The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,176

rich is not evil! Who has been hurt by what my devil brings to me? And all these in the household of Roelant have been helped.”

“There are dangers in what you do, Deborah! This thing grows stronger the more you speak to it—”

She hushed me. She had contempt for me now. Again, she pressed me to take the jewels. She told me bluntly I was a fool, for I did not know how to use my powers, and then she thanked me for having taken her to the perfect city for witches, and with an evil smile she laughed.

“Deborah, we do not believe in Satan,” I said, “but we believe in evil, and evil is what is destructive to mankind. I beg you beware of this spirit. Do not believe what it tells you of itself and its intentions. For no one knows what these beings really are.”

“Stop, you anger me, Petyr. What makes you think this spirit tells me anything? It is I who speak to it! Look to the demonologies, Petyr, the old books by the rabid clergy who do believe in devils, for those books contain more true knowledge of how to control these invisible beings than you might think. I saw them on your shelves. I knew that one word in Latin, demonology, for I have seen such books before.”

The books were full of truth and lies and I told her so. I drew back from her sadly. Once again she pressed me to take the jewels. I would not. She slipped them in my pocket and pressed her warm lips to my cheek. I went out of the house.

Roemer forbade me after that to see her. What he did with the gems I have never asked. The great treasure stores of the Talamasca have never been of much concern to me. I knew then only what I know now: that my debts are paid, my clothes are bought, I have the coins in my pockets I require.

Even when Roelant took ill, and this was not her doing, Stefan, I quite assure you, I was told I could not visit Deborah again.

But the strange thing was, that very often in odd places, Stefan, I beheld her, alone, or with one of Roelant’s sons in hand, watching me from afar. I saw her thus in the public streets, and once passing the house of the Talamasca, beneath my window, and when I went to call upon Rembrandt van Rijn, there she sat, sewing, with Roelant beside her, staring at me out of her sideways eye.

There were times even when I imagined that she pursued me. For I would be alone, walking and thinking of her, and remembering moments of our first beginning together when I had fed her and washed her like a child. I cannot pretend I thought of her as a child, however, when I thought of this. But all of a sudden, I would break my stride, turn, and there she would be, walking behind me in her rich velvet cloak and hood, and she would fix me with her eye before she turned down another lane.

Oh, Stefan, imagine what I suffered. And Roemer said, do not go to her. I forbid it. And Geertruid warned me over and over that this fiercesome power of hers would grow too strong for her to command.

The month before Roelant died, a young female painter of exquisite talent, Judith de Wilde, came to reside under his roof with Deborah, and to remain in the house with her aging father, Anton de Wilde, when Roelant was gone.

Roelant’s brothers took his sons home to the countryside, and the Widow Roelant and Judith de Wilde now together maintained the house, caring for the old man with great gentleness, but living a life of gaiety and many diversions as the rooms were thrown open all day and evening to the writers and poets and scholars and painters who chose to come there, and the students of Judith, who admired her as much as they admired any male painter, for she was just as fine, and had her membership in the Guild of St. Luke the same as a man.

Under Roemer’s edict, I could not enter. But many was the time I passed, and I swear to you, if I lingered long enough, Deborah would appear at the upstairs window, a shadow behind the glass. Sometimes I would see no more of her than a flashing light from the green emerald, and