The Witchery, page 30
The Book in place, the party progressed toward the port by way of the cathedral, where Sebastiana sprinkled a handful of hexed sapodilla seed at the feet of her namesake’s statue, knowing I’d find that, too, if ever I made it to Havana. Her hope was that I’d feel the hex’s effect and suppose my sister had been there. And though I heard and heeded the statue’s call, I did not extrapolate as my sister had wished: I did not understand she’d ensorcelled the statue; nor did I see that, in so doing, she meant to hint of having found the twins in those Roman catacombs bearing the martyred saint’s name…. Alors, so it sometimes goes with Craftwork—it is neither as easy as faith, nor as sure as science.
Then, finally, the party sailed in teams of two, knowing not that I had already set out upon the St. John’s; from the mouth of which river I’d sail on to Savannah, there to meet Calixto, Diblis, and all manner of darkness aboard the Athée…. Alors, so it sometimes goes…. And when they failed to find me, and all four reunited upon Indian Key, a return to Havana was deemed too risky: It was doubtful a weakened Sebastiana would survive the sail, let alone another encounter with Queverdo Brù.
I did survive Havana, of course; and so, led by my sister’s Book, and helped by loyal, much loved Calixto, I was able to search out Sebastiana and company where they’d encamped upon that key, hoping I’d someday show. Hope, yes; it was hope—Sebastiana would say—that staved off the Coming of the Blood, her Blood…hope and her newfound treasures.
Thusly did it all came to pass; till finally Calixto and I sailed within sight of Indian Key. There, upon a jutting pier, I saw by late daylight two figures, one seated and one standing. The robes of the former were as blue as blue can be, bluer than sea or sky, azure blue; and so I knew it was she: Sebastiana d’Azur. Standing tall at her side, waiting with her, shading her from the sun with a parasol, was…my daughter, my witch, my Léopoldine. And coming down the pier, dragging a man whose broadness of shoulder, whose blondness bespoke Asmodei, there came a boy, himself blond, moving as fast as his left leg allowed.
Calixto paddled us nearer the pier, smiling all the while. When he raised a hand to wave, one, two, three, four, enfin eight hands rose fast to return his wave. (Bien: six hands at least: I cannot aver that Asmodei waved.) And watching as Léopoldine helped Sebastiana stand, I, too, stood, unsteadily, in the bumboat, and waved, waved both arms as if I meant to fly. My heart, it burst like a star, save stars only burst when they die and I’d survived, blessed be. And if I thought anything, anything at all as I stepped onto that pier and into the arms of kin, it was to wonder, wordlessly, how a place I’d never been before could feel so much, so very much like home.
Chapter Twenty-six
Post equitem sedet atra cura.
Behind the rider sits dark care.
—HORACE, Atra Cura
“Mes enfants,” SAID SEBASTIANA, BRIMFUL OF TEARS AND putting forth Léopoldine and Luc, “may I introduce your…your Herculine. Dites bonjour…. Rather, say hello.”
And they did; he bowing, she keeping her distance whilst deigning to nod…. You see, Léopoldine had suspicions she’d yet to share with her brother. It was, après tout, a mere question of mathematics: If she, Leo, were a witch—as she most decidedly was—yet her mother, Peronette Gaudillon, had been mortal—as she most decidedly had been—and further, if I, a witch of “certain attributes,” as S. had described me to her charges, had met Peronette ten-plus years prior, and now Léopoldine and her brother were ten-plus years of age, alors…The child, as I say, was sharp as a tack, nay a stake, and sensed from the first what said attributes were…. Moreover: Asmodei had not honored his vow of silence on the subject; and even Sebastiana, as the months had passed and she’d despaired of ever seeing me again, had begun to speak of me in terms parental, if not paternal.
“Hello,” said Léopoldine, finally, in her accented English; for Sebastiana had deemed that French be spoken only in the Shadows, only at home; where, in the half year past, Léopoldine had learned all, nearly all Sebastiana could teach a young witch. Luc had been under the aegis of Asmodei, which scared me when first it became apparent; but each adult balanced the other somehow. Sebastiana had seen to this…. And in extending a large and slender hand, quite like mine but showing still the softness, the rounded angles of her age, Léopoldine showed me her Eye, the pupil pushing out into an iris of blue, quite bright—which trait she shared with her brother. Enfin, here she stood showing me the Eye, which, between sisters, is sometimes a challenge, sometimes a salute.
What to do? What to say?
Turning from Leo, I bent to take a handshake and kiss from Luc, the latter seeming a tear set onto my cheek, light yet somehow dense. His nails showed half-moons of blackest dirt, and dirt, too, showed in the lines of his sweat-slickened palm; such that the whole of his proffered hand was…perfect. Absolutely perfect.
The two parts of me. Indeed. It was eerie and wondrous at once.
I looked again at Léopoldine, taller, brunette to her brother’s blond—and only in Léopoldine’s feline grace and Luc’s wiliness, blunted by the shyness he’d inherited from me, surely, did I see the slightest hint of Peronette Gaudillon—and with a crooked finger I pulled my shaded spectacles to the tip of my nose, peering down over them to show the girl my own Eye. Further, I whispered that it was fixed, and that that was a story I’d tell her in time, if she were inclined to hear it.
“Vous êtes…,” she began in French before looking back to Sebastiana and righting herself, “You are very strong then, non?”
“I suppose I am, yes,” said I, hopeful she’d not hear my words as boastful. In truth, standing there on the weather-beaten, widely spaced planking of the pier, tearful and tense, and so excited I wondered how I’d draw sufficient breath, I did not feel strong, not at all. And when I turned from her treasures back to Sebastiana herself, well, I knew then I’d depleted what strength I’d held in reserve.
I’d waited long years to see, to kiss and hug again the woman, the witch who’d discovered and saved me; now here she was…. True, Sebastiana was unwell, and perspiring, such that I could only wonder how long she and Leo had waited upon that pier, S.’s parasol insufficient shelter from the sun; for she, Sebastiana, had recently divined the day but not the hour of our arrival, urged, verily urged to do so by her pupil. (Younger witches do not fear divination as older ones do.)…I saw the decade’s effects upon Sebastiana’s face. I shan’t call it damage; for it was not that: Still she was beautiful, but her black hair now streamed silver at the part, and lines had deepened beside her eyes—eyes whose blue told in her adopted Shadow-name, d’Azur—and her mouth. Her body, too, had changed, barreling a bit in the middle: She’d lost her waist but had not run to fat, not at all. At present, she was perspiring, yes, having not acclimated to the weather of the American South; and, in fact, she never would: From that day to her death, I never once sat in conversation with Sebastiana without fanning her, directly, with a fan from her collection, or indirectly, by tying to a finger or toe one of several strings Asmodei had rigged to fans upon the ceilings and walls of our every room, themselves ever a-churn at the end of longer strings, pulleys and belts…. So it was that, despite my wanting to hold on to Sebastiana forever—and she, me—we drew apart, concluded the mutual introducing (during which Asmodei, wordlessly but with evident discomfort, remarked my turned Eye) and proceeded up the pier and onto Indian Key proper, toward shade and—as offered by Leo, with S.’s prompting her toward politesse—lemonade. Léopoldine and Sebastiana led; followed by Calixto, who walked warily, in silence, beside Asmodei; and Luc, who, sliding his hand into mine, looked up to say, with a wide smile both toothy and true, that a ball was to be held that day at dusk in honor of a physician and his family, newly arrived upon the island.
“A physician?”
“Yes,” said Luc; and lest he embarrass me—for he thought I did not know the word in English—he leaned nearer to whisper its French equivalent, “un médecin.”
“Ah,” said I, “I see: un médecin.”
“Oui, c’est ça.” At which words Sebastiana turned, though it seemed she stood too far ahead to have heard the boy, and showed her Eye to him, at him. “I mean, yes,” amended he, “a physician…. And a ball! Though Sebastiana says it is not a ball, not really, but more of a party.”
“A party,” said I, no better an interlocutor than a parrot; for I was nervous…. Was there blame for me here? If not from my children then from myself? Sadly, there’d be no blame; for Leo and Luc both so blamed and despised their dead mother for all she’d done—a list of which would add naught but sadness to this record—and the effects of which linger still, in Léopoldine’s temper, in Luc’s sad dismissal of himself (Je suis nul, he is wont to say when sunken low: “I am nothing”), that it seemed they’d no blame left for me. Me; whom the twins seemed to judge on terms all their own, Leo needing to satisfy herself that I was of the Shadows, and strong, and Luc needing only to know that I’d stay…. Oh, but yes, Peronette had inflicted upon the two a decade’s worth of damage, which could never be wholly undone, not by love, spellwork, or aught else. And as for the hurt I’d come to feel over all they’d suffered at her hands, and in my absence, well, let this suffice: I saw my heart as a house, and said hurt I stowed in a room I determined never to enter.
Alors, onto the island we went, Luc dragging me up the pier as earlier he’d dragged Asmodei down it. “We have lots of parties here,” said he; and he leapt at the prospect, party, as every boy ought to, but he came down crookedly upon that still-lame left foot—booted, whilst the other was bare—twisting his ankle and stumbling such that again Sebastiana turned, as did Asmodei. With assurances from Luc, though, our progress resumed; and this time it was I who reached down my hand in search of his.
Improbably—or so one would have thought—there was indeed a party on Indian Key the night of our arrival. This was fortuitous, said S.—stopping to spell fortuitous for Leo and Luc—as it would allow us to celebrate yet spare us having to suffer the attention to be accorded the honorees, one Dr. Trevor and his wife, come with two daughters and a young son in tow…. In the Shadows one suffers attention, it’s true.
“Ce n’est pas un vrai bal,” said a smiling Sebastiana, later, when we’d a moment alone, “but, as they call it a ball, well, I do not disabuse them of the notion.” She, of course, had been to balls in all the capitals and finer châteaux of Europe, and knew whereof she spoke; but the colonists of Indian Key had been kind to her since the day she and Léopoldine had arrived. As she told of those early days upon the key, and of how fearful she’d been thinking she’d never see me again, her Eye turned. And something in her regard led me to…to lie; but these were the whitest of lies, and I excused myself even as I spoke them. I apologized to Sebastiana for the lateness of my arrival, saying I’d had to wait in Havana for Calixto to come back; and I’d not had to expound upon this: so said her sly smile. Further, I said that yes, I had met Queverdo Brù; but, sensing his motives were both odd and ill, I’d kept from him, despite his insistence, till finally I’d had to put him off permanently. Thusly did I lead my sister to believe that I’d not suffered at the alchemist’s hands, that I’d partaken of his library, yes, but had put him off with words alone (and not, mon Dieu, entombment!). Did she believe me? Had she divined the truth of my time in Cuba? I cannot say; but upon the pier, when first she saw me, she commented upon my pallor, and twirled strands of my silver hair betwixt her fingers. In so doing, was she encouraging confession? Again, I cannot say; but if so, well, I chose celebration over confession that day. And thereafter, discretion came to seem the wiser course; thusly were the horrors of Havana put behind me.
Sebastiana and Asmodei were settled and content upon Indian Key. They were welcome amongst the island’s salts, lost types, and miscreants, she grâce à her money, he à cause de his might…. Money and might mattered there, upon Housman’s key.
Housman, Jacob Housman, was lord of all the island; and the fact that he had allowed first Sebastiana and Leo, and, later, the rest of Sebastiana’s party, to settle on his island—everyone referred to it thusly—was owing to several factors rather more specific than money and might.
Sebastiana flirted with Housman, to be blunt; but she did so delicately, and in so witchly a way as to secure his dog-like devotion whilst sparing herself the enmity of his missus. Too, there may have been spells put into play. I cannot say; for on the topic my sister was coy. Moreover: Housman feared Asmodei; which fact—and one had only to spend a moment in the presence of both men to see Housman’s fear as factual—told more about Asmodei than it did Housman; who’d sailed down from Staten Island some few years prior and proceeded to develop the eleven-acre island into a port prosperous enough to rival St. Augustine, some several hundred miles to the north, and Key West as well, a day’s sail southward. Housman, I mean to say, was a man of few fears; but Asmodei was one.
Five grand, I once heard it said: That was the price paid by Housman in ’31, when he couldn’t have been much older than I was when first I arrived on his island (thirty or so). He’d sailed southward with cash and sufficient reason to live on the lam. And if the law, or Law, was another of Housman’s fears, he must surely have felt safe upon his key; for there the laws were his, and he was the Law.
Housman had talked the island out of the hands of a man named Gibson, who’d known not what he had. A waystation it was then, nothing more, with a tumbledown hotel of two stories wherein the wreckers would sometimes stay, amusing themselves with Gibson’s bowling pins and billiard balls, as well as with those things more commonly partaken of by seamen come ashore: whores, to be blunt; and booze. But Housman saw more in store for the island, which militarists might have deemed strategic in its location: thirty-five miles from Carysfort Reef—where wreck upon wreck foundered, their wares to be shared by whatever crew claimed them first—and quite near the sinkholes of Lower Matecumbe Key, from which freshwater was readily drawn. Too, Indian Key had long been reputed to be mosquito-free; and though it was Housman himself who spread this rumor, there was, owing to the island’s placement and its patterns of wind, some truth to his claim…. Bref, it was, or would be, a most livable place.
And indeed the island developed, Housman staking out its streets, its houses and groves, and seeing, too, to the importation of workable soil and rather less workable seedlings. Slaves, too, to do said work, of course. To support his wreckers, who in turn supported him and his island empire, Housman built warehouses, wharves, and several cisterns, one of which was carved from marble during our tenancy on the island at a cost of four thousand dollars. He drew to the island all manner of men whose skills were requisite to the realization of his dreams: blacksmiths, boat wrights, carpenters, caulkers, cooks, et cetera; and upon Indian Key they all lived in harmony; for Housman insisted on harmony, ensuring it with his henchmen and the occasional harangue, delivered within earshot of all and sundry.
Such was Indian Key when Calixto and I arrived, that winter of ’38: a most prosperous place;…and where there is prosperity there are, perforce, parties.
Léopoldine had baked a cake as “the family’s” contribution to the ball; but this confection had come from the oven so crooked and over-cooked as to seem not only alive—its pudding-like interior supporting a pulse of sorts—but inedible as well. So imposing was this pastry that Luc asked if he might be let to “kill it with a coconut,” which instrument he’d found on the sands outside the kitchen door and brandished now with great show. The query amused only Asmodei. Sebastiana—was she stifling a laugh herself?—said no, and would Luc please set the coconut down outside; whereupon she commiserated with Léopoldine, herself being of scant use in a kitchen. But what to do? They’d said they’d bring a cake to le bal…. Could it be rescued, this cake?
Calixto and I sat watching, sipping our lemonade, whilst the two witches iced the cake; but they’d have needed tar and caulking to reshape it sufficiently; and, what’s more, the cake had yet to cool, so that the icing they’d concocted slid from its sides like sap from a tapped tree. When next Luc suggested a suitable end for the cake—that he be let to pass a chain through it and use it to anchor his canoe—Sebastiana and Leo acceded with shrugs and wry smiles, whereupon the men turned mirthful; and I would have joined in but for the chill I suffered at hearing again Asmodei’s laughter, the same sound with which he’d once scorned me so.
The promise of a cake was fulfilled with punch instead; a punch so potent the original promise of a cake was fast forgotten, and the party, thusly fueled, proceeded apace.
…Oh, how we danced that first evening, on that tiny key set into the sea. Only my memories are more sublime than the night itself.
The “ballroom” consisted of planking set atop the smoothed sands of a piazza topped by a pergola of sorts, through the beams of which a flowering vine was woven. Not long after our arrival, there I’d stood, helping to hang lanterns from these same beams: We’d set white candles in glass, and in turn set the glass within shades of pink paper, so as not to confuse—and draw to us—any ships that might have spotted red or white lanterns from sea. (It was difficult to dance in that pink light, dimmed further by my blue spectacles; but I benefited from the effort, being able to attribute my clumsiness to poor eyesight and so excuse my omnipresent spectacles.) Plank tables overlain with lace were piled with delicacies—no finer fare could have been had in Havana or Key West—and set with tableware that told of the island’s chief trade: The flat-, stem-, and hollowware was all fine yet mismatched, much of it bearing the monogram of whoever had lost, or thought they’d lost their wares to the sea…. Indeed, there was no telling what one might find on the island, owing to the way things arrived there rather than sinking onto the seafloor. So it was that Housman had in his house a pianoforte lost by a marquis, who’d sought to ship it home to France from New Orleans; and we, in our house, had a harp none of us could play but which served, said Luc, as a suitable shredder of hard cheeses. It was to that pianoforte, in fact, as well as the multipurpose harp, that we danced that night; for the elder of the Trevors’ daughters tapped at the former whilst her little sister plucked at the latter.
