The Witching Hour (142 page)

He woke her gently as the sun began to sink. Enormous and
blood red, it made its spectacular path across the glittering emerald sea.

He shut his eyes finally because it was too much. He had to veer away from it, and come back again, slowly, as the hot breeze ruffled his hair.

At nine o’clock that evening, after they had enjoyed a tolerable meal at a bayside restaurant, the call came from the real estate agent. Rowan’s offer on the house had been accepted. No complications. The wicker and painted wood furniture was included. Fireplace fittings, dishes, everything would remain. They would move to clear title and close escrow as soon as possible. She could probably claim the keys in two weeks.

On Sunday afternoon, they visited the Destin Marina. The choice of boats was fabulous. But Rowan was still toying with the idea of sending for the
Sweet Christine.
She wanted something seaworthy. And there was really nothing here that surpassed the luxury and solidity of the old
Sweet Christine.

It was late afternoon when they started back. With the radio playing Vivaldi, they saw the sunset as they sped along Mobile Bay. The sky seemed limitless, gleaming with magical light beyond an endless terrain of darkening clouds. The scent of rain mingled with the heat.

Home. Where I belong. Where the sky looks as I remember it. Where the low country spreads out forever. And the air is my friend.

Fast and silent the traffic flowed on the interstate highway; the low cushy Mercedes-Benz cruised easily at eighty-five. The music ripped the air with its high pure violin glissandos. Finally the sun died to a wash of blinding gold. The dark swampy woodlands closed around them as they sped into Mississippi, the eighteen-wheelers rumbling by, the lights of the little towns flickering for an instant, then vanishing, as the last of the tarnished light died away.

Did she miss the drama of California? he asked her. Miss the cliffs and the yellow hills?

She was looking at the sky just as he was. You never saw such a sky out there. No, she said softly. She missed nothing. She was going to be sailing different waters, warm waters.

After a long while, when it was truly dark, and the only view now was the view of the glowing red tail lamps before them, she said:

“This is our honeymoon, isn’t it?”

“I guess it is.”

“I mean, it’s the easy part. Before you realize what kind of a person I really am.”

“And what kind is that?”

“You want to ruin our honeymoon?”

“It won’t ruin it.” He glanced at her. “Rowan, what are you talking about?” No answer. “You know you’re the only person in this world I really know right now. You’re the only one I don’t handle literally with kid gloves. I know more about you than you realize, Rowan.”

“What would I do without you?” she whispered, snuggling back against the seat, stretching out her long legs.

“Meaning?”

“I don’t know. But I’ve figured something out.”

“I’m afraid to ask.”

“He’s not going to show himself till he gets ready.”

“I know.”

“He wants you here right now. He’s standing back out of the way for you. He showed himself to you that first night just to entice you.”

“This is giving me the creeps. Why is he so willing to share you?”

“I don’t know. But I’ve given him opportunities, and he’s not really showing himself. Strange things happen, crazy things, but I’m never sure … ”

“Like what things?”

“Oh, not worth dwelling on. Look, you’re tired. You want me to drive for a while?”

“Good Lord, no. And I’m not tired. I just don’t want him here with us right now, in this conversation. I have a feeling he’ll come soon enough.”

Late that night, he woke up in the big hotel bed alone. He found her sitting in the living room. He realized she’d been crying.

“Rowan, what is it?”

“Nothing, Michael. Nothing that doesn’t happen to a woman once a month,” she said. She gave a little forced smile, faintly bitter. “It’s just … well, you’ll probably think I’m insane, but I was hoping I was pregnant.”

He took her hand, not knowing whether it was the right thing to kiss her. He too felt the disappointment, but more significant, he felt happy that she had actually wanted to have a child. All this time, he’d been afraid to ask her what her feelings were about such a thing. And his own carelessness had been worrying him. “That would have been great, darling,” he said. “Just great.”

“You think so? You would have been happy?”

“Absolutely.”

“Michael, let’s do it then. Let’s go on and get married.”

“Rowan, nothing would make me happier,” he said simply. “But are you sure this is what
you
want?”

She gave him a slow patient smile. “Michael, you’re not getting away,” she said, with a small playful frown. “What’s the point of waiting?”

He couldn’t help but laugh.

“And what about Mayfair Unlimited, Rowan? The cousins and company. You know what they’re going to say, honey.”

She shook her head, with the same knowing smile as before. “Do you want to hear what I have to say? We’re fools if we don’t do it.”

Her gray eyes were still rimmed in red, but her face was very tranquil now, and so pretty to look at, so soft to touch. So unlike the face of anyone he’d ever known, or loved, or even dreamed of.

“Oh, I want to do it,” he whispered. “But I’m forty-eight years old, Rowan. I was born in the same year your mother was born. Yes, I want it. I want it with all my heart. But I have to think of you.”

“Let’s have the wedding at First Street, Michael,” she said in her soft husky voice, her eyes puckering slightly. “What do you think? Wouldn’t it be perfect? On that beautiful side lawn.”

Perfect. Like the plan for the hospitals built upon the Mayfair legacy. Perfect.

He wasn’t sure why he was hesitating. He couldn’t resist. Yet it was all too good to be true, too sweet actually, her openness and her love, and the pride it engendered in him—that this woman of all women should need and love him just the way he needed and loved her.

“Those cousins of yours will draw up all the papers to protect you … you know, the house, the legacy. All that.”

“It’s automatic. It’s all entailed or something. But they’ll probably manufacture a storehouse of papers of one kind or another.”

“I’ll sign on the dotted line.”

“Michael, the papers really don’t mean anything. What I have is yours.”

“What I want is you, Rowan.”

Her face brightened; she drew her knees up, turning sideways on the couch to face him, and she leaned over and kissed him.

Suddenly it hit him, grandly and deliciously. Getting married. Marrying Rowan. And the promise, the absolutely dazzling promise of a child. This kind of happiness was so completely
unfamiliar to him that he was almost afraid. Almost. But not quite.

It seemed the very thing that they must do at all costs. Preserve what they had and what they wanted, against the dark current that had brought them together. And when he thought of the years ahead—of all the simple and heartbreakingly important possibilities—his happiness was too great to be expressed.

He knew better than to even try. After a few moments of silence, bits of poetry came to him, little phrases that barely caught the light of his contentment the way a bit of glass catches light. They left him. He was contented and empty, and full of nothing but a quiet inarticulate love.

In perfect understanding, it seemed, they looked at each other. Questions of failure, of haste, all the what if’s of life, did not matter. The quiet in her was talking to the quiet in him.

When they went into the bedroom, she said she wanted to spend their wedding night at the house, and then go on to Florida for the honeymoon. Wouldn’t that be the best way to handle it? A wedding night under that roof, and slipping away afterwards.

Surely the workmen could get the front bedroom ready in a couple of weeks.

“I guarantee it,” he said.

In that big antique bed in the front room. He could almost hear the ghost of Belle say, “How lovely for both of you.”

U
NEASY SLEEP
. She shifted, turned and put her arm over his back, drawing her knees under his, warm and snug again. The air-conditioning was almost as good as the Florida Gulf breeze.

But what was it tugging at her neck, tangling in her hair, and hurting her? She moved to brush it away, to free her hair. Something cold pressed against her breast. She didn’t like it.

She turned over on her back, half dreaming once again that she was in the Operating Room, and this was a most difficult procedure. She had to envision carefully what she meant to do—to guide her hands every step with her mind—commanding the
blood not to flow, commanding the tissues to come together. And the man lay split open all the way from his crotch to the top of his head, all his tiny organs exposed, quivering, red, impossible for his size, waiting for her somehow to make them grow.

“Too much, I can’t do this,” she said. “I’m a neurosurgeon, not a witch!”

She could see every vessel now in his legs and arms as if he were one of those clear plastic dummies threaded through and through with red, to teach children about circulation. His feet quivered. They too were small, and he was wriggling his toes trying to make them grow. How blank was the expression on his face, but he was looking at her.

And that tugging in her hair again, something pulling at her hair. Again, she pushed it away, and this time her finger caught it—what was it, a chain?

She didn’t want to lose the dream. She knew it was a dream now, but she wanted to know what was going to happen to this man, how this operation was to end.

“Dr. Mayfair, put down your scalpel,” said Lemle. “You don’t need that anymore.”

“No, Dr. Mayfair,” said Lark. “You can’t use it here.”

They were right. It was past the point for something so crude as the tiny flickering steel blade. This was not a matter of cutting, but of construction. She was staring at the long open wound, at the tender organs shivering like plants, like the monstrous iris in the garden. Her mind raced with the proper specifications as she guided the cells, explaining as she went along so that the young doctors would understand. “There are sufficient cells there, you see, in fact, they exist in profusion. The important thing is to provide for them a superior DNA, so to speak, a new and unforeseen incentive to form organs of the proper size.” And behold, the wound was closing over organs of the proper size and the man was turning his head, and his eyes snapped open and shut like the eyes of a doll.

Applause rose all around her, and looking up she was amazed to see that they were all Dutchmen here, gathered at Leiden; even she wore the big black hat and the gorgeous thick sleeves, and this was a painting by Rembrandt, of course,
The Anatomy Lesson
, and that is why the body looked so perfectly neat, though it hardly explained why she could see through it.

“Ah, but you have the gift, my child, you are a witch,” said Lemle.

“That’s right,” said Rembrandt. Such a sweet old man. He
sat in the corner, his head to one side, his russet hair wispy now in old age.

“Don’t let Petyr hear you,” she said.

“Rowan, take the emerald off,” Petyr said. He stood at the foot of the table. “Take it off, Rowan, it’s around your neck. Remove it!”

The emerald?

She opened her eyes. The dream lost its vibrancy like a taut veil of silk suddenly torn free and furling. The darkness was alive around her.

Very slowly the familiar objects came to light. The closet doors, the table by the bed, Michael, her beloved Michael, sleeping beside her.

She felt the coldness against her naked breast, she felt the thing caught in her hair, and she knew what it was.

“Oh God!” She covered her mouth with her left hand but not before that little scream had escaped, her right hand snatching the thing off her neck as if it had been a loathsome insect.

She sat up, hunched over, staring at it in the palm of her hand. Like a clot of green blood. Her breath caught in her throat, and she saw that she had broken the old chain, and her hand was shaking uncontrollably.

Had Michael heard her cry out? He didn’t move even as she leaned against him.

“Lasher!” she whispered, her eyes moving up as if she could find him in the shadows. “Do you want to make me hate you!” Her words were a hiss. For one second the fabric of the dream was clear again, as if the veil had once more been lowered. All the doctors were leaving the table.

“Done, Rowan. Magnificent, Rowan.”

“A new era, Rowan.”

“Very simply miraculous, my dear,” said Lemle.

“Cast it away, Rowan,” said Petyr.

She flung the emerald over the foot of the bed. Somewhere in the small hallway it struck the carpet, with a dull impotent little sound.

She put her hands to her face, and then feverishly, she felt of her neck, felt of her breasts as if the damnable thing had left some layer of dust or grime on her.

“Hate you for this,” she whispered again in the dark. “Is that what you want?”

Far off it seemed she heard a sigh, a rustling. Through the far hallway door, she could just barely make out the curtains in the living room against the light of the street, and they moved as if
ruffled by a low draft, and that was the sound she heard, wasn’t it?

That and the slow measured song of Michael’s breathing. She felt foolish for having flung the stone away. She sat with her hands over her mouth, knees up, staring into the shadows.

“Well, didn’t you believe the old tales? Why are you shaking like this? Just one of his tricks, and no more difficult for him than making the dance of the wind in the trees. Or making that iris move in the garden. Move. It did more than move, though, didn’t it? It actually … And then she remembered those roses, those strange large roses on the hall table. She had never asked Pierce where they had come from. Never asked Gerald.

Why are you so frightened?

She got up, put on her robe, and walked barefoot into the hall, Michael sleeping on, undisturbed, in the bed behind her.