always been one, now that he was retired? Were Elders made up of retired members as well as active ones? It seemed a bit medieval at times that no one knew.
Yuri had heard all this before. It only lasted a few days. Anton Marcus arrived the day after the announcement and at once won everyone over with his charming manner and intimate knowledge of each member’s history and background, and the London Motherhouse was immediately at peace.
Anton Marcus spoke after supper in the grand dining room to all members. A man of large frame with smooth silver hair and thick gold-rimmed glasses, he had a clean corporate appearance to him, and a smooth British accent of the kind which the Talamasca seemed to favor. An accent which Yuri now possessed himself.
Anton Marcus reminded everyone of the importance of secrecy and discretion regarding the Elders. The Elders are all around us. The Elders cannot govern effectively if confronted and questioned. The Elders perform best as an anonymous body in whom we all place our trust.
Yuri shrugged.
When Yuri went to his room one morning at two a.m. he found a communique from the Elders in his printer. “We are pleased that you have gone out of your way to welcome Anton. We feel that Anton will be a superb Superior General. If this adjustment is difficult for you, we are here.” There was also an assignment for Yuri. He was to go to Dubrovnik to pick up several important packages and take them to Amsterdam, then come home. Routine. Fun.
Yuri would have gone to spend Christmas with Aaron in New Orleans, but Aaron told him long distance that this was not possible, and that the investigation was at this point very discouraging, the most discouraging of his career.
“What’s happened with the Mayfair Witches?” asked Yuri. He explained to Aaron that he had read the entire file. He asked if he might perform some small task in connection with the investigation. Aaron said no.
“Keep the faith, Yuri,” said Aaron. “I’ll see you when God wills.”
It was not like Aaron to make such a statement. It was the first decisive signal to Yuri that something was really wrong.
Early on Christmas Eve in New Orleans, Aaron called Yuri in London. He said, “This is my most difficult time. There are things I want to do and the Order will not allow it. I have to remain here in the country, and I want to be in the town. What have I always taught you, Yuri? That obeying the rules is of absolute importance. Would you repeat those words of advice to me?”
“But what would you do if you could, Aaron?” asked Yuri.
Aaron said terrible trouble was about to happen to Rowan Mayfair, and that Rowan needed him, and he ought to go to her and do what he could. But the Elders had forbidden it. The Elders had told him to keep to the Motherhouse of Oak Haven and that he couldn’t “intervene.”
“Aaron,” said Yuri, “all through the story of the Mayfair Witches we have tried-and failed-to intervene. Surely it’s not safe for you to be close to these people, any more than it was for Stuart Townsend or Arthur Langtry-both of whom died as the result of their contact. What can you do?”
Aaron reluctantly agreed. Indeed, it had been a conversation of reconciling himself to the state of things. He mentioned that David and Anton were probably right to keep him out of the action, that Anton had inherited his position from David, and David had known the whole story. Nevertheless it was hard.
“I’m not sure about the merits of a life of watching from the sidelines,” Aaron said. “I’m not sure at all. Perhaps I have always been waiting for a moment, and now the moment is at hand.”
This was strange, strange talk from Aaron. Yuri was deeply disturbed by it. But he had two new assignments from Anton, and off he went to India and then to Bali to photograph certain places and persons, and he was busy all the while, enjoying his wanderings as he always had.
It was not till mid-January that Yuri heard from Aaron again. Aaron wanted Yuri to go to Donnelaith in Scotland, to discover whether or not a mysterious couple had been seen by anyone there. Yuri took down the notes hastily: “You are looking for Rowan Mayfair and a male companion, very tall, slender, dark hair.”
Yuri quietly realized what had happened-the ghost of the Mayfair family, the spirit which had haunted it for generations, had achieved some sort of passage into the visible world. Yuri didn’t question this, but he was secretly excited by it. It seemed momentous as well as terrible, and he wanted to find this being.
“That’s what you want, isn’t it? To find them? Are you sure the best place to begin is Donnelaith?”
“It’s the only place I know to begin right now,” said Aaron. “These two individuals could be anywhere in Europe. They might even have returned to the United States.”
Yuri left for Donnelaith that night.
There was that tone of deep discouragement to Aaron’s words.
Yuri typed out his notification of this assignment for the Elders in the customary form-on the computer to be sent by fax instantly to Amsterdam. He told them what he had been asked to do, and that he was doing it, and off he went.
Yuri had a good time in Donnelaith. Many people had seen the mysterious couple. Many people described the male companion. Yuri was even able to make a sketch. He was able to sleep in the same room which had been occupied by the couple, and he gathered fingerprints from all over it, though whose they were, he could not possibly tell.
That was all right, said the Elders to him in a special fax message from London to his hotel in Edinburgh. Top Priority. That meant no expense was to be spared. If the mysterious couple had left behind any articles, Yuri was to find them. Meantime he must be absolutely discreet. No one in Donnelaith was to know about this investigation. Yuri was slightly insulted. Yuri had always done things in such a way that people didn’t know about it. He told the Elders this.
“We apologize,” they said in their next fax. “Keep up the good work.”
As for Donnelaith, the place captured Yuri’s imagination. For the first time the Mayfair Witches seemed real to him; as a matter of fact, the entire investigation acquired a luminescence for him which no investigation had ever had in the past.
Yuri picked up the books and brochures sold for tourists. He photographed the ruins of the Donnelaith Cathedral and the new chapel only recently uncovered, with the sarcophagus of an unknown saint. He spent his last afternoon in Donnelaith exploring the ruins until sunset, and that night, he eagerly called Aaron from Edinburgh and told him all these feelings, and tried to draw from Aaron some statement about the mysterious couple and who they were.
Could the male companion be the spirit Lasher, come into the world in some human guise?
Aaron said that he was eager to explain everything, but now was not the time. Michael Curry, Rowan Mayfair’s husband, had been nearly killed on Christmas Day in New Orleans, and Aaron wanted to stay close to him, no matter what else was going on.
When Yuri got back to London, he turned the fingerprints and photographs over to the laboratory for processing and classification, and he wrote up his full report to Aaron and sent it by fax to a number in the United States. He sent the customary full copy to the Elders, via fax to Amsterdam. He filed the hard copy-the actual printed pages-and went to sleep.
That morning, when he tried to boot up the primary source material on the Mayfair Witches, he realized the investigation had changed.
All the primary sources-unedited testimony, inventories of items stored, photographs, pictures, et cetera- were closed. Indeed the File on the Mayfair Witches was closed. Yuri could find nothing by means of cross- reference.
When Yuri finally reached Aaron, to ask why this had happened, something curious occurred. Aaron clearly had not known the files had been marked confidential. But he did not want to reveal his surprise to Yuri. Aaron was angry, and disconcerted. Yuri realized he had alarmed Aaron.
That night Yuri wrote to the Elders. “I request permission to join Aaron in this investigation, to go to New Orleans. I do not profess to understand the full scope of what has happened, nor do I need to understand it. But I feel the pressing need to be with Aaron.”
The Elders said no.
Within days, Yuri was pulled off the investigation. He was told that Erich Stolov would take over, a seasoned expert in the field of “these things,” and that Yuri should take a little vacation in Paris for a while, as he would soon be going to Russia, where it was very dreary and cold.
