‘They say she never goeth to the minister,’ added Frère Ambroise. ‘’Tis true she is reputed to give much to help the parish poor——’
‘The poor we have with us always,’ Frey Tomás interrupted. ‘Did not the blessed Master say as much—aye, and scornfully rebuke those who would have had Mary Magdalene’s embrocation sold to buy bread for them?’ He helped himself to a fresh portion of spiced ox-tongue. ‘It is no work of merit to give bread unto the hungry. If it were heaven’s will that all men should be fed, then we should have no poor, but it is stated explicitly that the poor we shall have with us always. Methinks it might be judged defiance of divine purpose to alleviate their condition. If heaven had not willed that they be poor, then they would not be poor; but since their poverty is obviously by divine decree, whoso maketh them less poor, even though it be by giving them no more than a dry crust, thwarts heaven’s will, and is therefore no better than a heretic. And since all witchcraft is a species of heresy, it follows as the night the day that heresy is also a form of witchcraft, and Holy Scripture saith expressly, “Thou shalt not suffer any witch to live.” Dixi.’
Frère Ambroise scooped a ladleful of stewed lamprey into his platter, sampled it, and found it vastly to his taste. ‘’Tis a dreadful thing to contemplate the progress which the Devil maketh,’ he said piously, speaking somewhat thickly, for his mouth was overful with victual. ‘Since the scandals of the Templars were exposed, ’tis hard to say in what guise Satan will next manifest himself. Against him and his servants only one thing avails, the stake.’
Frey Tomás gulped a cup of wine. It was not as good as his own native sherris, but ’twould pass. ‘Excellently spoken, reverend sir,’ he agreed. ‘Thou sayest very well, indeed; but in our work among the wizards of the Reich and Bohemia we found that the stake itself is not always sufficient. Were it not better that the erring soul be purified and purged by fasting, contemplation, and mild discipline for a time, so that at last, although the body be destroyed by fire, the better and immortal part be saved? To burn the adjudged witch or warlock is indeed needful, but if the sinner be burnt in his unrepentant pride he may well go in seeming triumph to the stake, and thus set a bad example to the people.’
He beamed with Christian love upon the Lady Iseult. ‘If you, Milady, in the goodness of your heart would undertake the task of working on our erring sister’s stubborn heart, setting her for some years in a sweet retreat to which you only had the key, you might by proper loving adjuration and the imposition of indulgent discipline bring her to a state of grace, so that, chastened, meek, and humble, she might at last shame the Foul Fiend and go rejoicing to the stake, a ransomed soul.’
‘Perhaps’—the Lady Iseult had not thought of this before—‘perhaps my lord would not consent. He is somewhat beholden to the witch-wife.’
‘He must consent, Milady.’ Thus the chaplain. ‘If the woman truly be a witch—and good Frey Tomás who is expert in such matters tells us that she doubtless is—why, then, it is his duty to consent. For the sake of his good, lawful vassals who have had no traffic with the Evil One, and for all the countryside, it is his duty to have her delivered up for trial.’
‘But alas, we have no court ecclesiastical to hear her case,’ the Lady Iseult objected. ‘Where shall we find a warrant for her apprehension——’
Frey Tomás answered soothingly. He was a man of law as well as of God, and knew his way among the mazes of juridical procedure. ‘If the erring sister be put in restraints—of the proper sort—and kept in peaceful contemplation for a time, her better nature will at length assert itself, and she will gladly make confession of her error and denounce herself as one of those who has had dealings with the Arch Fiend. Then there will be no warrant necessary. Self-confessed and self-accused, she may be brought before the Prince Bishop for instant sentence and delivered to the secular arm and the purifying fire without delay.’
VIII
The Cage is Prepared
Sire Raymond rode out hawking the next morning, and in his absence Lady Iseult had a busy day. In the ambulatory between the barbican and inner wall of the château was an old well, not used since the great cistern had been dug in the forecourt, and thither Lady Iseult and her stone mason and his varlets repaired. The well was housed in a small lodge of stone, but there was light enough to permit work. At Milady’s orders they set a strong iron grille across the well’s base, a foot or so above the water level, strung an iron dipper by a strong chain to the grating, then proceeded to erect a vaulted dome over the well top, taking care to leave a two-foot hole in it. In this they hinged an iron cover and secured it with a massive lock and hasp. So well the caitiffs worked at Lady Iseult’s urging that the sun was but four hours past the prime when all was done. Then Milady had compassion on the mason and his crew, and bade them come into the hall and cool their gullets with a stoup of wine.
The drink was slightly bitter, but a dusty throat excuses lack of flavor, and so they drank not one, but several cups. After that it remained but to bury them in a convenient trench, for the venom in the wine was very potent, and they all died quickly, though not painlessly.
Fourchette was very happy. Five years and more had sped since she made her compact with the Evil One, and they had been good years, full years, years packed with peace and plenty. Now came power. The Lady Iseult, albeit with bad grace, had restored Jacques to place and favor, he was treated like a grandee when he went to the castle, and even she, Fourchette the villein’s wife, a mere serf of the body, was entreated courteously, knights and squires doffing their headgear in her presence, lesser folk genuflecting as to a lady born when she passed by. Her status was assured. With the wealth of Abarbanel to back her and the power that money gives within her hand she had no longer any need of Satan, or his aid. Tomorrow she would seek the parish priest and make confession of her error, submit to such penance as he chose to inflict—be sure, Fourchette, it will not be a heavy one when you declare your intention of a gift sufficient to build a new church and furnish it with painted windows and a silver reliquary set with gold and precious jewels!—then, once again a Christian in good standing, she would take her place among the elect of the town.
Poor Satan! She had used him shabbily. He had kept his bargain to the letter; all her enemies had perished miserably, she who had been a serf and villein’s mate was now become a great lady. Almost she could feel it in her heart to pity him . . . but he was such a fool . . . why should one keep her compact with the Devil when she might have all that he offered, and give nothing in return?
Hark! What was that clamor at the door? A sudden gust of roaring tempest? How the stout oak panels shook! The iron staves that held the portal fast seemed bending under a tremendous force! Could it be a mob collected, bent on sacking this fine house of hers? They would not dare—all knew how any who offended her met quick misfortune. . . .
‘Ha, Jezebel, foul witch, vile myrmidon of Satan, we have thee!’ The groined roof echoed to the pounding of mailed feet, the firelight flashed on sword and partizan and ax. They pounced upon her like hounds on the fox when he is run to earth. Hemp chafed her tender wrists, a soldier knocked her two-horned bonnet off and spurned it with his foot; another snatched the golden chain from round her neck. A dreadful, searing pain against her face—another—they had torn the long gold pendants from her ears, dragging flesh and gold away together. A page-boy darted from the mass of men-at-arms and with his dagger slit her fine green robe from waist to hem. Two other half-grown lads rushed up, long dog-whips in their hands, and swift and pitilessly fell the whistling lashes. Her bodice had been ripped away and red, thick welts formed on her tortured back, while all the noble company laughed in high glee as she fell shuddering to the floor. But the pages whipped her up again.
‘On thy feet, witch! Would you make us carry thee to thine abiding-place?’
Before the Lady Iseult’s feet Fourchette knelt down upon her knees and bowed her head in all humility. ‘I do beseech your Ladyship to grant m
e boon of covering. Do not, I prithee, drag me forth into the streets all naked.’
A square of sacking, foul with stable-soil was brought and draped about her lash-marked, trembling shoulders. ‘’Twill be enough for thee, witch-wife; there’ll be small need of dainty raiment in the place to which thou goest!’
IX
Fourchette’s Lace
The blackness of the dungeon was so absolute she could discern no difference between open and closed eyes. If she stood in the center of the grating she could touch the stone walls of her prison each side with her out-stretched hands, nor did she need to hold her arms full-length to do it. If she stood on the grating . . . but she could not. The roof was too low to permit her to stand upright, and though she was a little woman she could not lie full-length in her cell. Sitting was the only natural posture she could assume; she could neither lie stretched out to sleep nor stand erect to ease her cramping muscles, and the blackness . . . the unutterable, inky blackness! She felt as if she smothered, it was pressing in on her like something solid; so she screamed and beat her head against the stones until she swooned, and when she came to it was still around her, crowding, bearing down upon her, suffocating her with its solidity.
She realized where they had put her. It was an oubliette, a forgetress, an in pace—for such they humorously called the lightless, almost airless dungeons where the living dead were immolated to go slowly mad if they were luckless, or find quick oblivion and surcease in insanity if fortune favored them.
Creeping across the grating with exploring hands she found the chain to which the dipper swung. Pulling it up from the brackish water, she drank. It was foul and slime-scummed, but it eased her throat, rasped raw with futile screaming, and she drank and drank again. How long had she been there? She had fainted when they brought her to the château and informed her she must spend a term in pace and would be released on one condition, that she own herself a witch and go forthwith to the stake. When she came to, she had been here—how long? Time stands still in utter darkness; she might have lain there for a day, a week—no, if she had been there so long she would feel the pangs of hunger, for she had not eaten. . . . She crawled across the grating on bruised hands and knees again. What was that her fingers touched? Something cold and sleek and greasy. She recoiled in horror from the loathsome thing; it felt like dead flesh.
She raised her fingers to her face, smelled them. It was flesh. Roast meat. And she was hungry, ravenous. Wolfishly she gnawed the bone, worrying it until no scrap of meat was left on it. Then, replete with food, she slept.
A little light shone in the darkness. No, it was not light, it was a blacker blackness, the dim outlines of a form more solid than the solid gloom of the unchanging night that filled her dungeon. ‘Fourchette!’ The voice was soft and musical; a little sad, a little mocking.
‘Yea, lord!’ She recognized it, though she had not heard it since that day in her unwindowed cabin when she made her pact with hell.
‘You are in evil case, my little one.’
‘I be in evil case, great sir, but I have no one but myself to blame. Had I not considered cheating thee——’
His almost soundless mocking laughter silenced her. ‘What would you give to be freed from this place?’
‘Alackaday, great sir, what have I left to give? My body and my soul are thine already——’
‘Yea, that I know full well. You have erred and strayed from my ways like a lost sheep, and are no more worthy to be called my bride, but I have pity on you for the service you have done me aforetime. Pluck out ten hairs from your head and weave them into a spider-web. It will not be an easy task, and many times you’ll fail at it, but if you persist you will come at last to success. When at last the work is done and a web woven to my liking—then we shall see what we shall see. Farewell awhile, Fourchette.’
Furiously she plucked the hairs from her head, eagerly she set to work to fashion them into the pattern of a spider-web. In the blackness of the dungeon she could not see what she did; before she’d worked for half a minute she had snarled the strands past hope of disentanglement. Ten more hairs, a quarter-hour’s work in blindness, another hopeless snarl. Still she persisted, pulling hair on hair, starting each new piece of work in high hope, ending in despair as black as the air of her dungeon.
Up on the bright green earth where sunrise followed sunset and season took the place of season four years passed into eternity. In the lightless dungeon where Fourchette toiled endlessly, four times four thousand years seemed to have passed. But she took no count of time, for time had long since ceased for her. Work, sleep, eat rotting meat when it was thrown to her, drink foul, stinking water from the dipper chained to the grating—that was her program, and it varied not at all from one year’s end to another’s. She was almost wholly bald, for hair on glowing golden hair had been snatched out for her weavng, yet always, soon or late, she spoiled the work. Three times a week the Lady Iseult came to the dungeon, undid the heavy lock which held the iron cover in place, and dropped a chunk of rotting meat into the cell. ‘Are you ready to confess your sin and go to the stake now, witch-wife?’ she called each time she threw the stinking food down. But there was never an answer. In the darkness she could descry Fourchette bent at work, but Fourchette did not see her. Like one possessed she wove and knotted hairs into the pattern of a spider-web, and long ago her optic nerves had atrophied. Light and darkness were all one to her.
At last she sank back on her haunches, smiling in the blackness. A perfect web had been constructed, free of tangles, knots and snarls. ‘The work is done, great sir,’ she murmured. ‘Your handmaiden awaits your judgment.’
She felt his touch upon her hairless head. A sudden fiery thrill ran through her, followed by an icy chill. Somehow, she had changed, but how she did not know. She knew only that the dungeon seemed to have expanded mightily; it was vast as a great castle, and—she could run up its smooth sides as easily as she could creep across the grating of its floor. Also, for the first time in so many years she could not count them, she could see a little—not very well, but still a little. She could make out the joints in the masonry, and they seemed as wide as highways. Slight irregularities in the squaring of the stones now seemed like hillocks to her. Had the dungeon really grown to giant size, or had she shrunk until she was no larger than the little faery folk who spun their dainty cloths by moonlight?
‘The time is come, Milady,’ Chaplain Ambroise said. ‘Let us fetch our erring sister from her place of contemplation and repentence. Tomorrow the Prince Bishop burns a hundred witches and warlocks, minus one. It would be a dainty gesture for us to complete the tale and make an even hundred penitentes for the auto da fé.’
They ringed about the dungeon entrance with their swords and partizans as if they had come out to take some savage beast or strong and fearsome robber instead of one weak woman—and her blind.
‘By’r Lakin!’ cried a soldier as they threw the dungeon cover back. He struck at something with his pike-blade, missed it, and crossed himself with more piety than he’d shown in many a day.
‘What was it, Jouffroy?’ asked the Lady Iseult.
‘Naught but a spider, Milady. It must have made its dwelling in the dungeon with the witch-wife, and been frightened by the sudden light. Folk say their bites are poisonous——’
‘Spider me no spiders, varlet. Get thee down in yonder hole and drag me out the foul witch.’
But though the soldier Jouffroy searched right diligently, and others after him, they found no trace of Fourchette.
And what became of her nobody ever knew.
The Lady Iseult’s holiday was spoilt completely. She had promised the Prince Bishop one more witch to burn, and she could not make good her promise.
Perhaps this is significant: In that part of France which was once the ancient Pays de la Montagne the peasants call a cobweb jeweled with morning dew ‘la dentelle de Fourchette’—Fourchette’s lace.
The Gentle Werewolf
&nbs
p; SPRING HAD COME TO GALILEE and summer was not far behind. Already the plain of Jordan was showing brown and bare, a desert of dun sand and dust with here and there a patch of wiry goat-grass, but in the foothills of the Lebanons the fresh soft verdure washed the slopes with a green tide that broke into a froth of blossoms on the flat crests of the knolls. Southward, in Cairo the Magnificent, the Sultan Baibas plotted war, but the citizens of Acre paid small heed to warnings brought by spies and friendly Arabs. Since Saint Louis and his hard-fighting blades sailed for France in 1245 they had lived in constant peril of the Paynim; yet their basalt walls had broken wave on wave of Moslem soldiery—and it was spring. Why worry over rumored wars when the soft breeze played among the branches of the orchards, the soil smelt sweet and warm, and the larks and linnets piped their minstrelsy in every coppice?
The men-at-arms on watch at the Gate of Saint George waved friendly greetings to the little company of youths and maidens who clattered through the tunneled entrance and out into the sunlight burnishing the high road to Tiberius. Six of them there were, two noble squires and the young knight Gaussin de Solliès, and with them three maids of the highest blood of Outremer.1
They rode without attendants, for the Peace of Jerusalem still held and they had no fear of Paynim raiders, and this was Beyond-the Sea, not France, and chaperonage was an institution strange to them. Like their cousins overseas they were, yet strangely unlike, for while in France and England maids toiled at the broidering-frame and youths rode forth on raids or hunted in the forests where the sun was cold, and few of them could form the letters of his name, these children weaned in Palestine were born to luxury and reared in ease. Their Western manners warmed and softened by long contact with the East, they had escaped the thrall of crudity, abysmal ignorance, and uncleanliness of Europe’s mediaeval thousand years without a bath. Unguents spiced with scents from Cathay and Persia were theirs; the Arabs’ vapor bath was part of their routine; once a week at least skilled masseurs came to tend them; not less than once a month a eunuch barber or deft woman shaved their bodies till they were as free of surplus hair as those of newborn infants.
Night Creatures Page 4
