Next, After Lucifer

by Daniel Rhodes

  “This Courdeval. Did you say his nickname was soleil?” They stared at each other in mutual incomprehension.

  Then Boudrie sighed. “Forgive me, I fall easily into the accent of Marseille. Seul oeil, monsieur. Single eye.” McTell watched Linden shift uncomfortably in her seat, and felt a slight prickling of his own scalp. Perhaps there was something to the business of not speaking the name.

  “. . . a game played by the youth of that age,” Boudrie was saying, “a cruel and foolish one. They would nail a cat to a post through the loose skin behind its neck, then try to butt it to death with their heads. It seems that Courdeval, in a mark of his early savagery, participated in such a horror. He took the cat’s life, but the cat took his left eye; and in a further embellishment, it was claimed that he came by the power to see from that socket, which he always left uncovered—but to see things that ordinary men could not.” McTell got up again, restless, and paced. “So that’s the end of it? His execution?”

  “Not quite. The story becomes more fantastical yet. You have heard of the curse of Jacques de Molay?”

  McTell nodded, and turned to Linden’s questioning look. “De Molay was the Grand Master of the Templars when they were seized. The king kept him and his second-incommand in chains for seven years, then promised them freedom if they confessed to all the charges leveled against the Templars. They agreed, until they found out that Philippe le Bel planned to go back on his word and imprison them to die. So they recanted in front of the entire population of Paris, and Philippe, in a rage, had them burned over a slow fire the next day. The story goes that de Molay roared out a curse—summons might be a better word—for both the king and pope to meet him in judgment before the throne of God within the year. Both died of mysterious causes in the next several months. A lot of historians think that’s another fiction, made up to vindicate the Templars.”

  “Or to seek to prove that they did indeed possess supernatural powers,” Boudrie said. “In any case, the business attributed to Guilhem de Courdeval is in some sense similar. Though his voice kept silence at the stake, he is said to have spoken most clearly with the wrath of his gaze. Even the strongest men—war-hardened knights of the king, and the Inquisitors who had accompanied them, well versed in torture—were afraid and shielded themselves from it. And those peasants it fell upon—well, we will get to that shortly. But here is a most curious addition, if there is any truth to it. Normally, of course, the bones would be at least partially consumed during such a fire.”

  He paused and drank. Though the room was cooling in the twilight, McTell saw that the priest was sweating.

  “Courdeval’s skeleton, it was said, remained unmarred by the flames. The execution took place in front of the fortress, late in the day, and by custom the bones would have been buried soon after. But no one could be found who was willing to touch them. So they remained there, in full view of the village, for weeks.

  “At this point, the villagers began to die mysteriously.”

  “Ah-hah,” said McTell, snapping his fingers. “I begin to see. The deaths were attributed to old One-eye’s ghost.”

  “Precisely, monsieur. Guilhem de Courdeval’s reputed practices and powers naturally inspired revulsion and fear. Besides the Satanism and blood-drinking, he was said to be able to order spirits around like houseboys; and the trials of his companions include alleged eyewitness accounts of him literally raising the dead—not merely summoning ghosts, as necromancers sought to do, but animating corpses. Of course these accounts, given under torture, are hardly reliable; even if they were truthfully intended, we must consider the possibility of some form of mass hallucination.

  “But by far the greatest source of fear among the local populace was a particular—servant which Courdeval was reputedly able to summon at will. This being was in the nature of a familiar spirit, but not a dog or cat, such as a witch might have. It was more like something dragged from the darkest parts of the imagination, like the creatures of Bosch or Goya.”

  “The figure in the carving,” McTell said. The pieces of the puzzle were whirling in a tightening spiral, maddeningly close to snapping into place.

  Boudrie nodded, face wry. “Celui—the one—it was called by the peasants. It was believed that, of the many journeys Courdeval made in his life, he made one of a very unusual sort, to a place that is on no map; and that it was from this place he brought back his companion.

  “At any rate, according to the legend, Courdeval’s spirit lingered on after the destruction of his body, and was able to take a ghostlike shape. Together with celui, he was believed to roam the night, taking revenge on the villagers who had betrayed him. At last a small group took refuge in the cathedral itself, but even this sanctuary could not stop the evil powers. The peasants were horribly murdered in the very aisles of the church, while the priest may have fared worse yet. He was found days later behind the altar, still alive—in a sense. His eyes were round as coins; his face held a look that troubled even the bravest knights. Trembling violently, he stared without sleeping at something only he could see, and his hands never stopped making the motion of pushing it away from him. He was taken back to Avignon and cloistered, and there he died before long, without ever speaking again.”

  “And the carving?” McTell said.

  “It was done by a man named Peire Dupin, a stonemason who claimed to have witnessed certain of these goings-on, but escaped. There is little doubt that he did experience something shocking, though doubtless, too, his mind was primed to make a supernatural occurrence out of an entirely natural one. We must remember that he watched helplessly while his lifelong friends and his family were butchered. In any case, it seems that afterward he had but one wish: to finish that carving before he died. As with the unfortunate canon, this was not long after. Dupin was said to have lost his will to live, declaring that a world where such things could happen was no place for him. Before that, he was a healthy man in the prime of life.”

  D. f. descripsit, McTell thought: Dupin fils, the younger, hath drawn this.

  “Who or what was in truth responsible for those deaths is one more thing we will never know. Perhaps other escaped Templars, hiding out and killing for revenge; perhaps bandits taking advantage of the general confusion.”

  Boudrie’s voice dropped off; his eyes seemed to lose their focus.

  “The sacristan mentioned some kind of grimoire,” McTell prompted.

  “Ah yes,” Boudrie sighed. “The agency by which Courdeval was said to work his magic. It was purportedly bound in the skin of a heretic flayed alive—a pretty embellishment. This book has always been a popular part of the legend, perhaps because it is an actual object, something concrete instead of mere hearsay. I suppose it would be a species of proof that the whole sorcery business had some basis in fact, if only in the mind of Courdeval. Unfortunately, if it existed, it has not been found.”

  The priest began to dig in his pocket, and McTell saw with chagrin that he was taking out a watch. “Monsieur, you can’t leave us hanging like this,” McTell said, trying to put a lightness he did not feel into his voice. “How did it all end?”

  Boudrie’s thick finger tapped his knee. “Very well, Monsieur McTell, a few minutes more, and then I must leave you to your rest and go take mine. Your hospitality is most pleasant, but there are three or four old women who must hear Mass at a distressingly early hour each morning, and they would fare badly if I overslept.” This time he filled his own glass.

  “Here, then, is the final measure of both the superstition of the times and the fear in which Courdeval was held. When the massacre in the cathedral was discovered by travelers, a messenger was sent immediately to Avignon. With a swiftness unheard of for the times, a group of soldiers and churchmen were dispatched back to Saint-Bertrand with the object of laying Courdeval’s spirit to rest. After careful preparations, they accomplished this, and then hurried back to Avignon, glad to be done with such an unpleasant business.”

  “And it worked?” Linden said
.

  “Apparently so, madame. Courdeval faded from history, leaving only an ugly record of murder and savagery. His companions were tried and burned, and the doors of the cathedral were for a time sealed under interdict, because evil had penetrated them. At last the memory grew dim, and the traffic of pilgrims and such began to populate the area once more. Like the grimoire, Courdeval’s tomb has never been found.”

  “No skeleton, no book of magic, not even a leftover demon or two?”

  “I fear not, madame,” Boudrie said gravely.

  She leaned forward to stub out her cigarette. “You were right, the original story was better.”

  Boudrie smiled and waved a hand. “Like most villages, this one is very dull. During the winter months, life centers around the kitchen fire. A bottle of wine comes out, perhaps even absinthe, and a dog that ran loose and killed some chickens turns within a few years into the loup-garou, the werewolf. An owl someone sees beneath the full moon is a witch on her way to sabbath; and should that person fall sick soon after, why, clearly, it is the work of that witch. A homed goat silhouetted on a hill becomes the devil himself. Think what several centuries of this can accomplish.”

  “I suppose the proof is, to some degree, in the pudding,” McTell said. “If Courdeval had really had such powers, the soldiers would hardly have been able to take him.”

  “An excellent point, monsieur, one that any intelligent look at this legend must include. Although there are of course counterarguments. It has been speculated that Courdeval was taken because he had grown so arrogant, so confident of his own invincibility, that his vigilance was relaxed. Also, that because he was unsuspecting, his grimoire was hidden in the secret place where he kept it, a place only he knew. Without it he was relatively powerless; and as for his companion celui, it could be summoned only at night. Thus the haste to burn him before darkness fell.”

  “You talk as if this were a well-known legend, with fan clubs and discussion groups—like Sherlock Holmes,” Linden said.

  McTell agreed. “For all the research I’ve done, I’ve never even heard Courdeval’s name.”

  “As I said, monsieur, this is not a story that does credit either to France or to the Church—or to mankind, for that matter. I have reason to believe that the trial records were suppressed. Through some strange circumstances, this parish possesses a fragment of one copy, and it is the only copy I have ever heard of. Most of the legend, as well as the speculation that surrounds it, has passed from cure to cure over the years; there is rather a great deal of time for that sort of thing here. And while the local people are familiar with distorted versions of it, there has never been enough tourist traffic to make it widely known. Nor is there anything so really unusual about it. Travel to any village like Saint-Bertrand anywhere in Europe, buy a round of drinks for the old men in the tavern, and soon your ears will ring with stories of the great and the evil nobles who once lived in this or that castle—yes, and their ghosts too—whom you will never find in the pages of any history book.” He finished his cognac with a slow, appreciative swallow, then gripped the chair arm to rise. “But I think I have spread enough fairy tales myself for one evening. I am as bad as little Rene.”

  Though McTell’s curiosity was still mainly whetted rather than satisfied, he realized that he had learned all that he was going to from Boudrie, for tonight at least. “I’ll get the car,” he said.

  “Monsieur, please believe me, I look forward to the exercise. I do not get nearly enough of it.”

  “But in the dark—” Linden said.

  “After telling such gruesome stories, madame?” She laughed, blushing. “I will keep my hand on my rosary the entire way. It is not two kilometres.”

  They walked with him to the door. “Monsieur le cure,” McTell said, offering his hand. “It’s been a great pleasure. I hope you’ll come back again soon.”

  “Monsieur McTell, the pleasure was mine. I fear you may be in danger of finding me on your doorstep with regularity. Madame.” He raised Linden’s hand to his lips, eyes ardent. Priest or no, McTell thought with amusement, a Frenchman is a Frenchman. “Thank you for a so lovely evening. I hope you do not grow too bored with the poor society of our little town.” He started away; with his lumbering gait and thick shoulders, he looked less like a priest than a laborer.

  McTell hesitated, then called out, “Monsieur Boudrie.” The priest stopped and turned, face inquiring.

  “May I ask you one more question?”

  “By all means.”

  “I’m curious as to how you yourself look at the whole

  business. The Church still accepts the existence of hell and the devil and evil spirits, doesn’t it?”

  Moths fluttered helplessly in the soft porch lamplight; the song of crickets rose and fell. The night air was like a warm caress. McTell felt Linden’s hand tighten on his arm. “You don’t have to answer, of course,” he said.

  Boudrie shook his head slowly. “I have no objection to answering, monsieur. I am only trying to collect my thoughts. Such a question is more difficult to speak to in this day than it would have been a few centuries ago.

  “Well, then. With regard to the Templars, I believe that, in the main, many innocent men were cruelly treated for the basest of motives. As for the rest—if any of it were true, it would point to the existence of forces we can hardly imagine. The consequences of tampering with them would be beyond comprehension. Those charges that were leveled against the Templars of Montsevrain seem laughable to us today. But just as some men seem born to be saints, is it not conceivable that others come into the world as agents of evil? Certainly, to anyone with his eyes open to the world around him, it is too often easier to see the presence of evil than of good, is it not? I think anyone who accepts religion and yet uses his mind must at some point ask, If I believe in the power of God and His saints and angels to do works upon the earth, then does the other not follow?”

  For seconds his gaze held McTell’s. Then Boudrie’s face creased into a wry smile. “You ask me a simple question and I give you another lecture. To answer you succinctly, Monsieur McTell, I believe as Holy Mother Church instructs me to; and while spiritual agencies are not yet in complete disfavor, such credulousness as the fourteenth century knew is no longer fashionable even in the Roman Church.”

  McTell bowed. The answer had really told him only one thing: He had been right in thinking the priest a shrewd man. Once again, they exchanged good-nights.

  “You were right,” Linden said as they walked back inside. “The inner man is a great deal more impressive than the outer one.”

  “Does that mean I should be jealous?”

  “He doesn’t strike me as the fooling-around type. Although I’m sure that if he hadn’t become a priest, there’d have been no shortage of applicants.”

  “I wonder if a donation to the church would be looked at as condescending.”

  She shrugged. “I’m sure he’d be glad to have it, but he’d probably send it right on to the diocese.”

  “True enough,” McTell said. “But I’ll bet he’d hang on to a bottle of good Scotch.”

  He moved around the living room collecting the glasses and cups—none the wiser, he admitted, in spite of a most entertaining story. And reluctantly, he was coming to the conclusion that his mind was playing tricks. The girl obviously existed in the flesh, lived right there in the village. It was entirely possible that he had seen her previously, when he and Linden had first visited Saint-Bertrand, and that she had registered on his subconscious and come back in that sudden, inexplicable fashion.

  There remained, then, only two choices: put it out of his mind, the intelligent thing—

  Or climb again to the ruin and see what happened. “John!”

  Startled, he turned to see Linden in the kitchen doorway, fists on hips, and he realized he was standing motionless in the center of the room, hands full of glasses.

  “I asked if you remembered about the liquor,” she said. Guests! Linden’s ha
lf-sister and her husband, due day after next. “I’m sorry, honey, I blanked it out completely. I’ll drive to Grasse in the morning.”

  “Plenty of Tanqueray. You know Skip.”

  He did indeed know his brother-in-law, and it was more with resignation than with pleasure that he looked forward to the visit. But there was a bright aspect: it would keep Linden entertained.

  But that was a hell of a way to look at it. He set down his load of glassware and walked quietly up behind her, suddenly burying his face in her neck and growling, “I am the ghost of the evil Courdeval, and I’ve come to drink your blood!”

  “What, again?” she said. She held up her soapy hands. “You’ll just have to wait until I’ve finished the dishes.”

  “No respect,” he muttered and, looking appropriately glum, went back into the living room. He poured a little more brandy into a fresh glass. Tomorrow, he supposed, he would begin the laborious and thankless job of getting his mind back to his work, and he tried to organize his thoughts in that direction, to choose a place to begin and a course of action.

  But his mind rebelled, and instead, he fell back into the persistent dream image of the black mailed hand scraping at red soil, the visual equivalent of a snatch of song that played unendingly in some perverse and defiant chamber of the brain.

  It was past ten when Etien Boudrie arrived at the dark and empty rectory. He closed the door behind him, flipped on the light, and walked straight to the brandy. McTell’s fine Remy had tickled his appetite for liquor; the walk home through the night had honed it to an edge. In a few minutes he was comfortably settled in his study, a decanter at his elbow. The bootleg brandy he got by the keg from old Docre the vintner was a far cry from the Remy, but it would do.

  He had not been altogether truthful in what he had told the Americans. Mainly the sins were of omission. The story was grotesque enough as he had downplayed it; the parts he had left out stretched it to the ludicrous.

  CHAPTER 5

  But that was not all. He had sensed again that strange longing in McTell, this time in the form of a too intense curiosity—and a conscious effort to conceal it. Boudrie had no real reason for thinking this; it was only a feeling. But it had caused him, almost instinctively, to take a stance perhaps more skeptical than he truly felt.