Lycanthropos

by Sackett, Jeffrey

  Pierre Bourgot testified that, after having lost his sheep, he was told by a specter that they would be returned to him if he would turn from God and worship the Devil, which of course he promptly did. Whether or not Bourgot ever recovered his flock was not made clear, but his newfound powers made that a largely unimportant point. According to Bourgot, his fellow prisoner Verdung, also a servant of the Devil, provided him with a salve which, when applied to the entire surface of his body, turned him into a wolf. No explanation was given as to how he resumed his human form, but the court reasoned that, inasmuch as he obviously was in human form, he must have resumed it. This made perfect sense to the people in the court room. The idiocy of the reasoning astounded Michel de Notre Dame.

  Bourgot further testified that he and Verdung had met young Mentot at a witches’ sabbat which was conducted monthly in the woods, and which was supervised by Turks, Jews and Englishmen. Verdung and Mentot corroborated Bourgot’s testimony and added some flourishes, making reference to the number of children they had eaten and the number of wild wolves with whom they had had sexual relations. The spectators accepted all of this as voluntary testimony. Very few of them paid attention to the crushed knuckles, disjointed knees, scars and burns with which the three men seemed to have been afflicted; but Michel de Notre Dame recognized the result of torture when he saw it.

  The testimony of Janus Chaldian and the woman Claudia was of a different quality, however, though no one other than young Michel seemed to notice the difference. Yes, they were werewolves: no, they did worship the Devil; yes, they murdered and devoured people when the change came upon them; no, they had never heard of Bourgot’s salve; no, they had never been to a witches’ sabbat; no, they knew none of the other prisoners; no, to the best of their knowledge the other prisoners were not werewolves.

  But one statement made by the woman Claudia impressed Michel de Notre Dame more than anything else which was said during the proceeding, a statement which threw the court into turmoil and aroused the implacable wrath of Inquisitor General Jean Boin. She grew restless and irritable under the questioning until at last she said, "You ignorant asses! I am tired of answering your foolish questions. All I want to do is to die, so if you can kill me, be about it. Otherwise, stop pestering me with your idiocy!"

  She and her companion were then, of course, handed over to the secular arm for torture, and two days later they and the three other accused peasants were condemned to death by burning; but Michel, after freely distributing some of Monsignor d’Avignon’s gold to the attendant soldiers, heard some startling reports. The man Janus and the woman Claudia had been subjected to every torture known to the expert interrogators, the rack, the thumbscrew, the hot pincers, the ankle crusher, all of them; but not one drop of blood had been spilled, not one bone had been broken, not one tear had been shed. The soldiers crossed themselves as they told young Michel that these two must be in league with the Devil himself to be immune to the effects of torture. It was for this reason that Boin had decided to burn them separately from the others, privately and at night far from the town, so that if the judgment of the Inquisition were thwarted by the powers of hell, it would not be a public defeat which might shake the faith of the people.

  But Michel, armed as he was with a letter from Monsignor d’Avignon, was given permission to attend the secret burning, the holy execution which Boin conducted just after dusk in that cold December of 1521. He never forgot the events which transpired out in the forest clearing where Boin and the secular arm attempted to execute the sentence of the court. He dreamed about that night for the rest of his life, and his nightmares burned with the clarity of precise and horrible memory.

  Chaldian and the woman Claudia were tied to the stakes and the dried wood was piled high around their feet just as the sun began to sink down below the horizon. Boin, his face haggard and tense, nodded the order to begin, and the soldiers tossed burning torches onto the kindling. It took no more than a minute for the wood to begin to blaze brightly, and the flames danced up around the legs and chests and faces of the two condemned prisoners. Chaldian and the woman Claudia grimaced and twisted their bodies as the fire enveloped them, but they did not cry out, they did not plead or beg, they did not scream or weep. And though the flames consumed their clothing, they themselves did not burn.

  Boin saw that the flames were leaving them untouched, and he muttered, "Retro me. Satanas!" as the soldiers crossed themselves nervously and young Michel de Notre Dame came closer to the burning stakes so as to see more clearly the faces of the two prisoners. The young student shook his head in wonder as Janus Chaldian looked up at the full moon which had just made it appearance in the absence of the sun, and cried, "God, if a God there be, let us burn, let us die!"

  "Blasphemer!" Boin shouted. "Do you doubt God’s very existence on the threshold of death?!"

  Chaldian paid him no heed. "God, Gott, Dieu, Bogu, Allah, by whatever name you acknowledge, I beg you, if you exist, let us die, let us die, let the flames devour us!"

  "Janus..." the woman shouted over the roaring fire, "it comes, Janus...it comes..." And then she began to scream and writhe in agony, and her companion began to scream and writhe in agony, and for a moment Boin and Michel and the soldiers nourished a hope that the fire was consuming them. That hope died as Chaldian and Claudia began to change.

  Michel de Notre Dame squinted his eyes, certain that the dark shadows of the flames and the unearthly glow of the moon were combining to confound and confuse his vision, for what he saw happening could not possibly have been true; and a few moments later, as the prisoners’ screams were reduced to bestial howls and the claws began to tear at the ropes and the fanged jaws champed hungrily and the snarls and growls grew louder and more furious, the young man turned and ran wildly from the clearing. The werewolves ripped their bonds asunder and flew out from the inferno to visit death upon their tormenters.

  Young Michel de Notre Dame had counted himself fortunate, blessed, protected by God’s Holy Angel, because he had survived that night. Many of the others present did not live to see the dawn, for the outraged werewolves feasted hungrily on them in the eerie, flickering light which came from the would-be execution flames. Boin escaped also, and he ordered the records of the trial expurgated so as to delete all reference to the two demons who had escaped the justice of the Church. From that day forth, the official account of the trial of the werewolves of Poligny would contain not one word about Janus Chaldian and the woman Claudia. But Michel de Notre Dame remembered them. He remembered them in his waking moments, and in his dreams, and in his nightmares...

  ...and now it was forty-five years later, now it was the spring of 1566, and Michel de Notre Dame was an old man, and he was wearing silk and gold upon his body and the king’s own ring upon his long, bony finger, and he was standing in the midst of a busy Paris street, staring into the faces of damnation itself.

  He had done much over the past forty-five years. He had earned a reputation as a prophet and a seer, and his cryptic prophecies had come true often enough to make his name known to educated men all over Europe. When Michel de Notre Dame sat down in the privacy of his chambers and gazed into the candle flame, his trances afforded him visions of the future which he structured into the strange, confusing quatrains whose evocative lines were studied and argued about and interpreted in every corner of Christendom.

  But his success and his fame and his self-confidence did not afford him the strength not to tremble when he found himself face to face with the demons.

  "You are the seer Nostradamus?" Janus Chaldian asked. The old man nodded slowly.

  "We have heard of your wisdom and your powers," the woman Claudia said. "We need your help."

  Nostradamus swallowed hard. "I... I know you," he said, his aged voice trembling. "I was...I was at Poligny, in 1521. I was there that night... that night when Jean Boin consigned you to the flames... I remember you... I remember you both..."

  Chaldian and Claudia exchanged relieved looks
and the man said, "I am pleased, lord Astrologer, for I will not now need to tell you my tale nor attempt to convince you of its truthfulness."

  "Wh...what do you want from me?" the old man asked.

  "We want to die," the woman replied simply.

  Nostradamus nodded nervously. "I can try..." he said. "I cannot say that I will succeed, but I will try..."

  But he did not try to kill them, for he knew that they could not be killed. He took them to his private chambers and had them busy themselves with Casper Peucer’s recent book about the werewolves of Livonia, Commentarius de Praecipibus Divinationum Generibus, telling them that some clue to their affliction might be found in the text. Janus could not read Latin, but, much to her surprise, Claudia seemed to be able to, so she read aloud and translated it into French for her companion as Nostradamus excused himself on the pretext of an errand for the King, promising that he would return quickly.

  He did indeed return quickly, with a contingent of soldiers from the Palace. The old astrologer knew that these two demons could be managed while they were in their human guises, and he knew that the next full moon would be in three days time. He had a scant seventy-two hours in which to prepare a prison for the demons, and he set about the task with all of the enthusiasm and dedication of an old man who saw an opportunity to render one last service to God before his departure from this world.

  Nostradamus was known, respected, and feared by everyone connected to the government, and it did not take him long to learn that in the nether reaches of the dungeons of the Bastille, that massive one-time castle, now prison in the center of Paris, there existed a treasury stronghold unused since the days of Philip Augustus; a stronghold designed as an impregnable repository for gold and silver and, if need be, the king himself; a room surrounded by stone walls four feet thick; a room whose only window was a narrow slit in the stone no more than ten inches wide and four inches high, a slit which did not even look out at the world but rather connected the stronghold to another cell in the bowels of the prison, through which neither sunlight nor, more significantly, moonlight would ever pass; a room which did not even have a door, but merely a narrow hole in its ceiling, wide enough for a human being to be passed through and lowered the thirty feet to the floor of the stronghold, a hole which could be easily secured by more stone and iron and massive, immovable weight.

  A room into which the demons would be cast.

  Janus Chaldian allowed himself to be confined without protest or resistance, but the woman Claudia fought like an angry cat against the soldiers who forced her through the hole in the ceiling, allowing her to fall the thirty feet to the stone floor below. They did not know, but Nostradamus knew, that she had broken no bones, sustained no injuries, shed no blood.

  The old seer waited nervously that first night of the full moon, wondering if sheltering the two demons from the moonlight would keep them from the change, wondering if the moon were the harbinger of their curse or the creator of their curse or merely its distant companion, wondering if he were that night to die the death that he had escaped forty-five years before. He sat in his chambers, reading and waiting. Night fell, and no demon came to his door. Midnight came, and still he was alone in his chambers. At last, when the clock struck two, he could restrain his curiosity no longer and he went to the Bastille.

  He walked alone down the long, dark flights of stairs which led lower and lower into the depths of the prison. The guards, their faces white and their hands trembling, would not accompany him as he went down to the stronghold. As he stood silently upon what was the ceiling of the subterranean room, he reflected that the sheets of rock and the blocks of iron which he had ordered placed upon the narrow entrance hole should have blocked any sounds coming from below. He reflected that the thick stone walls and the thick ceiling should have provided a soundless barrier between the world without and the perdition within.

  And yet through the thick stone and the thick iron and the high space between the floor and the ceiling of the stronghold he was still able to hear, soft and muted but distinct, the screaming, shrieking, furious howls of the captive werewolves, the creatures whose internal demons were so powerful that even the absence of moonlight did not blunt their hellish rage. But they were unable to escape, for even their prodigious strength was not adequate to the task of moving tons of solid rock.

  Nostradamus returned the next night, and it was the same. He had succeeded where Jean Boin had failed. The world was safe from the power of the murdering demons.

  In June of 1566, Michel de Notre Dame, called Nostradamus, seer and prophet, alchemist and astrologer, felt his own life ebbing to an end. Two days before his death, Nostradamus did three things.

  First, of course, he made out his will.

  Second, he left secret private orders for the commander of the Bastille, orders prohibiting him from ever, for any reason, opening the stronghold or releasing its prisoners, orders which were designed to be transmitted to his successor and his successor’s successor and so on down through the ages.

  And third, the aged astrologer sat down and stared into the candle flame as he had so often over the past thirty years, seeking one final trance, one final vision of the future; and once again he saw that all human effort fades to insignificance when faced with the inexorable march of the centuries. He saw the year 1789. He saw the angry Parisian mob attack the Bastille in their revolutionary fervor. He saw them tear down the hated symbol of royal authority. He saw Janus Chaldian and the woman Claudia stumble out into the world, dazed, mute, blinded by the light after centuries of darkness, their tortured minds shattered and mad. And he saw the distant night sky of two centuries hence illuminated by the cold, full moon.

  Nostradamus died on June 18, 1566. His last vision, his last quatrain, was found beside his bed and later inserted at random into his Book of Centuries:

  Mis tresor templecitadins hesperiques

  Dans icelui retiré en secret lieu.

  Le templeouvrir les liens fameliques.

  Reprens ravis proie horrible au milieu.

  Western citizens place a treasure in a temple, put back there in a secret place. The chains of famine open the temple. Recaptured and ravished, a horrible prey is in their midst.

  As the old seer lay upon his deathbed, he wondered if he should have abandoned the habit of decades. He wondered if his final quatrain should have been a bit less cryptic.

  Weyrauch removed a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow. Louisa had once been so carried away by Kaldy’s soft and flowing voice, so enraptured by the memories which were being awakened in him, that she had again long since stopped taking notes. "Two hundred years?" she whispered.

  "Two hundred and twenty-three years, I suppose," Kaldy replied. "I knew that it had been quite a long time."

  "What happened when you were released?" Weyrauch asked.

  Kaldy shrugged. "What always happens. We changed, we killed, we wandered, we wondered. We went to England for a while, and to India, to Russia and to Hungary. Always the same." He sighed. "Always the same."

  "But two hundred years!" Louisa repeated. "Locked away in the darkness for two hundred years!"

  Kaldy nodded. "It was not pleasant. When Claudia and I were released, we were like mad people for a long while. But slowly, some memory returned. We knew our names. We knew what we were. What we are."

  "Your name seems to have changed," Weyrauch observed, "but hers did not. Why is that?"

  "Who knows?" Kaldy replied, his soft voice betraying a hint of irritation. "What difference does it make? For all I know my name is neither Janus Chaldian nor Janos Kaldy, and her name may not really be Claudia."

  "Do you remember back farther now, Herr Kaldy?" Louisa asked. "Now that you remember your imprisonment..."

  "No, Madam, I am sorry. It was not merely imprisonment which blunted my memory. It was the weight of time."

  Louisa shook her head. "Such a horrible thing to do. Such a horrible thing, to lock people up and j
ust...just leave them there to rot..."

  Kaldy sat up upon the pallet and stretched his arms with a delicate, feline motion. "Nostradamus was only doing what he thought was right, Madam. I cannot condemn him for that." He paused. "And let us face the facts. For two hundred and twenty-three years, Claudia and I did not kill, so perhaps the old seer was doing mankind a great service."

  Louisa allowed a long, tense breath to escape from between her lips. "You are a forgiving man, Herr Kaldy."

  "I am a murderer, Madam. I am a werewolf. How can I bear ill will toward anyone who seeks to keep me from killing? The only resentment I feel toward Nostradamus is that he did not make an attempt to destroy me." Kaldy closed his eyes and rubbed them tiredly. "He would have failed, of course."

  "And before your imprisonment," Weyrauch asked. "No other memories? Nothing before that experience at Poligny?"

  "Nothing."

  Weyrauch nodded. "Then we must try again, go back farther. We must know the how and the why of this."

  Kaldy smiled a Weyrauch with amusement. "Why must we know?" he asked. "So that I can be released from this hell in which I exist? Or so that your friend Colonel Schlacht can figure a way of using my curse to further his own evil ambitions?"

  Weyrauch flushed slightly. "Please, Herr Kaldy. I think that you know me better than that."

  Kaldy lay back down, turning his eyes away from Weyrauch. "I know you better than you think, Herr Doctor. I have known people like you for centuries, and please do not think that I am unsympathetic. But I have a very difficult time appreciating so profound a dedication to one’s own survival, when all I want to do is end my existence."

  Weyrauch bristled. "Herr Kaldy, that is a very easy thing for you to say, but allow me to suggest that there must have been a time when living meant more to you than dying!"

  "Yes, there must have been such a time," Kaldy laughed. "There must have been such..." He stopped laughing abruptly and his brow furrowed. "There must have...there must..." He fell into a pensive silence.