Curse of a Winter Moon

by Mary Casanova

  THE STAKES

  December 24

  With the fervor of market day or a Church holiday, the square filled with villagers. Suddenly I remembered. Today was a Church holiday. It was Christmas Eve.

  Hauling wood planks, several carpenters walked to the platform near the scaffolds and soon began to hammer. Around a sturdy pillar of wood, other workers stacked kindling high.

  A horse’s hooves clattered across the square. I kept strumming slowly, my mind somehow distant from my fingers. I glanced up. The abbot, heavily robed in black, his fleshy face tinged red, rode his horse toward me, then pulled to a stop in front of me.

  “Ah, such music in our midst,” said the abbot. “A source of comfort to the people.”

  I stopped strumming. “Abbot Joseph,” I began, trying to keep my voice calm, to hide how much like a worm I felt, cold and squirming before a preying bird. “May I have a word—about my brother and father, both wrongly accused?”

  To my surprise, he nodded.

  “Come,” he said.

  Though I was reluctant to leave my father, I rose, my legs stiff and awkward. I’d seize the chance to plead my father and brother’s case. It was, indeed, a rare opportunity. To have earned the ear of the abbot—this alone was a miracle. A faint flame of hope lit within me.

  Abbot Joseph spun his horse away and headed to the church. Hundreds of years old, it towered above the square. I quickly encased my lute, slung it across my back, and dashed after him.

  At the church, a monk led the abbot’s horse away. I followed the abbot through the side door before it closed.

  Candles burned in the foyer. The abbot’s footsteps clattered along the gleaming marble floor. I followed through a passageway, then another, and soon stood in a brightly colored room. Embroidered wool carpets covered the stone floor. A fire burned bright, and warmth poured from the massive hearth.

  Colored light flowed through three tall stained-glass windows. One depicted Michael the Archangel, standing with his sword drawn, his foot upon the head of a serpent. The next showed an angel protecting Daniel from the lions in a pit. The third showed a figure robed in white, leading three prisoners from flames, untouched. My dream! I was amazed at how similar my dream had been to these images. If only I could hope for a rescue from such heavenly warriors. Sadly, I’d seen such wonders only in the tapestries, glass windows, and sculptures owned by the Church, never in real life.

  Seated behind an oak desk, the abbot wrote on scrolls set before him. His chair was high-backed with red velvet cushions framed by ornately carved arms and legs, the only chair in the room. I stood across from him, waiting, hands at my sides.

  A monk entered, bowed from his waist, and laid another scroll across the abbot’s desk; when the abbot nodded, the monk removed himself to the far corner of the room.

  I grasped the edges of my jerkin. Even now, the stakes were being prepared in the square. Maybe the abbot only intended to have me play my lute. I couldn’t wait any longer. “My brother and father …” I began.

  Abbot Joseph held up the palm of his hand and kept his eyes upon the parchment and words scribbled in black ink. “You will wait.”

  I held my tongue and studied the abbot as he dipped his quill in the inkwell and continued to write. Perhaps he was signing something about the prisoners. Despite Church warnings, despite the dangers, more than anything I wanted to read what was on that paper. I would learn. I would find a way to rise above my ignorance. I would find a way to teach myself, if necessary. As my parents had hoped, I would learn to read.

  Finally, the abbot set down his quill and met my eyes.

  “I can do nothing for your father,” he said, the stain on his forehead a deep crimson. He tapped the scroll. “This is a statement from last night’s inquiry. Your father confessed to being a heretic. The laws regarding heresy are strict and immovable. To possess heretical literature, to continue in Huguenot thinking, is punishable by death. He will burn at the stake.”

  “But he’s …” My throat closed.

  The abbot squinted with impatience. “What has been decided is beyond you or me.”

  I understood. The Church had rules, and even an abbot was subject to a bishop, who was in turn subject to the cardinal, who was subject to the pope himself. And the pope was the very instrument of God.

  I forced myself to stand tall. Things were even beyond the abbot’s control. I struggled to find my voice. “And what of Jean-Pierre, my brother,” I began, my voice faltering, “he’s only a child.”

  The abbot ran his finger along the parchment. “Your brother’s fate is not yet sealed. The villagers will tear him apart if he isn’t burned at the stake. He cannot stay in Venyre, you must realize that.” He paused, glanced at the stained-glass windows, then looked again at me. “If he is truly a loup garou, as accused, we will learn that soon enough. These fears”—he dismissed them with a wave of his hand—“prey upon the minds of people. Until we know more about your brother, he could be kept safe at a monastery far from here.”

  I felt numb. My lower lip trembled. “M-merci, Abbot Joseph.”

  “Not too quickly,” said the abbot. He picked up his quill and stroked its long purple feather. “A village is like this,” he said, separating the feather with his fingers into a hundred small parts. “When things get out of control, the Church must”—he closed his hand over the feather and smoothed it into one piece again—“make things right. And in many ways, all the churches and villages are like a bird’s many feathers working as one—like the Holy Ghost.”

  “My brother,” I blurted. “Then he won’t be burned … you’ll send him away.”

  The abbot snapped the quill in half. “There is a price.”

  I waited and held my breath. Waited for the abbot’s words to decide my brother’s fate.

  “There is a price,” the abbot repeated, “for your brother’s freedom. You think I ask you here for the pleasure of your company?” He laughed to himself. “As Christ said, ‘There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for a friend.’ The price,” he said, “is this: your life for his.”

  I stood firm, but inside I staggered.

  The abbot paused, expressionless. He crossed his arms, sat back in silence, and waited. The church bells began to ring loudly, clanging through the village. “You don’t have much time to decide,” he said.

  The words I could never erase from my mind, my mother’s last wishes, my father’s plea, now filled my head. Tell Marius to take good care of his brother. The bells continued to ring. My answer came quickly, before I could change it out of fear for the flames.

  “Yes,” I said, “I will trade my life for his at the stake.”

  Abbot Joseph laughed. “Not the stake. But I see you have a good heart. No, your life will be spent in service to God, playing your lute as a monk, in exchange for your brother’s—he will be set free.” The abbot rose and adjusted the cap upon his head.

  “Music helps us rise above earth’s troubles,” he whispered. “It is a true gift.”

  Then he rolled the scroll and handed it to the attending monk. “Take this,” he commanded, “and notify Father Arnaud.”

  THE PRISONERS

  I followed the abbot and monk into the bright morning light. From the guardhouse, soldiers led nearly a dozen barefooted people strung together—seven men and five women—to the stake. Ropes circled their necks and fastened their hands behind their backs. Their heads were shaved bare, nicked red in spots. Among them, the two men who had arrived in cages were now walking skeletons.

  A few, including my father, had cloth bags of gunpowder tied around their necks, to help the accused die more quickly from explosion and spare them the agony of burning slowly. My father held his head high, neck muscles straining from the weight of the gunpowder. Marguerite. She must have found her way to the guardhouse to provide this strange act of kindness.

  The mercenary and soldiers shouted at the crowd. “Back up, unless you want to burn along with the others!�
�

  It was just as Brother Gabriel had said. Fear was spreading like grass fire. I hated my own helplessness. What use was a lute on my back against what was happening?

  “They’ll burn too fast!” a man shouted. “Remove the gunpowder! Dip the heretics from the scaffold! Make them suffer for their sins!”

  I felt ill. I had heard of towns where heretics were raised and lowered by ropes, in and out of the flames, as a way to prolong their suffering. God, not here. I could not bear to watch.

  Soldiers chained the prisoners to the wooden beam, then hammered the links fast to the post. Facing outward, in a tight circle around the stake, the accused stood quietly. Wood was stacked in long lengths around the base.

  From a nearby platform, Abbot Joseph raised his arm. “Villagers of Venyre,” he called. “We have nothing to fear. When God is for us, who can be against us?”

  My father’s voice rang out. “And God is with us! May He forgive you your ignorance, your haughty pride!”

  “Silence,” commanded Abbot Joseph, “or you will lose your tongue!” He inhaled so sharply that his nostrils pinched, then he continued. “Let the heretics, the workers of sorcery and evil—let them all perish in fires much kinder than the fires of eternal damnation. What mercy is there for those who turn against the Holy Church, the pope, the very heart of God?” Then he read a list of names and their convictions.

  “Catherine Perilleau … heretic!”

  “Michel Cézanne … heretic!”

  As the rest of the names were read, I pressed through the crowd, as close as possible toward my father. The rope cut into his neck. His name was read last.

  “Emanuel Poyet … heretic!”

  Crying and cursing filled the air around me.

  “Papa!” I cried. “May angels save you! Forgive me, for I cannot!”

  My father’s eyes, full of deep pain and deep love, met mine.

  “Where is the boy? The loup garou?” someone shouted.

  Just then, a guard came from the guardhouse carrying a small, limp body between outstretched arms toward the abbot. The crowd grew silent and it parted before the guard. I knew in an instant from the dark hair, the fair skin, that the body he carried was Jean-Pierre. “He is dead,” said the guard as he approached the abbot.

  “The boy,” the abbot repeated to the crowd from his platform, “is dead. Sickness—pray it isn’t the plague—spreads quickly to the wicked. All the more reason to rid Venyre of such evil.”

  A murmur went up from the crowd. Villagers began to cross themselves, then cheering filled the air.

  “Dead?” I cried, my voice lost amidst the other voices. I rushed toward the guard. The crowd closed in before I could get close enough, but in a glimpse, I saw Jean-Pierre’s grayish-white skin, his eyes closed.

  Whatever hope remained was trampled within me. Not my brother. Not Jean-Pierre.

  My chest filled with rage. I lunged, fists clenched, toward the abbot standing on his platform. With a jerk, I was stopped short, yanked back with strong hands and arms. I strained forward, strained against whoever held me. “Let me go!”

  “Marius Poyet,” the abbot called out over my head, “will redeem his family’s wickedness by choosing to dedicate his life in service to God at St. Benedict’s.”

  He gazed down at me; sunlight struck the red birthmark on his forehead. “This day will pass, Marius. Your music, through the years ahead, will be a welcome gift in God’s house.”

  THE FIRE

  I twisted around, arm raised to strike whoever held me back. My eyes met Brother Gabriel’s, his skin ashen beneath the cowl of his frock.

  “They’re going to burn my father!” I wailed. “They’ve killed my brother, and you hold me back?”

  “Come,” Brother Gabriel said gravely. “I’m here to take you away.”

  Then he seized my arm, and walked me steadily through the crowd, away from the stake. I struggled to break free and turn back. At the edge of the square my uncle stopped and brought his face to mine.

  “Listen!” he said, his forehead gleaming with perspiration. “There is nothing—nothing—we can do for your father or your brother now.”

  “Light the fires!” the mercenary bellowed in the distance.

  I turned my head to look as soldiers laid torches to wood around the base of the stake. Then smoke puffed upward, enveloping the prisoners in a gray cloud.

  “Papa!” I cried, my heart wrenched from my chest. I fell to my knees. The smell of wood and burning flesh met my nose. I didn’t want to breathe any of it in. I groaned like a wounded animal. How could this be happening?

  From the crowd rose screams and shouting, cursing and cheering, and pleas for help and pleas for mercy. “Burn the heretics!”

  “God help them!”

  “Spare them!”

  “Let them burn!”

  “Mother Mary!”

  I clapped my hands over my ears.

  Brother Gabriel gripped my shoulder, yanked me to my feet, and forced me to keep moving. “We must leave, right now while everyone is fixed on the fire. If you stay, the crowd will turn on you next. I received your message, but these are fires I cannot put out.”

  My legs were iron weights, yet they kept me moving away from the stake, past the smithy, and past the shadowed archway, where the dog was lying. He jumped up and trotted alongside as we neared the eastern gate.

  So this was the bargain, then, planned ahead of time, that my uncle would lead me back to the monastery to put my life beneath the yoke of a monk’s robe. And for what? So I could share my gift of music with a corrupt abbot, the man who had brought on this cruelty, this injustice, who had allowed both my father and my brother to die?

  As we stepped outside the gate, the guard who’d carried my brother strode toward us, empty-handed.

  “My brother?” I demanded. “Where did you put him?”

  “Ditch beyond the wall. Could be the plague.”

  I ran ahead to the ditch east of the olive grove. Several steps away from a half dozen other bodies lay Jean-Pierre, face down.

  “Marius! Don’t touch him. If it’s the plague or the sweats, you’ll die along with him. I know you love him, but—”

  I didn’t obey. I flipped my brother over and pushed my head against his small chest. A grief wider and deeper than any cavern I could imagine filled me. I wanted to lie down, to give up completely and die.

  Nearby, the dog began to sniff at the corners of a rolled blanket holding a body. “No!” I shouted, and the dog shrank to the ground and withdrew.

  In the span of days, my whole world had toppled. What kind of God could do this? I was going crazy, stuck in a nightmare that would not end. I seized my brother by his shoulders and shook him, shook him for dying, shook him hard, shook him until my tears flowed.

  “Marius,” said my uncle. “Marius, stop.”

  Something small and gray flew from Jean-Pierre’s mouth. The medicine pebble.

  Jean-Pierre had obeyed me and placed it beneath his tongue. If only my plan had saved him. I dropped my arms and hung my head.

  “Marius,” came Brother Gabriel’s voice, pressing and urgent. “We have no time. Nothing can be done now. Please trust me.”

  Suddenly, air wheezed from my brother’s lips, then came an audible filling of his chest. I jumped back. Slowly, slowly, my brother’s breathing deepened.

  “Brother Gabriel!” I shouted, not taking my gaze from my brother. His amber eyes were fixed in a distant stare, but after a few moments, he blinked. His eyes focused and settled on me.

  “Marius,” he said, his tongue thick around the word.

  I was stunned, unable to speak or move. How could this be? Then I gripped my brother by his shoulders, his body sagging against mine, and held him fast.

  “Praises to God!” said Brother Gabriel, tugging at my sleeve. “He’s alive. Now, for the love of mercy—”

  I couldn’t move. Jean-Pierre’s heart beat against mine.

  “I did what you said,” wh
ispered Jean-Pierre. “At the guardhouse … the pebble. I was so scared. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “You did just fine,” I said.

  I didn’t want Jean-Pierre to see the nearby bodies. I held my face close to his. His eyes had shut again.

  “Keep your eyes closed,” I said, then scooped him up and carried him in my arms like a bundle of rushes. I glanced back at the eastern gate, wondering if Celestin was watching—but no one was there. He, too, must have left his post to watch the burning. I turned toward the monastery. My life lay ahead there—an endless string of predictable gray days. And Jean-Pierre would serve out his life, undoubtedly, in the same way, but at a distant place. At least he was alive.

  Brother Gabriel shook his head. “No, Marius. This way,” he said, pointing to two donkeys in the distance on the edge of the olive grove. You and your brother must move on, no matter the abbot’s orders. Your lives would be at risk if you stayed.”

  He strode toward the donkeys and I followed, carrying Jean-Pierre, the dog flagging my side.

  “Don’t look back,” I told Jean-Pierre, his arms around my neck. “Don’t open your eyes until I tell you.”

  The donkeys grazed on a patch of dry winter grass. The snow had already melted clear away. Brother Gabriel untied the animals and motioned to the smaller donkey.

  “Sit here,” I said, setting Jean-Pierre upon the donkey, its winter coat thick and shaggy. “Open your eyes—and hang on.”

  Jean-Pierre opened his eyes. His skin was pale, but life glimmered in his face. “I’ve always wanted,” he whispered, falling forward and wrapping his arms around the animal’s neck, “a donkey.”

  “We must make haste,” my uncle said. “By evening, the abbot will expect to see you at St. Benedict’s.” He glanced at the sun, nearing its midcrossing of the sky. “He will not send out searchers until tomorrow morning. By then, you will be far away.”