“All right, handsome Petyr, what more would you say to me?”
Strange words I thought, between father and daughter, for surely she knows it, she cannot but know it. Yet again, perhaps she does not. I turned to her and began my warnings. Did she not understand that this spirit was no ordinary spirit? That this thing which could possess the body of the old man and make it do her bidding could turn upon her, that it was, in fact, obtaining its very strength from her, that she must seek to understand what spirits were, but she bid me hush.
And then it did seem to me that I was seeing the most bizarre things through the window of the lighted dining room, for the slave boys in their shining blue satin appeared to me to be dancing as they dusted and swept the room, dancing like imps.
“What a curious illusion,” I said. Only to realize that the young boys, dusting the seats of the chairs and gathering the fallen napkins, were only cavorting, and playing, and did not know that I watched.
Then staring back at Charlotte, I beheld that she had let her hair down free over her shoulders and that she was staring up at me with cold, beautiful eyes. It seemed also that she had pushed down the sleeves of her dress, as a tavern wench might do it, the better to reveal her magnificent white shoulders and the tops of her breasts. That a father should stare at a daughter as I stared at her was plainly wicked.
“Ah, you think you know so much,” she said, obviously referring to the conversation which in my general confusion I had all but forgot. “But you are like a priest, as my mother told me. You know only rules and ideas. Who told you that spirits are evil?”
“You misunderstand. I do not say evil, I say dangerous. I say hostile to man perhaps, and impossible to control. I do not say hellish, I say unknown.”
I could feel my tongue thick in my mouth. Yet still I continued. I explained to her that it was the teaching of the Catholic church that anything “unknown” was demonic, and that was the greatest difference between the Church and the Talamasca. It was upon that great difference that we had been founded long ago.
Again, I saw the boys were dancing. They whirled about the room, leaping, turning, appearing and reappearing at the windows. I blinked to clear my head.
“And what makes you think that I do not know this spirit intimately,” said she, “and that I cannot control it? Do you really think that my mother did not control it? Can you not see that there is a progression here from Suzanne to Deborah to me?”
“I see it, yes, I see it. I saw the old man, did I not?” I said, but I was losing the thought. I could not form my words properly and the remembrance of the old man upset my logic. I wanted the wine, but did not want it, and did not drink any more.
“Yes,” she said, quickening it seemed, and taking the wineglass from me, thank God. “My mother did not know that Lasher could be sent into a person, though any priest might have told her demons possess humans all the time, though of course they do it to no avail.”
“How so, no avail?”
“They must leave eventually; they cannot become that person, no matter how truly they want to become that person. Ah, if Lasher could become the old man … ”
This horrified me, and I could see that she smiled at my horror, and she bid me sit down beside her. “What is it however that you truly mean to convey to me?” she pressed.
“My warning, that you give up this being, that you move away from it, that you not found your life upon its power, for it is a mysterious thing, and that you teach it no more. For it did not know it could go into a human until you taught it so, am I right?”
This gave her pause. She refused to answer.
“Ah, so you are teaching it to be a better demon for your sake!” I said. “Well, if Suzanne could have read the demonology shown her by the witch judge, she would have known you can send a demon into people. Deborah would have known had she read enough too. But ah, it must be left to you to teach it this thing so that the witch judge is upheld in the third generation! How much more will you teach it, this thing which can go into humans, create storms, and make a handsome phantom of itself in an open field?”
“How so? What do you mean phantom?” she asked.
I told her what I had seen at Donnelaith-the gauzy figure of the being among the ancient stones, and that I had known it was not real. At once I saw that nothing I had said so far caught her interest as this caught it.
“You saw it?” she asked me incredulously.
“Yes, indeed I did see it, and I saw her see it, your mother.”
She whispered, “Ah, but he has never appeared thus to me.” And then, “But do you see the error, for Suzanne, the simpleton, thought he was the dark man, the Devil as they call him, and so he was for her.”
“But there was nothing monstrous in his appearance, rather he made himself a handsome man.”
At this she gave a mischievous laugh, and her eyes flashed with sudden vitality. “So she imagined the Devil to be handsome and for her Lasher made himself handsome. For you see, all that he is proceeds from us.”
“Perhaps, lady, perhaps.” I looked at the empty glass. I was thirsty. But I would not be drunk again. “But perhaps not.”
“Aye, and that is what makes it so interesting to me,” she said. “That on its own it cannot think, do you not see? It cannot gather its thoughts together; it was the call of Suzanne which gathered it; it was the call of Deborah which concentrated it further, and gave it the purpose to raise the storm; and I have called it into the old man, and it delights in these tricks, and peers through his eyes at us as if it were human, and is much amused. Do you not see, I love this being for its changing, for its development, as it were.”
“Dangerous!” I whispered. “The thing is a liar.”
“No, that is impossible. I thank you for your warnings, but they are so useless as to be laughable.” Here she reached for the bottle and filled my glass again.
But I did not take it.
“Charlotte, I implore you … ”
“Petyr,” she said, “let me be plainspoken with you, for you deserve as much. We strive for many things in life; we struggle against many obstacles. The obstacle of Suzanne was her simple mind and her ignorance; of Deborah that she had been brought up a peasant girl in rags. Even in her castle, she was that frightened country lass always, counting Lasher as the sole cause of her fortune, and nothing else.
“Well, I am no village cunning woman, no frightened merry-begot, but a woman born to riches, and educated from the time I can remember, and given all that I could possibly desire. And now in my twenty-second year, already a mother and soon perhaps to be a widow, I rule in this place. I ruled before my mother gave to me all her secrets, and her great familiar, Lasher, and I mean to study this thing, and make use of it, and allow it to enhance my considerable strength.
“Now surely you understand this, Petyr van Abel, for we are alike, you and I, and with reason. You are strong as I am strong. Understand as well that I have come to love this spirit, love, do you hear me? For this spirit has become my will!”
“It killed your mother, beautiful daughter,” I said. Whereupon I reminded her of all that was known of the trickery of the supernatural in tales and fables, and what the moral was: this thing cannot be fully understood by reason, and cannot by reason be ruled.
“My mother knew you for what you were,” she said sadly, shaking her head, and offering me the wine which I did not take. “You of the Talamasca are as bad as the Catholics and the Calvinists, when all is said and done.”
“No,” I said to her. “Of a different ilk entirely. We draw our knowledge from observation and experience! We are of this age, and like unto its surgeons and physicians and philosophers, not the men of the cloth!”