discovered. Some excavations were begun at Donnelaith but that work would take a century. And what would we find that I did not now know?
Yet I wrote enthusiastically to my professor and his friends, increased the endowments and gave in to their wishes in any project to further the study of Donnelaith and its complex of ruins.
Each letter I copied out into my book.
Then I took up another book and began to write my own life story in it. This book too was chosen for its strong binding and good paper. I never dreamt that both books would perish before I did.
Lasher meantime did not trouble me while I did this, but spent his time with Mary Beth, who almost up to the hour of giving birth went traipsing all about London and down to Canterbury and off to Stonehenge. She was ever in the company of young men. I believe there were two of them with her, Oxford scholars both, deeply in love, when she gave birth to baby Belle in the hospital.
I have never felt so separate from her as during this time. She was in love with the city and all the ancient sites and the newfangled things, rushing to see factories and theaters and all sorts of new inventions. She went to the Tower of London, of course, and the wax museum, which was all the rage. Her pregnancy was nothing to her. She was so tall, so strong, so hearty; the impersonation of a man was more than natural to her. And yet she was a woman, through and through, beautiful and eager for the child, though she had been told by now that it would not be the witch.
“It is mine,” she would say. “It is mine. Its name is Mayfair, as is my name. That is what matters.”
I was locked up in my rooms with the past, desperate to make a record which might invite a later interpretation. And the more I was left alone to it, and the more I realized I had written everything I knew, the more helpless and hopeless I felt.
Finally Lasher appeared.
He was as he had been that day we walked to the castle. A friend to me, a comfort. I let him stroke my brow; I let him soothe me with kisses. But secretly I lamented. I had found the thing I needed to know, and it would not help me. I could do no more. Mary Beth loved him, and did not see his power any more than any other witch who had ever dabbled with him, or commanded him or been kissed by him.
Finally, I asked him politely and kindly to go away, to go back to the witch and see to her. He consented.
Mary Beth, who had only the day before given birth, was still with the blessed baby girl in the hospital, resting comfortably, surrounded by nurses.
I went walking by myself through London.
I came to an old church, perhaps from those times, I don’t know. I don’t even know what it was, only I went into it, and sat in a rear pew, and bowed my head and gave myself over to almost praying.
“God help me,” I said. “I have never in my life really prayed to you, except when I felt I was in the memory of that creature in the old Cathedral, standing in his flesh before the window of St. Ashlar. I have learnt how to pray from that one single moment of possession, when I was in him, and he prayed. Now I am trying. I am praying now. What do I do? If I destroy this thing, do I destroy my family?”
I was deep in this prayer when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I looked up to see a young man standing there, dressed neatly in black, with a black silk tie, and looking a little too well-dressed and well-bred to be ordinary. He had beautifully groomed dark hair, and startling eyes, small but very gray and bright.
“Come with me,” he said.
“Why, are you the answer to my prayer?”
“No, but I would know what you know. I am from the Talamasca. Do you know who we are?”
Of course I knew these were the Amsterdam scholars. These were the men the old professor had described to me. My ancestor Petyr van Abel had more than likely been one of these.
“Ah, that is true, Julien, you know more than I thought,” said the man. “Now come, I would talk with you.”
“I’m not so certain,” said I. “Why should I?”
At once I felt the air around me stir, grow warm, and suddenly a gust of wind swept through the church, banging the doors, and startling this man so that he looked about him frightened.
“I thought you wanted to know what I know,” said I. “You seem afraid now.”
“Julien Mayfair, you don’t know what you do,” he said.
“But you know, I am to suppose?”
The wind grew stronger and banged the doors open, letting in a flood of ugly daylight among the dusty statues and carved wood, the sanctified shadows of the place.
The man backed away. He stared at the faraway altar. I felt the air collecting itself, I felt the wind growing strong, and rolling towards this man. I knew it would strike him one fine blow and then it did. He went sprawling on the marble floor, scrambling quickly to his feet and backing away from me. Blood ran from his nose, down his lips and his chin, and with a fancy handkerchief, he went to blot it.
But the wind wasn’t finished. The church was now giving off a low rumble as if the earth beneath it were moving.
The man rushed from the church. He was gone. The wind died down. The air was still, as if nothing had ever happened here. The shadows closed upon the nave. The dusty sun came only through the windows.
I sat down again, and peered once more at the altar.
“Well, spirit?” I said.
Lasher’s secret voice spoke to me out of the emptiness and the silence.
“I would not have those scholars near you. I would not have them near my witches.”
“But they know you, do they not? They have been to the glen. They know you. My ancestor Petyr van Abel…”
“Yes, yes and yes. I have told you the past is nothing.”
“There is no power in knowing it? Then why did you drive the scholar away? Spirit, I must tell you, all this is most suspicious to me.”
“For the future, Julien. For the future.”
“Ah, and this means that what I have learnt may stop what you see in the future.”
“You are old, Julien, you have served me well. You will serve me again. I love you. But I would not have you speak to the men of the Talamasca ever, at any time, nor would I have them trouble Mary Beth or any of my witches.”
“But what do they want? What is their interest? The old professor in Edinburgh told me they were antiquarians.”
“They are liars. They tell you they are scholars and scholars only. But they harbor a horrid secret, and I know what it is. I would not have them come close to you.”
“You know them then as they know you?”
“Yes. They feel an irresistible attraction to mysteries. But they lie. They would use their knowledge for their own ends. Tell them nothing. Remember what I say. They lie. Protect the clan from them.”
I nodded. I went out. I went up to my rooms and opened my big book, the book of the clan and of Lasher.
“Spirit, I know not whether you can read these words, whether you are here or not, or whether you have gone to protect your witch. I know none of these things. But this I wonder.
I closed the book.
Later in the week, as Mary Beth came back to our rooms in triumphant motherhood, and commenced to buy out every baby shop in London for its lace and trinkets and trash, I went to make my own historical study of this mysterious order.
The Talamasca.
Indeed, this was no easy task. Mentions were fewer than of St. Ashlar, and inquiries among the professors at
