I managed to obtain an article of Deirdre's clothing, a cotton duster, or loose-fitting garment, which had been put in the dustbin in back of the house. I took this garment back with me to England, and placed it in the hands of Lauren Grant, the most powerful psychometric in the order today.

  Lauren knew nothing per se about the Mayfair Witches, but one cannot rule out telepathy in such situations. I tried to keep out of it with my own thoughts as much as I could.

  "I see happiness," she said. "This is the garment of someone who is blissfully happy. She lives in dreams. Dreams of green gardens and twilight skies, and exquisite sunsets. There are low-hanging branches there. There is a swing hanging from a beautiful tree. Is this a child? No, this is a woman. There is a warm breeze." Lauren massaged the garment ever more tightly, pressing its fabric to her cheek. "Oh, and she has the most beautiful lover. Oh, such a lover. He looks like a picture. Steerforth out of David Copperfield, that sort of man. He's so gentle, and when he touches her, she yields to him utterly. Who is this woman? All the world would like to be this woman. At least for a little while."

  Is that the subconscious life of Deirdre Mayfair? Deirdre herself will never tell.

  In closing allow me to add a few details. Since 1976, Deirdre Mayfair, whether clothed in a white flannel nightgown or a cotton duster, has always worn the Mayfair emerald around her neck.

  I have seen Deirdre myself several times from a distance since 1976. By that time, I had made three visits to New Orleans to gather information. I have returned numerous times since.

  I invariably spend some time walking in the Garden District on these return visits; I have attended the funerals over the years of Miss Belle, Miss Millie, and Miss Nancy, as well as Pierce, the last of Cortland's sons, who died of a heart attack in 1984.

  At each funeral, I have seen Carlotta Mayfair. Our eyes have met. I have three times during this decade placed my card in her hand as I passed her. She has never contacted me. She has never made any more legal threats.

  She is very old now, white-haired, painfully thin. Yet she still goes to work every day. She can no longer climb up on the step of the St. Charles car, so she is taken by a regular taxi. Only one black servant works in the house regularly, with the exception of Deirdre's devoted nurse.

  With each visit, I encounter some new "witness" who can tell me more about "the brown-haired man" and the mysteries surrounding First Street. The stories are all much the same. But we have indeed come to the end of Deirdre's history, though she herself is not yet dead.

  It is time to examine in detail her only child and heir, Rowan Mayfair, who has never set foot in her native city since the day she was taken away from it, six hours after her birth, on a cross-continental jet flight.

  And though it is much too soon to attempt to put the information on Rowan into a coherent narrative, we have made some critically important notes from our random material, and there is considerable indication that Rowan Mayfair--who knows nothing of her family, her history, or her inheritance--may be the strongest witch the Mayfair family has ever produced.

  Twenty-four

  THE AIR-CONDITIONING FELT good after the hot streets. But as she stood quietly for a moment in the foyer of Lonigan and Sons, unobserved and therefore anonymous, she realized the heat had already made her faintly sick. The icy stream of air was now shocking her. She felt the kind of chill you have when you have fever. The enormous crowd milling only a few feet away took on a curious dreamlike quality.

  When she'd first left the hotel, the humid summer afternoon had seemed manageable. But by the time she'd reached the dark house on Chestnut and First, she was feeling weak and already feeling the chill, though the air itself had been moist and warm and close, full of the raw smell of earth and green things.

  Yes, dreamlike all of this--this room now with its white damask walls and small new crystal chandeliers, and the noisy well-dressed people in ever shifting clusters. Dreamlike as the shaded world of old houses and iron fences through which she had just walked.

  From where she stood, she could not see into the coffin. It was mounted against the far wall of the second room. As the noisy gathering shifted here and there, she caught glimpses of the deeply polished wood and the silver handles, and of the tufted satin inside the open lid.

  She felt an involuntary tightening of her facial muscles. In that coffin, she thought. You have to go through this room, and through the next room, and look. Her face felt so curiously rigid. Her body felt rigid too. Just go up to the coffin. Isn't that what people do?

  She could see them doing it. She could see one person after another stepping up close to the coffin, and looking down at the woman inside.

  And sooner or later someone would notice her anyway. Someone would ask, perhaps, who she was. "You tell me. Who are all these people? Do they know? Who is Rowan Mayfair?"

  But for this moment, she was invisible, watching the rest of them, the men in their pale suits, the women in pretty dresses, and so many of the women wearing hats, and even gloves. It had been years since she had seen women in gaily colored dresses with belted waists and soft full skirts. There must have been two hundred people roaming about, and they were people of all ages.

  She saw bald, pink-scalped old men in white linen with canes, and young boys slightly uncomfortable in their tight collars and ties. The backs of the necks of old men and young boys looked equally naked and vulnerable. There were even little children playing around the adults, babies in white lace being bounced on laps, toddlers crawling on the dark red carpet.

  And there a girl, perhaps twelve years old, staring at her, with a ribbon in her red hair. Never in all her years in California had she seen a girl of that age--or any child, for that matter--with a real ribbon in her hair, and this was a big bow of peach-colored satin.

  Everyone in their Sunday best, she thought. Was that the expression? And the conversation was almost festive. Like a wedding, it seemed suddenly, though she had never been to such a wedding, she had to admit. Windowless this room, though there were white damask draperies hung here and there utterly concealing what might have been windows.

  The crowd shifted, broke again, so that she could see the coffin almost completely. A fragile little old man in a gray seersucker suit was standing alone looking down at the dead woman. With great effort, he lowered himself onto the velvet kneeler. What had Ellie called such things? I want there to be a prie-dieu by my coffin. Rowan had never seen a seersucker suit before in her life. But she knew that's what it was, because she'd seen it in the movies--in the old black-and-white films in which the fans churned and the parrot clucked on its perch and Sidney Greenstreet said something sinister to Humphrey Bogart.

  And that is what this was like. Not the sinister quality, merely the time frame. She had slipped into the past, a world now buried beneath the earth in California. And maybe that was why it was so unexpectedly comforting, rather like that "Twilight Zone" television episode where the harried businessman gets off the commuter train at a town happily fixed in the leisurely nineteenth century.

  Our funerals in New Orleans were the way they ought to be. Tell my friends to come. But Ellie's stark uncomfortable service had been nothing like this, with her bone-thin, suntanned friends, embarrassed by death, sitting resentfully on the edge of their folding chairs. She didn't really want, us to send flowers, did she? And Rowan had said, "I think it would be terrible if there were no flowers ... " Stainless steel cross, meaningless words, the man speaking them a total stranger.

  Oh, and look at these flowers! Everywhere she looked she saw them, great dazzling sprays of roses, lilies, gladiolus. She did not know the names of some of these flower
s. Nestled among the small curly-legged chairs, they stood, great wreaths on wire legs, and behind the chairs, and thrust five and six deep into the corners. Sprinkled with glistening droplets of water, they shivered in the chilly air, replete with white ribbons and bows, and some of the ribbons even had the name Deirdre printed on them in silver. Deirdre.

  Suddenly, it was everywhere she looked. Deirdre, Deirdre, Deirdre, the ribbons soundlessly crying her mother's name, while the ladies in the pretty dresses drank white wine from stemmed glasses, and the little girl with the hair ribbon stared at her, and a nun, even a nun in a dark blue dress and white veil and black stockings, sat bent over her cane, on the edge of a chair, with a man speaking into her ear, her head cocked, her small beak of a nose gleaming in the light, and little girls gathered around her.

  They were bringing in more flowers now, little wire trees sprouting red and pink roses amid spikes of shivering fern. How beautiful. A big blond beefy man with soft jowls set down a gorgeous little bouquet very near the distant coffin.

  And such an aroma rose from all these many bouquets. Ellie used to say the flowers in California had no scent. A lovely sweet perfume hung in this room. Now Rowan understood. It was sweet the way the warm air outside had been warm, and the moist breeze moist. It seemed that all the colors around her were becoming increasingly vivid.

  But she felt sick again, and the strong perfume was making it worse. The coffin was far away. The crowd completely obscured it now. She thought about the house again, the high dark house on the "riverside downtown corner," as the clerk at the hotel had described it. It had to be the house that Michael kept seeing. Unless there were a thousand like it, a thousand with a rose pattern in the cast iron, and a great dark cascade of bougainvillea pouring down the faded gray wall. Oh, such a beautiful house.

  My mother's house. My house? Where was Michael? There was a sudden opening in the crowd, and once again she saw the long flank of the coffin. Was she seeing a woman's profile against the satin pillow from where she stood? Ellie's coffin had been closed. Graham had had no funeral. His friends had gathered at a downtown bar.

  You are going to have go up to that coffin. You are going to have to look into it and see her. This is why you came, why you broke with Ellie and the paper in the safe, to see with your own eyes your mother's face. But are these things actually taking place, or am I dreaming? Look at the young girl with her arm around the old woman's shoulder. The young girl's white dress has a sash! She is wearing white stockings.

  If only Michael were here. This was Michael's world. If only Michael could take off his glove and lay his hand on the dead woman's hand. But what would he see? An undertaker shooting embalming fluid into her veins? Or the blood being drained into the gutter of the white embalming table? Deirdre. Deirdre was written in silver letters on the white ribbon that hung from the nearby wreath of chrysanthemums. Deirdre on the ribbon across the great bouquet of pink roses ...

  Well, what are you waiting for? Why don't you move? She moved back, against the door frame, watching an old woman with pale yellow hair open her arms to three small children. One after another they kissed the old woman's wobbling cheeks. She nodded her head. Are all these people my mother's family?

  She envisioned the house again, stripped of detail, dark and fantastically large. She understood why Michael loved that house, loved this place. And Michael didn't know that that was her mother's house. Michael didn't know any of this was happening. Michael was gone. And maybe that was all there would ever be, just that one weekend, and forever this unfinished feeling ...

  I gotta go home, it isn't just the visions, it's that I don't belong out here anymore. I knew it that day I went down to the ocean ...

  The door opened behind her. Silently she stepped to the side. An older couple passed her as if she were not there, a stately woman with beautiful iron gray hair swept back in a twist, in a perfect silk shirtwaist dress, and a man in a rumpled white suit, thick-necked and soft-voiced as he talked to the woman.

  "Beatrice!" Someone spoke a greeting. A handsome young man came to kiss the pretty woman with the iron gray hair. "Darling, come in," said a female voice. "No, no one's seen her, she's due to arrive anytime." Voices like Michael's voice, yet different. A pair of men talking in whispers over their wineglasses came between her and the couple as they moved on into the second room. Once again, the front door was opening. Gust of heat, traffic.

  She moved over into the far corner, and now she could see the coffin clearly, see that half the lid was closed over the lower portion of the woman's body, and why that struck her as grotesque she didn't know. A crucifix was set into the tufted silk above the woman's head, not that she could see that head, but she knew it was there, she could just see a dash of flesh color against the gleaming white. Go on, Rowan, go up there.

  Go up to the coffin. Is this more difficult than going into an Operating Room? Of course they will all see you, but they won't know who you are. The constriction came again, the tightening in the muscles of her face and her throat. She couldn't move.

  And then someone was speaking to her, and she knew she ought to turn her head and answer, but she did not. The little girl with the ribbon watched her. Why wasn't she answering, thought the little girl.

  " ... Jerry Lonigan, can I help you? You're not Dr. Mayfair, are you?"

  She looked at him stupidly. The beefy man with the heavy jowls and the prettiest china blue eyes. No, like blue marbles, his eyes, just perfectly round and blue.

  "Dr. Mayfair?"

  She looked down at his hand. Large, heavy, a paw. Take it. Answer that way if you can't talk. The tightening in her face grew worse. It was affecting her eyes. What was this all about?--her body frozen in alarm though her mind was in this trance, this awful trance. She made a little gesture with her head at the distant coffin. I want to ... but no words would come out. Come on, Rowan, you flew two thousand miles for this.

  The man slipped his arm around her. Pressure against her back. "You want to see her, Dr. Mayfair?"

  See her, talk to her, know her, love her, be loved by her .... Her face felt as if it were carved of ice. And her eyes were unnaturally wide, she knew it.

  She glanced up into his small blue eyes, and nodded. It seemed a hush had fallen over everyone. Had she spoken that loud? But she hadn't said anything at all. Surely they didn't know what she looked like, yet it seemed they were all turning to look at her as she and this man walked into the first room, and the message traveled by whispers. She looked closely at the red-haired girl with the ribbon as she passed. In fact, she stopped without meaning to, stranded, on the threshold of the second room, with this nice man, Jerry Lonigan, beside her.

  Even the children had stopped playing. The room seemed to darken as everyone moved soundlessly and slowly, but only a few steps. Mr. Lonigan said:

  "You wanna sit down, Dr. Mayfair?"

  She was staring at the carpet. The coffin was twenty feet away. Don't look up, she thought, don't look up until you actually reach the coffin. Don't see something horrible from a distance. But what was so horrible about all this, how could this be worse than the autopsy table, except that this was ... this was her mother.

  A woman stepped up behind the little girl, placing her hand on the girl's shoulder. "Rowan? Rowan, I'm Alicia Mayfair, I was Deirdre's fourth cousin once removed. This is Mona, my little girl."

  "Rowan, I'm Pierce Mayfair," said the handsome young man on her right, extending his hand suddenly. "I'm Cortland's great-grandson."

  "Darling, I'm Beatrice, your cousin." Whiff of perfume. The woman with the iron gray hair. Soft skin touching Rowan's cheek. Enormous gray eyes.

  "--Cecilia Mayfair, Barclay's granddaughter, my grandfather was Julien's second son born at the First Street house, and here, Sister, come, this is Sister Marie Claire. Sister, this is Rowan, this is Deirdre's girl!"

  Weren't you supposed to say something respectable to nuns, but this sister couldn't have heard. They were shouting in her ear. "Deirdre's gi
rl, Rowan!"

  "--Timothy Mayfair, your fourth cousin, we're glad to see you, Rowan--"

  "--glad to see you on this sad ... "

  "Peter Mayfair, we'll talk later on. Garland was my father. Did Ellie ever talk about Garland?"

  Dear God, they were all Mayfairs. Polly Mayfair, and Agnes Mayfair, and Philip Mayfair's girls, and Eugenie Mayfair, and on and on it went. How many of them could there possibly be? Not a family but a legion. She was clasping one hand after another, and at the same time cleaving to the beefy Mr. Lonigan, who held her so firmly. Was she trembling? No, this is what they call shaking, not trembling.

  Lips brushed her cheek. " ... Clancy Mayfair, Clay's great-granddaughter. Clay was born at First Street before the Civil War. My mother is Trudy Mayfair, here, Mother, come, let Mother through ... "

  " ... so glad to see you, darling. Have you seen Carlotta?"

  "Miss Carlotta's feeling pretty bad," said Mr. Lonigan. "She'll meet us at the church--"

  "--ninety years old now, you know."

  "--do you want a glass of water? She's white as a sheet, Pierce, get her a glass of water."

  "Magdalene Mayfair, Remy's great-granddaughter. Remy lived at First Street for years. This is my son, Garvey, and my daughter, Lindsey. Here, Dan, Dan say hello to Dr. Mayfair. Dan is Vincent's great-grandson. Did Ellie tell you about Clay and Vincent and ... "

  No, never, about anyone. Promise me you will never go back, that you'll never try to find out. But why, why in the name of God? All these people--why the paper, the secrecy?

  "--Gerald's with her. Pierce stopped by. He saw her. She's fine, she'll be at the church."

  "Do you want to sit down, honey?"

  "Are you all right?"

  "Lily, darling, Lily Mayfair. you'll never remember all our names, don't try."

  "Robert, honey. We'll talk to you later."

  "--here if you need us, Rowan. Are you feeling all right?"

  I am. I'm fine. I just can't talk. I can't move. I ...

  There was tightening again of the facial muscles. Rigid, rigid all over. She held tighter to Mr. Lonigan's hand. He said something to them about her paying her respects now. Was he telling them to go away? A man touched her left hand.