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I saw, then, two founts of enterprise at work now in this family--one was the witches' fount, to use the spirit to acquire wealth and advantage; and the other was the natural or normal fount, already bubbling with a great strong flow that might not be stopped were the spirit destroyed.
Once again, it answered me.
"War on me and I destroy all this! You are living now because Katherine needs you."
I didn't answer. I went inside, took my diary, went down to the parlor, and urged the musicians to play loud and strong, and then I wrote my thoughts in my diary.
Meantime, my gifts and those of my mother were growing stronger. We healed, as I have said, we cast spells, we sent Lasher to spy upon those about whom we would know the truth, and sometimes to gauge the financial changes of the future.
This was no easy thing, and the older I became, the more I realized my mother was slowly becoming too mad to do much of anything practical. Indeed, our cousin Augustin, manager of the plantation, was pretty much doing what he wanted with its profits.
By the time I was fifteen, I knew seven languages, and could write very well in any one, and was now the unofficial overseer and manager of the entire plantation. My cousin Augustin grew jealous of me, and so in a fit of rage I shot him.
This was an awful moment.
I had not meant to kill him. Indeed, he was the one who had produced the gun and threatened me; and I in my rage had snatched it from his hand and fired the ball into his forehead. My plan had been "short-range," that is, to knock him about, and voila! he was totally and finally dead forever! No one could have been more surprised than I was. Not even him, wherever he went, for I did see his soul rise, befuddled and staring through a vague human form as it disintegrated.
The whole family went into chaos. The cousins fled to their cottages, the city cousins to their town houses in New Orleans; indeed the plantation shut down in mourning for Augustin, and the priest came, and the funeral preparations commenced.
I sat in my room weeping. I imagined that I would be punished for my crime, but very soon, I realized that nothing of the sort was going to happen!
No one was going to touch me. Everyone was frightened. Even Augustin's wife and children were frightened. They had come to tell me they knew it was "an accident" and did not want to risk my disfavor.
My mother watched this with astonished eyes, barely interested at all, and said, "Now you can run things as you like."
And the spirit came, nudging me playfully, delighted it could knock the quill pen out of my hand, and give me a start with a smile in the mirror.
"Julien," it said, "I could have done this thing stealthily for you! Put away your gun. You do not need it."
"Can you so easily kill?"
"Laughter."
I told it then of two enemies I had made, one a tutor who had insulted my beloved Katherine, and another a merchant who had crassly cheated us. "Kill them," I said.
The fiend did. Within the week both had met a bad end--one beneath the wheels of a carriage, the other thrown from his horse.
"It was simple," said the fiend.
"So I see," said I. I think I was fairly drunk with my power. And remember I was only fifteen, and this was the time before the war when we were still isolated from all the world beyond us.
As it turned out, Augustin's descendants left our land. They went deep into the Bayou country and built the beautiful plantation of Fontevrault. But that is another story. Someday you must journey up the river road and over the Sunshine Bridge and into that land, and see the ruins of Fontevrault, for many many things happened there.
But let me only say now, that with Tobias, the eldest son of Augustin, I was never reconciled. He had been a toddler on the night of the killing, and in later years his hate for me remained great, though his line was prosperous and they kept to the name Mayfair and their progeny married with our progeny. This was one of many branches of the family tree. But it was one of the strongest. And as you know Mona comes from this line, and from my later entanglement with it.
Now, to return to our day-to-day life, as Katherine became more and more beautiful, Marguerite began to fade, as if some vital energy were drawn from her by her daughter. But nothing of the sort really happened.
Marguerite was only mad with her experiments, of trying to bring the dead infants back to life, of inviting Lasher to plunge into their flesh, and make the limbs move, but he could never restore the soul itself. The idea was preposterous.
Nevertheless, she delved deep and drew me with her into magic. We sent for books from all over the world. The slaves came to us for medicines for every illness. And we grew stronger and stronger so that soon we could cure many common aches with the simple laying on of hands. And Lasher was always our ally in this, and if the daemon knew some secret that would cure the sick one--that he had been accidentally poisoned perhaps--it would make these secrets known to us.
When I was not at my experiments, I was with Katherine, taking her into New Orleans to see the opera, the ballet, whatever dramas we could, showing her the fine restaurants, and taking her for walks so that she might see the world itself, which a woman could not really do without an escort. She was as always innocent and full of love, slight of build, dark, and perhaps a little feebleminded.
It began to penetrate to me that in our inbreeding we had encouraged certain weaknesses. In fact, now amongst my cousins I began to study these things, and feeblemindedness of a certain charming sort was definitely part of it. There were also among us many with witches' gifts, and some even with witches' marks--a black mole or birth pattern of peculiar shape; a sixth finger. Indeed the sixth finger was a common thing, and could take various forms. It might be a tiny digit projecting from the outside edge of the hand, an adjunct to the little finger. Or it could be near the thumb, and sometimes a second thumb. But wherever it appeared, you can be sure someone was ashamed of it.
Meantime I had read the history of Scotland, under the fiend's nose, most likely without his being aware of it. For if I had a fiddler standing by, playing a dreary melody as I read, the fiend hardly noticed anything. Indeed, he often tired of being invaded by the music as it were and went off to court my mother.
Well and good. Donnelaith was not a town of importance. But there were some old stories that told it once had been, and that a great cathedral had stood there. Indeed there had been a school and a great saint in those parts, and Catholics had journeyed for miles and miles to worship at his shrine.
I kept this information for future use. I would go there. I would find the history of these people of Donnelaith.
Meanwhile my mother laughed at all this. And under the cover of music, said, "Ask him questions. You will soon discover he is no one or anything and comes from hell. It's that simple."
I took up the theme with it.
And sure enough, what she had said was true. I would say, "Who made the world?" and on it would go about mist and land and spirits always being there, and then I would say, "And Jesus Christ, did you witness His birth?" and it would say that there was no time where it lived and it saw only witches.
I spoke of Scotland, and it wept for Suzanne, and told me that she had died in fear and pain, and Deborah had watched with solemn eyes before the evil wizards of Amsterdam came to fetch her.
"And who were these wizards?" I asked, and the fiend said: "You will know soon enough. They watch you. Beware of them, for they know all and can bring harm to you."
"Why don't you kill them?" I said.
"Because I would know what they know," he said, "and there is no real reason. Beware of them. They are alchemists and liars."
"How old are you?"
"Ageless!"
"Why were you in Donnelaith?"
Silence.
"How did you come to be there?"
"Suzanne called me, I told you."
"But you were there before Suzanne."
"There is no there before Suzanne."
And so on it went, intrig
uing but never really advancing the story very far or revealing a practical secret.
"It is time for you to come and help your mother. Your strength is necessary."
This meant, of course, help Marguerite with her experiments. All right, I thought, though if she keeps burning those stinking candles and mumbling Latin words of which she doesn't know the meaning, I am leaving!
I followed Lasher into her rooms. She had just come in with an infant, feeble but alive, which had been left at the church door by its slave mother. The infant cried, a tiny brown creature with curling brown hair, and a little pink mouth that could break your heart. It seemed too small to survive very long. She was delighted with it. She put me in mind at once of a little boy playing with a bug in a jar, so savage was her interest, and so disconnected was she from the fact that this fragile wailing thing was human.
She shut the doors, lighted the candles, and then knelt beside the child and invited Lasher to go inside it.
With a great chant she egged the daemon on: "Into its limbs; see through its eyes; speak through its mouth; live in its breath and in its heartbeat."
The room seemed to swell and to contract, though of course it did not, and all that could rattle was moved, and the noise became a subtle murmuring--bottles jiggling, bells tinkling, shutters fluttering in the wind--and then this tiny baby before my eyes began to change. It coordinated its tiny limbs and the expression of its little face became malevolent or merely adultlike.
