And I had sent everyone away from me. I knew it was coming. I lay quiet on a heap of pillows looking out at the clouds above the crape myrtle.
I wanted to go back and back to Riverbend, I wanted to sit with Marie Claudette, I wanted to know, honestly, to know who had been that young man who kidnapped slaves and brought them to Marguerite’s chambers for her wild experiments? Who had been that thoughtless knave?
I lay there, and then a most dreadful truth seized me. A little truth, really. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t lift myself up. I could not make my arms obey. Death was stealing over me like a winter chill. It was freezing me.
And then, as if there were a God for raconteurs and lechers, there appeared Evelyn above the edge of the roof, her white hands on the green vines.
Up she came and across the porch top and I could hear her voice through the thick glass, “Open the window, Oncle Julien! It’s Evie, open to me.”
I couldn’t move. I stared at her, my eyes brimming. “Oh darling,” I whispered in my heart.
And then Evie called on her witches’ gifts, and with her hands and her gifts she sent the window rattling upward. She reached inside and took me by my shoulders, so frail and small I must have been by then. She brought me forward and kissed me.
“Oh darling, yes, yes…”
And beyond her, spreading out over the whole sky, the storm gathered. I heard the first raindrops strike the porch roof beneath her. I felt them on my face. I saw the trees begin to move in their fury. And I heard the wind, wailing as if he were wailing, lashing the trees and crying in his grief as he had on the death of my mother, and on the death of her mother.
Yes, it was a storm for the death of the witch, and I was the witch. And it was my death and my storm.
Twenty-four
THEY STOOD IN the mist, forming a vague circle. What was that low grinding sound? Was it thunder? They were the most dangerous people he had seen. Ignorance, poverty, that was their heritage, and everywhere he saw the common imperfections of the poor and the untended, the hunchback, the man with the club foot, the child whose arms were too short, and all the others, thin-faced, coarse, misshapen and frightening, in their gray and brown garments, to behold. The grinding noise went on and on, too monotonous for thunder. Could they hear it?
The sky above pressed down upon them, down upon the entire grassy floor of the glen. The stones did have carvings, the old man in Edinburgh had told Julien the truth. The stones were enormous, and they were all together in the circle.
He sat up. He was dizzy. He said, “I don’t belong here. This is a dream. I have to go back where I belong. I can’t wake up here. But I don’t know how to get back there.” The grinding sound was driving him mad. It was so low, so insistent. Did they hear it? Maybe it was some awful rumble from the earth itself, but probably not. Anything could happen here. Anything could happen. The important thing was to get out.
“We would like to help you,” said one of the men, a tall man with flowing gray hair. He stepped forward, out of the little circular gathering. He wore black breeches and his mouth was invisible beneath his gray mustache. Only a bit of lip showed as the deep baritone voice came from him. “But we do not know who you are or what you are doing here. We do not know where you come from. Or how to send you home.”
This was English, modern English. This was all wrong. A dream.
What is that rumbling? That grinding. I know that sound. He wanted to reach out and stop it. I know that sound. The stone nearest to him must have been some twenty feet high, jagged, like a crude knife rising from the earth, and on it were warriors in rows, with their spears and their shields. “The Picts,” he said.
They stared at him as if they did not understand him. “If we leave you here,” said the gray-haired man, “the little people may come. The little people are full of hatred. The little people will take you away. They’ll try to make a giant with you, and reclaim the world. You have the blood in you, you see.”
A sharp ringing sound carried over the blowing grass, suddenly, beneath the great span of boiling gray clouds. It came again, that same familiar peal. It was louder than the low grinding noise that ran on, uninterrupted, beneath it.
“I know what that is!” he said to them. He tried to stand, but then he fell down again into the damp grass. How they stared at his clothes. How different theirs were.
“This is the wrong time! Do you hear that sound? That sound is a telephone. It’s trying to bring me back.”
The tall man drew closer. His bare knees were filthy, his long legs streaked with dirt. Rather like a man who has been splashed with dirty water, and has let it dry on his skin. His clothing was matted with dirt.
“I’ve never seen the little people for myself,” he said. “But I know they are something to fear. We cannot leave you here.”
“Get away from me,” he said. “I’m getting out of here. This is a dream and you ought to leave it. Don’t wait around. Just go. I have things to do! Important things that must be done!”
And this time he rose full to his feet, and was thrown backwards and felt the floorboards beneath his hands. Again the telephone rang. Again and again. He tried to open his eyes.
Then it stopped. No, I have to wake up, he thought. I have to get up. Don’t stop ringing. He brought his knees up close to his chest and managed to get up on all fours. The grinding noise. The Victrola. The heavy arm with its crude little needle caught at the end of the record, grinding, grinding, looking for a new way to begin.
Light in the two windows. His windows. And there the Victrola under Antha’s window, the little letters VICTOR printed in gold on the wooden lid, which was propped open.
Someone was coming up the stairs.
“Yes!” He climbed to his feet. His room. The drafting board, his chair. The shelves filled with his books. Victorian Architecture. The History of the Frame House in America. My books.
There was a knocking at the door.
“Mr. Mike, are you in there? Mr. Mike, Mr. Ryan is on the phone!”
“Come in, Henri, come in here.” Would Henri hear his fear? Would he know?
The doorknob turned as if it were alive. The light fell in from the landing, Henri’s face so dark with the little chandelier behind him that Michael couldn’t see it.
“Mr. Mike, it’s good news and bad news. She’s alive, they’ve found her in St. Martinville, Louisiana, but she’s sick, real sick, they say she can’t move or speak.”
“Christ, they’ve found her. They know for sure it’s Rowan!”
He hurried past Henri and down the stairs. Henri came behind him, talking steadily, hand out to steady Michael when he almost fell.
“Mr. Ryan’s on his way over here. Coroner called from St. Martinville. She had papers in her purse. She fits the description. They say it’s Dr. Mayfair, for sure.”
Eugenia was standing in his bedroom holding the phone in her hand.
“Yes, sir, we’ve found him.”
Michael took the receiver.
“Ryan?”
“She’s on her way in now,” came the cool voice on the other end. “The ambulance is taking her straight to Mercy Hospital. She’ll be there in about an hour, if they use the siren all the way. Michael, it doesn’t look good. They can’t get any response from her. They’re describing a coma. We’re trying to reach her friend Dr. Larkin, at the Pontchartrain. But there’s no answer.”
“What do I do? Where do I go?” He wanted to get on I-10 and drive north till he saw the oncoming ambulance, then swing around, cutting across the grass, and follow it in. An hour! “Henri, get me my jacket. Find my wallet. Down in the library. I left my keys and my wallet on the floor.”