violence.
Until the end of her life, she talked to me. In the last days, she brought the orchestra into the bedroom, and while they played, she and I whispered together on the pillow.
Basically, she told me how Suzanne, the cunning woman, had called up the spirit Lasher, “in error,” in Donnelaith, and then been burnt; how her daughter, Deborah, was taken away by sorcerers from Amsterdam; how the beautiful Deborah was followed by Lasher, and courted by him, and made powerful and rich, only to suffer a horrible death in a French town on the day they tried to burn her as they had burnt her mother. Then came Charlotte into the picture, daughter of Deborah by one of the sorcerers from Amsterdam, and the strongest of the first three, who used the spirit Lasher as never before to acquire great wealth and influence and unlimited power.
And Charlotte-by her own father, Petyr van Abel, one of these daring and mysterious Amsterdam wizards, who had for her own good followed her to the New World to warn her of the evil of intercourse with spirits-then conceived Jeanne Louise and her twin brother, Peter, and from Jeanne Louise and her brother was born Angelique, who had been Marie Claudette’s mother.
Gold, jewels, coin of every realm, and every luxury, this family had acquired. Not even the revolution on Saint-Domingue had destroyed its immense wealth, very little of which rode upon the success of the crops, but was piled up now in a string of safe places.
“Your mother does not even know what she possesses,” said Marie Claudette, “and the more I think of it, the more important it is that I tell you.”
I naturally agreed. All this power and wealth, said Grandmere, had come to us through the machinations of this spirit, Lasher, who could kill those whom the witch marked for death, torment those whom she marked for madness, reveal to her secrets which other mortals strove to keep, and even acquire jewels and gold by transporting these things magically, though for this the spirit required great energy.
A loving thing was this spirit, she said, but it took some craft to manage. Look how it had abandoned her of late, and spent all its time hovering about Katherine’s crib.
“That’s because Katherine can’t see it,” I said. “It’s trying very hard. It won’t give up, but it’s useless.”
“Ah, is that so? I don’t believe it, a granddaughter of mine can’t see that thing?”
“Go see for yourself. The child’s eyes don’t move. It cannot see the creature even when it comes in its strongest form, which anyone might touch and feel as solid.”
“Ah, so you know it does that.”
“I hear its footsteps on the stairs,” I said. “I know its tricks. It can go from vapor to a solid being, and then in a gust of warm wind vanish.”
“Oh, you’re very observant,” she said. “I love you.”
I was very thrilled to the heart by this and I told her I loved her too, which I did. She was precious to me. Also, I had come to realize, while sitting on her knee, that I found old people more beautiful in the main than young ones.
This was to prove true of me all my life. I love young people too, of course, especially when they are very careless and brave, as my Stella was, or my Mary Beth. But people in the very middle of life? I can hardly tolerate them.
Allow me to say, Michael, you are an exception. No, don’t speak. Don’t break the trance. I won’t tell you you are a child at heart, but you do have some childlike faith and goodness in you, and this has been both intriguing to me and somewhat maddening. You have challenged me. Like many a man with Irish blood, you know all sorts of supernatural things are possible. Yet you don’t care. You go about talking to wooden joists and beams and plaster!
Enough. Everything depends on you now. Let me return to Marie Claudette and the particular things she told me about our family ghost.
“It has two kinds of voices,” she declared, “a voice one can hear only in one’s head, and the voice you heard, which can be heard by anyone with the right ears to hear it. And sometimes even a voice so loud and clear that it can be heard by everyone. But that isn’t often, you see, for that wears it out, and where does it get its strength? From us-from me, from your mother, and possibly even from you, for I have seen it near me when you were here, and I have seen you look at it.
“As for the inner voice, it can devil you with it anytime, as it has done many an enemy, unless of course you are defended against it.”
“And how do you defend yourself?” I asked.
“Can’t you guess?” she said. “Let me see how smart you are. You see it with me, which means it appears, no? It summons its strength, it comes together, it becomes as a man for a few cherished moments. Then it is gone and exhausted. Why do you think it gives so much of itself to me, instead of merely whispering inside my head, ‘Poor old soul, I shall never forget you’?”
“To be seen,” I said with a shrug. “It’s vain.”
She laughed with delight. “Ah, yes, and no. It has to take form to come to me for a simple reason. I surround myself night and day with music. It cannot get through unless it gathers all its strength, and concentrates most fiercely in the manifestation of a human form and a human voice. It must drown out the rhythm which at every moment enchants it and distracts it.
“Understand it likes music of course, but music is a thing with a sway over it, as music sometimes is with wild beasts or mythical persons in stories. And as long as I command my band to play, it cannot plague my mind alone, but must come and tap me on the shoulder.”
I remember that it was my turn to laugh with delight. The spirit was no worse than me in a way. I had had to learn to concentrate on my grandmother’s stories when the music seemed to make it all but impossible. But for Lasher, to concentrate was to exist. When spirits dream, they don’t know themselves.
I could digress on that. But I have too much to tell, and I’m too…tired now.
Let me go on. Where was I? Ah, yes, she told me about the power of music over the thing, and how she kept the music near her so that it would be forced to come and pay court, for otherwise it wouldn’t have bothered.
“Does it know this?” I asked.
“Yes, and no,” she said. “It begs me to shut out the din, but I cry and say I cannot, and it then comes to me and kisses my hand, and I look at it. You are right that it is vain. It would be seen again and again, just to be reassured that I have not drifted out of its realm, but it no longer loves or needs me. It has a place in its heart for me. That’s all, and that is nothing.”
“You mean it has a heart?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, it loves us all, and we great witches above all things, for we have brought it into knowing itself, and have greatly aided it to increase its power.”
“I see,” I said. “But what if you didn’t want it around anymore? If you…”
“Shhhh…never say such a thing!” she said, “not even with trumpets or bells pealing all about you.”
“All right,” I said, feeling strongly already that I must never be given the same advice more than once, and I said no more about that. “But can you tell me what it is?” I asked.
“A devil,” she said, “a great devil.”
I told her, “I don’t think so.”
She was amazed. “Why do you say that? Who else but the Devil would serve a witch?”
I told her all I knew of the Devil, from prayers and hymns and Mass and the quick-witted slaves all around me. “The Devil is just plain bad,” I said. “And he treats badly all who trust him. This thing is too damned good to us.”
She agreed, but it was like the Devil, she said, in that it would not submit to God’s laws, but would come through as flesh and be a man.
“Why?” I said. “Isn’t it a hell of a lot stronger the way it is? Why would it want to catch yellow fever or lockjaw?”
She laughed and laughed. “It would be flesh to feel all that flesh can feel, to see what men can see, and hear what they can hear, and not have forever to be collecting itself out of a dream and fear the losing of itself. It would be flesh to be real; to be in the world and of the world, and to defy God, who gave it no body.”
“Hmmm, sounds like it has overrated the whole experience,” I said. Or in words that a three-year-old might choose for pretty much the same thing, for by that age, like many a country child of the times, I’d seen plenty of
