hushed voices to be well-behaved, ask no questions, defer to the family customs in every regard, and pay no attention to anything strange that I might see pertaining to the realm of ghosts and spirits.
It was made known to me in no uncertain terms that strong Mayfair males did not do well; early death, madness, exile-those were the fates of the troublemakers.
When I look back on it, I think it is absolutely impossible that I could have become one of the great Passive Well-Behaved, along with my Oncle Maurice and Lestan and countless other goody-two-shoes cousins.
First of all, I saw ghosts all the time; heard spirits; could see life leaving a body when the body died; could read people’s minds, and sometimes even move or hurt matter without even really getting angry or meaning to do it. I was a natural Utile witch or warlock or whatever the word might be.
And I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t see Lasher. He was standing by my mother’s chair many a morning when I went in to greet her. I saw him by Katherine’s cradle. But he never cast his eyes on me, and I’d been warned very early on that I must never speak to him, nor seek to know who or what he was, or say his name, or make him look at me.
My uncles, all very happy men, said, “Remember this, a Mayfair male can have everything he desires-wine, women, and wealth beyond imagining. But he cannot seek to know the family secrets. Leave it in the hands of the great witch, for she sees all and directs all, and upon that principle our vast power has been founded.”
Well, I wanted to know what this was about. I had no intention of merely accepting the situation. And my grandmother, never someone not to catch the eye, became for me an extreme magnet of curiosity.
Meantime, my mother, Marguerite, grew rather distant. She snatched me up and kissed me whenever we chanced to meet but that wasn’t often. She was always going into the city to shop, to see the opera, to dance, to drink, to do God knows what, or locking herself in her study screaming if anyone dared to disturb her.
I found her most fascinating of course. But my grandmother Marie Claudette was more a constant figure. And she became for me in my idle moments-which were few-a great irresistible attraction.
First let me explain about my other learning. The books. They were everywhere. That wasn’t so common in the Old South, believe me. It has never been common among the very rich to read; it is more a middle-class obsession. But we had all been lovers of books; and I cannot remember a time when I couldn’t read French, English and Latin.
German? Yes, I had to teach myself that, as well as Spanish and Italian.
But I cannot recall a point in childhood where I had not read some of every book we possessed, and in this case that meant a library of such glory you cannot envision it. Most of those volumes have over the years simply rotted away; some have been stolen; some I entrusted many decades later to those who would cherish them. But then I had all I wanted of Aristotle, Plato, Plautus and Terence, Virgil and Horace. And I read the night away with Chapman’s Homer, and Golding’s
I read it all. I read it when I didn’t know what it meant until I did. I dragged my books with me about the house, pulling on skirts and jackets and asking, “What does this mean?” and even asking uncles, aunts, cousins or slaves to read various puzzling passages aloud to me.
When I wasn’t reading I was adventuring about with the older boys, both white and black, jumping onto horses bareback, or trekking into the swamps to find snakes, or climbing the swamp cypress and the oaks to watch out for pirates invading from the south. At two and a half, I was lost in the swamps during a storm. I almost died, I suppose. But I shall never forget it. And after I was found, I never again suffered any fear of lightning. I think I had my little wits nearly blown out of my head by thunder and lightning that night. I screamed and screamed and nothing happened. The thunder and lightning went on; I didn’t die; and in the morning I was sitting at the table with my tearful mother, having breakfast.
Ah, the point is this: I learned from everything, and there was plenty to learn from.
My principal tutor in those first three years of life was in fact my mother’s coachman, Octavius, a free man of color and a Mayfair by five different lines of descent from the early ones through their various black mistresses. Octavius was then only eighteen or so, and more fun man anyone else on the plantation. My witch powers did not so much frighten him, and when he wasn’t telling me to hide them from everybody else, he was telling me how to use them.
I learnt from him for example how to reach people’s thoughts even when they meant to keep them inside, and how to give them suggestions without words, which they invariably obeyed! And how even to force my will with subtle words and gestures on another. I learnt also from him how to cast spells, making the entire world around appear to change for myself and for others who were with me. I also learnt many erotic tricks, for as many children are, I was erotically mad at age three and then four, and would attempt things then which made me blush by the time I was twelve-at least for a year or two.
But to return to the witches and how I came to be known to them.
My grandmother Marie Claudette was always there amongst us. She sat out in the garden, with a small orchestra of black musicians to play for her. There were two fine fiddlers, both slaves, and several who played the pipes, as we called them, but which were wooden flutes known as recorders. There was one who played a big bass riddle of a homemade sort, and another who played two drums, caressing them with his soft fingers. Marie Claudette had taught these musicians their songs, and soon told me that many such songs came from Scotland.
More and more I gravitated to her. The noise I did not like, but I found that if I could get her to take me in her arms she was sweet and loving and had things to say as interesting as the things I read in the library.
She was stately, blue-eyed, white-haired, and picturesque as she lay on a couch of wicker and fancy pillows, beneath a canopy that blew just a little in the breeze, sometimes singing to herself in Gaelic. Or letting loose long strings of curses on Lasher.
For what had happened you see was that Lasher had tired of her! He had gone on to serve Marguerite and to hover about Katherine, the new baby. And for Marie Claudette he had only an occasional kiss or word or two of poetry.
Perhaps every few days or so, he came to beg Marie Claudette’s forgiveness for giving all his attentions to Marguerite, and to say in a very pure and beautiful voice, which I could hear, that Marguerite would not have it otherwise. Sometimes when he came to kiss and court Marie Claudette, he was dressed as a man in frock coat and pants, which were then a novelty you understand, we are only a few decades past tricorne and breeches, and sometimes he had a more rustic look to him, in rawhide garments of a very rough cut; but always his hair was brown and his eyes brown, and he was most beautiful.
And guess who came along, all ringlets and smiles, and hopped up into her lap, and said, “Grandmere, tell me why you are so sad? Tell me everything.”
“Can you see that man who comes to me?” she asked.
“Of course,” I said, “but everybody says I should lie to you about it, though why I don’t know because he seems to like to be seen, and will even frighten the slaves by appearing to them, for no good reason, it seems to me, except vanity.”
She fell in love with me at that moment. She smiled approvingly at my observations. She also said she’d never encountered a two-year-old child who was so bright. I was two and a half but I didn’t bother to point this out. Within a day or two of our first real conversation about “the man,” she began to tell me everything.
She told me all about her old home in Saint-Domingue and how she missed it, about voodoo charms and devil worship in the islands and how she’d mastered every slave trick for her own purposes.
“I am a great witch,” she said, “far greater than your mother will ever be, for your mother is slightly mad and laughs at everything. As for the baby Katherine, who knows. Something tells me you had best look out for her. I myself laugh at very little.”
Every day I jumped in her lap and started asking her questions. The hideous little orchestra played on and on-she would never tell them to stop-but very soon she began to expect me to come, and if I did not she sent Octavius to find me, wash me and deliver me. I was happy. Only the music sometimes sounded to me like cats howling. I asked her once if she wouldn’t like to listen instead to the song of the birds, but she only shook her head and said that it helped her think to have this background.
Meantime, over the din, her tales became more and more involved and filled with colorful pictures and
