Night Creatures

by Seabury Quinn

  The days sped swiftly as a weaver’s shuttle, and with the coming of high summer Gustav’s ardor seemed to cool. The meetings by the rowan tree were less and less frequent; when she came running forth from the shadow, hands lifted toward him, he was slower in dismounting from Pale Death.

  One July night when the moon was awash in a sky tremulous with silver clouds he lay with his head couched in her lap while she let down the waterfall of her hair above his face and brushed the silken ends of the unraveled strands against his lips and cheeks. ‘And thou wilt surely take me to the castle and acknowledge me as thy true wedded spouse eftsoons?’ she whispered, bending till he felt the flutter of her breath like moth-wings on his mouth.

  ‘Have I not said it, little bride of my heart? There are grave reasons for my tarrying, my father’s consent to our nuptials must be first obtained, for I am not of lawful age as yet,’ he answered somewhat petulantly. ‘Why plaguest thou me thus?’

  ‘Oh lord and master of my heart and life and soul, believe me it is not for myself alone that I ask,’ she replied, and her voice sank till he rather felt than heard the words. ‘Thy condescending love is all that thy poor Else asks. To meet thee thus beneath the greenwood tree, to feel thy arms about me and thy kisses on my lips, ach Gott, it is such heaven as I had not thought existed, but’—pride made her words shine like new-minted silver—‘there is another with us now, my lord. We are not alone in the forest.’

  ‘Herr Je, how meanest thou?’ he asked in mock-fear. ‘Dost mean the fairy-folk——’

  ‘Nay, silly one!’ her laughter rippled like the running of clear water over stones. ‘’Tis here——’ She took his hand and laid it just below the gently-swelling rondure of her bosom. ‘’Tis of thee, my Gustav, and of me. And, oh my lord, when first I knew it I felt as the ever-blessed heilige Maria must have when the Angel of the Lord appeared to her——’ Sublimity of prideful joy rendered her inarticulate, but he could feel the quickened pulsing of her heart in the hands pressing his.

  Slowly he rose to his knees, then to his feet. His hands felt cold, and the hollows of his shoulders ached suddenly with a fine pain. Each word she’d spoken ate its way into his brain as if etched by strong acid.

  To make love to a pretty peasant maiden in the moonlit forest while the little cheeping insects hymned their lyric canticles and the wind crooned a soothing song among the branches of the rowan tree, even to go through the form of marriage before an obscure priest who knew neither him nor her—that was one thing. But to stand before his cold-eyed, sneering friends and own this peasant woman as his wife, to tell his race-proud sire that he was wedded to a serf, the father of a villein wench’s child—his heart gave a cold, nauseating lurch inside his breast. ‘Auf wiedersehen, liebchen,’ he faltered as he climbed into the saddle. ‘I—I must away to the castle—my august sire——’ His farewell faded to an echo broken by the clacking of his horse’s hoofs against the flints of the roadway. And so Gustav von Hohenneitschütz und von Ketlar rode out of little Else’s life—but she had not gone out of his.

  She could not understand. Night after night she went to the trysting place by the rowan tree and waited while the stars came out and the moon swam across the sky, telling and retelling her rosary of deferred hope—‘He will come; oh, surely, any moment he will come!’—until the eastern sky grew bright and the sun rose amid a tossing surf of ruddy clouds.

  At last her desperation made her bold and, greatly daring, she trudged up the long road to the castle. She knew the risk she took in doing this, for though the stiff-necked townsmen had begun to curb the nobles in their arrogance the peasant still had no rights of property or person which the lord or his underlings were bound to respect.

  A bugle-horn was sounding as she neared the moat and a troop of cavaliers and ladies clattered through the gateway and across the drawbridge. First came the fauconiers, the men who trained and groomed the falcons, brave in livery of Lincoln green and gold and riding on small shaggy horses, then, two by two upon their blooded mounts, the gentle folk, each with a hooded hawk perched on his gauntleted left wrist.

  Her breath quickened with sudden joy, for in the foremost rank she glimpsed a tall white horse—Pale Death—and striding him in green doublet and russet cloak was Gustav.

  Beside him, laughing at some jest he made, a lady rode upon a delicately-pacing palfrey. Tall, elegantly slender, white-skinned, black of hair and black of eye she was, with thin red lips that made her white teeth even whiter as she shrilled to sudden tinkling laughter at her partner’s sally. ‘Well spoken, kinsman, thou must come to court, they would appreciate thy wit there,’ Else heard her say as they swept past her at a brisk canter.

  Pale Death gave her a whinnying greeting and would have turned his soft nose toward her, for she had often fed him tender grasses while he stamped impatiently beneath the rowan tree, but his rider jerked the bridle sharply, dragging him away as he struck spurs into his flanks.

  ‘Gustav, my lord,’ the girl raised empty, pleading hands, ‘thou comest not——’ Her voice snapped like a broken thread, for the young man glanced down at her with a look void of recognition as if she had been a roadside bush or boulder.

  ‘Who was the lady riding with the Junker Gustav?’ she asked the guardsman lolling on his pike beside the drawbridge.

  ‘It is the Gräfin Elnora von Hernsdorf,’ the man-at-arms replied negligently. ‘She is the Junker’s cousin and betrothed. They wed at Michaelmas——’

  Three men-at-arms came grinning from the guardroom. They were off duty, and the summer day was young. The pretty chit might prove amusing, though she were as mad as any hare in March.

  Else realized her peril. Once they had her inside the castle—— Like a doe pursued by greyhounds she fled headlong down the path, the guardsmen’s raucous laughter following her like hurled missiles. ‘Ach Gott,’ she moaned when she had reached the sanctuary of the forest and regained her breath a little, ‘he passed me by unheeding as if I had been a stock or stone, his horse knew me, but he——’

  A single scarlet word burned in her brain: Witchcraft! Her lord and husband was bewitched. Nothing but an evil spell could make him renounce his pledged word, only witchcraft could have wiped the memory of her kisses from his heart. She must fight fire with fire, she must find a wise woman who could lift the spell from her adored and make him own her as his lawful spouse before the world.

  It was Lammas Night, the first night in August, the Feast of Saint Peter’s Chains, when witches and warlocks and all the host of those who forswore God and served Beelzebub were gathering for their unclean worship. The sun had gone down in a riot of wrathful color and dusk had fallen early. The sky was sullen with the weight of rain that would not fall, and from every hilltop blazed the guardian fires the peasants lighted to keep off the witch-brood. Else had been wandering through the forest since the first long shadows had begun to dull the outlines of the trees. Somewhere, she knew, a witches’ coven would be meeting, somewhere thirteen lost souls would be giving adoration to the Evil One; she must find them and secure their help. A dozen times she’d thought she heard the skirking of the witches as they cleft the air on flying broomsticks, but each time it had proved a flight of water-fowl flying homeward from their feeding-grounds. Once or twice she thought she heard a witch-hag running through the woods, but when she followed she had found it a red deer or spotted buck that hurried down a by-path of the forest.

  At last, footsore and weary, she had sunk to rest beneath the rowan tree where she and Gustav had met in the happy time before he was enchanted. ‘Oh, good, kind, Herr Teufel, regard me if it pleaseth thee,’ she prayed with all the simple trustfulness she would have used in offering a petition to Saint Anne. ‘I am very tired and most miserable. My wedded husband is spellbound, and I would have one of thy people lift the spell from him. Lead me to their congregating place, good Devil, and I shall thank thee very much. Amen.’

  Like an echo to her closing words she heard a muted drumming, a hurry
ing, insistent rhythm that beckoned her like a bent finger. She knew the place from which the sound came—the fairy-ring that stood deep in the forest. A dozen times she’d crossed it with half-bated breath, for it was said to be a meeting-place of witches, yet never till that moment had she thought to look there. She ran half stumbling down the trodden woodland path, crashed through the wall of flowering briars that cut her feet and legs until the red blood spurted from them, and came at last with fluttering heart and wide eyes to the border of the clearing.

  Upon a flat stone in the center sat a creature robed in red and masked with leather. Deer’s antlers crowned his head, and from the falseface that obscured his features swept a long blue beard. One hand was hidden in his scarlet robe, in the other he held a thick club with which he drummed upon the stone, and round him danced a ghastly crew of thirteen forms, half-animal, half-human, wholly evil.

  She saw that they had human legs, thin, knob-kneed, spindle-shanked, but from the thighs up they were clad in goatskin, topped with the beasts’ heads, haired and horned. In their furred hands each bore black candles which gave a little light but more smoke, and a sharp unpleasant smell. Round and round the throne they jumped and capered, leaped and danced with squeaking, shrilling cries that made her think of rats caught in a trap.

  Scarce daring to draw breath she looked at them with wide-set, staring eyes. She knew now that she could not do it, she dared not! These were votaries of Lucifer the accursed; to speak with them, or even stay to witness their abominations would be——

  With a sudden squeaking cry one of the demons darted from the ring, leaped straight at her, and seized her by the wrists. Before she realized her plight she had been dragged into the center of the circle with the witches chattering round her, thrusting at her with their flaming candles, threatening her with claw-hooked hands.

  ‘What dost thou at our secret session, maiden?’ The seated figure’s voice was deep and rumbling, but not angry.

  ‘May it please your worship, good Herr Devil, I was not spying on you,’ she mustered courage to reply. ‘I did but seek for a wise woman who could lift a spell from one I love——’

  ‘What wilt thou pay for such a service?’ broke in the masked master of the coven.

  ‘Pay?’ she faltered, taken utterly aback. In all her life she had not touched a piece of money; except for the blue linen smock she stood in she had nothing she could call her own. ‘What can one who has nothing pay, Meinherr?’ she asked simply.

  He laughed, a booming, rumbling laugh which somehow had no mirth in it. ‘Wilt promise to give anything we ask, no matter what, if we perform this service for thee?’ he demanded.

  ‘Yea, good Herr Devil, anything that’s mine to give I’ll give thee freely, if thou wilt do this for me,’ she promised.

  ‘’Tis well. Tomorrow morning go to Margaretta’s hut hard by the water-ford, and do what she commands thee. Speak not to any of thy visit here tonight, or we shall wreak such vengeance on thee that in years to come thy story shall be used to frighten children from their naughtiness.’ He waved his hand in dismissal, and her captors led her to the margin of the clearing and thrust her out into the briar-patch, where the sharp thorns tore her tender skin until her feet and legs were criss-crossed with bright bloody weals.

  Old Margaretta’s hut was dark and dirty and overflowing with the odor of evil. A stuffed and much moth-eaten owl graced the shelf above its fireplace, a black cat with a single eye arched its back and spat at Else as she paused trembling on the threshold of the witch’s house.

  The mistress of the place was suited to her surroundings. She was clothed in evil-smelling rags no one of which matched any other in weave or color, around her neck was strung a chain of tarnished metal plates, brass rings gleamed dully in her ears and on each finger of her gnarled and dirty hands. As far as Else could discern she had but four teeth, none of which met, and she had been chewing some dark aromatic herb so that the odor of it almost stopped the girl’s breath, and discolored spittle ran down from the corners of her withered mouth and made twin lines across her bristly chin.

  ‘Come in, my dear, come in!’ she bade in a cracked, cackling voice. ‘Hast come to pay thy call on Mother Marg; good, kind old Mother Marg?’ The laugh accompanying her words was anything but good and kind, and Else would have turned and fled had not the old hag grasped her by the wrist with such a grip that she was almost fainting from the pain when finally she sank down on a stool before the empty fireplace.

  ‘And what can Mother Marg do for thee, my sweet pigeon?’ asked the crone when Else, after two attempts, found that she could not speak for very fear and loathing of her hostess.

  Now her words were loosed, and tearfully she told how she had met Gustav on Walpurgis Night, how they had loved and wed, how he had passed her by unseeing, and how he purposed to be false to his vows and take his cousin Elnora to wife.

  The old hag listened, nodding understandingly. At last, when Else had completed her recital: ‘It is his father, the graf, who has made him thus, my child,’ she announced. ‘He has cast a spell upon his son and wiped all recollection of his marriage from his mind——’

  ‘The Graf von Hohenneitschütz a warlock?’ Else asked incredulously. ‘One so noble, one so high——’

  ‘Eh, eh, thou’d be surprised at those who worship at the witch’s altar, and at the things the noble Graf von Hohenneitschütz knows,’ the beldame answered with another cackle.

  Which was quite true, for nearly every noble in the empire those days had his favorite sorcerer or witch, and as for Johann Hohenneitschütz—the old witch Margaretta had once been young and pretty, and he had met her in the grünwald, wooed, won, and left her empty-hearted. Like father like son, the hag reflected as she nodded at her tearful visitor. He had taken all and given nothing. Now to strike him through his son, his dearest treasure—— ‘Hast anything of thy true love’s?’ she asked abruptly. ‘A lock of his sweet hair, belike, or the handkerchief with which he wiped his dainty face——’

  ‘Thou’lt—thou’lt give it back to me?’ asked Else tremulously as she reached into her bosom and drew out a linen sack in which she kept a ringlet clipped from Gustav’s hair.

  ‘Of course I will, thou silly little fool!’ the hag replied as she snatched at the treasure. ‘I do but want it that I may attune my spell to him. When I am done thou’rt welcome to it. Now begone, and come not here again until I send for thee!’

  That night old Margaretta made magic. Out of candle wax filched from the parish church when none was looking she made a poppet, a doll with features strangely like the features of the Junker Gustav Hohenneitschütz, and with cloth chopped from her rag dress she clothed it in doublet and hose and painted blue eyes in its face and red lips on its mouth. Finally, upon its head she set the lock of Gustav’s hair and combed and curled it till it fell in clustering ringlets round the neck.

  This done, she laid the image on her clean-swept hearth and knelt beside it while she said six Paternosters backward and summoned her familiars:

  ‘Black spirits, white spirits,

  Spirits brown and gray,

  Hear me, heed me, give me what I pray:

  May this wax be as his heart,

  May he feel my baneful dart,

  May his flesh and spirit part

  At thy dread command!’

  She drew blood from her wrist and made a ruddy circle round the supine image, then, with a smile so terrible it would have frightened Satan, drove a long pin slowly through the waxen figure’s middle. ‘As this poppet wounds, so may you be wounded, Gustav Hohenneitschütz; as this wastes away, so may your bones and blood and body waste away to nothingness; may you suffer torments never-ceasing till you wait for death as the bridegroom waits the coming of the bride.’

  Slowly, very slowly, with the science of a surgeon and the neat precision of a torturer, she thrust the cruel pin deeper and more deeply in the yielding wax.

  And, recites the chronicle, it was at that precise momen
t that Johann Georg Ulric Mathias von Hohenneitschütz und von Ketlar clapped both hands to his right side and fell face-forward to the floor in a groaning-fit. Leeches came post-haste, but though they rubbed him with a salve made from the fat of weasels mixed with badgers’ blood and dosed him liberally with the ashes of burned toads mixed in white wine with moss scraped from a murderer’s skull, his pains increased, so that the doctors were dismissed and an exorcist sent for. Even this proved unavailing. The patient lapsed into a coma on the second day, and never regained consciousness.

  The cry of witchcraft was raised forthwith, and the officers of justice went from house to house, arresting all who could by any chance be deemed in league with Satan, old Margaretta among them.

  Her case was hopeless from the start. The one-eyed black cat, the stuffed owl, the waxen image with the bodkin thrust into its midriff would have been evidence enough to send her to the stake on charges of black sorcery even if she had not made a full confession of her sins.

  Of course she did not damn herself without persuasion. The thumbscrews proved inadequate, for she was very strong and very stubborn, but when her legs and arms had been disjointed by the rack, her feet crushed in the boot, and hot lead poured upon her naked belly she broke down and confessed fully, naming all her witch-companions in the coven and saying she had worked her mischief on the graf at the behest of Else the goose-girl.

  Else lay upon a straw-stuffed mattress, and though it was an afternoon in torrid August and the logs heaped in the wide-mouthed fireplace before which she lay flamed with almost blistering heat, she shivered as if she had been exposed to a December blast. Three men looked down on her as she lay there, three learned doctors of the law, two in the black stuff gowns with fur hoods marking them as civil justices, the third in the black cassock and white scapular of an ecclesiastic. ‘This is thy full and free confession, woman, made without fear and with no hope of favor?’ asked the chief magistrate.