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| 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.
