Lasher Read online

  I had to go and I had to forgive her.

  "Lasher, what do I do?"

  "You will see," he said.

  "But there is no female to carry on the line! She will wither as a widow behind closed doors. You know it. I know it."

  "You will see," he said again. "Go to her."

  The whole family held its breath. What will happen?

  I went to the First Street house. It was a rainy night, very hot and simmering, and in the Irish slums only blocks away, the bodies of fever victims were stacked in the gutters.

  A stench wafted on the breeze from the river. But there stood this house as it always has, majestic among its oaks and magnolia trees, a narrow and high-flung castle complete with battlements and walls that appear indestructible. A deep secretive house, full of graceful designs yet somehow ominous.

  I saw the window of the master bedroom to the north. I saw a sight which many have seen since, and which you have seen, the flicker of candles against the shutters.

  I came into the house, forcing the door, with Lasher's help or my own strength I do not know, only that it yielded to me, and the lock broke and was thereafter useless.

  I took off my rain-drenched coat and went up the stairs. The door to the master bedroom lay open.

  Of course I expected to see the dead Irish architect lying there putrefying on summer schedule. But I soon realized he had been taken away on account of the contagion. The superstitious Irish maids came to tell me this, that Darcy, poor soul, was already buried, and with the bells of St. Alphonsus tolling night and day, there had been no time for a Requiem.

  Within the room, all had been scrubbed down and cleaned, and it was Katherine who lay on the bed, a giant four-poster with black carved lions' heads in its posts, crying softly into the embroidered pillow.

  She looked so small and so frail; she looked like my little sister. Indeed, I called her that. I sat by her and comforted her. She sobbed on my shoulder. Her long black hair was still thick and soft, and her face held its beauty. All those babies lost had not taken away her charms or her innocence, or the radiant faith in her eyes when she looked at me.

  "Julien, take me home to Riverbend," she said. "Take me home. Make Mother forgive me. I cannot live here alone. Everywhere I look I see Darcy, only Darcy."

  "I will try, Katherine," I said. But there was no doubt in my mind, I could not make a reconciliation with Mother. Mother was so crazy now, she might not even know who Katherine was, or where she'd been. Things were that out of hand there. Last I saw Mother, she and Lasher had been making flowers spring early from their seeds. And Lasher had told Mother secrets of plants which could make a brew to make her see visions. That was Mother's life of late. I might tell her Katherine had died and come back to earth and we had to be good to her. And who knows? She might have bought it.

  "Don't worry, my beautiful girl," I said. "I'll take you home if you want to go, and your little babies with you. All the family is there as always."

  She nodded her head, and gestured in a helpless graceful way as if to say it was in my hands.

  I kissed her and held her in my arms, and then laid her down to rest, assuring her that I would sit with her until morning.

  The door was closed. The nurse was gone. The little boys were quiet, wherever they were. I went out of the room to have a smoke.

  I saw Lasher.

  He stood at the foot of the staircase looking up at me. He said in his silent voice, Study this house. Study its doors, its rooms, its patterns. Riverbend will perish as did the citadel we built in far-off Saint-Domingue, but this house will last to serve its purpose.

  A dreamy feeling came over me. I went down the stairs, and began to do what you have done, Michael, a thousand times. Walk about this house slowly, in and around, laying my hands upon its doorframes and its brass knobs and musing at the paintings in the dining room and the lovely plaster ornament that everywhere decorated its ceilings.

  Yes, a beautiful house, I thought. Poor Darcy. No wonder his designs had been so much the fashion. But he had had no witch's blood I supposed. I suspected my nephews Clay and Vincent were as innocent as my brother, Remy. I went out into the gardens. I perceived what had been done, a great octagon of a lawn, with an octagon carved in the stone posts that ended the limestone balustrades. And everywhere flagstones at angles, so that one was beset in the moonlight with lines and designs and patterns.

  "Behold the roses in the iron," said Lasher to me. By this he meant the cast-iron railings. And I saw what he pointed out, lines at angles, echoing the angles of the flags, as well as the roses.

  He walked with his arm around me now, and I felt a thrill in this, this closeness with him. I had half a mind to invite him into the trees, and give myself over to him. I was addicted as I said. But I had to remember my beloved sister. She might wake and cry and think that I had left her.

  "Remember all these things," he said again. "For this house will last."

  As I came into the hallway, I saw him in the high dining room door with his hands on the frame. How it soared above him with its tapered keyhole shape, more narrow above, and thereby looking higher.

  I turned to note that the front door, through which I'd just come, which I had left wide open, was of the same design, and there he stood, as if he had never been in the other place at all, a man like me with his hands on the frame, peering back at me.

  "Would you live after death, Julien? Of all my witches you ask me so little about that final darkness."

  "You don't know anything about it, Lasher," I commented. "You said so yourself."

  "Don't be cruel with me, Julien. Not tonight of all nights. I am glad to be here. Would you live after death? Would you hover and stay, that is what I am asking you?"

  "I don't know. If the Devil was trying to take me into hell I might hover and stay, if that's what you mean, a purgatorial soul wandering about, appearing to voodoo queens and spiritualists. I suppose I could do it." I crushed out my cigar in the ashtray on the marble table, which is there now, this very day, in the lower hallway.

  "Is that what you've done, Lasher? Are you some vile human being become a ghost, hovering forever, and seeking to wrap yourself in an undeserved mystery?"

  I saw something in the face of the fiend change. One moment he was my twin and then he had smiled. Indeed, he was imitating my very smile and to perfection. I had not seen him do this trick before very often. And as he slumped against the door frame, he folded his arms as I might, and he made a little sound of cloth brushing the wood, to let me know how strong he was.

  "Julien," he said, actually shaping his mouth with the words, he was so strong, "maybe all mysteries are nothing at the core. Maybe the world is made from waste."

  "And you were there when it happened?"

  "I don't know," he said, imitating my own sarcastic tone exactly. He raised his eyebrows as I raise mine. I had never seen him so strong.

  "Shut the door, Lasher," I said, "if you are so very mighty."

  And to my astonishment, he reached for the knob and stepped aside, and made the door close exactly as if he were a man doing it. That was the limit for him, for it had been an astonishing feat. He was gone. The air held the heat as it always did.

  "Admirable," I whispered.

  "Remember this place if you would linger or come back; remember its patterns. In the dim world beyond they will shine in your eyes, they will guide you home. This is a house for centuries to come. This is a house worthy of the spirits of the dead; this is a house in which you may safely remain. War or revolution or fire, or the river's current, will not trouble you. I was held once...by two patterns. Two simple patterns. A circle, and stones in the form of a cross...two patterns."

  I memorized this. More proof that he was not the great Devil himself.

  I went up the stairs. I had gotten just a little more out of him than I usually did, but nothing much really. And then there was Katherine.

  This time I found her awake, and standing by the window.r />
  "Where did you go?" she asked me breathlessly. And then she threw her arms around me again and leant against me. It seemed I felt Lasher stirring near us. I told him through the mind, Do not come here now, you'll scare her. I lifted her chin as men do to women, though how the little things stand it, I don't know, and I kissed her.

  At that very second, something caught me by surprise. It was the pressure of her breasts against me. She wore nothing but a soft white dressing gown, and I felt her nipples, her heat, and then a stream of heat it seemed from her lips. But when I drew back and looked at her I saw only innocence.

  I also saw a woman. A beautiful woman. A woman whom I had loved, who had risen up against me and cast me aside for another, a body loved by me as a brother should love his sister, with nothing about it unfamiliar to me from all our childhood romps and swims, and yet it was a woman's body, and it was in my arms, and in a moment of daring, I kissed her again, and then again, and then even once more, and I felt her begin to burn against me.

  I was repelled. This was my baby sister, Katherine. I took her to the bed and laid her down; she seemed confused, looking at me. Dare I say spellbound? Did she think it was Darcy come back?

  "No," she whispered. "I know it is you. I have always loved you. I'm sorry. You must forgive my little sins, but when I was a little girl I used to dream we would marry. We would walk down the aisle. It was only when Darcy came that I gave up that silly incestuous dream. God forgive me."

  She made the Sign of the Cross, and drew up her knees, and reached for the covers.

  I don't know what came over me. Fury? I looked down at this little feminine thing, this creature with her outstretched hand and ragged veil of black hair, and pale shivering face, and I saw her make the Sign of the Cross, and I became enraged.

  "How dare you play with me in this way!" I said, and I threw her back on the bed. Her dressing gown opened and there were her breasts, a luscious enticement.

  Within seconds, I was ripping open my own clothes. She had begun to scream. She was terrified.

  "No, no Julien, don't!" she cried.

  But I was on top of her, and spreading her legs, and ripping what cloth was left out of my way.

  "Oh Julien, please, please, don't," she cried in the most heartbreaking voice. "It's me, it's Katherine."

  But it was done. I had raped her and I took my time in finishing it and then climbed off the bed and went to the window. I thought my heart would burst. And I could not believe what I had done.

  Meantime, she had gone from a little curl of a sobbing woman in the bed, to rushing to me, and suddenly flinging her arms around me and crying again my name, "Julien, Julien!"

  What did this mean? That she wanted me to protect her from myself?

  "Oh, darling child," I said. And I broke down utterly, kissing her.

  And then we did it again, and again, and again.

  And Mary Beth was born to us nine months after.

  By then we had been at Riverbend all that time, and I could scarcely stand the sight of Katherine.

  I had not dared to trouble her under our own roof, and I doubt she would have received me anyway. She had blotted the truth from her mind. She thought the thing in her belly was Darcy's baby. She said her rosary all the time, for Darcy's unborn child.

  And everyone, everyone knew what I had done to her. Julien the evil one. Julien had got his sister with child. The cousins stared at me as if I were anathema. Out of Fontevrault, Augustin's son Tobias came especially to curse me and tell me I was the Devil. Far and wide people knew who did not dare to show their displeasure.

  And then there were all my gambling, whoring friends, who thought it strange and unmanly, but when I did not falter a step in my usual dance, they merely gave a shrug and accepted it. That's one thing I found out, you can carry off most any sin, if you just do nothing.

  Ah, but the baby was coming. Once again, the whole family held its breath.

  And Lasher? When I saw him at all, he was as impassive as he had ever been. He hovered near Katherine all the time, unseen by her.

  "It was his doing," my mother said. "He pushed you into her arms. Stop fretting. She has to have more babies, everyone knows, she has to have a daughter. Why not you for the father, a powerful witch? I think it's a fine idea."

  I didn't bother to talk about it again with her.

  And I didn't know if it had been his doing. I don't know now. All I knew was it was the most expensive pleasure I'd ever bought, this rape, and that I, Julien, who could kill men at any time without a qualm, felt filthy and acquainted with cruelty and with evil.

  Katherine really lost her mind before Mary Beth was born. But nobody knew it.

  From the time of the rape, really, she was never anything any more than a mumbling woman saying her beads, and talking about angels and saints, good for playing with little children.

  But then came the night of Mary Beth's birth; Katherine was huge with the child, and screaming in agony. I was in the room, with the black midwives and the white doctor, and with Marguerite and all those who were to attend and help. You never saw such a committee assembled.

  And finally with her last and most wrenching scream, Katherine pushed Mary Beth forth into the world, and here it came, this beautiful and perfect child, resembling more a small female than an infant. By that I mean that though its head was a baby's head, it had rich black curls already, and one shining tooth flashed beneath the baby's upper lip, and its arms and legs were exquisite. It writhed with life and gave forth the most soft and beautiful and lustful cries.

  They put it into my arms.

  "Eh bien, Monsieur, this is your niece," said the old doctor with great ceremony.

  And I looked down at this daughter of mine, and then in the corner of my eye saw the devil come in vapor form, my Lasher, not in the solid way so that others in this room might see, but merely an apparition, soft as silk brushing my shoulder. And the child's eyes had seen it too! The child was making its tiny precocious mouth into a smile for it.

  Her cries grew quiet; her tiny hands opened and closed. I planted my kiss on her forehead. A witch, a witch through and through; the scent of power rose from her like perfume.

  And then came the most ominous words I had ever heard, confidential from the fiend to me:

  "Well done, Julien. You have served your purpose!"

  I was thunderstruck. Every silent and deafening syllable sank in slowly.

  I let my right hand slip up and around the baby's throat, beneath its covers of white linen and lace, and closed my thumb and my forefinger tightly against the pale flesh, though no one in the room took notice.

  "Julien, no!" came his whisper in my head.

  "Oh, come now," I asked in my secret voice, "you need me to protect it for a little while longer, don't you? Look around you, spirit. Look with a human's cunning, for once, and not the addled brains of an angel. What do you see? An old hag and a mumbling madwoman, and a baby girl. Who will teach it what it needs to know? Who will be there to protect it when it begins to show its gifts?"

  "Julien, I never meant that I would harm you."

  I laughed and everyone thought I was laughing at the wriggling child, which did certainly seem to have its little eyes focused tight upon something which no one else could now see, just over my shoulder, and now I gave it over to the nurses, and they bathed it again to make it ready for its mother.

  I withdrew from the room. I was steaming with rage. You have served your purpose! Indeed, had that been it from the very first? More than likely. And all the rest was games and I knew it.

  But I knew this too. Around me in all directions, there thrived an immense and prosperous family, a family of people I loved, who had once loved me before this abominable act, and stood to love me still if I could earn their forgiveness. And in that room behind me was a darling child who touched my heart as all children always have--and this child was mine, my firstborn!

  All the good things, I thought, the good things which are li
fe itself! And damn this daemon to hell that I cannot get rid of it!

  But what right had I to complain? What right had I to regret? What right had I to be ashamed? I'd let the thing enslave me from my earliest years, when I knew it was treacherous and fanciful and pompous and selfish. I'd known. I'd played into its hands as all the witches had, as the whole family had.

  And now, if it was to let me live, I had to be of some clear use to it. I had to think of something. Teaching Mary Beth wouldn't be enough. No, not nearly enough. After all the thing itself was a damned good teacher. No, I had to think of something quick, and it was going to take all my witches' gifts to do it.

  Even as I brooded, the family gathered. Cousins came running, shouting and waving and clapping their hands.

  "It's a girl, it's a girl! At last, Katherine has given birth to a girl!"

  And suddenly I was surrounded by loving hands, and loving kisses. It was perfectly fine that I'd raped my sister; or I'd done penance enough; whatever, I didn't know. But Riverbend was filled with cheering voices. Champagne corks popped; musicians played. The baby was held aloft from the gallery. Ships on the river began to blow their whistles to honor our visible and obvious festivity.

  Oh God in heaven! What will you do now, I thought, you evil evil man? What will you do merely to keep yourself alive and to save that tiny baby from utter destruction?

  Fifteen

  THE WORLD SHOOK with Father's song and Father's laughter. Father said, in his fast high-pitched voice, "Emaleth, be strong; take what you must; Mother may try to harm you. Fight, Emaleth, fight to be with me. Think of the glen and the sunshine and of all our children."

  Emaleth saw children--thousands and thousands of people like Father, and like Emaleth herself, for she did see herself now, her own long fingers, and long limbs, and hair swimming in the water of the world that was Mother. The world that was already too small for her.

  How Father laughed. She saw him dance; she saw him dance as Mother saw him. His song to her was long and beautiful.

  Flowers were in the room. Lots and lots of flowers. The scent was everywhere mingled with the scent of Father. Mother cried and cried and Father tied her hands to the bed. Mother kicked him and Father cursed; and there was thunder in heaven.