Merrick - Anne Rice [2]
She nodded, regarding me with great seriousness.
“Yes, all that’s the truth,” she answered under her breath. “He crossed my path, you might say.” She was mulling it over. “But I’ve seen Louis de Pointe du Lac many a time. I was a child when I first saw him, and now you and I speak of this for the first time.”
I was quite amazed. I should have known she would surprise me at once.
I admired her immensely. I couldn’t disguise it. I loved the simplicity of her appearance, her white cotton scoop neck blouse with its simple short sleeves and the necklace of black beads around her neck.
Looking into her green eyes, I was suddenly overcome with shame for what I’d done, revealing myself to her. Louis had not forced me to approach her. I had done this of my own accord. But I don’t intend to begin this narrative by dwelling on that shame.
Let me say only that we’d been more than simple companions in the Talamasca together. We’d been mentor and pupil, I and she, and almost lovers, once, for a brief while. Such a brief while.
She’d come as a girl to us, a vagrant descendant of the clan of the Mayfairs, out of an African American branch of that family, coming down from white witches she scarcely knew, an octoroon of exceptional beauty, a barefoot child when she wandered into the Motherhouse in Louisiana, when she said, “I’ve heard of you people, I need you. I can see things. I can speak with the dead.”
That had been over twenty years ago, it seemed to me now.
I’d been the Superior General of the Order, settled into the life of a gentlemanly administrator, with all the comforts and drawbacks of routine. A telephone call had wakened me in the night. It had been from my friend and fellow scholar, Aaron Lightner.
“David,” he’d said, “you have to come. This is the genuine article. This is a witch of such power I’ve no words to describe it. David, you must come. . . .”
There was no one in those days whom I respected any more deeply than Aaron Lightner. I’ve loved three beings in all my years, both as human and vampire. Aaron Lightner was one of them. Another was, and is, the Vampire Lestat. The Vampire Lestat brought me miracles with his love, and broke my mortal life forever. The Vampire Lestat made me immortal and uncommonly strong for it, a nonpareil among the vampires.
As for the third, it was Merrick Mayfair, though Merrick I had tried my damndest to forget.
But we are speaking of Aaron, my old friend Aaron with his wavy white hair, quick gray eyes, and his penchant for southern blue-and-white-striped seersucker suits. We are speaking of her, of the long ago child Merrick, who seemed as exotic as the lush tropical flora and fauna of her home.
“All right, old fellow, I’m coming, but couldn’t this have waited till morning?” I remembered my stodginess and Aaron’s good-natured laughter.
“David, what’s happened to you, old man?” he’d responded. “Don’t tell me what you’re doing now, David. Let me tell you. You fell asleep while reading some nineteenth-century book on ghosts, something evocative and comforting. Let me guess. The author’s Sabine Baring-Gould. You haven’t been out of the Motherhouse in six months, have you? Not even for a luncheon in town. Don’t deny it, David, you live as if your life’s finished.”
I had laughed. Aaron spoke with such a gentle voice. It wasn’t Sabine Baring-Gould I’d been reading, but it might have been. I think it had been a supernatural tale by Algernon Blackwood. And Aaron had been right about the length of time since I’d stepped outside of our sanctified walls.
“Where’s your passion, David? Where’s your commitment?” Aaron had pressed. “David, the child’s a witch. Do you think I use such words lightly? Forget the family name for a moment and all we know about them. This is something that would astound even our Mayfairs, though she’ll never be known to them if I have my say in matters. David, this child can summon spirits. Open your Bible and turn to the Book of Samuel. This is the Witch of Endor. And you’re being as cranky as the spirit of Samuel when the witch