The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,223

matter how despondent I became, I would drink nothing further. That I must be released or go mad.

And feeling disgust for all my weakness, I put on my boots, which I had not touched in all this time, and the new coat brought to me long ago by Charlotte, and went to the balustrade to look out over the sea. I thought, surely she will kill me rather than let me go. But it must be known one way or the other. This I can no longer endure.

Many hours passed; I drank nothing. Then Charlotte came. She was weary from her long day of riding and tending to the plantation, and when she saw that I was dressed, when she saw that I wore my boots and my coat, she sank down into the chair and wept.

I said nothing, for surely it was her decision whether or not I should leave this place, not mine.

Then she said: “I have conceived; I am with child.”

Again, I made no answer. But I knew it. I knew that it was the reason she had been away for so long.

Finally when she would do nothing but sit there, dejected, and sad, with her head down, crying, I said:

“Charlotte, let me go.”

At last she said that I must swear to her to leave the island at once. And that I must not tell anyone what I knew of her or her mother or of anything that had passed between us.

“Charlotte,” I said, “I will go home to Amsterdam on the first Dutch ship I can find in the harbor, and you will see me no more.”

“But you must swear to tell no one—not even your brethren in the Talamasca.”

“They know,” I said. “And I shall tell them all that has taken place. They are my father and my mother.”

“Petyr,” she said. “Haven’t you the good sense even to lie to me?”

“Charlotte,” I said. “Either let me go or kill me now.”

Again, she wept, but I felt cold towards her, cold towards myself. I would not look at her, lest my passion be aroused again.

At last she dried her eyes. “I have made him swear that he will never harm you. He knows that I shall withdraw all love and trust from him if he disobeys my command.”

“You have made a pact with the wind,” I said.

“But he protests that you will tell our secrets.”

“That I shall.”

“Petyr, give me your pledge! Give it to me so that he can hear.”

I considered this, for I wanted so to be free of this place, and to live, and to believe that both were still possible, and finally I said:

“Charlotte, I will never do you harm. My brothers and sisters in the Talamasca are not priests or judges. Nor are they witches. What they know of you is secret in the true sense.”

She looked at me with sad tear-filled eyes, and then she came to me, and kissed me, and though I tried to make of myself a wooden statue, I could not do it.

“Once more, Petyr, once more, from your heart,” she said, her voice full of sorrow, and longing. “And then you may leave me forever, and I will never look into your eyes again until I look some day into the eyes of our child.”

I fell to kissing her again, for I believed her that she would let me go. I believed her that she did love me; and I believed for that last hour as we lay together, that perhaps there were no laws for us, as she had said, and that there was a love between us which perhaps no one else would ever understand.

“I love you, Charlotte,” I whispered to her as she lay beside me, and I kissed her forehead. But she would not answer. She would not look at me.

And as I dressed once more, she turned her face into the pillow and cried.

Going to the door, I discovered that it had never been bolted behind her, and I wondered how many times that had been the case.

But it did not matter now. What mattered was that I go, if that damnable spirit would not stop me, and that I not look back, or speak to her again, or catch the scent of her sweetness, or think about the soft touch of her lips or her hand.

And on this account I asked her for no horse or coach to take me into Port-au-Prince, but resolved that I should simply leave without