Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [45]
“But let’s return to Mad Manfred, as those around the parish began to call my unfortunate ancestor, who took to going out into Sugar Devil Swamp alone and muttering and cursing, and sometimes not returning for days at a time.
“There was a general commotion to it because all knew that Sugar Devil Swamp had never been logged and was damned near impenetrable for a pirogue, and legends already existed as to bears that habitually hunted there, and cougars and bobcats, and even worse creatures which howled in the night.
“That Manfred was snake-bit more than once and survived it was part of his growing reputation, and it was said he fired on a stranger he’d seen out there some distance from the house, and brought back the wounded poacher and heaved his body on the bank with oaths and vicious warnings to his workmen that this ought to be a lesson to anyone who dared to come into his swamp or onto his land.
“Soon it became known that there was an island out there, and it was to this island that Manfred went, pitching a tent for himself and shooting what he needed for food.
“You can just picture this guy tearing birds apart with his teeth.
“He made no secret of his island sanctuary, only warning again that no one must ever attempt to follow him to his ‘lair,’ as he called it, threatening open season on trespassers and boasting that he had shot and killed several bears.
“Rumor had it that the island was cursed and Manfred was cursed, and that his gold was ill-gotten from gambling, if not worse vices, and that his name, Manfred, he had taken from the play by Lord Byron, with the intent to signal other Demon Worshipers of his own ilk, and that he had sold his soul to the Devil long before he had ever laid eyes on the humble and sweet Virginia Lee, and that she had been his very last chance at salvation.
“As for their little children, William and Camille, it was Jasmine’s ancestors who brought them up—Ora Lee and Jerome are the famous names—both of them Creole people of color with French accents, and something of a distinctive history, their parents having been free artisans before the Civil War.
“For Ora Lee and Jerome, Manfred built the bungalow out back to the far right, a real Creole-looking building, with a deep porch and rocking chairs, and two stories of good-sized rooms.
“Members of the clan have broken off all along to go to college and enter professions, but there are always some who stay in the bungalow, and they have their own vegetable and flower gardens and their own company whenever they choose.
“When I was a kid they still had their own cow and some chickens, but now it’s too easy to go to market for anything a person needs.
“It’s a charming house, a kind of tropical mansion in its own way, full of treasured antiques and various displays of needlework done by the women and furniture made by the men. It’s also full of cast-offs from the big house, and Aunt Queen is famous for refurnishing the front room and giving all the old items to Jasmine, as if Jasmine had a warehouse rather than a family home. It’s on a human scale, Jasmine’s house. Blackwood Manor was built for ‘giants in the earth.’
“Because African and Spanish and French and Anglo-Saxon genes were all scrambled in the lineage of Jasmine’s people before they came, and down through the years by marriage to other people of all colors, Jasmine’s family are all different shades of yellow, red, brown and black.
“Jasmine’s dark, as you saw, with the fabulous green eyes. She bleaches that close-cropped Afro of hers and something happens with that yellow hair and those green eyes that’s magic.
“Her older sister, Lolly, can pass for Spanish or Italian, and then there’s Jasmine’s brother, Clem, who has very dark skin and African features. He drives Aunt Queen’s car and takes care