Merrick - Anne Rice [65]
“What do you want for yourself, Merrick,” I asked her suddenly, desperate to stop the ever increasing speed of her words.
She looked at me sharply, and then she smiled. “I want to be educated, Mr. Talbot. I want to go to school.”
“Ah, how marvelous,” I whispered.
“I told Mr. Lightner,” she continued, “and he said you could do it. I want to be in a high-quality school where they teach me Greek and Latin and which fork to use for my salad or my fish. I want to know all about magic, the way Matthew did, telling me things out of the Bible, and reading over those old books and saying what was tried and true. Matthew never had to make a living. I expect I will have to make a living. But I want to be educated, and I think you know what I mean.”
She fixed her gaze on me. Her eyes were dry and clear, and it was then perhaps more than at any other time that I noticed their beautiful coloration of which I’ve spoken before. She went on talking, her voice a little slower now, and calmer and almost sweet.
“Mr. Lightner says all your members are educated people. That’s what he told me right before you came. I can see those manners in the people at the Motherhouse and I hear the way they talk. Mr. Lightner says it’s the tradition of the Talamasca. You educate your members, because it’s a lifelong thing to be a member, and you all live under the same roof.”
I smiled. It was true. Very true. “Yes,” I said, “we do this with all who come to us, insofar as they are willing and able to absorb it, and we’ll give it to you.”
Merrick leant forward and kissed me on the cheek.
I was quite startled by this affection, and at a loss as to the proper thing to do. I spoke from the heart.
“Darling, we’ll give you everything. We have so much to share, it would be our duty if it weren’t . . . if it weren’t such a pleasure for us to do.”
Something invisible was suddenly gone from the house. I felt it as if a being had snapped its fingers and simply disappeared. Merrick showed no consciousness of this.
“And what will I do for you in exchange?” she asked in a calm sure voice. “You can’t give me everything for nothing, Mr. Talbot. Tell me what you want from me.”
“Teach us what you know about magic,” I answered, “and grow up to be happy, to be strong, and never to be afraid.”
9
IT WAS GROWING DARK when we left the house.
Before leaving New Orleans, we dined together at Galatoire’s, a venerable old New Orleans restaurant where I found the food to be delicious, but Merrick was by this time so exhausted that she turned quite pale and fell sound asleep in her chair.
The transformation in her was remarkable. She murmured that Aaron and I must care for the Olmec treasures. “Look at them but be careful,” she said, as a matter of fact. And then came the sudden slumber which left her pliant but unconscious, as far as I could see.
Aaron and I all but carried her to the car—she could walk in her sleep if propelled—and much as I wanted to talk with Aaron I didn’t dare risk it, though Merrick slept between us, quite soundly, during the entire ride home.
When we reached the Motherhouse, that good female member of the Order whom I’ve mentioned before, and will now for the sake of this account call Mary, helped us to carry Merrick up to her room and lay her on the bed.
Now, I remarked a little while ago that I wanted the Talamasca to envelop her in fantasy, to give her everything that she should desire.
Let me explain that we had already begun this process by creating an upstairs corner bedroom for her, which we believed to be a young woman’s dream. The fruit-wood bed, its posts and canopy decorated with carved flowers and trimmed in