Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 3)

"All right, if you must know, we may have a chance during the memorial, or whatever it is, to find out where Stuart is keeping Tessa."

"How could we find out that?"

"Stuart's not a rich man, Marklin. He's bound to have a home somewhere, a place we've never seen, some ancestral manse or something. Now, if we play our cards right, we can ask a few questions about this subject, out of concern, of course, for Stuart. Have you got a better idea?"

"Tommy, I don't think Stuart would hide Tessa in a place that was known to be his home. He's a coward, perhaps, a melodramatic lunatic even, but he's not stupid. We are not going to find Stuart. And we are not going to find Tessa."

"Then what do we do?" asked Tommy. "Abandon everything? With what we know?"

"No. We leave here. We go back to Regent's Park. And we think. We think about something far more important to us now than anything the Talamasca can offer."

"Which is?"

"We think, Tommy, about the Mayfair witches. We go over Aaron's last fax to the Elders. And we study the File, we study it closely for every clue as to which of the clan is most useful for our purposes."

"You're going too fast," said Tommy. "What do you mean to do? Kidnap a couple of Americans?"

"We can't discuss it here. We can't plan anything. Look, I'll wait till the damned ceremony starts, but then I'm leaving. I'm stepping out at the first opportunity. You can come later if you like."

"Don't be stupid," said Tommy. "I don't have a car. I have to go with you. And what if Stuart's at the ceremony? Have you thought of that?"

"Stuart's not coming back here. He has better sense. Now, listen, Tommy. This is my final decision. I'll stay for the beginning of the ceremony, I'll pay my respects, chat with a few of the members, that sort of thing. And then I'm out of here! And on, on to my rendezvous with the Mayfair witches, Stuart and Tessa be damned."

"All right, I'll go with you."

"That's better. That's intelligent. That's my practical Tommy."

"Get some sleep then. They didn't say when they'd call us. And you're the one who's going to drive."

Nineteen

THE TOPMOST ROOM of the tower. Yuri sat at the round table, looking down into the cup of steaming Chinese tea before him.

The condemned man himself had made the tea. Yuri didn't want to touch it.

All his life in the Talamasca, he had known Stuart Gordon. He had dined countless times with Gordon and Aaron. They had strolled the gardens together, gone to the retreats in Rome together. Aaron had talked so freely with Gordon. The Mayfair witches and the Mayfair witches and the Mayfair witches. And now it was Gordon.

Betrayed him.

Why didn't Ash kill him now? What could the man give that would not be contaminated, not perverted by his madness? It was almost a certainty that his helpers had been Marklin George and Tommy Monohan. But the Order would discover the truth on that score. Yuri had reached the Motherhouse from the phone booth in the village, and the mere sound of Elvera's voice had brought him to tears. Elvera was faithful. Elvera was good. Yuri knew that the great chasm that had opened between him and the Talamasca had already begun to close. If Ash was right, that the conspiracy had been small, and indeed that seemed to be the case--that the Elders were not involved--then Yuri must be patient. He must listen to Stuart Gordon. Because Yuri had to take back to the Talamasca whatever he learned tonight.

Patience. Aaron would want it thus. Aaron would want the story known, and recorded for others to know. And Michael and Rowan, were they not entitled to the facts? And then there was Ash, the mysterious Ash. Ash had uncovered Gordon's treachery. If Ash had not appeared in Spelling Street, Yuri would have accepted Gordon's pretense of innocence, and the few foolish lies Gordon had told while they sat in the cafe.

What went on in Ash's mind? He was overwhelming, just as Yuri had told them. Now they knew. They saw for themselves his remarkable face, the calm, loving eyes. But they mustn't forget that he was a menace to Mona, to any of the Mayfair family--

Yuri forced himself to stop thinking about this. They needed Ash too much just now. Ash had somehow become the commander of this operation. What would happen if Ash withdrew and left them with Gordon? They couldn't kill Gordon. They couldn't even scare him, at least Yuri didn't think so. It was impossible to gauge how much Rowan and Michael hated Gordon. Unreadable. Witches. He could see that now.

Ash sat on the other side of the circle, his monstrous hands clasped on the edge of the old, unfinished wood, watching Gordon, who sat to his right. He did hate Gordon, and Yuri saw it by the absence of something in Ash's face, the absence of compassion, perhaps? The absence of the tenderness which Ash showed to everyone, absolutely everyone else.

Rowan Mayfair and Michael Curry sat on either side of Yuri, thank God. He could not have endured to be close to Gordon. Michael was the wrathful one, the suspicious one. Rowan was taken with Ash. Yuri had known she would be. But Michael was taken with no one just yet.

Yuri could not touch this cup. It might as well have been filled with the man's urine.

"Out of the jungles of India," said Stuart, sipping his own tea, in which he had poured a large slug of whiskey. "I don't know where. I don't know India. I know only that the natives said she'd been there forever, wandering from village to village, and that she'd come to them before the war, and that she spoke English and that she didn't grow old, and the women of the village had become frightened of her."

The whiskey bottle stood in the middle of the table. Michael Curry wanted it, but perhaps he could not touch the refreshments offered by Gordon either. Rowan Mayfair sat with her arms folded. Michael Curry had his elbows on the table. He was closer to Stuart, obviously trying to figure him out.

"I think it was a photograph, her undoing. Someone had taken a picture of the entire village, together. Some intrepid soul with a tripod and a wind-up camera. And she had been in that picture. It was one of the young men who uncovered it among his grandmother's possessions when the grandmother died. An educated man. A man I'd taught at Oxford."

"And he knew about the Talamasca."

"Yes, I didn't talk much to my students about the Order, except for those who seemed as if they might want to ..."

"Like those boys," said Yuri.

He watched the light jump in Stuart's eye, as if the lamp nearby had jumped, and not Stuart.

"Yes, well, those boys."

"What boys?" asked Rowan.

"Marklin George and Tommy Monohan," said Yuri.

Stuart's face was rigid. He lifted the mug of tea with both hands and drank deeply.

The whiskey smelled medicinal and sickening.

"Were they the ones who helped you with this?" asked Yuri. "The computer genius and the Latin scholar?"

"It was my doing," said Stuart, without looking at Yuri. He was not looking at any of them. "Do you want to hear what I have to say, or not?"

"They helped you," said Yuri.

"I have nothing to say on the subject of my accomplices," Gordon said, looking coldly at Yuri now, and then back again into empty space, or the shadows along the walls.

"It was the two young ones," said Yuri, though Michael was gesturing to him to hold back. "What about Joan Cross, or Elvera Fleming, or Timothy Hollingshed?"

Stuart made an impatient and disgusted gesture at the mention of these names, hardly realizing how this might be interpreted in relation to the boys.

"Joan Cross doesn't have a romantic bone in her body," Stuart said suddenly, "and Timothy Hollingshed has always been overrated due simply to his aristocratic bac

kground. Elvera Fleming is an old fool! Don't ask me these questions anymore. I won't be made to speak of my accomplices. I won't be made to betray them. I'll die with that secret, be assured."

"So this friend," said Ash, his expression patient but surprisingly cold, "this young man in India, he wrote to you, Mr. Gordon."

"Called me, as a matter of fact, told me he had a mystery for me. He said he could get her to England, if I'd take over once she arrived. He said that she couldn't really fend for herself. She seemed mad, and then not mad. No one could quite analyze her. She spoke of times unknown to the people around her. And when he'd made inquiries, with a view to sending her home, he found she was a legend in that part of India. I have a record of it all. I have our letters. They are all here. There are copies in the Motherhouse as well. But the originals are here. Everything I value is in this tower."

"You knew what she was when you saw her?"

"No. It was extraordinary. I found myself enchanted by her. Some selfish instinct dominated my actions. I brought her here. I didn't want to take her to the Motherhouse. It was most peculiar. I couldn't have told anyone what I was doing or why, except for the obvious fact that I was so charmed by her. I had only lately inherited this tower from my mother's brother, an antiquarian who had been my family mentor. It seemed the perfect place.

"The first week, I scarcely left at all. I had never been in the company of such a person as Tessa. There was a gaiety and simplicity in her which gave me inexpressible happiness."

"Yes, I'm sure," said Ash softly, with a trace of a smile. "Please go on with your story."

"I fell in love with her." He paused, eyebrows raised, as if amazed by his own words. He seemed excited by the revelation. "I fell completely in love with her."

"And you kept her here?" asked Yuri.

"Yes, she's been here ever since. She never goes out. She's afraid of people. It's only when I've been here a long while that she'll talk, and then she tells her amazing tales.

"She's seldom coherent, or I should say chronological. The little stories always make sense. I have hundreds of recordings of her talking, lists of Old English words and Latin words which she has used.

"You see, what became clear to me almost immediately was that she was speaking of two different lives, a very long one which she was living now, and a life she'd lived before."