“All you’ve told me sounds familiar; there is a sense of recognition, just as I felt when I saw the house last night. And you know of course that the Talamasca couldn’t be familiar to me, it’s not possible that I would have heard of you and forgotten except if
Aaron listened to all this carefully, as he had listened to Michael, intermittently, all along.
It seemed to Michael that both knew their knowledge of each other had deepened and become seemingly natural to them, that they were now completely at ease.
Michael had drunk only coffee since they’d left New Orleans. He intended to keep it that way, at least until he had read all that Aaron had to give him to read.
Michael was also weary of the limousine, weary of the smooth, brutal way it shot through the old swampy landscape. He wanted to breathe fresh air.
As soon as they entered the gates of the retreat house, turning left off the river road with the levee behind them, Michael knew the place from the picture books. The oak-lined avenue had been photographed countless times over the decades. It seemed lavishly dreamlike in its southern Gothic perfection, the gargantuan black-barked trees extending their gnarled and heavy limbs to form an unbroken ceiling of crude and broken arches leading all the way to the verandas of the house.
Great streaks of gray Spanish moss hung from the deep knotty elbows of these branches. Bulging roots crowded, on either side, the narrow rutted gravel drive.
Michael loved it. It lay its hands silently on his heart the same way that the beauty of the Garden District had done so; a quiet faith sprang up in him, that no matter what else happened to him, he was home in the south and things were somehow going to be all right.
The car tunneled deeper and deeper into the green-tinted light, ragged rays of sun here and there piercing the shadows, while beyond, the low country on both sides, full of high grass, and tall shapeless shrubbery seemed to close in upon the sky and upon the house itself.
Michael pressed the button to lower the window. “God, feel that air,” he whispered.
“Yes, rather remarkable I think,” Aaron said softly. But he was smiling indulgently at Michael. The heat was wilting. Michael didn’t care.
It seemed a hush fell over the world as the car came to a stop and they climbed out before the broad two- story house. Built before the Civil War, it was one of those sublimely simple structures-massive yet tropical, a square box graced with floor-length windows, and surrounded on all sides by deep galleries and thick unfluted columns rising to support its flat roof.
It seemed a thing made to capture the breezes, for sitting and gazing out over fields and river-a strong brick structure made to survive hurricanes and drenching rains.
Hard to believe, Michael thought, that beyond the distant levee was the river traffic of tugs and barges which they had glimpsed less than an hour ago as a chugging ferry brought them to the southern bank. All that was real now was this soft breeze stealing over the brick floor on which they stood, the broad double doors of the house suddenly open to receive them, the errant sun glinting in the glass of the beautifully arched fanlight window above.
Where was the rest of the world? It didn’t matter. Michael heard again the wondrous sounds that had lulled him on First Street-the singing of insects, the wild, seemingly desperate cry of birds.
Aaron pressed his arm as he led Michael inside, apparently ignoring the shock of the artificially chilled air. “We’ll have a quick tour,” he said.
Michael scarcely followed his words. The house had caught him up, as houses always did. He loved houses made in this fashion with a wide central hallway, a simple staircase, and large square rooms in perfect balance on either side. The restoration and furnishings were sumptuous as well as meticulous. And rather characteristically British, what with dark green carpets, and books in mahogany cases and shelves rising to the ceilings in all the main rooms. Only a few ornate mirrors recalled the antebellum period, and a little harpsichord pushed into a corner. All the rest was solidly Victorian, but not unpleasing by any means.
“Like a private club,” Michael whispered. It was almost comical to him, the occasional person seated deep in a tapestried chair who did not even glance up from a book or a paper as they glided soundlessly past. But the overall atmosphere was unmistakably inviting. He felt good here. He liked the quick smile of the woman who passed him on the staircase. He wanted to find a chair himself at some time or other in the library. And through all the many French doors, he caught the greenery outside, a great sprawling net swallowing up the blue sky.
“Come, we’ll take you to your room,” Aaron said.
“Aaron, I’m not staying. Where’s the file?”
“Of course,” Aaron said, “but you must have quiet to read as you like.”
He led Michael along the upper corridor to the front bedroom on the eastern side of the house. Floor-length windows opened onto both the front and the side galleries. And though the carpet was as dark and thick as everywhere else, the decor had yielded to the plantation tradition with a couple of marble-top bureaus and one of those overpowering poster beds which seemed made for this kind of house. Several layers of handmade quilts covered its shapeless feather mattress. No carvings ornamented its eight-foot-high posts.
But the room had a surprising array of modern conveniences, including the small refrigerator and television fitted into a carved armoire, and a chair and desk nestled in the inside corner, so that they faced both the front windows and those to the east. The phone was covered with buttons and tiny carefully inscribed numerals for various extensions. A pair of Queen Anne wing chairs stood on tiptoe before the fireplace. A door was open to an adjoining bath.
“I’m moving in,” Michael said. “Where’s the file?”
“But we should have lunch.”
“You should. I can get a sandwich and eat it while I’m reading. Please, you promised. The file.”
Aaron insisted that they go at once to a small screened porch off the back of the second story, and there, overlooking a formal garden with gravel paths and weathered fountains, they sat down to eat. It was an enormous southern breakfast, complete with biscuits, grits, and sausage; and plenty of chicory cafe au lait to drink.
Michael was ravenous. Again, he had that feeling he’d had with Rowan-good to be off the booze. Good to be clear-headed, looking out on the green garden with the branches of the oaks dipping down to the very grass. Divine to be feeling the warm air again.
“This has all happened so fast,” Aaron said, passing him the basket of steaming biscuits. “I feel I should say something more, yet I don’t know what I can say. We wanted to approach you slowly, we wanted to get to know you and for you to know us.”
Michael couldn’t stop thinking about Rowan suddenly. He resented it powerfully that he couldn’t call Rowan. Yet it seemed useless to try to explain to Aaron how worried about Rowan he was.
“If I had made the contact I hoped to make,” said Aaron, “I would have invited you to our Motherhouse in London, and your introduction to the order might have been slow and graceful there. Even after years of fieldwork, you would not have been asked to undertake a task as dangerous as intervention with regard to the Mayfair Witches. There is no one in the order even qualified to undertake such a task except for me. But you are involved, to use the simple modern expression.”
“In it up to the eyeballs,” Michael said, eating steadily as he listened. “But I hear what you’re saying. It would be like the Catholic church asking me to participate in an exorcism when they knew I wasn’t an ordained priest.”
“Very nearly so,” he said. “I sometimes think that on account of our lack of dogma and ritual, we are all the more stringent. Our definition of right and wrong is more subtle, and we become more angry with those who don’t comply.”
“Aaron, look. I won’t tell a blessed soul in Christendom about that file, except for Rowan. Agreed?”
Aaron was thoughtful for a moment. “Michael,” he said, “when yoy’ve read the material we must talk further about what you should do. Wait before you say no. At least commit yourself to listening to my advice.”
“You’re personally afraid of Rowan, aren’t you?”
Aaron drank a swallow of coffee. He stared at the plate for a moment. He had eaten nothing but half a
