The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,172

commodious room as you well know as you inherited it, but in his time it was filled with clocks, for he loved them, and these have since been distributed about the house.

Roemer always kept the windows over the canal open, and all the healthy noises of the city flowed, it seemed, into this room. It had about it a cheerful aspect. And as he brought Deborah now into the sunlight, and bid her sit down and calm herself, she seemed quieted and comforted, and then sat back and with a weary, pained manner looked up into his eyes.

Pained. I saw such pain in this instant as to nearly bring the tears to my own eyes. For the mask of blankness had utterly melted, and her very lips were trembling, and she said in English:

“Who are you men and women here? What in the name of God do you want with me!”

“Deborah,” he said, speaking soothingly to her. “Listen to my words, child, and I shall tell you plainly. All this while we have sought to know how much you could understand.”

“And what is there,” she demanded hatefully, “that I should understand!” It seemed a woman’s vibrant voice coming from her heaving bosom, and as her cheeks flamed, she became a woman, hard and cold inside and bitter from the honors she had seen. Where was the child in her, I thought frantically, and then she turned and glared at me, and again at Roemer, who was intimidated if I ever saw him, but he worked fast to overcome it and he spoke again.

“We are an order of scholars, and it is our purpose to study those with singular powers, powers such as your mother had, which were said wrongly to have come from the devil, and powers which you yourself may possess as well. Was it not true that your mother could heal? Child, such a power does not come from the devil. Do you see these books around you? They are full of stories of such persons, called in one place sorcerer, and in another witch, but what has the devil to do with such things? If you have such powers, place your trust in us that we may teach you what they can and cannot do.”

Roemer spoke further to her of how we had helped witches to escape their persecutors and to come here, and to be safe with us. And he spoke even to her about two of the women with us who were both powerful seers of spirits, and of Geertruid, who could make the very glass rattle in the windows with her mind, if she chose.

The child’s eyes grew large but her face was hard. Her hands tightened on the arms of the chair, and she cocked her head to the left as she fixed Roemer and looked him up and down.

I saw the look of hate come back into her face, and Roemer whispered: “She is reading our thoughts, Petyr, and she can hide her own thoughts from us.”

This gave her a start. But still she said nothing.

“Child,” Roemer said, “what you have witnessed is terrible, but surely you did not believe the accusations made against your mother. Tell us, please, to whom did you speak the night in the inn when Petyr heard you? If you can see spirits, tell these things to us. No harm will ever come to you.”

No answer.

“Child, let me show you my own power. It does not come from Satan, and no evocation of him is required for its use. Child, I do not believe in Satan. Now, behold the clocks around you—the tall case clock there, and the pendulum clock to the left of you, and the clock on the mantelshelf, and that clock there on the far desk.”

She looked at all these, which greatly relieved us for at least she understood, and then she stared in consternation as Roemer, without moving a particle of his physical being, made them all come abruptly to a stop. The endless ticking was gone from the room and had left a great silence after it, which seemed strong enough in its emptiness to hush even the sounds from the canal below.

“Child, trust in us, for we share these powers,” said Roemer, and then pointing to me, he told me to start the clocks again by the power of my mind. I shut my eyes and said to the clocks: “Start,” and the clocks did as they were told and the