|
| A render of the Rembrandt portrait of Deborah Mayfair |
The Thirteen Witches
CAUTION! Contains spoilers
The village midwife, she was probably very young, in her late teens,
given the time and circumstances under which she conceived
Deborah. It is she who called up Lasher in the circle of stones at
Donnelaith in a supposed attempt to call up Saint Ashlar. She
called him "Lasher" either because she got Ashlar's name wrong or
because he "lashed" at the grass and trees around her as he gathered
himself together. Her granddaughter, Charlotte, would later tell
Petyr van Abel that Suzanne had learned how to call up Lasher from a
pamphlet shown her by a witch judge. In that judge's effort to
stamp out witchcraft during the hysteria of the middle ages, he had
instead contributed to the founding of a powerful family of
witches.
Suzanne was burnt at the stake as a witch for supposedly cursing people
through her alliance with Lasher. Upon her death, Lasher began
creating the storm that occurs over the death site of the witch at the
time of death. He spread her ashes in four directions.
Born in or about 1652, she too is condemned to be burnt at the stake in
the village of Montcleve, France in 1689. Before she can be led to
the pyre though, she jumps to her death from the parapets of the prison
where she was held. Her remains are then thrown on the pyre and
burnt. A doll of her somehow survives and is found by Rowan and
Michael Curry 300 years later in the attic of the First Street
house.
She was a "merry-begot", conceived during the spring fertility festival
in May. Her father was the Earl of Donnelaith, a line of
aristocracy who carried - and passed on - the giant helix. It is
this connection that saves her from burning along with her mother.
The Earls are probably descendants of the Taltos, who populated
Donnelaith for centuries before the time of Suzanne. Indeed, it
was one of the earls who fathered Lasher with Anne Boleyn in her
ill-fated attempt to give Henry VIII a son and heir.
Deborah was taken out of Donnelaith by Petyr Van Abel, a Dutch
Talamasca scholar who had come to Scotland to research witch
burnings. She had been publicly flogged while her mother was
burnt. Van Abel takes her to Amsterdam, where she stays at the
Talamasca Motherhouse and scares the scholars by commanding Lasher to
manipulate the clocks. She later marries Roelant, a painter.
It is at this time that her portrait is painted by Rembrandt and with
Lasher's assistance, acquires the Mayfair Emerald.
After Roelant's death, she goes to France to marry the Comte de
Montcleve, but before she leaves, she seduces Petyr Van Abel.
Their union produces Charlotte Mayfair.
Raised as the eldest daughter of the Comte de Montcleve, she was born
in 1667 or 1668. Upon her marriage to Antoine Fontenay, she
relocates to the Caribbean island of Saint-Domingue ("san domang"), or
Haiti. She establishes an indigo plantation there and is known to
be very generous to the slaves in exchange for unfailing loyalty.
Deborah lies to the authorities as to the whereabouts of Charlotte when
she is sentenced to die, telling them she is in St. Martin's.
Otherwise, Charlotte would have been burnt as well.
Because Antoine Fontenay cannot produce the female child Charlotte
requires to pass on the witch line, she also seduces Petyr Van Abel, her
father, by holding him in a small cabin until he acquiesces and
mates with her. By combining their already-close genetics to her
92 chromosomes, she is able to pass significant traits to her
offspring, Jeanne-Louise and Peter, which will add to the unique genetic
blueprint of the Mayfair line all the way to Rowan and Mona
Mayfair. She dies in 1743.
Little is known about this Mayfair, but it is likely that her daughter,
Angelique, was fathered by her fraternal twin, Peter.
Jeanne-Louise was born in or about 1690 in Saint-Domingue and continued
to own the plantation, Maye Faire, after her mother's death.
*Note: Jennifer Lewis made this as an image of Deborah, but had none
for Jeanne Louise, so I've used a different portrait for Deborah and
this one for Jeanne Louise.
Born in 1725, she is doubly inbred even though her parents, as
fraternal twins, are about as related as a brother and sister born years
apart. Little is known about her as well. She married
Vincente St. Christophe, the first person of French ancestry in the
Mayfair line, and along with her sons Lestan and Maurice Mayfair,
produces the next witch, Marie Claudette.
She was the witch to establish the Mayfair Legacy.
It was during the Haitian slave uprisings of the late 1700's that
she moved her family, many belongings and her fortune intact to
Louisiana. It was the loyalty cultivated by her
great-grandmother, Charlotte, that prompted the slaves to warn her and
her family of the uprisings before they could be attacked, giving them a
chance to flee.
It was she who, upon arrival in Louisiana, established Riverbend
Plantation, a continuation of sorts of Maye Faire. She married
Henri Landry and with him produced, among other children,
Marguerite Mayfair.
A beauty in her youth, a crazed hag as she got older, she conducted
experiements on the bodies of dead slaves and their stillborn infants in
attempts to bring Lasher into the flesh. Unfortunately, the bodies
began to decay, unable to support life any longer, and Lasher was unable
to "come through."
Her first husband, Tyrone McNamara, was the first person of Irish
ancestry in the Mayfair line. He was a musician. With him,
she produced Remy and Julien Mayfair, born in 1828. By then, Marie
Claudette was still alive and disgruntled that Lasher now gave his
attention to Marguerite and not her. She was also displeased that
Marguerite had not yet produced a daughter to inherit the legacy.
That was remedied by Marguerite's second husband, Arlington Kerr, also
Irish. With him, Marguerite gave birth to Katherine in 1830.
Kerr did not wait for the blessed event; he disappeared after only six
months of marriage. Marie Claudette, according to Julien,
probably looked at Katherine in the cradle and thought, "what an idiot."
(LR)
Was she the ninth witch? She certainly was the weakest and least
interested in the Mayfair legacy, the emerald and certainly in
Lasher. In her youth, she would dress up as a man and go with her
brothers into New Orleans, but as soon as she met and fell in love with
Darcy Monahan, that changed.
Katherine did make her contribution to the legacy and the line,
however. It is she who commissioned the construction of the First
Street house. She, along with her brothers, hired Darcy Monahan as
the builder of the house, and it was during construction that she fell
in love with and married him.
When Julien caught them in the unfinished double parlor of the house,
he tried to break them up. This was the one and only time that
Katherine summoned Lasher, and commanded him to protect the one she
loved. Lasher told Julien that he must obey Katherine as she was
the Legacy Witch, not him, and so he did.
For years, Julien avoided First Street and Katherine. Darcy and
Katherine managed to produce two sons, Clay and Vincent, and five more
stillborn children. In 1871, Darcy was stricken with the yellow
fever epidemic to the utter delight of Marguerite. Upon his death,
Katherine was alone at First Street, grief stricken for her husband and
lost babies. It was then that Julien finally went to her.
At the age of 41, Katherine conceived by Julien, her half-brother, Mary
Beth Mayfair. Not wanting to live in the First Street house
without Darcy, Katherine returned to Riverbend and there gave birth to
her daughter, the next designee of the legacy. It was in 1888, the
year her granddaughter Belle was born in London, that Katherine added
the First Street house to the Legacy.
The other contender for the ninth witch slot, Julien was Lasher's
departure from his oath to Deborah, never to smile upon a male
child. It was to him that Marie Claudette told of Lasher's
ultimate plan, yet she did not know how exactly he would do it, only
that the rampant inbreeding was part of Lasher's plan. She told
young Julien about the family history all the way back to Suzanne, and
taught him how to confuse Lasher with music.
Julien, in the absence of his father or anyone in a position to act as
regent, assumed the management of Riverbend at a young age. It was
in a dispute over this management that Julien shot and killed his cousin
Augustin, sparking a division and feud that would continue well into the
20th century. This feud was what prompted construction of
Fontevrault, a second Mayfair plantation. Despite the feud,
however, it did not stop his descendants from interacting with the
Fontevrault branch of the Mayfair Family.
Julien's rampant sexual appetites were what generated the lines
that would produce Michael Curry and Tarquin Blackwood. It was he,
despite his trepidation, who would continue the tradition of incest
within the family to produce stronger witches for Lasher.
When he died in 1914, Lasher gave him a storm, whereas there was no
storm to mark Katherine's passing in 1905.
*I swear, this one of Julien looks a lot like Johnny Depp!
Deemed by the Talamasca to have been the most powerful witch produced
by the family in the 19th Century, Mary Beth was indeed powerful.
She was capable of bilocation and had no qualms about ordering Lasher to
punish those who tried to cheat her. She was a magnate as much as
a witch and it was through her combined efforts with Julien that the
Legacy grew into the enormous fortune that it is by the time of Rowan's
inheritance.
Mary Beth continued and expanded upon what Julien started by
diversifying her interests. Because of her business savvy, the
Mayfair fortunes were well-cushioned against economic crises such as
Black Friday and the Great Depression.
On her trip to Donnelaith, Scotland with Julien, Mary Beth conceived
Belle Mayfair by "Lord" Mayfair, who was born in London, England in
1888. Many believed it was Julien who fathered Belle, though
Julien himself denied it. Belle, according to Lasher, was not the
next witch, and he informed Julien that he must mate with his
daughter/niece to produce the next witch. Julien found this idea
repugnant but Mary Beth accepted it as what she must do to strengthen
the line and make her family rich.
Before she mated with Julien, she married Daniel McIntyre, an
attorney-turned-judge at St. Mary's Cathedral in New Orleans. She
was the last Legacy witch to marry before Rowan. With McIntyre,
she had Carlotta in 1899 and Lionel in 1900. It was in 1901 that
she had Stella with Julien (or possibly Cortland as the Talamasca seemed
to believe), who would become the next witch in the Legacy in place of
her sister, Carlotta. This may have been a big mistake.
Mary Beth died of cancer in 1925 at the age of 53.
By far the most flamboyant and freedom-loving Mayfair thus far, Stella
took over as the Designee of the Legacy from her sister, Carlotta.
Carlotta claimed it was her own rejection of Lasher, whom she could see
and hear clearly, in favor of banishing him with her devotions and
prayers, that caused the change. That could very well have been
because Stella seemed to enjoy using her powers to the point of
expulsion from different schools, whereas Carlotta was oppositional and
sour from the beginning. Mary Beth had once said she did not love
Carlotta and it seemed to pain her that she couldn't love her own
daughter.
This seemed to create a rivalry between the two sisters. Stella
wanted Carlotta to leave her alone; Carlotta wanted to control as much
as she could without being the Designee of the Legacy. She wanted
Stella's child taken from her, wanted power of attorney, tried to find a
way to crack the legacy and ultimately resorted to killing if she
failed. Stella was wild, unpredictable and unfit, Carlotta
claimed. She avoided Stella's parties like the Plague, preferring
to live in the garconniere, whispering her prayers and oaths. In
reality, Stella's parties probably served two functions: one, to gather
whom she thought were the most likely "Thirteen Witches" and two,
to use the music to confuse Lasher just as her ancestor had done so he
couldn't prevent what she was doing or even hear her thoughts.
It was Carlotta who provoked Lionel, her full brother, into
shooting Stella from the staircase at First Street during one of
Stella's parties by inciting his jealousy. Carlotta informed
Lionel of Stella's plans to leave the family with Arthur Langtry of the
Talamasca, who was present that night. It was Carlotta who
confused Lasher so that he could not stop Lionel.
Stella died in October, 1929, and was buried from the house so that
Cortland Mayfair, Julien's son, could take some of her bones to make a
doll of her. Her 8-year-old daughter Antha, who saw her mother
shot and killed before her very eyes, would come into the custody of
Carlotta, and the First Street house would spend the next sixty years
slowly deteriorating.
Antha, the nervous, frail daughter of Stella, found herself in the
unofficial custody of Carlotta and her three aunts, Belle, Millie
Dear, and Nancy Mayfair upon the death of her
mother. Carlotta tried for years to gain legal custody
of Antha and finally succeeded when Antha was in her teens.
Carlotta would claim that Antha was congenitally insane, and it was upon
this basis that she managed to successfully commit Antha to mental
hospitals after the death of Sean Lacy and before the birth of
Deirdre.
Antha was a writer and had run away to New York to escape New Orleans
and Carlotta. However, her peers there were confused about her
tendency to write about crumbling antebellum mansions in New Orleans
when she was in shining, modern New York. She carried with her a
"magic" coin purse that she used frequently. Pawn shop owners
would give her money for the rare coins, only to discover that the coins
had mysteriously returned to the velvet bag Antha had originally carried
them in. It was while she was in New York, having some success as
a writer, that she met and fell in love with Sean Lacy, and he with
her.
Sean Lacy was not happy about Antha's pregnancy, however, but before he
could become a father, he was killed in a car crash. Antha,
installed at Bellevue Hospital, is collected by Carlotta, who was
contacted by Amanda Grady Mayfair, the estranged wife of Cortland
Mayfair, Julien's son. Antha returned to New Orleans and delivered
Deirdre.
On the day of her death, she told Carlotta, "This is my house. I
can turn you out if I want to." She also informed the mailman of
her plans to restore her home. Unfortunately, she did not live to
realize these plans as she was killed that same afternoon.
Carlotta told authorities that Antha was congenitally insane and that it
was a suicide. Upon Red Lonigan's postmortem inspection of Antha's
body, however, he noted that there were deep, angry scratches beneath
her eye and that her eyeball appeared to have been clawed out.
Carlotta later admitted to Antha's granddaughter, Rowan Mayfair, that
she did indeed murder Antha in an attempt to stop Lasher. If Antha
could not see, she could not give him power.
She was survived by her only daughter, Deirdre, who would in turn grow
up in the First Street house plagued by Carlotta's incessant attempts to
stop Lasher.
It was with the observations of other people that
The Witching Hour opened the Lives of the Mayfair Witches.
What was interesting was that only certain people claimed to be able to
see Lasher and yet Dr. Petrie, Deirdre's psychiatrist in 1983, was able
to see him clearly. He was the person to whom Lasher appealed to
stop giving Deirdre the drugs, and when he forgot a dose, it appeared
that Deirdre was indeed capable of communicating as she whispered
"Lasher" quite audibly.
Father Mattingly, to whom Deirdre confessed about her association with
Lasher at the age of six, heard Deirdre described as "a nice bunch
of carrots" as she could do nothing but sit on the porch with the "young
man", stare, and drool.
She was subjected to shock treatments and dangerously high levels of
psychotropic drugs since she gave birth to Rowan, in order to stop her
from going after the daughter who had been taken from her. As a
child, she was repeatedly expelled from various schools as her mother
and grandmother had been for antics that had involved Lasher, such as
making flowers float through the air. Shortly before she conceived
Rowan, she attended Texas Women's University, where she told Aaron
Lightner that she wanted "normal life". Unfortunately, she would
never realize that ambition.
Carlotta decided to take Deirdre's baby upon the news that Deirdre was
pregnant. The claim is that a professor whom Deirdre had had an
affair with was the father, but it turns out that Cortland Mayfair, by
then (1959) about 80 years old, is the father. Deirdre gives birth
to Rowan at Mercy Hospital and it is Carlotta who names the baby Rowan
for the rowan branch that supposedly protects homes from evil spirits in
Irish lore. Carlotta tells Deirdre whatever she must to make
her scream and rail and convince doctors she was insane. Deirdre
ranted for hours at Lasher in the hospital chapel that he was
responsible for her baby being taken from her.
The provocation worked, and Deirdre was institutionalized for 17 years
before she came home in 1976 to sit in her porch rocker and continue to
be comatose until the end of her life.
It was in the last hours of her life that Deirdre came awake one last
time, to go into such a rage at the suggestion that she be taken back to
an institution that she succeeded in shattering windows at the First
Street house. How could a comatose, heavily drugged woman be
capable of such strength? It is a further testament to the fact
that Deirdre was not actually ill from being insane; she was ill from
practically being poisoned by drugs she did not need.
She died instead in August, 1989 and it was her death that is the
catalyst for the return of her daughter Rowan, to kiss her
goodbye.
Rowan Mayfair grew up knowing nothing of her family's history.
Despite the love Ellie Mayfair gave her over the years, she did not
participate in family gatherings of any sort because she and Ellie were
cut off from the rest of the family. It was clear, though, at an
early age, that she had inherited considerable power from her ancestors,
the Mayfair Witches.
Unknown to her, Ellie Mayfair has reported to Carlotta about Rowan over
the years, which is how Carlotta knew Rowan's rage had killed a little
girl on the playground in or about 1965 at the age of six, and she was
probably aware of the attacker who attempted to rape Rowan and instead
wound up dead when Rowan was 14, in or about 1973-74. Four other
deaths were discovered by the Talamasca, two of which Rowan was aware
of: a girl Rowan had an argument with in a science lab at UC Berkely in
the late 1970's, Dr. Karl Lemle, Rowan's mentor until his research into
human fetuses repelled her in 1983 or 1984, her adopted father, Graham
Franklin, who finally seduced her forcibly by telling her he would leave
a dying Ellie if she did not cooperate in 1988, and Karen Garfield,
Graham Franklin's 27-year-old mistress, when she showed up shortly after
Graham's death asking if she could have some of his personal
effects.
Rowan, born on November 7, 1959, is a very intelligent and powerful
witch, obviouly more powerful than either Mary Beth or Carlotta Mayfair,
though Lasher tells her Carlotta's powers matched her own. She was
accepted into UC Berkely, and if she was a doctor by 1983, she would
have had to graduate from high school approximately two years early, as
a pre-med undergraduate program is about four years and so is medical
school. It is entirely possible that she accelerated her program
by taking extra classes during the year and by taking summer session
courses. If she was a doctor by 1983, she would have graduated
from UC Berkely with a bachelor's degree in about 1979. She would
then have to have completed an internship during which she would have
been a licensed physician, then complete a residency in a specific area
of medicine before she could take the board certification exam.
Given her intelligence and her drive to rectify what she had done, it is
entirely possible that she completed all coursework in a shorter time
than her peers would have.
It is Rowan's knowledge of cellular structure and the science of life
that Lasher needs to help him "come through". Rowan has inherited
powers from her forebears that enable her to command cells and
manipulate physical matter without the aid of Lasher, and this is what
makes her more powerful than either Mary Beth or Carlotta as they had to
either enlist Lasher's assistance or resort to more crude means to
achieve their aims. Rowan, in addition to powers she has yet to
understand, thoroughly understands human anatomy and biology, and she
can also repair damaged tissue and cells with her powers with her
surgeon's scalpel to aid her. Lasher needs these extraordinary
abilities to help him in his goal, but he must bide his time.
Lasher appears to Rowan at the moment of Deirdre's death in New
Orleans. He demonstrates that he is in fact capable of
manipulating elements, environment and physical matter by creating what
appears to be a violent storm in Richardson and San Francisco
Bays. The storm is so violent that Rowan's home rocks on its
pilings. She later learns that there was no storm of any
recognizable sort on either bay on the night and time Lasher appeared
and this convinces her that Lasher is more powerful than others might
believe him to be.
He also comes to her on the plane to New Orleans. Here, Rowan has
had a metamorphosis of some kind. Upon her decision to go to New
Orleans, she packs clothes she has not worn since vacations with her
adoptive parents, cosmetics, perfume and shoes. She had not had
time to dress up in a feminine way since her entrance in to
medicine. She buys sunglasses and a spy novel, "glamorous", in the
airport gift shop and thereby begins a transformation from her lonely
life to a life she wants more - a life with family, with Michael
Curry. It is during her sleep on the plane to New Orleans that
Lasher somehow gets underneath her clothing and takes her sexually,
making her feel raped after she has woken up. She later tells
Michael about this encounter, and he reacts as a typical jealous male
but also brings up an important point. Did the pleasure he gave
her make her consider the idea of being in direct contact with
Lasher? He does not blame her, as he certainly would like to talk
with Lasher, the spirit he had seen in the garden and in the church when
he was a child.
Rowan goes to New Orleans, buries her mother, reunites with Michael,
claims the house and the Legacy, and commences with Michael the
restoration of her ancestral home. As she tours the house, she
spots the service ware in the butler's pantry and envisions having large
family gatherings at the First Street house, an experience she had never
had before in her polished life in San Francisco. The restoration
is completed, and to coincide with the reopening of the house, she and
Michael have their wedding reception there after a formal white-dress
wedding at St. Mary's Catholic Church.
Rowan does eventually meet with Lasher, but she must keep it a secret
as Lasher threatened to kill Michael if she told him. Michael soon
discovers she has lied to him and after being evicted from First Street
by Rowan, returns too late to stop Lasher from realizing his plan at
midnight on Christmas Eve, "the witching hour."
Lasher takes Rowan on a cross-continental run while Michael
languishes at Mercy Hospital, the victim of a heart attack after having
drowned in the swimming pool. It is the vision of the firefighters
coming through the door, the same ones from his father's firehouse, that
brings him back to life. While Rowan and Lasher are transferring
large sums of money from her fortune to various untraceable bank
accounts and performing clandestine lab tests on Lasher, Michael remains
despondent over the loss of his wife. It is Mona Mayfair, the
"wanderslut", who wakes him and renews his determination to find Rowan
and bring her home.
When she does return home, she is comatose like her mother and
languishes near death in her bed, the same bed that both her mother and
Mary Beth died in. She survives by the nourishing milk of her
daughter by Lasher, Emaleth, a Taltos born of a human and a
Taltos. It is after she kills Emaleth in fear of the Taltos taking
over humanity that she lapses into a guilt and self-torture that will
last until well after Lestat finds her and falls in love with her.
By far the most fascinating of the witches, she is a twenty-fold
Mayfair who can trace more lines of descent from the original Mayfairs
than anyone else in the family. She has built this geneology on
her computer, a pasttime she is fascinated with. She manages to
get her hands on the File on the Mayfair Witches before anyone can stop
her, and she is also determined to seduce every male Mayfair cousin
currently living. She is a constant source of entertaining and
worrisome gossip, prompting Cecilia Mayfair to ask Gifford Mayfair, "do
you know that child likes to do it in the cemetery?!"
It is Mona who, in her determination to seduce the Mayfair cousins and
through her spirit link with the shade of Julien Mayfair, breaks into
the First Street house and eventually seduces Michael with Julien's
help. Julien creates an illusion that draws them both to the
double parlor, where they make love and probably conceive
Morrigan. They are caught by Eugenia, the house's maid. It
is this union that wakes Michael Curry from his stupor and renews his
determination to find Rowan, just as Julien intended.
Later, Mona helps with the investigation into Rowan's disappearance and
the whereabouts of Lasher. She informs the women of the family
that none of them can remain alone while Lasher is attempting to mate
with Mayfair women, some of whom are dying of uterine hemorrhages as a
result of being unable to bear a Taltos, including Mona's own mother,
Alicia Mayfair. It is Mona who helps with the cleanup after
Michael dispatches Lasher.
Unfortunately, Morrigan's birth was the beginning of the illness that
would have ultimately killed Mona if Lestat had not turned her into a
Blood Drinker. The description of her transformation is almost
magical, and one can just envision Mona's hair thickening and becoming
rich, her body filling out, her skin plumping, her pain vanishing and
her strength returning to that of a powerful vampire. Without the
transformation, Mona would surely have died as she sought to do in Quinn
Blackwood's bed among a bower of flowers, Ophelia Immortal.
