Come Together: The Mayfair Witches

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.

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.

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.

Rowan's Rage 

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.

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.

Amelia Street: The Fontevrault Outpost

The Mayfair Vampire Chronicles 

Though Merrick Mayfair is not one of the Legacy Mayfair Witches, she still represents a unique branch of the Mayfairs as a family. Hers is a branch that also descends from the gens de couleur libres--the Free People of Color. From the Mayfairs of First Street, Merrick's common ancestor is Julien Mayfair. When Merrick first came into contact with the Talamasca, she showed them a collection of old photographs of her ancestors, ones who sat for photographs in a studio owned by one of those ancestors.

Merrick Mayfair is who Louis approached for help in contacting the spirit of Claudia. Much to the dismay of David Talbot, the two not only fancy one another, but Merrick becomes the first Mayfair vampire. Courtesy of Louis. What Louis did next was what brought Lestat out of his self-imposed coma...

Merrick and Mayfair Witches Religion