It had exhausted my soul to revisit those times when I was a living mortal being, when I had taken the wet daytime heat of New Orleans for granted, when I'd been a trusted friend to Merrick, for that is what I had been, regardless of what Honey in the Sunshine had condemned me for being—with a boy named Joshua who had lived many, many years before. As for that matter, Aaron and Mary never questioned me about it. But I knew that neither of them would ever look at me in the same way again. Joshua had been too young and I had been too old for the relationship. And I had only confessed my transgressions—a precious few nights of love—to the Elders long after Joshua was dead. They had condemned me for it and charged me never to let such a thing occur again.
When I'd been appointed Superior General, the Elders had exacted a confirmation that I was well beyond such breaches of morality, and I had given it, humiliated that it had been mentioned again.
As for Joshua's death, I did blame myself for what happened to him. He had begged me to go on the climb, which itself was not terribly dangerous, to visit a shrine in the Himalayas which had been part of his study in Tibetan lore. Other members of the Order were with him and they came home safe. The fall had been the result of a small but sudden avalanche, as I understood it, and Joshua's body had not been recovered for several months. Now as I reviewed these things for Louis, now as I pondered that I had approached the woman Merrick in my dark and eternal guise as a vampire, I felt the sharpest and most profound guilt. It wasn't something for which I could ever seek absolution. And it wasn't something that could prevent me from seeing Merrick again. It had been done. I had asked Merrick to raise Claudia's ghost for us. And I had much more to tell Louis before the two could come together, and more within myself that had to be resolved.
All this while, Louis had listened without saying a word. With his finger curled under his lip, his elbow on the arm of the couch, he had merely studied me as I recounted the memories, and now he was eager for the tale to go on.
'I knew this woman was powerful,' he said gently. 'What I didn't know was how much you loved her.' I marveled at his customary manner of speaking, the melting quality of his voice and the way his words seemed barely to disturb the air.
'Ah, well, neither did I,' I replied. 'There were so many of us, bound together by love, in the Talamasca, and each one is a special case.'
'But this woman, you truly love her,' he pressed gently. 'And I've asked you to go against your heart.'
'Oh, no, you haven't,' I confessed. I faltered. 'It was inevitable that I contact the Talamasca,' I insisted. 'But it should have been contact with the Elders, in writing, and not this.'
'Don't condemn yourself so much for contacting her,' he said with an uncommon self-confidence. He seemed earnest and, as always, forever young.
'Why not?' I asked. 'I had thought you were a specialist in guilt?' He laughed politely at this, and then again made a silent chuckle. He shook his head.
'We have hearts, don't we?' he replied. He shifted a little against the pillows of the couch. 'You tell me you believe in God. That's more than the others have ever said to me. Quite truly it is. What do you think God has planned for us?'
'I don't know that God plans anything,' I said a little bitterly. 'I know only that He's there.' I thought of how much I loved Louis, and had ever since I had become Lestat's fledgling. I thought of how deeply I depended upon him, and what I would do for him. It was the love of Louis which had at times crippled Lestat, and enslaved Armand. Louis need have no consciousness of his own beauty, of his own obvious and natural charm.
'David, you have to forgive me,' he said suddenly. 'I want so desperately to meet this woman myself that I urge you on for selfish reasons, but I mean it when I say that we do have hearts in every sense of the word.'
'Of course, you do,' I replied. 'I wonder if angels have hearts,' I whispered. 'Ah, but it doesn't matter, does it? We are what we are.'
He didn't answer me, but I saw his face darken for a moment and then he fell into reverie, with his habitual expression of curiosity and quiet grace.
'But when it comes to Merrick,' I said, 'I have to face that I've contacted her because I need her desperately. I could not have gone on for long without contacting her. Every night that I spend in New Orleans, I think of Merrick. Merrick haunts me as though she was a ghost herself.'
'Tell me the rest of your story,' Louis prodded. 'And, if when you're finished you wish to conclude the matter with Merrick—end the contact, so to speak—then I shall accept it without another word.'
11
I WENT ON with my tale, flashing back once more some twenty years, to the summer of Merrick's fourteenth year. It wasn't hard for the Talamasca to enfold such a friendless orphan as one could easily see. In the days following Great Nananne's funeral, we discovered that Merrick had no legal identity of any kind, save for a valid passport obtained through the testimony of Cold Sandra that Merrick was her daughter. The last name was an assumed name.
Where and how Merrick's birth might have been recorded eluded our most diligent efforts. No baptism of Merrick Mayfair was recorded in any parish church in New Orleans for the year of Merrick's birth. Few pictures of her existed in the boxes which she had brought with us.
And indeed, no record of Cold Sandra or Honey in the Sunshine existed other than passports which were both under assumed names. Though we calculated a year of death for the two unfortunates, we could find nothing in the newspapers of Lafayette, Louisiana, or anywhere near it to indicate that murdered bodies had been found. In sum, the Talamasca began with a blank slate for Merrick Mayfair, and using its immense resources it soon created for her the documentation of birth and age which the modem world requires. As for the matter of Catholic baptism, Merrick was adamant that she had indeed been given the sacrament as an infant—Great Nananne had 'carried her to church'—and as late as only a few years before I left the Order, Merrick still combed church records, in vain, for proof of this herself. I never fully understood the significance of this baptism to Merrick, but then there were many things about Merrick which I never came to understand. One thing I can say for certain, however. Magic and Roman Catholicism were completely intermingled for Merrick and this remained so all her life.
As for the gifted and kindhearted man named Matthew, he was not difficult to trace at all. Matthew had been, in fact, an Olmec archaeologist, and when polite inquiries were made among his survivors in Boston, it was quickly ascertained that a woman named Sandra Mayfair had lured him to New Orleans by means of a letter some five years before regarding some Olmec treasure for which the woman claimed to have directions and a rough hand-drawn map. Cold Sandra claimed to have been given an article about Matthew's amateur adventures by her daughter Merrick, who came upon it in
Though Matthew's mother was seriously ill at the time, Matthew had made the journey south with her blessing, and had set out on a private expedition beginning in Mexico. He was never seen by anyone in the family alive again. As for the expedition, Matthew had kept a journal by means of long impassioned letters addressed to his mother, which he had mailed all in a batch upon his return to the States.
After Matthew's death, in spite of the woman's determined efforts, no scholars in the field of Olmec studies could be interested in what Matthew claimed to have seen or found.
The mother had died, leaving all these papers to her sister, who did not know what to make of 'the responsibility' and quickly decided to sell Matthew's papers to us for a liberal sum. Those papers included a small box of vivid color photographs sent to the mother, many of which included Cold Sandra and Honey in the Sunshine, both extraordinarily beautiful women, as well as the ten-year-old child, Merrick, who did not resemble the other two. As Merrick had risen from a week of torpor and was deep in her studies, and fascinated with her education in etiquette, it was no great pleasure for me to give her these photographs and letters for her private store. She showed no emotion, however, when confronted with the snapshots of her mother and her sister. And preserving her usual silence on the question of Honey in the Sunshine, who appeared to be about sixteen in the pictures, she put all of this aside.
As for me, I spent some time with the pictures.
Cold Sandra was tall and tawny with very black hair and light eyes.
As for Honey in the Sunshine, she appeared to fulfill all the expectations engendered by that name. Her skin in the photographs did appear to be the color of honey, her eyes were yellow as were her mother's, and her hair, light blond and tightly curly, fell down around her shoulders like foam. Her facial features appeared entirely Anglo- Saxon. The same was true of Cold Sandra.
As for Merrick in the photographs, she appeared very much as she did when she came to our door. She was
