Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [28]
“ ‘Rebecca at the Well,’ he said. ‘All of them of the same story, Rebecca at the Well.’ And then, ‘If they tell you I murdered her they’re telling you the truth. She couldn’t be satisfied with cameos and diamonds and pearls, not that one. I killed her, or more truthfully, and it’s time for the truth, I dragged her to her death.’
“Of course I was awestruck by his words,” said Aunt Queen, “but instead of being suspicious and horrified, I was impressed that he was addressing these words to me. And he went on talking, the slobber coming down the side of his mouth to his chin. I should have helped him wipe his face, but I was too young to do anything as compassionate as that.
“ ‘Those were the old days,’ he said to me, ‘and she wore those high-collared lace blouses, and the cameos looked so very precious at her throat. She was so precious when I first brought her here. They’re all so precious in the beginning and then they turn rotten. Except my poor dead Virginia Lee. My lovely, unforgettable Virginia Lee. Would she had lived forever, my own Virginia Lee. But the others, rotten, I tell you, greedy and rotten every time.
“ ‘But she was the worst of all my disappointments,’ he told me, fixing me with his mean eyes. ‘Rebecca, and Rebecca at the Well,’ he said. ‘It was he who gave me the first cameo for her, when he’d heard her name, telling me the story of it, and he that brought several more, all of Rebecca, all gifts for her, he said, he being the evil spy that he was, ever watching us; they all came from him, all these cameos, if truth be known, from him, though there’s no taint on it, and you’re just a child.’ ”
Aunt Queen paused, appealing to Lestat mutely to assure herself, I think, that she had an audience, and then when she saw that both of us were rapt, she went on.
“I remember all those words,” she said, “and in my girl’s heart I wanted the enchanting cameos, of course. I wanted them, the whole box! And so I held it tight as he went on, barking his words, or maybe even gnashing them out, it’s hard to say. ‘She grew to love the cameos,’ the old beast said, ‘as long as she could still dream and be content at the same time. But women aren’t gifted with contentment. And it was he that killed her for me, a bloody sacrifice, that’s what she was, an offering up to him, you might say and I would say, but I was the one who dragged her to it. And it wasn’t the first time that I’d taken some poor misshapen soul to those bloody chains, to be sure.’ ”
I shivered. These words sounded a deep dark chord in me. I had a passel of secrets that weighed on me like so many stones. I couldn’t do anything except listen in a vague spell as she went on.
“I remembered those words ‘to those bloody chains,’ ” said Aunt Queen, “and all his other words as he yammered away: ‘She gave me no choice, if the truth be known.’ He was almost bellowing. ‘Now you take those cameos and wear them, no matter what you think of me. I have something there sweet and costly to give you, and you’re just a little girl and my grandchild, and that’s what I wish it to be.’
“Of course, I didn’t know how to answer him,” Aunt Queen went on. “I don’t think for a moment I believed he was a real murderer, and I certainly didn’t know of this strange accomplice to whom he referred, this he, of whom he spoke with such mystery, and I never did find out who the man was, not to this very day. But he knew. And he continued as if I’d lanced a wound. ‘You know, I confess it, over and over,’ he said, ‘to the priest and to the sheriff, and neither believes me, and the sheriff just says she’s been gone some thirty-five years and I’m imagining, and as for him, what if his gold built this house; he’s a liar and a cheat and he’s left me this house as a prison, as a mausoleum, and I can’t go any longer to him, though I know he’s out there, he’s out there on Sugar Devil Island, I can feel him, I can feel his eyes on me in the night when he comes near. I