Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(87)
Author: Anne Rice

“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.”

“Two lives? Then you mean, simply, reincarnation.”

“After a long while, she explained,” said Gordon. He was now so passionately involved in his tale, he seemed to have forgotten the danger to him. “She said that all her kind had two lives, sometimes more,” he went on. “That you were born knowing all you needed to know to survive, but then gradually an earlier life came back to you, and bits and pieces of others. And it was the memory of this earlier life that kept you from going mad among human beings.”

“You had realized,” asked Rowan, “by this time, that she wasn’t human. She would have fooled me.”

“No. Not at all. I thought she was human. Of course, there were strange characteristics to her—her translucent skin, her tremendous height, and her unusual hands. But I didn’t think, ‘No, this being isn’t human.’

“It was she who said that she wasn’t human. She said it more than once. Her people lived before humans. They had lived thousands of years in peace on islands in the northern seas. These islands were warmed by volcanic springs from the depths, by geysers of steam, and pleasant lakes.

“And this she knew, not because she herself had lived at that time, but because others she had known in her first lifetime could remember a former life in this paradise, and that was how her people knew their history, through the inevitable and always singular remembrance of earlier lives.

“Don’t you see? It was incredible, the idea that everyone would come into this world with some distinct and valuable historical memories! It meant that the race knew more of itself than humans could possibly know. It knew of earlier ages from, so to speak, firsthand experience!”

“And if you bred Tessa to another of her race,” said Rowan, “you would have a child who could remember an earlier life—and then perhaps another child and another life remembered.”

“Exactly! The chain of memory would be established, and who knows how far back it would go, for each one, remembering some earlier existence, remembering the tales of those he had known and loved in that time who remembered having lived before!”

Ash listened to all this without comment, or any perceptible change of emotion. None of it seemed to surprise him or offend him. Yuri almost smiled. It was the same simplicity he’d observed in Ash at Claridge’s, when they had first spoken.

“Someone else might have dismissed Tessa’s claims,” said Gordon, “but I recognized the Gaelic words she used, the bits of Old English, the Latin, and when she wrote down the runic script, I could read it! I knew she told the truth.”

“And this you kept to yourself,” said Rowan, neutrally, as if merely trying to quell Gordon’s annoying emotion and get back on track.

“Yes! I did. I almost told Aaron about it. The more Tessa talked, the more she spoke of the Highlands, of early Celtic rituals and customs, of Celtic saints even, and the Celtic church.

“You do know that our church in England then was Celtic or Briton or whatever you want to call it, founded by the Apostles themselves, who had come from Jerusalem to Glastonbury. We had no connection with Rome. It was Pope Gregory and his henchman, St. Augustine, who thrust the Roman church on Britain.”

“Yes, but then you did not tell Aaron Lightner?” asked Ash, raising his voice just slightly. “You were saying …?”

“Aaron had already gone to America. He had gone there to make contact once more with the Mayfair witches, and to pursue other paths in psychic investigation. It was no time to question Aaron about his early research. And then, of course, I had done something wrong. I had taken a woman entrusted to me as a member of the Order, and I had kept her for myself, almost a prisoner. Of course, there has never been anything stopping Tessa from leaving, nothing but her own fear. But I had closeted this woman away. I had told the Order nothing about it.”

“But how did you make the connection?” asked Ash. “Between Tessa and the Mayfair witches?”

“Oh, it wasn’t that difficult at all. One thing followed upon another. As I said, Tessa’s speech was full of references to archaic Highland customs. She spoke over and over of the circles of stones built by her people and later used by the Christians for bizarre rituals to which their priests could never put a stop.

“You know our mythology, surely all of you, some of you. The ancient myths of Britain are full of mythic giants. Our stories say the giants built the circles, and so did Tessa. Our giants lingered long after their time in the dark and remote places, in the caves by the sea, in the caves of the Highlands. Well, Tessa’s giants, hunted from the earth, almost annihilated, also survived in secret places! And when they did dare to appear among human beings, they incited both worship and fear. It was the same, she said, with the Little Folk, whose origins had been forgotten. They were revered on the one hand, and feared on the other. And often the early Christians of Scotland would dance and sing within the circle of stones, knowing that the giants had once done this—indeed, had built the circles for that purpose—and they would, by their music, lure the giants from hiding, so that the giants came down to join the dance, at which point these Christians would slaughter them to satisfy the priests, but not before using them to satisfy old gods.”