The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,183

and why you must convey this to her?”

“I see it. I see it all. You wished your husband dead, on account of his treachery. And the demon struck him down.”

“It is deeper than that. Do not seek to compass it. I never wished him dead. I loved him. And I did not know of his treachery! But you must make known what I have said to Charlotte, for her protection, for my invisible servant cannot tell her of his own changing nature. He cannot speak to her of what he himself does not understand.”

“Oh, but … ”

“Do not stand on conscience with me now, Petyr. Better that you had never come here, if you do. She has the emerald in her possession. He will go to her when I am dead.”

“Do not send him, Deborah!”

She sighed, with great disappointment and desperation. “Please, I beg you, do as I ask.”

“What took place with your husband, Deborah?”

It seemed she would not answer, and then she said, “My husband lay dying when my Lasher came to me, and made known to me that he had tricked my husband and made him fall in the woods. ‘How could you do such a thing,’ I demanded, ‘which I never told you to do?’ And then came his answer: ‘But Deborah, had you seen into his heart as I did, it is what you would have told me to do.’ ”

I was chilled to my very bones then, Stefan, and I ask that when you have this letter copied out for our records, that the above words be underlined. For when have we ever heard of such conniving and willfulness from an invisible devil, such wit and such stupidity in one?

I saw this imp, as if loosed from a bottle, cavorting and wreaking havoc at will. I remembered Roemer’s old warnings. I remembered Geertruid and the things which she had said. But this was worse even than they might have imagined.

“Aye, you are correct,” she said to me, sadly, having read this from my mind. “You must write this to Charlotte,” she beseeched me. “Be careful with your words, lest the letter fall into the wrong hands, but write it, write it so that Charlotte sees the whole of what you have to say!”

“Deborah, restrain this thing. Let me tell her, at the behest of her mother, to drop the emerald into the sea.”

“It is too late for that now, Petyr, and the world being what it is, I would send my Lasher to Charlotte even if you had not come tonight to hear this last request from me. My Lasher is powerful beyond your dreams of a daimon, and he has learnt much.”

“Learned,” I repeated in amazement. “How learned, Deborah, for he is merely a spirit, and they are forever foolish and therein lies the danger, that in granting our wishes they do not understand the complexity of them, and thereby prove our undoing. There are a thousand tales that prove it. Has this not happened? How so do you say learned?”

“Think on it, Petyr, what I have told you. I tell you my Lasher has learnt much, and his error came not from his unchangeable simplicity but from the sharpening of purpose in him. But promise me, for all that passed between us once, write to my beloved daughter! This you must do for me.”

“Very well!” I declared, wringing my hands. “I shall do it, but I shall tell her also all that I have just said to you.”

“Fair enough, my good priest, my good scholar,” she said bitterly, and smiling. “Now go, Petyr. I cannot bear your presence here any longer. And my Lasher is near to me, and we would talk together, and on the morrow, I beg you, get indoors and safe once you see that my hands and feet are unfettered and that I have come to the church doors.”

“God in heaven help me, Deborah, if only I could take you from this place, if it were possible by any means—” And here I broke down, Stefan. I lost all conscience. “Deborah, if your servant, Lasher, can effect an escape with my assistance, you have only to tell me how it might be done!”

I saw myself wresting her from the mad crowds that surrounded us and of stealing her away over the walls of the town and into the woods.

How she smiled at me then, how tenderly and sadly. It was the way she had smiled when we had parted