The Witching Hour

  She gazed up at the windows of Julien's old room. Was she thinking again of Antha?

  "I can feel the curse lifting from this place," she whispered. "That's what was meant, that you and I should come, and love each other here."

  Yes, I believe mat, he thought, but somehow or other he didn't say it. Maybe the stillness around him seemed too alive; maybe he was afraid to challenge something unseen that watched and listened.

  "All these walls are solid brick, Rowan," he went on, "and some of them as much as twenty inches thick. I measured them with my hands when I walked through the various doorways. Twenty inches thick. They'd been plastered over outside to make the house look like stone because that was the fashion. See the scoring in the paint? To make it look like a villa built of great blocks of stone?

  "It's a polyglot," he confessed, "with its cast-iron lace and Corinthian columns and Doric and Ionic columns, and the keyhole doorways--"

  "Yeah, keyholes," she said. "And I'll tell you about another place where I saw a doorway like that. It's on the tomb. At the very top of the Mayfair tomb."

  "How do you mean at the top?"

  "Just the carving of a doorway, like the doorways in this house. I'm sure that's what it was, unless it's really meant to be a keyhole. I'll show you. We can walk over there today or tomorrow. It's right off the main path."

  Why did that fill him with uneasiness? A doorway carved on the tomb? He hated graveyards, he hated tombs. But sooner or later he had to see it, didn't he? He went on talking, stifling the feeling, wanting to have the moment and the sight of the house before him, bathed in the lovely sun.

  "Then there are those curved Italianate windows on the north side," he said, "and that's another architectural influence. But it's all of a piece, finally. It works because it works. It's built for this climate with its fifteen-foot ceilings. It's a great trap for light and cool breezes, a citadel against the heat."

  Slipping her arm around him, she followed him back inside and up the long shadowy stairs.

  "See, this plaster is firm," he explained. "It's almost surely the original, but it was done by master craftsmen. They probably ran those crown moldings by hand. There aren't even the minimum cracks you'd expect from settlement. When I get under the house I'm going to find these are chain walls that go clear down to the ground, and that the sills that support this house are enormous. They have to be. Everything is level, firm."

  "And I thought it was hopeless when I first saw it."

  "Take this old wallpaper down with your imagination," he said. "Paint the walls in your mind's eyes with bright warm colors. See all this woodwork shining white and clean."

  "It's ours now," she whispered. "Yours and mine. We're writing the file from now on."

  "The File on Rowan and Michael," he said with a faint smile. He paused at the top of the stairs. "Things up here on the second floor are simpler. The ceilings are about a foot lower, and you don't have the ornate crown moldings. It's all a smaller scale."

  She laughed and shook her head. "And how high are these smaller rooms, thirteen feet, perhaps?"

  They turned and went down the hall to the first bedroom on the very front of the house. Its windows opened both to the front and the side porches. Belle's prayer book lay on the chest of drawers, with her name engraved in the cover in gold letters. There were photographs in gilt frames behind dim glass hanging on dulled and rusted chains.

  "Julien again. Has to be," said Michael. "And Mary Beth, look, that woman looks like you, Rowan."

  "So they told me," she said softly.

  Belle's rosary, with her named engraved on the back of the crucifix, lay still on the pillow of the four-poster bed. Dust rose from the feather comforter when Michael touched it. A wreath of roses peered down at him from the satin tester above.

  Gloomy it all seemed with its fading flowered paper, and the heavy armoires tilting ever so slightly forward, and the carpet threadbare and the color of dust itself. The branches of the oaks looked like ghosts beyond the pongee curtains. The bathroom was clean and very plain--tile from Stella's time, Michael figured. A great old tub such as one still finds now and then in old hotels, and a high pedestal lavatory, and stacks of towels, layered with dust, on a wicker stand.

  "Oh, but Michael, this is the best room," Rowan said behind him. "This is the one that opens to the south and the west. Help me with this window."

  They forced the stubborn sash. "It's like being in a tree house," she said as she stepped outside on the deep front gallery. She laid her hand on the fluted Corinthian column and looked into the twisted branches of the oaks. "Look, Michael, there are ferns growing in the branches, hundreds of little green ferns. And there, a squirrel. No, there are two of them. We've frightened them. This is so strange. It's like we're in the woods, and we can jump out there and start climbing. We could just wander heavenward through this tree."

  Michael tested the rafters underneath. "Solid, just like everything else. And the iron lace isn't rusted, not really. All it needs is paint." No leaks in the roof above either.

  Just waiting, waiting all this time to be restored. He stopped, and slipped off his khaki jacket. The heat was getting to him finally, even here where the river breezes did flood by.

  He slung the jacket over his shoulder and held it with one hooked finger.

  Rowan stood, with arms folded, leaning on the cast-iron railing. She looked out over the quiet still corner.

  He was looking down through the tangle of the little sweet olive trees, at the front gate. He was seeing himself as a boy standing there, just seeing himself so clearly. She clasped his hand suddenly and drew him after her back inside.

  "Look, that door connects to the next bedroom. That could be a sitting room, Michael. And both lead on to that side porch."

  He was staring at one of the oval photographs. Stella? Had to be Stella.

  "Wouldn't it be wonderful?" she was saying. "It has to be the sitting room."

  He glanced down again at the white leather cover of the prayer book with the words Belle Mayfair inscribed in gold. Just for a second, he thought, Touch it. And to think, Belle was so sweet, so good.

  How could Belle hurt you? You're in this house and not using the power.

  "Michael?"

  But he couldn't do it. If he began, how could he stop? And it would kill him, those electrical shocks passing through him, and the blindness, the inevitable blindness when the images swam around him like murky water, and the cacophony of all the voices. No. You don't have to. Nobody has told you that you have to.

  The thought suddenly that someone might make him do it, might tear off the glove and force his hand on these objects, made him cringe. He felt cowardly. And Rowan was calling him. He looked down at the prayer book as he moved away.

  "Michael, this must have been Millie's room. It has a fireplace, too." She stood before a high dresser, holding a small monogrammed handkerchief. "These rooms are like shrines," she said.

  Beyond the long window, the bougainvillea grew so thick over the side porch that the lower railings could no longer be seen. This was the porch above Deirdre's porch. Open, because only that lower part had been screened in.

  "Yes, all these rooms have fireplaces," he said absently, his eyes on the fluorescent purple blossoms of the bougainvillea. "I'm going to have a look at the firebricks in the chimneys. These little shallow grates were never used for wood, they were used for coal."

  Now they housed gas heaters, and he rather liked that, for in all this time, he'd never seen a little gas heater blazing away in the cozy winter dark, with all those tiny blue and gold flames.

  Rowan stood at the closet door. "What is that smell, Michael?"

  "Lord, Rowan Mayfair, you never smelled camphor in an old closet?"

  She laughed softly. "I've never even seen an old closet, Michael Curry. I've never lived in an old house, nor visited an old hotel. State of the art was my adoptive father's motto. Rooftop restaurants and brass and glass. You can't imagine the lengt
hs to which he went to maintain those standards. And Ellie couldn't stand the sight of anything old or used. Ellie threw out all her clothes after a year's wear."

  "You must think you slipped off the planet."

  "No, not really. Just slipped into another interpretation," she said, her voice trailing off. Thoughtfully she touched the old clothes hanging there. All he saw were shadows.

  "And to think," she whispered, "the century is almost over, and she lived all her life right here in this room." She stepped back. "God, I hate this wallpaper. Look, there's a leak up there."

  "Nothing major, honey. Just a little leak. There's bound to be one or more in a house this size. That's nothing. But I think the plaster's dead up there."

  "Dead? The plaster is dead?"

  "Too old to take a patch. See the way it's crumbled. So we'll put in a new ceiling," he said, shrugging. "Two days work."

  "You're a genius."

  He laughed and shook his head.

  "Look, there's an old bathroom there," she said. "Each room has its own bathroom. I'm trying to see everything cleaned and finished ... "

  "I see it," he said. "I see it all with every step I take."

  Carlotta's room was the last major room at the end of the hallway--a great gloomy cavern it seemed, with its black four-poster bed and its faded taffeta ruffles, and a few dreary slip-covered chairs. A stale smell rose around them. A bookshelf held law texts and reference books. And there, the rosary and the prayer book as if she'd only just laid them down. Her white gloves in a tangle, and a pair of cameo earrings, and a string of jet beads.

  "We used to call those Grandma beads," he said with vague surprise. "I forgot all about those." He moved to touch them and then drew back his gloved hand as if he'd drawn near to something hot.

  "I don't like it in here, either," Rowan whispered. She was hugging the backs of her arms again in that chilled, miserable gesture. Scared maybe. "I don't want to touch what belonged to her," she said, looking vaguely repelled by the items strewn on the dresser, repelled by the old furniture, beautiful as it was.

  "Ryan will take care of it," she murmured, becoming ever more uneasy. "He said that Gerald Mayfair will come and take away her things. She left her personal things to Gerald's grandmother." At last she turned as if something had startled her, then stared almost angrily at the mirror between the side windows. "There's that smell again, that camphor. And something else."

  "Verbena, and rose water," he said. "See the bottle? They plant little things like that now in quaint northern California bed-and-breakfast hotels. I've planted them on many a marble-top table. And there they sit. The real thing."

  "It's too real," she whispered, "it's dreary and unhappy."

  They moved on to the rear door of the room which opened onto a little corridor and a short stairs, and then two small rooms, following one upon the other.

  "The maids slept here in the old days," Michael explained. "Eugenia has that room back there now. Technically we are looking into the servants' wing, and they would never have used this connecting door, because it wasn't here until recent years. They cut through the brick wall to put it in. In the old days the servants would have come into the main house by means of the porch."

  At the far end of the wing, they could see a dull light burning. "That's the stairway that leads down to the kitchen. And that old bathroom back there was Eugenia's. In the old days southern people had the black servants use a different bathroom. You've heard enough about all that, I imagine."

  They turned back into the larger room. Rowan moved carefully across the faded rug, and Michael followed her to the window and gently pushed back the soft frail curtain, so that they could look down on the brick sidewalks of Chestnut Street, and the artful facade of the grand house across the way.

  "See, open to the river side," said Michael, looking at the other building. "And look at the oak trees on that property and the old carriage house is still standing. See the stucco peeling from the bricks. It, too, was made to look like stone."

  "From every window you see the oaks," Rowan said, speaking low as if not to disturb the dust. "And the sky, such a deep blue. Even the light is different here. It's like the soft light of Florence or Venice."

  "That it is," Michael said.

  Again, he found himself staring apprehensively at the belongings of this woman. Maybe Rowan's uneasiness had communicated itself to him. He imagined, compulsively and painfully, having to take off his glove and lay his naked hand upon things that had been hers.

  "What is it, Michael?"

  "Let's go," he said under his breath, clasping her hand again and moving back into the main hall.

  Only reluctantly did she follow Michael into Deirdre's old room. Here her confusion and revulsion seemed to deepen. Yet he knew she was compelled to make this journey. He saw the way her eyes moved hungrily over the framed photographs, and the little Victorian cane-seated chairs. Michael hugged her close as she stared down at the vicious stain on the mattress.

  "That's awful. I've got to call someone," he said, "to clean that up."

  "I'll do it," she said.

  "No, I will. You asked downstairs if I could take over, hire the people I needed to restore the whole place. Well, I can take care of that too."

  He looked at the stain, a great oval of brown, the center of it sticky. Had the woman hemorrhaged when she was dying? Or had she lain there with her waste seeping out in the heat of this awful old room?

  "I don't know," Rowan whispered, though he hadn't voiced the question. She gave a ragged sigh. "I've already asked for the records. Ryan's requesting everything through legal channels. I talked to him today. I called the doctor. I talked to the nurse, too, Viola. Sweet old woman. She told it like Dickens. All the doctor said was that there was no reason to take her to the hospital. The whole thing was crazy. He didn't like my asking him questions. He suggested that I was wrong to ask him. He said it was the humane thing to let her die."

  He held her more tightly, grazing her cheek with his lips.

  "What are those candles?" she asked, staring at the little bedside altar. "And that awful statue. What's that?"

  "The Blessed Mother," he said. "When there's a naked heart on it like that I guess you call it the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I don't really remember. The candles are blessed candles. I saw them flickering up here, when I was outside that first night. I never dreamed she was dying. If I'd known I ... I don't know. I didn't even know who lived here when I first came."

  "But why did they burn these blessed candles?"

  "It's to comfort the dying. The priest comes. He gives her what they call the Last Sacraments. I went with the priest a couple of times when I was an altar boy."

  "They did that for her, but they didn't take her to the hospital."

  "Rowan, if you had known, if you had come, do you think she could have been brought around? I don't think so, honey. I don't think it matters now."

  "Ryan says no. She was hopeless. He says that once about ten years ago, Carlotta took her off the drugs. There was no response to any stimulus except reflex. Ryan says they did everything they could, but then Ryan is covering Ryan, isn't he? But I'll know when I see the records, and then I'll feel better ... or worse."

  She moved away from the bed, her eyes drifting more sluggishly over the room. She seemed to be forcing herself to evaluate it the way they had evaluated everything else.

  Tentatively he pointed out to her that only in this room was there the ornamentation that was common to the lower floor. He drew her attention to the scrollwork crowning the windows. A crystal chandelier, covered with dust, hanging from an ornate plaster medallion. The bed itself was huge and vaguely ugly.

  "It's not like the others, the four-posters," she said.

  "It's newer, machine made," he explained, "It's American. That was the kind they bought by the millions near the end of the last century. Probably Mary Beth bought it and it was very much the thing."

  "She stopped time, didn't she?"
>
  "Mary Beth?"

  "No, that hateful Carlotta. She stopped time here. She made everything grind to a halt. Think of young girls growing up in a house like this. There isn't a scrap of evidence that they ever had anything beautiful or special or contemporary of their own."

  "Teddy bears," Michael whispered. Hadn't Deirdre said something about teddy bears in the garden in Texas?

  Rowan had not heard him. "Well, her reign is over," she said, but it was without triumph or resolution.

  She suddenly moved forward and picked up the plaster Virgin with the exposed red heart, and pitched it across the room. It landed on the marble floor of the open bathroom, the body breaking into three uneven pieces. She stared at it as if shocked by what she'd done.

  He was astonished. Something purely irrational and completely superstitious shook him. The Virgin Mary broken on the bathroom floor. He wanted to say something, some magic words or prayers to undo it; like tossing salt over your shoulder or knocking on wood. Then his eye caught something glittering in the shadows. A heap of tiny glittering things on the table at the far side of the bed.

  "Look, Rowan," he said softly, slipping his fingers around the back of her neck. "Look, on the other table, over there."

  It was the jewel box, and it stood open. It was the velvet purse. Gold coins heaped everywhere, and ropes of pearls, and gems, hundreds of small glittering gems.

  "Good God," she whispered. She moved around the bed, and stared down at it as if it were alive.

  "Didn't you believe it?" he asked her. But he wasn't sure now whether he had believed it himself. "They look fake, don't they? Like a motion-picture treasure. Couldn't possibly be real."

  She looked at him across the barren empty bed. "Michael," she said softly, "would you touch them? Would you ... lay your hands on them?"