Lasher

  "It's so strange," said Lily. "This is like being from a family of great musicians, yet not knowing how to read music, not even knowing how to carry a tune."

  Only Paige Mayfair seemed unembarrassed, the one from away, the one who hadn't grown up in the shadow of First Street, hearing people answer each other's thoughts as easily as each other's words.

  Paige laid her small leather pocketbook on the floor, and came to the bed. "Turn out the lights, except for the candles."

  "That's nonsense," said Fielding.

  "I prefer it that way," said Paige. "I prefer that there will be no distractions." Then she looked down at Rowan, studying her slowly from her smooth forehead down to the feet poking straight up beneath the sheet. Paige's face looked sad, deliberately sad and thoughtful.

  "This is useless," said Fielding. He was obviously finding it difficult to remain standing.

  Mona tugged him over closer to the bed. "Here, lean on the mattress," she said, trying not to be impatient. "I've got your arm. Lay your hand on her. One hand will do it."

  "No, both hands, please," said Paige.

  "Absolute idiocy!" said Fielding.

  The others closed in around the bed. Michael stepped back but then Lily gestured that he must join them too. They all laid their hands on Rowan, Fielding tilting forward at a precarious angle, his labored breathing audible, a little cough collecting in his wattled throat.

  Mona felt Rowan's soft pale arm. She had laid her fingers right on the bruises. What had caused them? Had he grabbed Rowan and shaken her? You could almost see the marks of the fingers. Mona laid her own fingers on top of the marks.

  Rowan, heal! She hadn't waited for the others, and now she saw that all had made the same silent unceremonious decision. She heard the communal prayer rising; she saw that Paige and Lily had closed their eyes. "Heal," whispered Paige. "Heal," whispered Mona.

  "Heal, Rowan," said Randall in a deep decisive voice.

  Finally the disgruntled murmur came from Fielding. "Heal, child, if the power is within you. Heal. Heal. Heal."

  When Mona opened her eyes again she saw that, Michael was crying. He was holding Rowan's right hand tight in both of his. He was whispering the word along with all of them. Mona closed her eyes and said it again.

  "Come on, Rowan! Heal!"

  Moments passed as they remained there. Moments passed in which this or that one whispered, or stirred, or clasped the flesh more tightly or patted it. Lily laid her hand on Rowan's forehead. Michael bent to kiss Rowan's head.

  It was Paige finally who said that they had done what they could do.

  "Has she had the Last Sacraments?" asked Fielding.

  "Yes, at the hospital, before the surgery," said Lauren. "But she is not going to die. She is holding steady. She is in a deep coma. And she could go on like that for days."

  Michael had turned his back on the assembly. Silently, they slipped out of the room.

  In the living room, Lauren and Lily poured the coffee. Mona set out the sugar and the cream. It was still pitch-dark outside, wintry, still.

  The great clock chimed five. Paige looked at it, as if startled. And then dropped her eyes.

  "What do you think?" asked Randall. "She's not dying," said Paige. "But there is absolutely no response. At least none that I could feel."

  "None," said Lily.

  "Well, we tried it," said Mona. "That's the important thing. We tried."

  She went out of the double parlor into the hallway. For a moment she thought she saw Michael at the top of the stairs. But it was just the nurse passing. The house creaked and rustled as it always did. She hurried up, deliberately on tiptoe, trying not to play the stairs like musical keys.

  The bedside lamp had been lighted again. The candle flames were lost in the brash yellow illumination.

  Mona wiped her eyes and took Rowan's hand. Her own hand was snaking. "Heal, Rowan!" she said. "Heal, Rowan! Heal! You're not dying, Rowan! Heal!"

  Michael put his arms around her, kissed her cheek.

  She didn't turn away. "Heal, Rowan," she said. I'm sorry I did it with him. I'm sorry. "Heal, please," she whispered, "what good is it all...the heritage, the money, any of it...if we can't...if we can't heal?"

  It must have been six-thirty when Mona made the resolve. There would be a Mayfair Medical. It would happen just as Rowan had planned.

  Mona had taken a wool blanket with her out under the oak tree, before the guest house, and she was sitting there on the dry blanket, watching the morning shimmer in the wetness around her, the fresh light green leaves of the bananas, the crinkled elephant ears, the ginger lilies, the green moss on the bricks. The sky was violet now just as it might be at sunset, something she witnessed far more often than dawn.

  A guard slept in a straight-backed chair at the garden gate. Another walked back and forth on the other side of the picket gates along the flagstones beside the pool.

  The house seemed to grow brighter, more distant against the deepening violet. A deep blood-red aurora began to rise slowly to the far right. You never really knew east from west in New Orleans, until the sun came, or the sun went. Well, here it was coming, glorious and not altogether silent. It seemed the birds heard it; the birds were incited; and all the thick shaggy leaves around her were rattling and alive.

  It made her happy to see it, incompletely and impatiently happy. It made her feel alone. Designee of the legacy. Lauren had said in a low whisper, "This shouldn't come as much of a surprise to you. It's a matter of lineage. You traced it yourself in your computer. We'll explain it all. I cannot talk about it while Rowan lives and breathes."

  There will be a Mayfair Medical, Rowan. That will be your legacy, and we will take our secrets with us into our own private and ultimately dispensable history, but the stones of Mayfair Medical will stand firm for all to see.

  She felt dizzy suddenly. Kind of sick. She really hated being awake at this time of morning. Always had. And when Mona was little, Alicia had always wanted to go to Mass. Drunk or sober the night before, didn't matter. Alicia had to get up and go to Mass. They went uptown to Holy Name on the streetcar. Mona always felt bad like this, headachy with a bad taste in her mouth. That had only stopped in the last few years when Alicia was drinking in the morning, finally, and was already with a beer in her hand, sitting on the back steps, when Mona came down.

  But it wasn't so bad being awake now, seeing this deep red color rising miraculously, seeing it turn to gold. The sheer excitement of the last few days rendered things so precious, so clear. Look at this garden, never forget to look at it. The legacy. Christ, Mona, this is your garden! Or soon will he!

  No wonder she couldn't sleep. She had tried. Best to use this time for thinking, for planning, for laying out in orderly fashion the thing that had begun to obsess her, the location and the structure of Mayfair Medical, where the word Heal would be written. In stone? In stained glass?

  Pierce would be her strongest ally; he was of the same conservative ilk as Ryan, but the idea was dear to him; he wanted it to work. The last two months, he had kept the plan alive. With a little pushing, he could be made to formulate, imagine, envision. It would all work out, the conservatives in the firm holding them back a little, and their insistence to be bold, to think big, to dream.

  Pierce lay asleep not very far away in one of the many scattered lounge chairs, his jacket over his shoulder. He had wanted the bracing air, he said. He was near the pool. He couldn't take the stuffiness of indoors. He had looked like a baby when she passed him.

  We'll do it, thought Mona. It's more than a childish resolve to go around the world before I am twenty, or dig a tunnel to China, or start the most successful mutual fund in the international stock market. Designee of the legacy. All things are possible, that is the key thing to remember.

  Not Alicia's view as she sat with her beer on the step. "I'm too tired to do anything anymore." Don't think about her in a freezer drawer. They don't really freeze people in the morgue, do they? Don't they just k
eep them cold?

  All those books on hospitals, where had Mona seen them? In Rowan's room, when Mona had been plotting to seduce Michael. Those books were in the nightstand by the bed. Mona would read them later, study the entire project. That was important--have an advanced scheme before you bring them to the table; run the meeting like an ad for new computers, with all those shiny laser printouts of floor plans, and spreadsheets and lists.

  Finally she closed her eyes. She could feel the sun now. Didn't have to see it.

  She would play a little trick on herself that always made her sleep. Her mind was going a mile a second, and so she made it do something: decorate the lobbies and offices of Mayfair Medical--made it pick colors, made it hang drapes, made it choose paintings for the interior, paintings that would make waiting patients happy, paintings that would give overworked doctors and nurses a moment of illumination when they stepped into a corridor or into a stairwell, or came in the front doors.

  Representations of healing, something like that beautiful painting by Rembrandt of the Anatomy Lesson. She opened her eyes with a start. No, they wouldn't want to see that, nothing that terrible. Think of other things, the passive and beautiful faces of Piero Delia Francesca, the soft sweet eyes of Botticelli's women, soothing fancies. Things that were better than real.

  She was so sleepy. She was trying to remember all the people in that big Medici painting in Florence, the one with Lorenzo looking out of the corner of his eye. She'd been five when Gifford took her to Europe the first time.

  "Mothers and babies!" she'd said as they went through the Palazzo Vecchio. She'd so loved to skip and twirl on the stone floors. She had never seen so many pictures of that one grand theme. Gifford had whispered sternly, "Madonna with Child."

  Gifford bent down to kiss her. Go to sleep for a while.

  Yes, think I will. I didn't mean to, I mean with Michael, I never meant to...

  They know that. It doesn't matter now. It's small. You are so like a Mayfair, to want to be fierce and reckless, and then be guilt-ridden! Don't you know that's how it is with us? Nobody gets off light.

  Are you certain she wouldn't hate me for it? That it was so small? I didn't think you would think it was small. That's the whole trick of it, deciding what is small and large.

  It's small.

  Finally, her head against the rough bark of the oak, she slept.

  Thirty

  HE LIKED THE house. It stood on the street, that is Esplanade Avenue, rather like a palazzo in Rome or a town house in Amsterdam, and though it was brick stuccoed over, it had the appearance of stone. It was painted in Roman colors, the dark Pompeian red, with a deep ocher trim.

  Esplanade Avenue had seen better days. But it was architecturally fascinating to Yuri, all these marvelous vintage buildings, amid the other commercial makeshift trash. He'd enjoyed his long walk through the Quarter, meandering, and then coming upon this house just as he reached the border of the district, the grand avenue which had once been the high street of the French and Spanish, and was now still full of mansions such as this. Of course two men were following him. But so what?

  He felt the big heavy gun in his pocket. Wooden handle, long barrel. All right.

  Beatrice let him in.

  "Oh, thank God, darling, Aaron is on tenterhooks. What can I get for you?" She glanced past him. She saw the man under the tree across the street.

  "Nothing, madam, thank you," said Yuri. "I like my coffee very black and strong, and I stopped for a nice quick shot of it in one of the little cafes."

  They stood in a massive center hall, with a grand stairway flowing up beyond them, branched at its landing, sending narrow stairs up the right wall and the left. The floor was mosaic tile and the walls were like those outside, a deep terra-cotta red.

  "That's exactly the kind of coffee I make," said Beatrice, taking his raincoat from him, virtually helping him out of it. The gun was in his jacket, thank God. "Brewed regular but from espresso roast. Now go into the parlor. Aaron will be so relieved."

  "Ah, then I will accept, thank you," said Yuri.

  Parlors lay to the left of him and to the right. But he could feel the warmth coming from the one just before him, and then he saw Aaron in one of his worn gray wool cardigans, pipe in hand, standing by the fire. Again, he was impressed with the vigor in Aaron and how it seemed mingled with his anger, and his suspicion. There was a hard line to Aaron's mouth but it made him look more the conventional man.

  "We have a communication from the Elders," said Aaron without preamble. "It came in on the fax line at the Pontchartrain Hotel."

  "The Elders used such a means?"

  "It's written entirely in Latin. It's addressed to us both. There are two copies, one for each of us."

  "How considerate of them."

  Deep oxblood leather couches faced each other before the fireplace, revealing only the center of a dark blue Chinese rug. The table was glass, littered with papers. There were large rich modern paintings, abstracts mostly, in gilt frames. Marble-top tables; armchairs of tufted velvet, a little worn. Fresh flowers, such as one usually sees only in public lobbies. Big gorgeous blooms arranged in porcelain vases before various mirrors, here and there, and above the mantel with its solemn marble lion's head beneath it. All very beautiful and comfortable to behold. Communications from the Elders, dear God.

  "Sit down, I'll translate it for you."

  Yuri sat down. "You don't have to translate it for me, Aaron. I read Latin." He gave a little laugh. "I sometimes write to the Elders in Latin, just to keep sharp."

  "Ah, of course you do," said Aaron. "How could I not know that? That was stupid of me." He gestured to the two shiny fax copies on the table, strewn, as it were, over the magazines--those large expensive compendiums of furnishings and architecture full of designer names and famous faces and advertisements for the sort of fine items which were everywhere in this very room.

  "You don't remember Cambridge?" asked Yuri. "Those afternoons when I read Virgil to you? You don't remember my translation of Marcus Aurelius that I made for you?"

  "Remember it." Aaron pressed his lips together. "I carry it with me. I'm going soft in the head. I'm so used to those of your generation not reading Latin. Just a slipup. The day I first laid eyes on you, how many languages did you speak?"

  "I don't know. I know what I don't know. Let me read it."

  "Yes, but tell me first what you found out."

  "Stolov is at the Windsor Court, very fancy, very expensive. He has two other men with him, possibly three. There are others from the Order. They were following me when I came back down Chartres Street to come here. There is a man across the street. All of them same age, same style--young Anglo-Saxon or Scandinavian, dark suits, same thing. I would say there are six of them I know now by face. They took no pains to conceal themselves. Indeed, I think it is their motive to frighten, or to compel, if you know what I mean."

  Beatrice came sweeping into the room, her high heels clicking glamorously on the tile floor. She set down the tray with small cups of steaming espresso. "There's a potful," she said. "Now I'm going to call Cecilia."

  "Is there any more family news?" asked Yuri.

  "Rowan's doing well. There's no change. There is brain activity, but it's minimal. Yet she's breathing on her own."

  "Persistent vegetative state," said Aaron softly.

  "Oooh, why do you have to say those words again?" Beatrice scolded gently.

  "You know why. Rowan is not--at this time--recovering. One must keep that in mind."

  "But the mysterious man himself," asked Yuri.

  "No sight of him anywhere," said Beatrice. "They are saying he couldn't be in Houston. You can't imagine how many people are searching the city of Houston. He may have cut his hair, of course, but there's nothing he can do about being six and half feet in height. God only knows where he is. I'm going to leave you with Aaron. I don't want to think about it. I am cooking dinner with an armed guard in my kitchen."

  "He wo
n't eat very much," said Aaron with a little smile.

  "Oh, hush up." She seemed on the verge of something, then simply went to Aaron and kissed him brusquely and affectionately, and dashed out in a flurry of silk and clicking heels as she had come.

  Yuri loved the coffee. A pot of it. His hands would soon be trembling and he would have indigestion, but he didn't care. When you love coffee you abandon everything to that love.

  He picked up the fax. He knew Latin so well he did not have to translate in his mind. It was as clear to him as any tongue he spoke:

  From the Elders

  to

  Aaron Lightner

  Yuri Stefano

  Gentlemen:

  Seldom have we been faced with such a dilemma: the defection of two members of the Order who are not only dear to us all, but invaluable, seasoned investigators who have both become models for the incoming novices and postulants. We are hard put to understand how this situation came about.

  We fault ourselves. Aaron, we did not inform you of all that was involved in the Case of the Mayfair Witches. Wishing to focus your attentions upon the Mayfair family, we withheld certain relevant information concerning the legends of Donnelaith in Scotland, indeed, concerning the Celts in that area of north Britain and in Ireland. We realize now we should have been more explicit and open from the start.

  Please understand it was never the intention of the Order to manipulate you or exploit you. In the spirit of good investigation, we were reluctant to present presumptions or suspicions, lest we control the answers to the very questions we asked.

  We know now that we have in a very practical sense made an error in judgment. You have abandoned us. And we know also that this is not something you would have ever done lightly. Once again the burden for this tragedy lies with us.

  Let us now come to the point. You are no longer members of the Talamasca. You are excommunicated without prejudice, which means simply that you are honorably separated from the Order, from its privileges, its obligations, its records and its support.

  You have no further permission from us to make any use of records compiled by you while you were under our wing. You cannot reproduce, discuss, circulate any knowledge you have now or may come to have on the subject of the Mayfair Witches. We wish to be very explicit on this point.