A silence ensued in which Mona took her old place.
"Rowan," I said, "you were trying to explain how you knew about us. You were talking about Merrick Mayfair, about when she disappeared from the Talamasca. "
"Oh, that's a good one," said Dolly Jean. She drank more of the Amaretto. "I can't wait for this. Go on, Rowan, if you've a mind to talk for once, I want to hear it. Carry on as if I wasn't here to cheer you along. "
"You have to understand what the Talamasca meant to us," Rowan said. She paused. Then went on in a low voice, filling the quiet completely. "The Talamasca has known the Mayfair family through all its thirteen generations. Mona understands. Quinn, I don't know that you ever understood, but we could tell them anything. They knew all about the Taltos. They knew. It was like going to Confession to go to them. They have the solidity and the eternal self-confidence of the Roman Church. And Stirling was so patient. Mona loved him. "
"Don't talk about us as if we're not here," said Mona.
"Patience, Mona," I said.
Rowan continued as if she hadn't even heard:
"Then it was Dolly Jean, our precious Dolly Jean Mayfair from Fontevrault Plantation, who said that Merrick Mayfair had become a Blood Child: 'Sure enough! That's what happened to that one!' Dolly Jean knew it. She'd called Tante Oscar. Tante Oscar had told her. "
Rowan smiled at Dolly Jean, who nodded and took another huge mouthful of Amaretto. Rowan leaned over and so did Dolly Jean and their foreheads touched, and then they kissed tenderly on the mouth. It was as if these two women were lovers.
"You do right by me, now," Dolly Jean retorted. "Or I'll shout you down. Truth is I can't recollect what happened. "
"Hush up," said Rowan softly, with another tender smile.
Dolly Jean nodded and took another drink.
Rowan sat back and went on:
"Dolly Jean had Henri take her and me downtown in the big car to visit Tante Oscar. It was the French Quarter, off the beaten path. Tante Oscar's an elderly colored Mayfair who lives up three flights of stairs in a flat with a balcony from which you could see the River. Tante Oscar was over one hundred years old. Still is. "
Rowan's words were gaining speed.
"Tante Oscar was wearing at least three sets of clothes, dresses over dresses, and at least four fancy worked scarves around her neck, and topped by a long maroon coat with golden fur along the collar, I think it was foxes, little foxes with heads and tails, I don't know, and she had a ring on every bony finger, and a long oval face, and jet black hair, and huge egg-shaped yellow eyes. And there was wall-to-wall furniture in the flat, three buffets in a row, and three desks in a row, and dining room tables in three
rooms, and couches and chairs all over, and carpets laid on carpets, and little tables with doilies and bisque figurines and photographs in frames, and sterling silver tea services everywhere you looked. Armoires were bulging with clothes and all askew. "
Dolly Jean began to cackle as she took another drink, and Mona laughed under her breath. Rowan continued as if she didn't hear them.
"Gorgeous little twelve-year-old mulatto children were running everywhere, getting us coffee and cake, and getting the mail, and running downstairs for the newspapers. There was a TV on in every room and an overhead fan blowing. I've never seen such beautiful children as I've seen in New Orleans. The colors of these children were simply indescribable.
"Tante Oscar went to the refrigerator, which she called the ice box though it was brand-new, and opened it to show us that the telephone was in there because she never talked on it, and there was the telephone all right, right there in the middle of the milk and the yogurts and the jars of jam, but when Dolly Jean had called, Tante Oscar had heard the ring through the refrigerator door because it was Dolly Jean, and she had answered.
"Tante Oscar told us that Blood Children had been living in the Quarter for two hundred years, feeding off the blood of the riffraff, and Merrick Mayfair was now one of them. It was meant to be. Merrick Mayfair's old Oncle Vervain had foreseen it, that his beloved little Merrick Mayfair would one day walk with the Blood Children, and he had told Tante Oscar and no one else. Oncle Vervain had been a great Voodoo doctor, and everyone respected him, but when he saw that in the future, it broke his heart. Tante Oscar said that now Merrick Mayfair would live forever. "
I winced. If only I had seen that Light. . . . But how many chances would God give me?
"Of course Oncle Julien had tried to prevent this catastrophe-I think Oncle Julien is paying for his sins by wasting his time on earth-. "
"I like that very much," I uttered before I could stop myself.
Her words flowed right on.
"-Tante Oscar explained to us. Oncle Julien had come in a dream to Merrick Mayfair's Great Nananne when she was dying and told Great Nananne to give Merrick Mayfair to the Talamasca. But Tante Oscar said it was the curse of Oncle Julien that his interference in the world of the living always failed. "
"Did she really say such a thing?" I asked.
Michael smiled and shook his head. He looked at Mona and Mona was looking at him.
Rowan continued her tale:
"When I described the black-haired one, the one I'd seen walking, Tante Oscar knew him. She called him Louis. She said the Sign of the Cross would drive him off, though it had no power over him. He merely respected it. She said the one to fear was the blond-haired one who had a strange name and who, 'talked like a gangster and looked like an angel. ' I never forgot those words, I thought they were so strange. "