Merrick - Anne Rice [15]
She finished the glass, set it down, and, before I could do it for her, she reached for the bottle again.
“Do you want Aaron’s papers?” she asked.
I was completely taken aback.
“You mean you’re willing to give them to me?”
“David, I’m loyal to the Talamasca. What would I be if it weren’t for the Order?” She hesitated, then: “But I’m also deeply loyal to you.” For a few seconds she was musing. “You were the Order for me, David. Can you imagine what I felt when they told me you were dead?”
I sighed. What could I say in answer?
“Did Aaron tell you how we grieved for you, all those of us who weren’t entrusted with a speck of the truth?”
“From my soul, I’m sorry, Merrick. We felt we kept a dangerous secret. What more can I say?”
“You died here in the States, in Miami Beach, that was the story. And they’d flown the remains back to England before they even called to tell me you were gone. You know what I did, David? I made them hold the casket for me. It was sealed shut when I got to London but I made them open it. I made them do it. I screamed and carried on until they gave in to me. Then I sent them out of the room and I stayed alone with that body, David, that body all powdered and prettied up and nestled in its satin. I stayed there for an hour perhaps. They were knocking on the door. Then finally I told them to proceed.”
There was no anger in her face, only a faint wondering expression.
“I couldn’t let Aaron tell you,” I said, “not just then, not when I didn’t know whether I’d survive in the new body, not when I didn’t understand what life held for me. I couldn’t. And then, then it was too late.”
She raised her eyebrows and made a little doubting gesture with her head. She sipped the rum.
“I understand,” she said.
“Thank God,” I answered. “In time, Aaron would have told you about the body switching,” I insisted. “I know he would have. The story of my death was never meant for you.”
She nodded, holding back the first response that came to her tongue.
“I think you have to file those papers of Aaron’s,” I said. “You have to file them directly with the Elders and no one else. Forget the Superior General of the moment.”
“Stop it, David,” she responded. “You know it is much easier to argue with you now that you are in the body of a very young man.”
“You never had difficulty arguing with me, Merrick,” I retorted. “Don’t you think Aaron would have filed the papers, had he lived?”
“Maybe,” she said, “and maybe not. Maybe Aaron would have wanted more that you be left to your destiny. Maybe Aaron wanted more that whatever you had become, you’d be left alone.”
I wasn’t sure what she was saying. The Talamasca was so passive, so reticent, so downright unwilling in interfere in anyone’s destiny, I couldn’t figure what she meant.
She shrugged, took another sip of rum, and rolled the rim of the glass against her lower lip.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” she said. “I only know that Aaron never filed the pages himself.” She went on speaking:
“The night after he was killed I went down to his house on Esplanade Avenue. You know he married a white Mayfair, not a witch by the way, but a resilient and generous woman—Beatrice Mayfair is her name, she’s still living—and at her invitation I took the papers marked ‘Talamasca.’ She didn’t even know what they contained.
“She told me Aaron had once given her my name. If anything happened, she was to call me, and so she’d done her duty. Besides, she couldn’t read the documents. They were all in Latin, you know, Talamasca old style.
“There were several files, and my name and number were written on the front of each, in Aaron’s hand. One file was entirely devoted to you, though only the initial, D, was used throughout. The papers on you, I translated into English. No one’s ever seen them. No one,” she said with emphasis. “But I know them almost word for word.”
It seemed a comfort suddenly to hear her speaking of these things, these secret Talamasca things, which had once been our stock in trade. Yes, a comfort, as if the warm presence of Aaron were actually