“What does that have to do with it?” demanded Randall.
“That’s what it will do,” said Aaron quietly. “If we don’t stop it.”
Twenty-three
AH, YOU CANNOT imagine the miracle of her voice, and how much I loved her, loved her completely whether she was Cortland’s child or not. It was a love we feel for those who are our own and like unto us, and yet too many years lay between us. I felt desperate and helpless and all alone, and when I sat down on the side of my bed, she sat beside me.
“Tell me, Evelyn, child, you see the future. Carlotta came to you. What did you see?”
“I don’t see,” Evelyn said in a voice as small as her round little face, her gray eyes appealing to me to accept and to understand. “I see the words and I speak the words, but I do not know their meaning. And long ago, I learned to keep quiet and let the words fade away unread, unspoken.”
“No, child. Hold my hand. What do you see? What do you see for me and my family? What do you see for all of us? Are we one clan with one future?”
Even through my tired fingers I felt her pulse, her warmth, the witches’ gifts, as we always said, and I saw that small, that evil sixth finger. Oh, I would have had it cut off, painlessly and with skill, if I had been her father. And to think that Cortland was-my own son. I meant to kill Cortland.
First things first. I held tight to her hand.
Something shifted in her perfect little circle of a face; her chin lifted so that her neck seemed all the more long and beautiful. She began to speak the poem, her voice soft and rapid, borne by the rhythm itself:
One will rise who is too evil.
One will come who is too good.
’Twixt the two, a witch shall falter
and thereby open wide the door.
Pain and suffering as they stumble
Blood and fear before they learn.
Woe betide this Springtime Eden
Now the vale of those who mourn.
Beware the watchers in that hour
Bar the doctors from the house
Scholars will but nourish evil
Scientists would raise it high.
Let the devil speak his story
Let him rouse the angel’s might
Make the dead come back to witness
Put the alchemist to flight.
Slay the flesh that is not human
Trust to weapons crude and cruel
For, dying on the verge of wisdom,
Tortured souls may seek the light.
Crush the babes who are not children
Show no mercy to the pure
Else shall Eden have no Springtime.
Else shall our kind reign no more.
For two nights and two days she stayed in this room with me.
No one dared to break in the door. Her great-grandfather Tobias came and threatened. His son Walker roared at the gate. I do not know how many others came or what they said, or even where all the quarrels took place. Seems I heard my Mary Beth screaming on the landing at her daughter Carlotta. Seems Richard knocked a thousand times, only to be told by me that all was well.
We lay together in the bed, the child and I. I did not want to hurt her. Nor can I blame on her what took place. Let me say we sank into the softest of caresses, and for a long time I cuddled her and sheltered her, and tried to drive away the deep chill of her fear and her loneliness. And fool that I was, I thought that in me, tenderness was now something safe.
But I was too much of a man still for anything so plain and simple. I gave her kisses till she knew she must have them, and opened herself to me.
Through the long night we lay together, musing when all the other voices had died away.
She said that she liked my attic better than her attic, and I knew in my sorrow that I would die in this room, very soon.
I didn’t have to tell her. I felt her soft hand on my forehead, trying to cool it. I felt the silken weight of her palm on my eyelids.
And the words of the poem, she said them over and over. And I with her, until I knew every verse.
By dawn, she did not need to correct me any longer. I didn’t dare to write it down. My evil Mary Beth will burn it, I told her. Tell the others. Tell Carlotta. Tell Stella. But my heart was so sick. What would it matter? What would happen? What could the words of the poem mean?
“I’ve made you sad,” she said gently.
“Child, I was already sad. You have given me hope.”
I think it was late Thursday afternoon that Mary Beth finally took the hinges from the door and opened it.
“Well, they are going to bring the police in here,” Mary Beth said by way of excuse, very practical and nondramatic. Her way of doing things.
“You tell them they can’t lock her up again. She’s to come and go as she wishes. You call Cortland now in Boston.”
“Cortland is here, Julien.”
I called Cortland to me. Stella was to take the child down to her own room and sit with her, and not let anyone take her away. Carlotta would be with them, just to make sure the girl was safe.
Now this son of mine was my pride and joy, as I’ve said, my eldest, my brightest, and all these years I had tried to protect him from what I knew. But he was too shrewd to be protected entirely, and now for me he had fallen off his pedestal and I was too angry not to judge him for what had become of this girl.
“Father, I didn’t know, I swear it. And even now I don’t believe it. It would take me hours to tell you the story of that night. I could swear that Barbara Ann put something in my drink to make me mad. She dragged me out into the swamp with her. We were in the boat together; that is all I remember, and that she was devilish and strange. I swear this, Father. When I woke I was in the boat. I went up to Fontevrault and they locked me out. Tobias had his shotgun. He said he’d kill me. I walked into St. Martinville to call home. I swear this. That’s all I remember. If she is my child, I’m sorry. But they never told me. Seems they never wanted me to know. I’ll look out for her from now on.”
“That’s all well and good for the fifth circuit court of appeals,” said I. “You knew when she was born. You heard the rumors. Make sure this child is never a prisoner again, you understand? That she has everything she requires, that she goes to school away from here if she wants to, that she has money of her own!”
I turned my back on them. I turned my back on my world. I did not answer when he spoke to me. I thought of Evelyn and how she described her silence, and it seemed an amusing power, to lie there and not to answer, to let them think that I could not.
They came and they went. Evelyn was taken back, with Carlotta and Cortland to speak for her. Or so I was told.
Only Richard’s crying broke my heart. I went away from it, deep into myself where I could hear the poem and say the phrases, trying vainly to figure them out.
Let the devil speak his story,
Let him rouse the angel’s might.
But what did it mean to me? Finally I clung to the last verse of it: “Else shall Eden have no Springtime.”
We were the Springtime, we Mayfairs, I knew it. Eden was our world. We were the Springtime, and the simple word Else meant there was hope. We could be saved somehow. Something could stop the vale of those who mourn!