Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [137]
I think I scared her just a little. She was so tired and gaunt that she fell back from the sound of my voice. “We’re not finished with this discussion, Beloved Boss,” she said. “Trouble with you is you get too emotional. I question anything and you just blow your stack.”
Quinn picked her up and carried her off, making huge circles on the terrace as he went, singing to her, and so they disappeared from sight and her laughter rang out in the softly purring evening.
A warm breeze came to fill the silence. The distant trees were doing their subtle dance. My heart was suddenly beating too hard and a cold anxiety crept over me. I picked up the statue of Saint Juan Diego from the flagstones and set him properly on the table where he belonged. I said nothing about him. Ah, tacky little dude with thy paper roses, thou art surely destined for better representations.
I was in the depths. The pulsing night sang to me of the nothingness. The stars spread out to prove the horror of our universe—bits and pieces of the body of no one flying at monstrous speed away from the meaningless, uncomprehending source.
Saint Juan Diego, make it go away. Work another miracle!
“What is it?” Stirling asked softly.
I sighed. In the distance the white fence of the pasture looked pretty, and the smell of the grass was good.
“I’ve failed at something here,” I said, “and it’s a major failure.” I studied the man to whom I’d just spoken.
Patient Stirling, the English scholar, the Talamasca saint. The man who got down with monsters. Starved for sleep yet ever attentive.
He turned to look at me. Clever, quick eyes.
“What do you mean?” he asked. “What failure?”
“I cannot impress upon her a sense of the gravity of her transformation.”
“Oh, she knows,” he said.
“You surprise me,” I answered. “Surely you don’t forget who I am. You don’t buy this facade. There’s some reservoir of goodness and wisdom in you that never lets you forget what’s behind this mask. And now you think you know her better than I do?”
“She’s reeling from one shock after another,” he said calmly. “How can it be helped? What did you expect of her? You know she worships you. And what if she teases you with outrageous propositions? It was always her way. I feel no fear when I’m near her, no instinctive wariness of an undisciplined power. In fact, quite to the contrary. I sense that there may come a moment when you look back and realize that somewhere along the line her innocence was lost and you can’t even remember when it happened.”
I thought of the massacre last night, the ruthless elimination of Lord Rodrigo and his soldiers. I thought of the bodies heaved into the everlasting sea. I thought of nothing.
“Innocence is not our stock-in-trade, my friend,” I said. “We don’t cultivate it in one another. Honor, I think we can have, more than you may know, and principles, yes, and virtue as well. I’ve taught her that, and every now and then we can behave magnificently. Even heroically. But innocence? It’s not to our advantage.”
He drew back to think on this, with just a little nod. I sensed that there were questions he wanted to ask me, but he didn’t dare. Was it propriety or fear? I couldn’t tell.
We were interrupted and perhaps it was for the best.
Jasmine came across the lawn with another carafe of coffee for Stirling. She was in a sharp tight red dress and high-heel shoes. She was singing loudly:
“Gloria! Gloria! In Excelsis Deo!”
“Where’d you pick up that hymn?” I asked. “Is everybody around here committed to driving me to madness?”
“Well, of course not,” she said. “What would make you say a thing like that? That’s a Catholic hymn, don’t you know that? Grandma’s been singing it in the kitchen all day. Says it’s from the Latin Mass in the old days. Says she saw Patsy in a dream singing that hymn. Patsy all dressed in pink cowboy clothes, with a guitar.”
“Mon Dieu!” A shiver passed through me. No wonder Julien was leaving me alone tonight. Why not?
She poured two cups of the steaming coffee. She set down the carafe.