Should have warned Michael Curry, she thought. Should have warned Rowan Mayfair. But they had read that tale. They should have known! Nobody could be happy in that First Street house. Fixing it up, that was sheer nonsense. The evil in that house lived in every brick and every bit of mortar; thirteen witches; and to think, all those old possessions of Julien’s were up in the attic. The evil lived in those things; it lived in the plaster ceilings, and under the porches and eaves, like bees’ nests hidden in the capitals of the Corinthian columns. That house had no hope, no future. And Gifford had known it all her life.
She hadn’t needed these Talamasca scholars from Amsterdam to tell her. She knew.
She’d known it when she’d first gone to First Street-a little girl with her beloved grandmother Ancient Evelyn, who was even then called Ancient because she was already old, and there were several young Evelyns then-one married to Charles Mayfair and another to Bryce-though whatever became of them, she couldn’t now remember.
She and Ancient Evelyn had gone to First Street, to visit Aunt Carl and poor doomed Deirdre Mayfair, the heiress in her rocking-chair throne. Gifford had seen the famous ghost of First Street-clearly and distinctly-a male figure standing behind Deirdre’s chair. Ancient Evelyn had seen it too, no doubt in Gifford’s mind. And Aunt Carlotta, that steely, cold and vicious Aunt Carlotta, had chatted with them in the dreary parlor as if there were no ghost there at all.
As for Deirdre, she had been already catatonic. “Poor child,” Ancient Evelyn had said. “Julien foresaw everything.” That was one of those statements Ancient Evelyn always refused to explain, though she often repeated it. And later, to her little granddaughter Gifford: “Deirdre’s known all the sorrow and never knew the fun of being one of us.”
“There was fun?” Gifford wondered about that now, as she had wondered then. What did Ancient Evelyn mean by fun? Gifford suspected she knew. It was all recorded in those old photographs of her with Oncle Julien. Julien and Evelyn in the Stutz Bearcat on a summer day, in white coats and goggles. Julien and Evelyn under the oaks at Audubon Park; Julien and Evelyn in Julien’s third-floor room. And then there was the decade after Julien’s death, when Evelyn had gone away with Stella to Europe, and they had had their “affair,” of which Evelyn spoke with great solemnity.
In Gilford’s early years, before Ancient Evelyn had gone silent, Ancient Evelyn had always been willing to tell those tales in a whispered but steady voice-of how Julien had bedded her when she was thirteen, of how he’d come up to Amelia Street, and cried from the sidewalk, “Evelyn, come down, come down!” and forced Evelyn’s grandfather Walker to let her loose from the attic bedroom where he had locked her up.
Bad bad blood between Julien and Evelyn’s grandfather-going way back to a murder at Riverbend when Julien was a boy, and a gun had gone off by accident, killing his cousin Augustin. The grandson of Augustin swore hate for the man who had shot his ancestor, though all were ancestors of everyone involved in some way or another. Tangle, tangle. Family trees of the Mayfair clan were like the thorny vines that choked off the windows and doors of Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
And to think, Mona was working it all out on her computer, and had only recently made the proud announcement that she had more lines of descent from Julien, and from Angélique, than anyone. Not to mention the lines feeding in from the old Mayfairs of Saint-Domingue. It made Gifford dizzy and sad, and she wished Mona would go for boys her own age, and care a little about clothes, and stop this obsession with family, and computers, and race cars, and guns.
“Doesn’t it teach you something about guns?” Gifford had demanded. “This huge rift between us and the Mayfairs of First Street? All happened on account of a gun.”
But there was no stopping Mona’s obsessions, large or small. She had dragged Gifford five times to a miserable little shooting gallery across the river just so they both could learn how to shoot their big noisy.38s. It was enough to make Gifford go mad. But better to be with Mona than to worry what Mona was doing on her own.
And to think, Ryan had approved of it. Made Gifford keep a gun after that in her glove compartment. Made her bring a gun to this house.
There was so much for Mona to learn. Had Ancient Evelyn ever told Mona those old tales? Now and then Ancient Evelyn emerged from her silence. And her voice was still her voice, and she could still begin her chant, like the elder of a tribe giving forth the oral history:
“I would have died in that attic had it not been for Julien-mad and mute, and white as a plant that has never seen sun. Julien got me with child and that was your mother, poor thing that she became.”
“But why, why did Oncle Julien do it with a girl so young?” Gifford had asked only once, so great was the thunder in response:
“Be proud of your Mayfair blood. Be proud. Julien foresaw everything. The legacy line was losing his strength. And I loved Julien. And Julien loved me. Don’t seek to understand those people-Julien and Mary Beth and Cortland-for then there were giants in the earth which there are not now.”
Giants in the earth. Cortland, Julien’s own son, had been Ancient Evelyn’s father, though Ancient Evelyn would never admit it! And Laura Lee, Julien’s child! Dear God, Gilford couldn’t even keep track of the lines unless she took a pen and paper and traced them out, and that she frankly never wanted to do. Giants in the earth! More truly devils from hell.
“Oh, how perfectly delicious,” Alicia had said, listening gleefully and always ready to mock Gifford and her fears. “Go on, Ancient Evelyn, what happened then? Tell us about Stella.”
Alicia had already been a drunk by the age of thirteen. She had looked old for her age, though thin and slight like Gifford. She’d gone into barrooms downtown and drunk with strange men, and then Granddaddy Fielding had “fixed her up” with Patrick just to get some control of her. Patrick, of all the cousins. A horrid idea, though he hadn’t seemed so bad in himself back then.
This is my blood, all these people, Gifford thought. This is my sister, married to her double or triple cousin, Patrick, whatever he is. Well, one thing can be said for sure. Mona is no idiot. Inbred, yes, child of an alcoholic, yes, but except for being rather “petite,” as they said of short girls in the South, she was on every count a winner.
Probably the prettiest of that entire generation of Mayfairs far and wide, and surely the most intelligent and the most reckless and belligerent, though Gifford could not stop loving Mona no matter what Mona did. She had to smile when she thought of Mona firing that gun in the shooting gallery and shouting to her over the earplugs: “Come on, Aunt Gifford, you never know when you might have to use it. Come on, both hands.”
Even Mona’s sexual maturity-this mad idea that she must know many men, which had Gifford frantic-was part of her precocity. And Gifford had to admit, protective though she was, she feared for the men who caught Mona’s attention. Heartless Mona. Something hideous had happened with old Randall for instance, Mona seducing him almost certainly, and then losing interest in the entire venture, but Gifford could get no straight answers out of anyone. Certainly not Randall, who went into an apoplectic fit at the mention of Mona’s name, denying that he would “harm a fly,” let alone a child, et cetera. As if they were going to send him to prison!
And to think the Talamasca with all their scholarship knew nothing about Mona; knew nothing about Ancient Evelyn and Oncle Julien. Knew nothing about the one little girl in this day and age who might be a real witch, no joke.