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“You wonder if I was a handsome man when I was alive,” said the vaed in me Only I never knew that I was handsome Life whirled about , not even a mirror… especial
ly not a mirror… with a free eye But this is what happened I stepped near to the pane of glass and let the light touch my face And this I did at a moment when Babette’s eyes were turned towards the panes Then I appropriately vanished
“Within seconds all the sisters knew a ‘strange creature’ had been seen, a ghostlike creature, and the two slave ate I waited out these moments impatiently for just that which I wanted to happen: Babette finally took a candelabru everyone’s fear, ventured out onto the cold gallery alone to see as there, her sisters hovering in the door like great, black birds, one of the that the brother was dead and she had indeed seen his ghost Of course, youas she was, never once attributed what she saw to ith of the dark gallery before I spoke to her, and even then I let her see only the vague outline of o back,’ I whispered to her ‘I come to tell you of your brother Do as I say’ She was still for an instant, and then she turned to me and strained to see me in the dark ‘I have only a little time I would not har it was nothing, she told them to shut the door, and they obeyed as people obey who not only need a leader but are desperate for one Then I stepped into the light of Babette’s candles”
The boy’s eyes ide He put his hand to his lips “Did you look to her… as you do to me?” he asked
“You ask that with such innocence,” said the vaht I always had a less supernatural appearance And Ian ordinary creature ‘I have only minutes,’ I told her at once ‘But what I have to tell you is of the greatest iht bravely and won the duel — but wait… You must kno, he is dead Death was proverbial with hioodness or courage could do nothing But this is not the principal thing which I came to tell you It is this You can rule the plantation and you can save it All that is required is that you let no one convince you otherwise You must assume his position despite any outcry, any talk of convention, any talk of propriety or co The sa when your brother slept above Nothing is changed You must take his place’
“ ‘If you do not, the land is lost and the family is lost You will be five women on a small pension dooive you Learn what youuntil you have the answers And take e whenever you waver You must take the reins of your own life Your brother is dead’
“I could see by her face that she had heard every word She would have questioned me had there been time, but she believed me when I said there was not Then I used all my skill to leave her so swiftly I appeared to vanish Frolow of her candles I saw her search the dark for n of the Cross and walk back to her sisters within”
The vampire smiled “There was absolutely no talk on the river coast of any strange apparition to Babette Freniere, but after the firstand sad talk of the wohborhood because she chose to run the plantation on her own She er sister, and was married herself in another year And Lestat and I aled words”
“Did he go on living at Pointe du Lac?”
“Yes I could not be certain he’d told reat pretense was necessary My sister was married in my absence, for exa si of my mother’s funeral Meantiht with the old man and made nice noises with our knives and forks, while he told us to eat everything on our plates and not to drink our wine too fast With dozens of miserable headaches I would receive my sister in a darkened bedroom, the covers up to ht on account of the pain in e amounts of money to invest for us all Fortunately her husband was an idiot; a harenerations of es between first cousins
“But though these things ell, we began to have our problems with the slaves They were the suspicious ones; and, as I’ve indicated, Lestat killed anyone and everyone he chose So there was always some talk of mysterious death on the part of the coast But it hat they saw of us which began the talk, and I heard it one evening when I was playing a shadow about the slave cabins
“Now, let me explain first the character of these slaves It was only about seventeen ninety-five, Lestat and I having lived there for four years in relative quiet, I investing theapartments and town houses in New Orleans which I rented, the work of the plantation itself producing little… more a cover for us than an invest over to Lestat, and, as you realize, I was still legally alive But in seventeen ninety-five these slaves did not have the character which you’ve seen in films and novels of the South They were not soft-spoken, brown-skinned people in drab rags who spoke an English dialect They were Africans And they were islanders; that is, soo They were very black and totally foreign; they spoke in their African tongues, and they spoke the French patois; and when they sang, they sang African songs whichto me in my mortal life They were superstitious and had their own secrets and traditions In short, they had not yet been destroyed as Africans completely Slavery was the curse of their existence; but they had not been robbed yet of that which had been characteristically theirs They tolerated the baptisarments imposed on there by the French Catholic laws; but in the evenings, theycostumes, made jewelry of animal bones and bits of discarded old; and the slave cabins of Pointe du Lac were a foreign country, an African coast after dark, in which not even the coldest overseer would want to wander No fear for the vampire
“Not until one suh the open doors of the black foree a conversation which convinced er The slaves kneere not ordinary h a crack in the door, they had seen us dine on elasses to our lips, laughing, our faces bleached and ghostly in the candlelight, the blind h keyholes they had seen Lestat’s coffin, and once he had beaten one of theallery s of his room ‘There is no bed in there,’ they confided one to the other with nodding heads ‘He sleeps in the coffin, I know it’ They were convinced, on the best of grounds, of ere And as for e from the oratory, which was now little more than a shapelesswisteria in the spring, wild roses in su on the old unpainted shutters which had never been opened, spiders spinning in the stone arches Of course, I’d pretended to visit it in er believed such lies And now they attributed to us not only the deaths of slaves found in the fields and swamps and also the dead cattle and occasional horses, but all other strange events; even floods and thunder were the weapons of God in a personal battle waged with Louis and Lestat But worse still, they were not planning to run away We were devils Our power inescapable No, we , where I became an unseen member, were a number of the Freniere slaves
“This h I firmly believed the entire coast to be impervious to a wave of hysteria, I did not intend to risk notice of any kind I hurried back to the plantation house to tell Lestat our gaive up his slave whip and golden napkin ring and move into town
“He resisted, naturally His father was gravely ill andaway from stupid slaves ‘I’ll kill them all,’ he said calmly, ‘in threes and fours Some will run away and that will be fine’