Blood Canticle (21 page)

“But Jasmine,” said Quinn, “when did you see this ghost? Was it after you all found this note?”

“No, Grandma just told you, I saw her before I even knew about the letters, she came to the window, crying and clawing. And she’s done it again! And I’m scared even to go to sleep out there. I don’t know what she wants, Little Boss, what can I do for her? Little Jerome is upstairs in Tommy’s room playing video games right now, I’m scared to even let him stay in the back house, what can I do? Quinn, you’ve got to hold another séance for Patsy!”

Suddenly Mona spoke up, and it was as if a light had gone on in that corner of the room.

“The poor creature probably doesn’t know she’s dead,” Mona said tenderly. “Someone has to tell her. She needs to be guided into the Light. This often happens to people, especially if they die suddenly. I can tell her.”

“Oh, please, could you do that?” said Jasmine. “That’s it, you got it, she doesn’t know, and she’s wandering around, all forsaken and lost, coming out of the swamps back of my house and doesn’t know what’s happened to her.”

The sheriff was smirking and raising his eyebrows and squinting his eyes. Nash was becoming extremely uncomfortable as he watched the man.

“That’s what happened with Goblin, wasn’t it?” Big Ramona asked. “You all told him he was dead and he went on. Well, you all have to do it again, you just got to.”

“Yes, it was,” said Quinn. “I’ll tell her to go on. I don’t mind doing it. I don’t think it will require an entire séance.”

“Well, you people ought to do that right away,” said the sheriff, now on his feet and primed to depart, tugging at his heavy belt, “but I must tell you, it is the darnedest thing that every time you have a death out here you have a ghost right smack dab in the middle of it. Sure enough! Do you see the ghost of Miss McQueen carrying on like this? No, you do not! She’s not scratching at any windowpane. Now that was a great lady!”

“What are you talking about!” Quinn demanded in a low voice. He looked up angrily at the sheriff. I’d never seen Quinn take on such an expression. I’d never heard Quinn talk in such a voice. “You trying to give us a lecture on who’s a good dead person and who’s not? Seems like you should wait outside of Jasmine’s window and give that lecture to Patsy. Or why don’t you just go back to your office and dictate a book on manners for the lately dead?”

Big Ramona chuckled under her breath. I swallowed my laughter. Nash was greatly worried. Tommy was afraid.

“Don’t you talk that way to me!” the sheriff said, leaning over Quinn. “You’re nothing but a crackpot kid, Tarquin Blackwood. It’s the scandal of the parish that you’ve inherited Blackwood Farm! It’s the end for this place out here and everybody knows it. And there’s other things you’ve done that are the scandal of the parish, and now you go around saying you murdered your mother. I ought to run you in.”

A cold rage came over Quinn. I could see it happening.

“I did murder her, Sheriff,” he said in an iron voice. “I snatched her up from her couch upstairs, broke her neck, carried her out into the pirogue and went deep, deep into the dark swamp until I saw the backs of the gators in the light of the moon, and then I threw her body into the muck. And I said, ‘Eat up Mother.’ That’s what I did.”

The entire room was thrown into consternation, with Big Ramona and Jasmine crying No no no, and Nash murmuring desperate confidential reassurance to Tommy, and Tommy glaring at Quinn, and one of the Shed Men laughing, and Cyndy the Nurse avowing that Quinn would never really do such a thing. Grady Breen was speechless, shaking his head and shuffling papers in his briefcase uselessly, and even Mona was shocked, staring at Quinn with her glassy green eyes in vague wonder.

“You going to run me in, Sheriff?” asked Quinn, looking icily up at the man.

The room fell silent.

The sheriff was squint-eyed and speechless.

Nash was fearful and poised to act.

Quinn uncoiled from the chair and rose to his full height and looked down on the sheriff. The combination of Quinn’s youthful face and imposing height alone was frightening, but the menace flowing from him was palpable.

“Go on, Big Boy,” Quinn said in a stage whisper. “Put those handcuffs on me.”

Silence.

The sheriff froze, then turned his head away, backed up two feet, and sidled towards the door and went off into the hall and out the front, muttering that nobody at Blackwood Farm had a lick of sense, and, it was such a crying shame that the house would now go to rack and ruin, yes, indeed, RACK AND RUIN! Slam went the door. No more sheriff.

“Well, I think I’d better be going along,” said Grady Breen in a cheery loud voice, “and I’ll get you a copy of the coroner’s report first thing.” He made for the front door so quickly that he might have suffered a heart attack later in his car. (But he did not.)

Meantime, Tommy ran to Quinn and threw his arms around him. Nash looked on helplessly.

This caught Quinn very much off guard. But he at once reassured the boy.

“Don’t you worry about anything,” he said. “You go on back to Eton. And when you come home, Blackwood Farm will be here, always, safe and sound and beautiful as it is now, and making lots of people happy, with Jasmine and Big Ramona and everybody, the same as it is today.”

The Shed Men murmured that that was certainly the case. And Cyndy the Nurse said it was true. Big Ramona said, “Yes, Lawd.”

Now Jasmine saw that she was needed, and, giving her face a final wipe with her handkerchief, she released her grip on me, received a little torrent of my kisses and went to put her arms around Tommy.

“You come on in the kitchen with me, Tommy Blackwood,” she said. “You too, Nash Penfield, I’ve got a pot of stewed chicken on the stove; you too, Cyndy . . .”

“
You
have a pot of chicken on the stove? Who is this ‘You’?” asked Big Ramona, “that’s
my
pot of stewed chicken. And just look at this Mona Mayfair, why the child’s totally recovered.”

“No, no, you all go on,” said Mona, rising and gesturing for them to leave us. “Quinn and Lestat and I have to talk.”

“Little Boss,” said Jasmine, “I’m not sleeping downstairs in that house. I’ve moved upstairs with Jerome and Grandma, and I’m locking the shutters over the windows. Patsy’s after me.”

“I’ll find her out there,” said Quinn. “Don’t worry.”

“Does she come at any certain time?” Mona asked very kindly.

“ ‘Bout four in the morning,” said Jasmine. “I know ‘cause she stops the clock.”

“That’s about right,” said Quinn.

“Now, don’t you start again with that!” Jasmine rebuked him. “Now they found all those letters and they think she shot herself, you’re off the hook, now cool it!” And she pulled Tommy away with her.

“But wait a minute,” said Tommy, at once clabbering up and losing a little of his manly dignity in the pure sadness of a child. “I really want to know.” He swallowed. “Quinn, you didn’t kill her, did you?” It was heartbreaking.

For a long moment everyone was silent, and then Quinn said:

“No, Tommy, I didn’t. It’s important that you believe me, that I would never do a thing like that. It’s just, I wasn’t kind to her. And now she’s gone. And I feel sad about it. And as for the sheriff, I don’t much care for him, and so I said mean things to him.”

It was the most perfect of lies, executed with such determination that it shone in the darkness of Quinn’s thoughts as it was uttered. It was inflamed with the vibrant love that Quinn felt for Tommy. His hatred of Patsy was as intense as ever. That her ghost was on the prowl infuriated him.

“That’s right,” said Jasmine. “We just all wish we’d treated her better. She was an independent person, wouldn’t you say now, Little Boss, and sometimes we didn’t understand her.”

“Very well put,” said Quinn. “We didn’t try hard enough to understand her ways.”

“Of course Tommy understands,” said Nash. “We all understand. Perhaps I can explain this a little better, if Quinn will allow. Come, Tommy, let’s have some supper in the kitchen. Now that Quinn’s here, there’s nothing to worry about any longer, and Miss Mayfair, if you’ll allow me to say, you do look absolutely lovely. It’s marvelous to see you again, and so fit.”

“Thank you, Mr. Penfield,” said Mona, as if she wasn’t a wild beast.

But Quinn’s face was very dark, and as soon as the room was empty except for the three undercover monsters, we drew together.

“Let’s go upstairs,” said Quinn, “I really need your advice just now, Lestat. I have to figure out some things. I have some ideas.”

“You know I’ll do anything I can,” I responded.

I calculatedly ignored Mona in her penitential black, who led the way up the circular staircase.

22

Q
UINN
’
S IMPRESSIVE BEDROOM SUITE
—bedroom and parlor divided by a huge arch—had been completely cleaned since the making of Mona Mayfair into an irresponsible little demon. And the bed on which the Dark Gift had been given was all made up with its fancy dark blue velvet comforter and draperies.

There was the center table where Quinn and I had sat for hours as he’d told me the story of his life, and Mona and I took our places there, but Quinn seemed stunned by the sight of the room, and for a long moment he simply appraised his surroundings as if they meant something wholly new to him.

“What gives, Little Brother?” I asked.

“Pondering, Beloved Boss,” he said. “Just pondering.”

I was not looking at the harpy. Was I glad she was sitting to my right rather than roaming the world all vulnerable and tearful in her sequined chemise? Yes, but I was under no obligation to say so to one who had so furiously rejected me. Was I?

“Come, talk to us,” I said to Quinn. “Sit down.”

Finally, he did, taking his old place with his back to the computer desk, and just opposite me.

“Lestat, I’m not sure what to do.”

“I can go out to her at four a.m.,” said Mona, “I’m not afraid of her. I can try to reach her.”

“No, darling,” Quinn said, “I’m not thinking of Patsy just yet. I couldn’t give less of a damn about Patsy, except for Jasmine’s sake, really. I’m thinking of Blackwood Manor. I’m thinking of what’s going to happen to it. You see, all the time we were in Europe, Aunt Queen and I were in charge by phone, by fax, by some means, and then all this last year we were both here, figures of security and authority. Now all that’s changed. Aunt Queen is gone, simply gone, and I don’t know that I want to be here very often. I don’t think that I can be.”

“But can’t Jasmine and Big Ramona run the place, as they did while you were in Europe?” Mona asked. “I thought Jasmine was a whiz at that. And Big Ramona was a genius chef.”

“All that’s true,” said Quinn. “They can do everything, actually. They can do the cooking and the cleaning, and they can meet and greet the drop-in guests. They can host the Easter Feast and Christmas Supper and every other imaginable event. Jasmine is extremely talented as a manager and a guide. Fact is, they can all do far more than they believe they can. And they all have plenty of money, money enough to walk away from this place and be comfortable wherever they go. That gives them a feeling of security, and an air of independence. But they want to be right here. This is their home. But they want for there to be a presence, a Blackwood presence, and without that, they’re insecure.”

“I see,” she said. “You can’t make them think like owners of the place.”

“Exactly,” he said. “I’ve given them every opportunity,” he went on. “Every type of advancement and profit sharing as well, but they want me in residence. They want my authority. And Tommy wants it. And then there’s Tommy sister Brittany to think of, and Tommy’s mother, Terry Sue. They’ll be coming frequently to visit. They’ve become part of Blackwood Farm because of Tommy. Someone has to be at the very heart of this house to receive them. And Jasmine wants me to be that heart, not only for herself but for my son, Jerome, and I’m not sure that I can continue to be the Master of Blackwood Farm as I would have been if only—.”

“The answer’s simple,” I said.

“What is it?” Quinn asked, startled.

“Nash Penfield,” I said. “You make him resident curator, to run and maintain this property on your behalf and on behalf of Tommy and Jerome.”

“Resident curator!” Quinn’s face brightened. “Ah, that sounds brilliant. But would he take the job? He’s finished his Ph.D. He’s ready to start teaching.”

“Of course he’ll take the job,” I said. “The man spent years in Europe with you and Aunt Queen. You described it as a luxurious journey.”

“Oh, yes, Aunt Queen broke the bank,” replied Quinn. “And Nash did seem to make the most of it in the best ways.”

“Exactly. I suspect Nash is thoroughly ruined for ordinary life. He would love nothing better than to be curator here, to maintain the Easter and Christmas traditions for the sake of the parish, and whatever else you want, while earning a high salary, having a gorgeous bedroom and ample time to write a couple of books in his academic field.”

“Perfect,” Quinn said. “And he has the style and the grace to pull it off. Oh, this could be the answer.”

“Run the idea by him. Suggest that in his idle hours he could begin to build a proper library on shelves put up on the inside walls of the double parlor. And he could write a short history of Blackwood Farm, to be printed up for the tourists, you know, with architectural details and blueprints and legends and such. Throw in the limousine and driver twenty-four hours a day, and a new car of his own every two years, and a deep-pocket expense account and paid vacations to New York and California, and I think you’ll have him.”

“I know he’ll go for it,” said Mona. “Downstairs he was desperate to intervene when the sheriff was acting like an idiot. He just didn’t feel he had the right to do it.”

“Precisely,” I said, without looking at Mona. “It’s a dream position for a man of his gifts.”

“Oh, if he only would,” said Quinn, with mounting excitement, “that would be key. And I could come and go from this room, with you and Mona, anytime that I wanted.”

“It’s far more interesting than what awaits Nash elsewhere,” I said. “And he can play proper host to Tommy’s mother, Terry Sue, and exert a guiding influence on little Jerome, maybe tutor him, in fact, and you don’t have to tell him how to treat Jasmine and Big Ramona; he knows. He adores them. He was born in Texas. That’s the South. He isn’t some ignorant Yankee who doesn’t know how to speak two civil words to a black person. He respects them completely.”

“I think you’ve hit on it,” Quinn said. “If he were ensconced in Blackwood Farm, it would work. It would work for a long time. Jasmine would be ecstatic. She loves Nash.”

I nodded and shrugged.

“That’s a grand idea,” said Quinn. “In time I’ll tell them Mona and I were married in Europe. They won’t protest. It will be perfect. Mona, you really think he’ll go for it?”

I refused to look at her.

“Quinn, he’s already part of Blackwood Farm,” she said.

Quinn went to the phone. “Jasmine,” he said, “I need you up here.”

Almost instantly we heard the vibration of the staircase as Jasmine came running up, and then breathlessly she opened the door.

“What’s the matter, Little Boss?” She was panting. “What’s going on?”

“Sit down, please,” he said.

“You scared me to death, you miserable boy!” she declared. She took her chair. “Now what’s on your mind to call me like that! Don’t you know this whole place is in a state of crisis? And now Clem’s saying he won’t sleep in the bungalow, either, because he’s scared of Patsy coming to him too.”

“Never mind all that, you know perfectly well Patsy can’t hurt you!”

He sat back down and he told her the whole plan, how Nash would be the curator, but before he was halfway through what he meant to say, she threw up her hands and declared it was a miracle. The whole parish would be happy. Nash Penfield had been put on this Earth for Blackwood Farm.

“Now, it’s Aunt Queen who put that idea in your head, Little Boss, she’s looking down from Heaven,” Jasmine said. “I know she is. And so is Mamma, who died right there in that very bed. God bless us all. You know what people round here believe? They believe Blackwood Farm belongs to everybody!”

“Everybody?” asked Mona. “Everybody who?”

“All the parish around, girl,” said Jasmine. “The phone’s been ringing off the hook since Aunt Queen died. Are we still going to do the Christmas Dinner? Are we still going to have the Azalea Festival? I’m telling you, they think this place belongs to the whole parish.”

“Well, they’re right,” said Quinn. “It really does. So do I have your consent to ask Nash Penfield to take the job?”

“Yes, indeed!” Jasmine said. “I’ll tell Grandma, you’ll get no argument from her. You just talk to Nash Penfield. He and Tommy are down in the parlor. I wanted them to play the piano. Nash knows how to play. Tommy knows one song. But Tommy says you don’t play the piano for weeks after a person dies. Now, we never abided by that here because we were always a Bed-and-Breakfast. And I say that Tommy can play that song.”

Quinn got up and went out with Jasmine.

I followed them down the stairs. I wanted to see this thing through. I ignored the fact that Mona came afterwards and was behaving with such obvious grace and reticence. A complete facade.

Wise ones must not be deceived by such ploys.

Tommy was sitting at the square grand in the double parlor, an antique that apparently still worked. And he was crying just a little and Nash was standing over him. I could feel the pure love of Nash for Tommy.

“Tommy,” Quinn said. “There was this woman in Beethoven’s time who lost her child. She was bereft. Beethoven would come into her house, unannounced, and he would play the piano for her. She would be lying upstairs, distraught, and she would hear him playing down there in the drawing room, and the piano music was his gift to her, to comfort her. You play the piano if you like. You offer the music up to Aunt Queen. You go on. Part the gates of Heaven with your music, Tommy.”

“You tell Little Boss what you mean to play,” said Jasmine.

“It’s a song by Patsy,” said Tommy. “Patsy sent the CD to us while we were in Europe. I wrote home for the sheet music. Aunt Queen saw to it we had suites with pianos so I could learn the song. It’s very Irish and very sad. I wanted to play it for Patsy, to see if it would quiet her soul.”

Quinn said nothing. His face went pale.

“You go on, son,” I said. “That’s a good idea. Aunt Queen will be pleased and so will Patsy. Patsy will hear you. You play the song.”

Tommy laid his hands on the keys. He began a simple, very Celtic-sounding ballad. It had its Kentucky Bluegrass sound too. Then, startling us all, he began to sing the lyrics in a low competent boy soprano that was as mournful as the music:

Go tell my friends for me

That I’m not coming back.

Go tell the gang for me

That I can dance no more.

Go tell the ones I love

That I have gone on home.

I’m walking in the graveyard now

And I am all alone.

And I’ll be gone before the leaves

Begin to fall again.

They’re rushing up and down the stairs

The bed is wide and soft.

But I lie still and oh, so cold.

Because my mother’s gone.

Will I soon see her simple face?

I have no dreams or faith.

I wish that I could make a song

That tells how good it’s been.

I had the stage, I had the light.

The music was the tale.

But things are tinged with purple now

And these sad notes I play.

I wait until the autumn comes

And I will be no more.

We stood together, bound by the sorrow of it, as if we were in a deep enchantment.

Quinn leant down to kiss Tommy on the cheek. Tommy just stared at the printed music before him. Jasmine had her arm around his shoulder.

“Now that was beautiful,” she said. “And Patsy wrote that, now, she knew what was coming, she knew.”

Then Quinn drew Nash off with him into the dining room. Mona and I went with him, but there was no real need for us.

I saw this as they sat down to talk.

I saw that Nash understood from the first words, and was completely desirous of this position that Quinn was describing to him. I saw that it had been Nash’s secret dream. Nash had only been waiting for the time to present such a proposal to Quinn.

Meanwhile, in the parlor Jasmine was asking Tommy to play the song again.

“But you didn’t really see that awful ghost of Patsy, did you?” Tommy was asking.

“No, no,” said Jasmine, trying to comfort Tommy, “I was just carrying on, I don’t know what got into me, don’t you be afraid of Patsy’s ghost, don’t you think about that, besides, you see a ghost, you make the Sign of the Cross, nothing to it, now you sing that song again, I’ll sing it with you. . . .”

“You play the song again, Tommy,” I said. “You keep playing it and you keep singing it. If her spirit’s wandering, she’ll hear it and it will comfort her.”

I went out the unlocked front door into the warm humid air, down the steps and away from the light, and I walked back behind the house and over to the far right where the bungalow stood in which Jasmine and Big Ramona and Clem lived.

It was lighted cheerily. And only Clem was there, sitting on the front porch, rocking and smoking a very aromatic cigar. I gestured for him not to get up on my account, and I walked back behind the house and along the treacherous soft bank of the swamp.

I could hear Tommy singing. I sang the words along with him, soft, in no more than a whisper. I tried to picture Patsy as she had been in her heyday—country-western star, in her leather jackets with fringe and skirts and boots, with teased and bouffant hair, belting her original songs. It was the image that Quinn had given to me. Grudgingly he had said she could truly sing. Even Aunt Queen had mentioned to me with some reserve that Patsy could really sing. Ah, there hadn’t been a single soul in the world of Blackwood Farm who had felt love for Patsy.

And all I’d glimpsed was the sick Patsy, bitter and full of hate, sitting on the couch in her white nightgown, knowing she’d never be well enough to perform anymore, hollering for Cyndy, the Nurse, to give her another shot, hating Quinn out loud and with her soul, her pinched and twisted soul, Patsy, who’d caught the plague from drug needles and didn’t care how many times she’d passed it on.

And Quinn had done her in just exactly as he’d described it to the sheriff.

I walked on, with the swamp beside me. I let my vampiric hearing rove. Nash had begun to play Patsy’s song, with more notes and a bolder expression. He and Tommy were singing it together. Sadness. Jasmine cried. Jasmine whispered, “Ah, the pure pitifulness of it.”