Lasher (20 page)

In the Motherhouse in Amsterdam, Yuri made certain that he could escape any time he wanted. He checked and re-checked the many unlocked doors. The room was small, immaculate, with a window over the canal and the cobblestoned quais. He loved it. He missed the bright light of Italy. This was a dimmer place, northern, like Paris, but that was all right. Inside were warm fires, and soft couches and chairs for dozing; firm beds, and lots of good food. The streets of Amsterdam pleased him, because the many old houses of the 1600s were built right against each other, making long stretches of solid and beautiful facades. He liked the steep gables of the houses. He liked the elm trees. He liked the clean-smelling clothing he was given, and he came to even like the cold.

People with cheerful faces came and went from the Motherhouse. There was steady day-to-day talk of the Elders, though who these people were, Yuri didn’t know.

“You want to ride a bike, Yuri?” asked Aaron. Yuri tried it. Taking his cue from the other riders young and old, he rode the bike like a demon through the streets.

Still Yuri wouldn’t talk. Then, after constant prodding, he told the story of the maharaja.

“No. Tell me what really happened,” asked Aaron.

“Why should I tell you anything?” Yuri demanded. “I don’t know why I came here with you.” It had been a year since he
had spoken real truth about himself to anyone. He had not even told Andrew the real truth. Why tell this man? And suddenly, denying that he had any need of telling the truth, or confiding, or explaining, he began to do both. He told all about his mother, about the gypsies, about everything…He talked and talked. The night wore on and became the morning, and still Aaron Lightner sat across from him at the table listening, and Yuri talked and talked and talked.

And when he finished he knew Aaron Lightner and Aaron Lightner knew him. It was decided that Yuri would not leave the Talamasca, at least not right then.

For six years, Yuri went to school in Amsterdam.

He lived in the Talamasca house, spent most of his time on his studies, and worked after school and on weekends for Aaron Lightner, entering records into the computer, looking up obscure references in the library, sometimes merely running errands—deliver this to the post office, pick up this important box.

He came to realize that the Elders were in fact all around him, rank and file members of the Order, but nobody knew who they were. It worked like this. Once you became an Elder, you didn’t tell anybody that you were. And it was forbidden to ask a person, “Are you an Elder?” or, “Do you know whether or not Aaron is an Elder?” It was forbidden to speculate on such matters in one’s mind.

The Elders knew who the Elders were. The Elders communicated with everyone via the computers and the fax machines in the Motherhouse. Indeed, any member, even an unofficial member like Yuri, could talk to the Elders whenever he chose. In the dead of night, he could boot up his computer, write a long letter to the Elders, and sometime later that very morning an answer would come to him through the computer printer, flowing out page after page.

This meant of course that there were many Elders, and that some of them were always “on call.” The Elders had no real personality as far as Yuri could detect, no real voice in their communications, except that they were kindly and attentive and they knew everything, and often they revealed that they knew all about Yuri, maybe even about things of which he himself was unsure.

It fascinated Yuri, this silent communication with the Elders. He began to ask them about many things. They never failed to answer.

In the morning, when Yuri went down to breakfast in the refectory, he looked around him and wondered who was an Elder, who here in this room had answered his letter this very night. Of course, his communication might have gone to Rome, for all he knew. Indeed, Elders were everywhere in every Motherhouse, and all you knew was that they were the old ones, the experienced ones, the ones who really ran the Order, though the Superior General, appointed by them, and answerable only to them, was the official head.

When Aaron relocated to London, it was a sad day for Yuri, because the house in Amsterdam had been his only permanent home. But he would not be separated from Aaron, and so they left the Amsterdam Motherhouse together, and went to live in the big house outside London which was also beautiful and warm and safe.

Yuri came to love London. When he learnt that he was to go to school at Oxford, he was delighted by this decision, and he spent six years there, corning home often on weekends, wallowing as it were in the life of the mind.

By the age of twenty-six, Yuri was ready to become a serious member of the Order. There was not the slightest doubt in his mind. He welcomed the travel assignments given him by Aaron and David. Soon he was receiving travel instructions directly from the Elders. And he was making out his reports to them on the computer when he returned.

“Assignment from the Elders,” he would say to Aaron on leaving. Aaron never questioned it. And never seemed particularly surprised.

Always, wherever he went and whatever he did, Yuri talked on the phone long distance to Aaron. Yuri was also devoted to David Talbot, but it was no secret that David Talbot was old and tired of the Order and might soon step down as Superior General, or even be politely asked by the Elders to resign the post.

Aaron was the one to whom Yuri responded, Aaron was the one about whom Yuri cared.

Yuri knew that between him and Aaron there was a special bond. For Yuri, it was the powerful irrational love that forms its roots in childhood, in loneliness, in ineradicable memories of tenderness and rescue, a love that no one but the recipient can destroy. Aaron is my father, Yuri thought, just as Aaron must have been a father to Andrew, who had died in the hotel in Rome.

As Yuri grew older he was away more of the time. He loved to wander on his own. He was most comfortable when anonymous. He needed to hear different languages around him, to submerge himself in giant cities teeming with people of all ranks and ages; when he was so immersed—with his individuality an entirely private and unrecognized matter—he felt most alive.

But almost every day of his life—wherever he was—Yuri spoke to Aaron by phone. Aaron never chided Yuri for this dependence. Indeed, Aaron was always open and ready for Yuri, and as the years passed, Aaron began to confide to Yuri more of his own feelings, his own little disappointments and hopes.

Sometimes they talked in a guarded way about the Elders, and Yuri could not discern from the conversation whether Aaron was an Elder or not. Of course Yuri wasn’t supposed to know if Aaron was an Elder. But Yuri was almost certain Aaron was. If Aaron wasn’t an Elder, then who were the Elders, for Aaron was one of the wisest and oldest men in the entire Talamasca worldwide?

When Aaron stayed month after month in the United States investigating the Mayfair Witches, Yuri was disappointed. He’d never known Aaron to be away from the Motherhouse so long.

When Christmas came near, a lonely time for Yuri as it is for so many, Yuri went into the computer and accessed the File on the Mayfair Witches, printing it out in its entirety and studying it very carefully to get a grasp of what was keeping Aaron in New Orleans for so much time.

Yuri enjoyed the story of the Mayfair Witches, but it aroused no special feeling in him any more than any other Talamasca file. He looked for a role to play—could he perhaps gather information on Donnelaith for Aaron? Otherwise, the totality of the story did not impress itself on his mind. The Talamasca files were filled with strange stories, some far stranger than this.

The Talamasca itself held many mysteries. They had never been Yuri’s concern.

The week before Christmas, the Elders announced the resignation of David Talbot as Superior General, and that a man of German-Italian background, Anton Marcus, would take his place. No one in London knew Anton Marcus.

Yuri didn’t know Anton. Yuri’s main concern was that he had never had the chance to tell David good-bye. There was some mystery surrounding David’s disappearance, and, as often
happens in the Talamasca, the members spoke of the Elders, and the remarks were made reflecting puzzlement and resentment, and confusion as to how the Order was organized and run. People wanted to know—would David remain an Elder, assuming he had 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 communiqué 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.