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  "Michael, I've written a letter to Mona. I had to write it. You know, before I left New Orleans, I pledged my heart to Mona. But Mona is too young for such a pledge, and now that I am home, back with the Order, I realize more than ever how unsuited I am to court Mona. I've sent my letter to the Amelia Street address, but I fear that Mona will, for a little while at least, be angry with me."

  "Yuri, Mona has other things on her mind right now. This is probably the best decision you could have made. We forget that Mona is thirteen. Everybody forgets it. And certainly Mona forgets it. But you've done the right thing. Besides, she can contact you if she wants to, can't she?"

  "Yes, I am here. I am safe. I am home."

  "And Tessa?"

  "Well, they took her away, Michael. That's the Talamasca for you. I'm sure that's what happened to her. She was surrounded by a very courtly group of companions and invited to go with them, probably to Amsterdam. I kissed her goodbye before she left. There was some talk of a nice place for her where she could rest, and where all her memories and stories would be recorded. No one seems to know how to calculate her age. No one knows if what Ash has said is true, that she will die soon."

  "But she's happy, and the Talamasca has taken care of her."

  "Yes, absolutely. Of course, if she ever wants to leave, she can leave. That's our way. But I don't think Tessa thinks in those terms. I think she drifted for years--how many years, no one knows--from one protector to another. She didn't grieve too long for Gordon, by the way. She says that she doesn't care to dwell on unpleasant things."

  Michael laughed. "I understand. Believe me. Look, I've got to go back now. We're having some supper together, and then Ash is going to go on with his story. It's beautiful here where we are. Snowing and cold, but beautiful. Everything that surrounds Ash reflects his personality. It's always that way. The buildings we choose for ourselves, they're always reflections of us. This place is filled with colored marble and with paintings, and with ... with things that interest him. I don't suppose I should talk about it much. He does want his privacy, to be left in peace after we leave him."

  "I know. I understand. Listen, Michael, when you see Mona, you must tell her something for me ... that ... you must tell her that I ..."

  "She'll understand, Yuri. Mona has other things on her mind right now. It's an exciting time for her. The family wants her to leave Sacred Heart, to start studying with private tutors. Her IQ is off the charts, just as she always said it was. And she is the heir to the Mayfair legacy. I think for the next few years Mona will be spending a lot of time with Rowan and with me, studying, traveling, getting sort of the ideal education for a lady of what ... how shall I say, great expectations. I'm going to go now. I'll call you again from New Orleans."

  "Please do this, please. I love both of you. I love ... the three of you. Will you tell the others for me, Ash and Rowan?"

  "Yes. By the way, those cohorts, those helpers of Gordon?"

  "It's all finished. They're gone, and they can never hurt the Order again. I'll talk to you soon, Michael."

  "Goodbye, Yuri."

  Twenty-seven

  EVERYBODY ALWAYS TOLD him the Fontevrault Mayfairs were crazy. "That's why they come to you, Dr. Jack." Every single one of them was mad, said the town, even the rich kin in New Orleans.

  But did he have to find it out for himself on an afternoon like this, when it was as dark as night, and half the streets in town were flooded out?

  And bringing out a little newborn baby in such a storm, wrapped up in smelly little blankets and lying in a plastic ice chest, no less! And Mary Jane Mayfair expecting him just to make out the birth certificate right there in his office.

  He'd demanded to see the mother!

  Of course, if he'd known she was going to drive this limousine like this over these shell roads, right through this storm, and that he'd end up holding this baby in his arms, he would have insisted on following her in his pickup.

  When she'd pointed to the limousine, he'd thought the woman had a driver. And this was a brand-new car, too, twenty-five feet long if it was a foot, with a moon roof and tinted glass, a compact disc player, and a goddamned telephone. And this teen Amazon queen at the wheel--in her dirty white lace dress, with mud spattered on her bare legs and her sandals.

  "And you mean to tell me," he shouted over the rain, "that with a big car like this, you couldn't have brought this baby's mother to the hospital?"

  The baby looked fine enough, thank God for that, about a month premature, he figured, and undernourished, of course! But otherwise okay and sleeping right now, deep in the ice chest with all the stinky little blankets around it, as he held the thing on his knees. Why, these blankets actually reeked of whiskey.

  "Good heavens, Mary Jane Mayfair, slow down!" he said finally. The branches were making a racket on the top of the car. He flinched as the clumps of wet leaves slapped right against the windshield. He could hardly stand it, the way she ran right over the ruts! "You're going to wake the baby."

  "That baby's just fine, Doctor," said Mary Jane, letting her skirt fall all the way back down her thighs to her panties. This was a notorious young woman, nobody had to tell him that. He'd been pretty damn sure this was her baby and she was going to make up some cock-and-bull story about its having been left on the doorstep. But no, there was a mother out there in those swamps, praise God. He was going to put this in his memoirs.

  "We're almost there," Mary Jane called out, half smashing a thicket of bamboo on their left, and rolling right on past it. "Now, you got to carry the baby in the boat, all right, Doctor?"

  "What boat!" he shouted. But he knew damn good and well what boat. Everybody had told him about this old house, that he ought to drive out to Fontevrault Landing just to see it. You could hardly believe it was standing, the way the west side had sunk, and to think this clan insisted upon living there! Mary Jane Mayfair had been slowly cleaning out the local Wal-Mart for the last six months, fixing the place up for herself and her grandmother. Everybody knew about it when Mary Jane came to town in her white shorts and T-shirts.

  She was a pretty girl, though, he had to give her that much, even with that cowboy hat. She had the most high-slung and pointed pair of breasts he'd ever seen, and a mouth the color of bubble gum.

  "Hey, you didn't give this baby whiskey to keep it quiet, did you?" he demanded. The little tucker was just snoring away, blowing a big bubble with its tiny little pink lips. Poor child, to grow up in this place. And she hadn't let him even examine this baby, saying Granny had done all that! Granny, indeed!

  The limousine had come to a halt. The rain was teeming. He could scarcely see what looked like a house up ahead, and the great fan leaves of a green palmetto. But those were electric lights burning up there, thank God for that. Somebody'd told him they didn't have any lights out here.

  "I'll come round for you with the umbrella," she said, slamming the door behind her before he could say they should wait till the rain slacked off, and then his door flew open and he had no choice but to pick up this ice chest like a cradle.

  "Here, put the towel over it, little guy will get wet!" Mary Jane said. "Now run for the boat."

  "I will walk, thank you," he said. "If you'll just kindly lead the way, Miss Mayfair!"

  "Don't let him fall."

  "I beg your pardon! I delivered babies in Picayune, Mississippi, for thirty-eight years before I ever came down to this godforsaken country."

  And just why did I come? he thought to himself as he had a thousand times, especially when his new little wife, Eileen, born and raised in Napoleonville, wasn't around to remind him.

  Lord in heaven, it was a great big heavy aluminum pirogue, and it didn't have a motor! But there was the house, all right, the entire thing the color of driftwood, with the purple wisteria completely wrapped around the capitals of those upstairs columns, and making its way for the balusters. At least the tangle of trees was so thick in this part of the jungle that he was almost dry for a moment. A tu
nnel of green went up to the tilting front porch. Lights on upstairs, well, that was a relief. If he had had to see his way around this place by kerosene lamp, he would have gone crazy. Maybe he was already going crazy, crossing this stretch of duckweed slop with this crazy young woman, and the place about to sink any minute.

  "That's what's going to happen," Eileen had said. "One morning we'll drive by there, and there won't be any house, whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel, will have sunk into the swamp, you mark my words, it's a sin, anybody living like that."

  Carrying the ice chest and its quiet little contents with one hand, he managed to get into the shallow boat, thrilled to discover that it was full of about two inches of water. "This is going to sink, you should have emptied it out." His shoes filled up to the ankles immediately. Why had he agreed to come out here? And Eileen would have to know every last detail.

  "It's not going to sink, this is a sissy rain," said Mary Jane Mayfair, shoving on her long pole. "Now hang on, please, and don't let the baby get wet."

  The girl was past all patience. Where he came from, nobody talked to a doctor like that! The baby was just fine under the towels, and pissing up a storm for a newborn.

  Lo and behold, they were gliding right over the front porch of this dilapidated wreck and into the open doorway.

  "My God, this is like a cave!" he declared. "How in the world did a woman give birth in this place? Will you look at that. There are books in there on the top shelf of that bookcase, right above the water."

  "Well, nobody was here when the water came in," said Mary Jane, straining as she pushed on the pole.

  He could hear the thonk-thonk of it hitting the floorboards beneath them.

  "And I guess lots of things are still floating around in the parlor. Besides, Mona Mayfair didn't have her baby down here, she had it upstairs. Women don't have their babies in the front room, even if it isn't underwater."

  The boat collided with the steps, tossing him violently to the left, so that he had to grab the slimy wet banister. He leapt out, immediately stamping both his feet to make sure the steps weren't going to sink under him.

  A warm flood of light came from upstairs, and he could hear, over the hiss and roar of the rain, another sound, very fast, clickety, clickety, clickety. He knew that sound. And with it, a woman's voice humming. Kind of pretty.

  "Why doesn't this stairway just float loose from the wall?" he asked. He started up, the ice-chest cradle beginning to feel like a sack of rocks to him. "Why doesn't this whole place just disintegrate?"

  "Well, in a way, I guess it is," said Mary Jane, "only it's taking a couple hundred years, you know???" She went thumping up the steps in front of him, pushing right in his way as she hit the second-floor hall, and then turning around and saying, "You come with me, we got to go up to the attic."

  But where was that clickety, clickety, clickety coming from? He could hear somebody humming, too. But she didn't even give him a chance to look around, rushing him to the attic steps.

  And then he saw old Granny Mayfair at the very top in her flowered flannel gown, waving her little hand at him.

  "Hey, there, Dr. Jack. How's my handsome boy? Come give me a kiss. Surely am glad to see you."

  "Glad to see you too, Grandma," he said coming up, though Mary Jane once again shoved right past him, with the firm admonition that he was to hold tight to the baby. Four more steps and he'd be glad to set this bundle down. How come he was the one who'd wound up carrying it, anyway?

  At last he reached the warm, dry air of the attic, the little old lady standing on tiptoe to press her lips to his cheeks. He did love Grandma Mayfair, he had to admit that much.

  "How you doing, Grandma, you taking all your pills?" he asked.

  Mary Jane picked up the ice chest as soon as he set it down, and ran off with it. This wasn't such a bad place, this attic; it was strung with electric lights, and clean clothes hanging on the lines with wooden clothespins. Lots of comfortable old furniture scattered around, and it didn't smell too much like mold; on the contrary, it smelled like flowers.

  "What is that 'clickety-clickety' sound I'm hearing on the second floor down there?" he asked as Grandma Mayfair took his arm.

  "You just come in here, Dr. Jack, and do what you got to do, and then you fill out that baby's birth certificate. We don't want any problems with the registration of this baby's birth, did I ever tell you about the problems when I didn't register Yancy Mayfair for two months after he was born, and you wouldn't believe the trouble I got into with the city hall and them telling me that ..."

  "And you delivered this little tyke, did you, Granny?" he asked, patting her hand. His nurses had warned him the first time she came in that it was best not to wait till she finished her stories, because she didn't. She'd been at his office the second day he opened up, saying none of the other doctors in this town were ever going to touch her again. Now that was a story!

  "Sure did, Doctor."

  "The mama's over there," said Mary Jane, pointing to the side gable of the attic, all draped in unbleached mosquito netting as if it were a tent with its peaked roof, and the distant glowing rectangle of the rain-flooded window at the end of it.

  Almost pretty, the way it looked. There was an oil lamp burning inside, he could smell it, and see the warm glow in the smoky glass shade. The bed was big, piled with quilts and coverlets. It made him sad, suddenly, to think of his own grandmother years and years ago, and beds like that, so heavy with quilts you couldn't move your toes, and how warm it had been underneath on cold mornings in Carriere, Mississippi.

  He lifted the long, thin veils and lowered his head just a little as he stepped under the spine of the gable. The cypress boards were bare here, and dark brownish red and clean. Not a leak anywhere, though the rainy window sent a wash of rippling light over everything.

  The red-haired girl lay snug in the bed, half asleep, her eyes sunken and the skin around them frighteningly dark, her lips cracked as she took her breaths with obvious effort.

  "This young woman should be in a hospital."

  "She's worn out, Doctor, you would be too," said Mary Jane, with her smart tongue. "Why don't you get this over with, so she can get some rest now?"

  At least the bed was clean, cleaner than that makeshift bassinet. The girl lay nestled in fresh sheets, and wearing a fancy white shirt trimmed in old-fashioned lace, with little pearl buttons. Her hair was just about the reddest he'd ever seen, and long and full and brushed out on the pillow. The baby's might be red like that someday, but right now it was a bit paler.

  And speaking of the baby, it was making a sound at last in its little ice-chest bed, thank God. He was beginning to worry about it. Granny Mayfair snatched it up into her arms, and he could tell from the way she lifted it that the baby was in fine hands, though who wanted to think of a woman that age in charge of everything? Look at this girl in the bed. She wasn't even as old as Mary Jane.

  He drew closer, went down with effort on his knees, since there was nothing else to do, and he laid his hand on the mother's forehead. Slowly her eyes opened, and surprised him with their deep green color. This was a child herself, should never have had a baby!

  "You all right, honey?" he asked.

  "Yes, Doctor," she said in a bright, clear voice. "Would you fill out the papers, please, for my baby?"

  "You know perfectly well that you should--"

  "Doctor, the baby's born," she said. She wasn't from around here. "I'm not bleeding anymore. I'm not going anywhere. As a matter of fact, I am fine, better than I expected."

  The flesh beneath her fingernails was nice and pink. Her pulse was normal. Her breasts were huge. And there was a big jug of milk, only half drunk, by the bed. Well, that was good for her.

  Intelligent girl, sure of herself, and well bred, he thought, not country.

  "You two leave us alone now," he said to Mary Jane and the old woman, who hovered right at his shoulders like two giant angels, the little baby whining just a little, like it ha
d just discovered again that it was alive and wasn't sure it liked it. "Go over there so I can examine this child, and make sure she's not hemorrhaging."

  "Doctor, I took care of that child," said Granny gently. "Now do you think I would let her lie there if she was hemorrhaging?" But she went away, bouncing the baby in her arms, pretty vigorously, he thought, for a newborn.

  He thought sure the little mother was going to put up a fuss, too, but she didn't.

  There was nothing to do but hold this oil lamp himself, if he wanted to make sure everything was all right. This was hardly going to be a thorough examination.

  She sat up against the pillows, her red hair mussed and tangled around her white face, and let him turn back the thick layer of covers. Everything nice and clean, he had to hand it to them. She was immaculate, as though she'd soaked in the tub, if such a thing was possible, and they had laid a layer of white towels beneath her. Hardly any discharge at all now. But she was the mother, all right. Badly bruised from the birth. Her white nightgown was spotless.

  Why in the world didn't they clean up the little one like that, for God's sake? Three women, and they didn't want to play dolls enough to change that baby's blankets?

  "Just lie back now, honey," he said to the mother. "The baby didn't tear you, I can see that, but it would have been a damned sight easier for you if it had. Next time, how about trying the hospital?"

  "Sure, why not?" she said in a drowsy voice, and then gave him just a little bit of a laugh. "I'll be all right." Very ladylike. She'd never be a child again now, he thought, pint-sized though she was, and just wait till this story got around town, though he wasn't about to tell Eileen one word of it.

  "I told you she was fine, didn't I?" asked Granny, pushing aside the netting now, the baby crying a little against her shoulder. The mother didn't even look at the baby.

  Probably had enough of it for the moment, he thought. Probably resting while she could.

  "All right, all right," he said, smoothing the cover back. "But if she starts to bleed, if she starts running a fever, you get her down into that limousine of yours and get her into Napoleonville! You go straight on in to the hospital."

  "Sure thing, Dr. Jack, glad you could come," said Mary Jane. And she took his hand and led him out of the little tent enclosure, away from the bed.