Blood Canticle - Anne Rice [74]
Rowan’s words were gaining speed.
“Tante Oscar was wearing at least three sets of clothes, dresses over dresses, and at least four fancy worked scarves around her neck, and topped by a long maroon coat with golden fur along the collar, I think it was foxes, little foxes with heads and tails, I don’t know, and she had a ring on every bony finger, and a long oval face, and jet black hair, and huge egg-shaped yellow eyes. And there was wall-to-wall furniture in the flat, three buffets in a row, and three desks in a row, and dining room tables in three rooms, and couches and chairs all over, and carpets laid on carpets, and little tables with doilies and bisque figurines and photographs in frames, and sterling silver tea services everywhere you looked. Armoires were bulging with clothes and all askew.”
Dolly Jean began to cackle as she took another drink, and Mona laughed under her breath. Rowan continued as if she didn’t hear them.
“Gorgeous little twelve-year-old mulatto children were running everywhere, getting us coffee and cake, and getting the mail, and running downstairs for the newspapers. There was a TV on in every room and an overhead fan blowing. I’ve never seen such beautiful children as I’ve seen in New Orleans. The colors of these children were simply indescribable.
“Tante Oscar went to the refrigerator, which she called the ice box though it was brand-new, and opened it to show us that the telephone was in there because she never talked on it, and there was the telephone all right, right there in the middle of the milk and the yogurts and the jars of jam, but when Dolly Jean had called, Tante Oscar had heard the ring through the refrigerator door because it was Dolly Jean, and she had answered.
“Tante Oscar told us that Blood Children had been living in the Quarter for two hundred years, feeding off the blood of the riffraff, and Merrick Mayfair was now one of them. It was meant to be. Merrick Mayfair’s old Oncle Vervain had foreseen it, that his beloved little Merrick Mayfair would one day walk with the Blood Children, and he had told Tante Oscar and no one else. Oncle Vervain had been a great Voodoo doctor, and everyone respected him, but when he saw that in the future, it broke his heart. Tante Oscar said that now Merrick Mayfair would live forever.”
I winced. If only I had seen that Light. . . . But how many chances would God give me?
“Of course Oncle Julien had tried to prevent this catastrophe—I think Oncle Julien is paying for his sins by wasting his time on earth—.”
“I like that very much,” I uttered before I could stop myself.
Her words flowed right on.
“—Tante Oscar explained to us. Oncle Julien had come in a dream to Merrick Mayfair’s Great Nananne when she was dying and told Great Nananne to give Merrick Mayfair to the Talamasca. But Tante Oscar said it was the curse of Oncle Julien that his interference in the world of the living always failed.”
“Did she really say such a thing?” I asked.
Michael smiled and shook his head. He looked at Mona and Mona was looking at him.
Rowan continued her tale:
“When I described the black-haired one, the one I’d seen walking, Tante Oscar knew him. She called him Louis. She said the Sign of the Cross would drive him off, though it had no power over him. He merely respected it. She said the one to fear was the blond-haired one who had a strange name and who, ‘talked like a gangster and looked like an angel.’ I never forgot those words, I thought they were so strange.”
She fixed me in her gaze. I was lost to her.
“And then years later and only days ago, you came into the double parlor at Blackwood Farm and Jasmine called you ‘Lestat’ and you talked like a gangster and looked like an angel. I knew what you were deep, deep down in my mind where I didn’t want to know. I knew. I could remember the