Taltos (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #3)(86)
Author: Anne Rice

“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 café.

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 background. 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.”