Blackwood Farm - Anne Rice [84]
“I told her what I’d found and laid out the jewelry on the kitchen table.
“ ‘Well, you shouldn’t have gone up there!’ she declared. Much to my surprise, she got ferocious. ‘You just run wild these days, you know it? Why didn’t you ask me before you went up there, Taw-quin Blackwood?’ And on and on she ranted in that vein.
“I was too busy looking at the cameos. ‘All the same theme,’ I said again, ’ ”Rebecca at the Well,” and all so very pretty. Why did they get thrown up there in a trunk with all those things? Don’t you think Aunt Queen would want these things?’ Of course Aunt Queen had at least ten cameos of ‘Rebecca at the Well,’ I knew that much, though I didn’t know how she had come by the first of them, and if I had known I would have been more engrossed than I already was.
“At supper I told Pops all about it and showed him the loot, but he was no more interested in this than in anything else, and while Jasmine read me the riot act about meddling where I didn’t belong, Pops just said in his dead voice:
“ ‘You can have anything you find up there,’ which made Jasmine quiet down at once.
“At bedtime, I gave the pearls to Big Ramona, but she said she didn’t feel easy taking them, that there was a story to them and all the things that were in that trunk.
“ ‘You save them for some day when you get married,’ she said. ‘And you give those pearls to your new wife. You have them blessed by the priest first. Remember. Don’t you give them away unless they’re blessed by the priest.’
“ ‘I’ve never heard of such a thing,’ I told her. ‘A pearl necklace blessed by the priest?’
“I begged her to tell me the story—I knew she knew things—but she wouldn’t, and she said she didn’t remember it real well anyway, which I knew was a fib, and pretty soon she had me saying our evening prayers.
“It was her bright idea that night that we should say an entire Rosary, and we did it, meditating on the Sorrowful Mysteries, and then we made an Act of Contrition as well. All this we offered up for the Poor Souls in Purgatory, and then we said the famous prayer to the Archangel Michael to defend us in battle against the Evil One, and then we went to sleep.
“Next day, I wrote to Aunt Queen about the discovery, and I told her that I had put the cameos with her collection in the parlor showcase, and that the pearls were in her dressing table, if she should want them. I asked if she would please tell me the story that Big Ramona wouldn’t tell. Who was Rebecca Stanford? How did her things get in our house?
“I went back up and searched all of the attic. Of course there were wonderful items—old art deco lamps and tables and overstuffed chairs and couches that were rotting, and even a couple of typewriters of the ancient black species that weigh a ton. Other bundles of old clothes appeared mundane and fit for the rag pile, and there was an ancient vacuum cleaner that ought to have been donated to a museum.
“As for the wicker furniture, I had all of it brought down to be restored, pending Pops’ approval, which was granted with a silent nod. The Shed Men were happy to have a new project, so that went all right.
“I didn’t find anything else that was really interesting. Rebecca Stanford was the mystery of the moment, and when I left the attic for the last time I took the leather-bound book I’d found in her things, and there came again that uneasy and exciting feeling. I saw Goblin in the doorway and again he shook his head.
“That it banished despair, this excited feeling—that’s what I liked.
“The following day, Thursday, was another quiet one, an in-between day, and the panic started in on me, and after lunch I went outside to walk the avenue of the pecan trees and feel the crunch of the pea gravel under my feet.
“The light was golden and I hated it because it was already failing, and the dread was coming on me thick.
“When I reached the front steps I sat down with the leather-bound book I’d found