Asimov's SF, April-May 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “As you wish,” said the knight.

  But at that moment the inn door flew open. There were faces I knew; the innkeeper, even more grizzled than when last I saw him, some villagers who had given evidence in the matter of the Marshall of France; but I did not yet see the face I most dreaded to see, and so I breathed a sigh of relief. My traveling companions must have mistaken it for relief at seeing that this was not, after all, a village of ghosts.

  “Father Lenclud,” the innkeeper said, “it's best you came in.”

  I started to protest, “We are bound for Tiffauges,” but he interrupted me. “What you want,” he said, “is all in here.”

  The door opened wider. We saw tables inside, and we could smell a rabbit stew on the pot. There was a smoky light and the air heated up just a little; I could see the others were tired, and perhaps, perhaps the person I wished to avoid was no longer there. After all, it had been ten years; no, twelve. Perhaps I was safe after all. Perhaps she had gone away.

  And in the grand scheme of things, it was, perhaps, a smallish sin, for which I had suffered seven painful penances already.

  We piled inside, leaving our cart and our belongings unguarded; for who would steal from God? and we were offered benches inside; there were villagers there, and children, too, scurrying in the shadows; the walls were sooty and greasy; but the fire blazed, and the stew was filling.

  The innkeeper said nothing while we ate, except to remind me of his name, which was Henri. I learned at supper that our knight was another Jean of Nantes; but this one we called Johan, because he had a Flemish mother.

  It was only when we had eaten our fill that Henri was ready to tell us why the villagers had sent a letter to His Grace in Nantes.

  “We've got him locked in the cellar,” he said.

  “And he is well rested, and has eaten?” It is true that we torture people, but we do love them; I never want to begin an investigation with threats and violence; that comes all too soon.

  “Yes, he's eaten all right.”

  “Twelve fish,” said a woman from the back. “I counted them myself. Raw. And all the bones. You've never heard such a crunching sound, mon pére! Frightened out of our wits, we was.”

  “Bid her come out of the shadows,” I said, “she seems to have a lot to say.” And I regretted it as soon as I said it, because when she stepped into the light I recognized her, as I should have from the voice.

  She knew me too. But she had the courtesy to lower her gaze, and gave no sign of it. In the firelight, in her grubby peasant shift, she was still beautiful, though. I looked longer than I ought to have. I was glad I had remembered to pack the flagellum.

  “Your name?” I asked her, already knowing the answer.

  “I am Alice, mon pére. I am the innkeeper's wife.”

  So she had married. How much did the innkeeper know?

  “Alice,” I said softly, “tell me about the man in the cellar. If it is indeed a man; I have read the letter to the bishop, but we tend to view reports of devils in the flesh with a degree of cynicism.”

  The villagers looked at each other. Alice looked at me. Was there a hint of reproach? She did not reveal much. In the void in the conversation, all we could hear was the sizzle from the fireplace.

  “Children, come out now,” the innkeeper said at last, speaking at the shadows and at the space under the stairs. “The inquistor won't hurt you.”

  I realized then what it was that had subdued the noise. It was fear.

  'You have to forgive us,” Henri said, “they haven't trusted many people since ... you know.”

  Three children emerged. One was a little girl with stringy hair, perhaps seven; an older girl, on the cusp of womanhood, her shapeless smock belying an incipient voluptuousness. The two girls curtsied. Then there was the boy. He was perhaps eleven; he had long blonde hair, a dirty face, and clear blue eyes. He seemed so familiar ... I could not place him ... he did not look at me at all. But Alice did. At me and him. And in that awkward moment I understood everything, and I knew that her marriage must have been loveless, born from desperation.

  “They saw him,” the innkeeper said. “They'll tell you.”

  “We're not to tell him anything,” said the boy, defiant. “They're going to burn him at the stake. He's our friend.”

  “Let the church be the judge of that now, Guillaume,” Alice said. Was her voice not edged with cynicism?

  “Guillaume, sit by me,” I said, with all the gentleness I could muster. “Tell me of your friend.” I reached out to touch his cheek. He flinched quite visibly, but overcame it, and sat on the bench. Meanwhile, the musician, the knight, and the torturer were already heavily into their ale. I called for Brother Pierre to take notes.

  Guillaume kept his distance from me. I did not yet dare think the unthinkable: that I should acknowledge him, that he should have my name, that I could, in this peasant village, live on; that I had a son.

  He said, “I'm sorry about the mud, mon pére; that was my idea. Not any of the others'.”

  I remembered that the strange man was reportedly coated in mud. I waited for him to go on.

  “It was a week ago. I wouldn't have seen the fire, but there was this noise, first. It was a rustling sound. I thought it might be a wolf, and we've only the one cow. I took a knife. When I stepped out of our hut it was almost as bright as day. When I looked up it was like the sun was in the sky, only bigger and more blue.”

  “Our Guillaume is prone to fancifying,” the innkeeper said. “You tell mon pére the truth now, you hear, don't exaggerate.” To me he grumbled, “The boy should have been whelped in a castle, not a hut, the way he carries on.”

  “Go on, Guillaume.”

  “I'm not making it up,” he said. “I can show you where the fire fell.”

  “An accursed spot!” said Henri. “No one has gone there save the boy since it happened. A whole circle of forest seared into a blackened clearing. If it isn't the devil's work, I don't know what is.”

  “Me and my sisters,” said Guillaume, “we wanted to keep him as a pet. But someone saw him and denounced us to the inquisition. Are you going to torture him, mon pére? Are you going to torture me?"

  I would have embraced him then and there. But I knew that the pleasure of having him in my arms, the warmth of human love, was not for me; I am married only to Christ. And so I only said, “Guillaume, take me to that place.”

  “By all the saints!” said the innkeeper. “Can you not burn the demon and be done with it?”

  “I'll say this only once,” I said. “Please listen. The men of the village could have handled this matter by themselves. They could have clubbed the stranger to death, hacked him up, buried him in an unmarked grave; without a feudal lord nearby, with the village's legal status still under negotiation, such a crime would almost certainly not have been noticed by anyone. But you chose to involve the Church. That was the right and honorable thing to do. But the Church is here now, and things will be done according to procedure. If a trial is necessary it will be a fair trial. If torture is demanded it will be strictly in accordance with the Papal Bull Ad Exstirpanda, which set appropriate guidelines over a century ago. If execution is required, it will be carried out by the secular arm in Nantes. We are not barbarians, Henri, and we shall not fall prey to peasant superstitions.”

  And that, it was to be hoped, was that.

  * * * *

  And so I went out again into the cold, not yet having had a moment in private with Alice—for I dreaded that possibility—accompanied by Guillaume, by Brother Paolo, who fears nothing, and Brother Pierre, and by Chevalier Johan and his squire, who held aloft a burning torch.

  We entered the woods. Guillaume walked swiftly, knowing the location of every tree. We reached the clearing in only an hour, and when I stood there, with the bright moon shining down on every charred stalk, and the wind howling, I saw many hallmarks of the devil's work.

  For example, the clearing was completely and perfectly circular. N
o random falling object, no hand of man could have made it so. The snow had melted and refrozen into a glassy shield, from whose center there projected a strange metal artifact. I say metal, but it had a purplish sheen unlike any steel or bronze I had ever looked upon.

  Guillaume took me by the hand. “I'll show you the spaceship,” he said. “Come, mon pére. There's nothing living; it's just twisted metal.”

  “Spaceship?” said Johan the knight.

  “That's the word he used,” Guillaume said.

  He tugged at my hand again, and, all in innocence, he tugged at my heart, too. I followed him, bold as he was, for he knew nothing of the dark powers, and I could not afford to show fear. The artifact was mostly concealed under the ice; we were seeing only the tip of it. It was a thing of delicate needles, of twists and twirls of metal, of gossamer webs no mortal hand could have woven. When I saw it my heart sank, for I knew that whatever was in the cellar of the inn was no lost village idiot. I prayed in my heart to the Blessed Virgin, and there sprang unbidden into my mind the image of Alice, Alice with unbound hair in the spring breeze, Alice of the ample breasts; and I trembled, knowing that the Dark One must have sent me that vision to divert me from my contemplation of all that is immaculate. I knew that tonight I was in for a long session with the knout, and that my hair shirt would be blooded come morning.

  Now, I was truly afraid. But the boy was not. These infernal shards were just a new kind of toy for him, and the demon, perhaps, a new kind of pet. That is what it must be like, I thought, to grow up in the shadow of Tiffauges, in a world where evil, hanged and burned at the stake, still would not loose its grip. He bent down, stared at the metal with a natural curiosity, tried to pry the pieces from the ice, but they would not budge.

  I looked at the boy, and past him, into the barren trees; beyond them I could see where the two rivers met, and I could see the castle as well; that is how bright the moon was, and how glistening the ice. The wind whistled. The chateau was a black and shapeless mass; one tower had already crumbled. Evil can rot even stone, rot it from within.

  “We will turn back,” I said curtly. The squire with the torch turned immediately. He sensed it too. Brother Pierre had been taking notes, even sketching the diabolical device on a scrap of vellum.

  “Come, mon pére,” Guillaume said, “I'll take you to him now.”

  And on the way back to the village, the boy sang, in a hearty voice, the war-song L'homme armé, and because we were all afraid of the gathering dark, we followed his lead, and it was a raucous chorus; but as soon as we reentered the village something dampened our spirit and the singing petered out.

  But Brother Paolo whispered in my ear, “That boy has a sweet voice, though untrained; one could really make something of it. I'll have him for the morning mass; he will brighten the gloom.”

  * * * *

  And so, with the others all fast asleep, or turning in, Guillaume led me down to the cellar. Always, our dour chevalier followed, his hand never leaving his sword-hilt. Brothers Pierre and Paolo had joined our friend the torturer in a room for six. I was to sleep alone.

  The lad unlocked the door, lit a few more candles, and showed me what manner of creature had arrived at Tiffauges in a ball of flame.

  Completely covered from head to toe in mud, as they said he would be. He was naked, a state permitted only before the Fall of Man. Hunched over, chained to the wall by his ankles. Perhaps this room had served as a holding pen for Gilles de Rais’ victims; for they were slender chains, such as might be used to subjugate a child.

  Guillaume lit yet more candles, and now I could see the face clearly. The eyes were large and round, haunting, oddly beautiful.

  “Len ... clud,” he said. A sweet, small voice. It chilled me.

  “Have you ever told it my name?” I said to Guillaume.

  “No, mon pére. He just knows things. He plucks them from people's heads, I think.”

  The eyes peered at me. Yes. I could feel something invading my thoughts. An alien presence. I tried to block it by thinking the words of the rosary over and over.

  “Are you a demon?” I asked the stranger. When properly bound to answer by an emissary of the Church, a demon must speak the truth; for hell is ever subject to the will of heaven.

  Suddenly, images filled my thoughts. I tried reciting the rosary aloud as though to drown them out. There were creatures with goats’ horns, forked tails, hideous leering faces. He was answering me after all, in pictures if not in words.

  “Stay back, Guillaume! This creature has just shown me ... terrifying things.”

  “Mon pére,” Guillaume said, “he is only showing you what's in your own heart.”

  “It's a monster!” I cried, and I leaped to shield the child from its gaze.

  And it said, “I not a monster.”

  Tears rolled down its cheeks. They dug great chasms in the mud. And now I could see what lay beneath all that mire. It was something green. The squamous, reptilian skin that was a certain mark of the dark powers.

  “My son,” I said, “you tried to hide his skin from us?”

  “They would have killed him,” said Guillaume. “They get frightened easy; they're superstitious.”

  “There are worse things than death,” I said, and more images sprang into my head ... flames and bright red devil eyes, and I could almost smell the brimstone. “Tomorrow you will douse him with water, and we will see the extent of his monstrosity.”

  “I am not a monster.”

  His speech was much clearer than before. Before, he seemed to speak like the village idiot I had once thought him to be; now he had the more sophisticated accent of the city.

  Guillaume said, “Mon pére, he first learned to talk from us, but now he's getting it from you.”

  I stared into the monster's eyes and saw within them such a great despair that I knew he must be among those, once blessed by divine light, who were now eternally deprived of the presence of God.

  “Perditus es,” I said, for I knew that the devil must speak Latin.

  “Per-di-tus.” Lost. I did not know whether he understood, or if he was merely aping me; but then he continued: “Do-mum.” He wanted to return home. He had even used the correct accusative of motion towards, so he could not have been simply copying my words.

  “Ubi est domus tua?” I asked him where his home might be.

  In response, he looked up at the dank ceiling. The candlelight flicked on old grime.

  “In caelo,” he said softly.

  My home is in the sky.

  Like Lucifer himself, he dared to claim heaven as his patrimony!

  The cellar was cold, but the chill I felt was not from natural causes. I called for Chevalier Johan. “Sir Knight,” I said, “the secular arm must have arrived by now. You must ride out quickly and tell them not to pitch their tents, but to ride straight to the chateau. They must clean out a few rooms and they must prepare a dungeon, and tell Brother Paolo to asperge the rooms with holy water, and celebrate mass in the chapel at dawn so as to purge the taint that hangs over it and over this village. Tell them to tie the accused up firmly and admit him there as the Church's ward. Ask them to clean the mud from the accused and to clothe him so that we do not have to be shamed in the sight of God with his nakedness.”

  The boy looked at me with alarm. “You'll burn him!” he said. “Our friend. He played with us.”

  “He is not your friend, my child. Go now.”

  I dismissed them all and told them to make fast the door of the cellar behind us.

  And the stranger said, so quietly that indeed I was not sure whether he spoke aloud at all, or whether the words simply sounded within the confines of my mind, “I am not a monster. I am from another world. I am lost. I beg of you, send me home.”

  * * * *

  I hoped for a few hours’ peace before going to the chateau to say mass, but it was not to be. In the little cell they gave me, which was behind the kitchen, I scoured, by candlelight, the books I had brought w
ith me, trying to glean some knowledge of just what this creature might be. Was he a denizen of hell who had somehow escaped the confines of the Dark One, and by saying “Send me home” was he actually begging for some kind of salvation, some reconciliation with God? Was there a village idiot underneath this skin, who had been possessed by a devil, who could yet be cured, if the devil could only be driven from the flesh? Was it a devious impostor, come to tempt me?

  These were all possibilities. That was why a fair trial was essential.

  In the brief hour of twilight, before the sunrise, I knelt down to pray. Before I did so, I stripped off my habit and my hair shirt, took the bloodstained knout from my satchel, and vigorously flagellated myself. To no avail. I had barely begun the paternoster when Alice, unbidden, entered the room. It was almost as though my penance had conjured up a further test.

  “Mon pére,” she said. And then, again, “Oh Jean, my love.”

  I shook. My back was still bloody and it was perhaps the pain that convulsed me, though I should have been used to it by now; but no, it was the spiritual turmoil. “That was years ago. That was weakness. We can never think of it.”

  “That's easy for you to say, mon pére,” Alice said. “I've paid for it every day since then. I haven't come to reprove you. I know that you scourge yourself. But there are other kinds of penance, too. Guillaume should not be growing up here, in this desolate place. He's part of you. Can you not acknowledge that?”

  “It's a lot to comprehend in a single day. Does the boy know?”

  “Perhaps. I don't know. I've seen you look at each other. He may have guessed. And he has your eyes. I love him most for that.”

  “Alice,” I said, “there are cardinals who have sired children, and popes who have made their bastards cardinals. But the Bishop of Nantes doesn't have a very modern mind. And I'm a Dominican. A teacher. How if it is seen that I do not follow my own preaching? Shall I give up even my vows to God?”

  “Did you not do so already, Jean?”

  And there she had me. But I had done penance. God forgives, even if the Bishop of Nantes would not. “But what would you have me do?”