by Ann Benson
I was a much younger woman then, more attuned to the demands and possibilities of life. At that time Guillaume might have been near sixty years of age, but he was as handsome a man as I had ever seen, tall, straight, slender, and well-built, with sky-blue eyes and a beautiful smile. I am ashamed to admit that in my Etienne’s final days, I looked upon Guillaume with some longing. I had not known my husband’s strength since before he went to Orléans, and I missed his caresses terribly. I have since managed to forgive myself for those shameful thoughts, though I doubt that God is ready to do so just yet, and were Jean de Malestroit to know, well, there would be no telling how much penance would be required of me for my human frailty.
We were to pass through Champtoceaux anyway, I told myself; surely even his Eminence cannot object to a further small delay in our return. And Guillaume Karle was easy enough to find: To a one, the folks of whom we asked directions knew him, and all spoke with great admiration for the aging gentilhomme. Still, one never knew what lay behind a door, and my diligent escort would not allow me to make the initial approach alone. For your own protection, Sister, Frère Demien had said, so seriously. How I managed to remain unscathed through the years without his guardianship, I was forced to wonder—it must have been through some unseen, mysterious angel whose powers were reserved specifically for traveling abbesses. Indeed.
I watched as the door was opened inward, and when the occupant appeared, there stood the man we had seen in the tavern. My shock was matched only by the shock of snow-white hair he himself sported. There was a stirring of pleasure in me that I wanted to banish, but it persisted—yea, increased—as I regarded him after so much time. I saw surprise and perhaps a bit of pleasure in his face as well; he turned toward me and shaded his eyes with one hand, and with the other waved an enthusiastic greeting. I could not suppress my smile of response.
He walked with astounding firmness through the small garden at the front of his house and came up to me, and though I was still on my mount, I was not much higher than he.
“Madame,” he said, with genuine warmth. “Or perhaps I should call you Mother.”
“Mais, non, Monsieur, no one but your own remarkable maman should have that honor from you.”
“How kind of you to speak so well of her. And how truly wonderful of you to call upon me. It has been a very long time, has it not?”
I was smiling very broadly by then. “It has indeed, Monsieur, too long.”
We sparred with admiring protests for a few moments until he said, “Perhaps we ought to go inside and speak of other things.”
He offered a hand to me and I allowed him to help me climb down from my beast. When one is wearing a nun’s robes and attempting to remove oneself from the back of a donkey, there is little hope of achieving grace. Somehow I landed on the ground without stumbling.
I found a measure of welcome inside the house that I did not often feel in unfamiliar places. The air was warm but fresh and smelled of oiled wood. No wonder—the furnishings were handsome and well-made, their fineness beyond what one would expect from the son of a midwife. The presence of a woman seemed almost palpable—perhaps he had taken a wife after all. There was a richness to his world that made me feel inexplicably happy.
I had no idea how Guillaume Karle made his living other than helping his mother in her work, but I imagined that it must have been substantial for him to afford the niceties he had accumulated.
“How lovely your furnishings are,” I said.
“Ah, thank you,” he said. “Most of them I made myself.”
That said, it was all too obvious: He was a maker of furniture. I should have gleaned that from the whittling. But there were tapestries and weavings all about, again of a quality that one finds only in noble households. I laid my hand on a finely woven cloth that ran along the top of a handsome chest. Guillaume Karle noted my interest. “Mother always complained that she rarely had time to do these things. She was taught her skills as a very young child.”
The ability to produce such finery is not granted to the daughters of lesser families. There had always been rumors of intriguing origin, that Madame Karle was by birth a duchess or princess who had run away and would not allow herself to be found. I had never given any credence to this gossip—Madame was far too practical, far too versed in the natural world to have had such an upbringing. And I had been told by the woman herself that her father was a physician. In the long run, it mattered little to me where she had come from. She was a good woman who had raised a very fine son; both would have my admiration forever.
I could not keep myself from looking around the room. My eyes came to rest on a very small portrait of a young dame, rendered in ink on parchment and displayed in a carved ivory frame. I requested permission to touch it with a look in Guillaume’s direction, to which he responded with a nod.
I picked it up with great tenderness.
The woman in the portrait wore a slight smile, an expression I recalled on the face of the midwife on occasion. “Madame herself?” I asked.
“None other.”
It must have been a good likeness, because I was able to envision the old woman who had brought my children out of me as a young matron in her prime. Though it had been rendered without color, I could see that her hair had been very light in shade; in her late years it was silver with dashes of the original gold in it. There was great dignity in her expression and fire in her eyes, both of which were qualities I remembered from my personal contact with her. I set the portrait back down on the chest.
“Now you will tell me that she is still alive, and I shall not be shocked to hear it.”
“I wish I could,” her son said, “but she was called to God at the age of ninety-nine. Or so we think. She recalled having survived the Black Death, and that is how we came to that conclusion.” He smiled with a bit of sadness. “But even she could not resist the final summons. No one can, our greatest hopes notwithstanding.”
It had not been all that many years ago. “I am truly sorry,” I said. “I will always be grateful for what she did for my husband. And yourself as well.”
Frère Demien’s silent presence reminded me that we had best be about the business that had brought us here.
“Well,” I said with a wistful sigh, “this day’s light will fade before we know it. Perhaps Frère Demien already told you at the door—we have just come from Champtocé. We had a visit with the old castellan from my time there, who still lives on the premises.”
“Ah,” Guillaume said, “Monsieur Marcel.”
“The very one.”
“A good man if ever one lived. How goes it with him? I often think of him, but it has been a long time since I ventured into that place.”
His tone of voice gave me the notion that he was happy to have been absent. “He is in good health and sound spirits,” I said. “And things there look much the same, except for a bit of neglect one hopes due to time more than intent,” I said. “But, of course, things cannot really be the same within the walls, the place having changed hands so often.”
“All for the better, I say.” He paused and then added, “There finally came a point when Mère would no longer go there, not for any reason. She always said there were evil doings therein. She could feel it in her bones, she told me.”
Her bones were correct. We would later hear from Poitou:
When Milord Gilles had once again recovered the castle at Champtocé from his brother René, Lord de la Suze, we went there, but our purpose was merely to hand it over yet again, this time to the Lord Duke of Brittany. Milord had sold it to him, though I suspect that he would not have relinquished the place had there been any means to avoid it. I do not know the intricacies of the arrangement between them, only that Milord was sorely unhappy about it and had enacted the transfer under some duress.
It was on that occasion that Milord Gilles first made me swear a vow of secrecy. He said, “Poitou, you must never betray my confidences. To anyone.” I did not understand in tha
t moment what he wanted me to keep secret, but in my devotion, I swore anyway.
It was with this vow that my shame began in earnest.
Milord ordered us—Henriet, his cousin Gilles de Sille, two servants, Robin Romulart and Hicquet de Brémont, and myself—to go to the tower, where he said we would find the bodies and bones of many dead children. He wanted to make sure that Duke Jean would not discover them when he took possession of Champtocé. I did not believe him at first. But the others verified the truth of it all, and I began to fear for my soul. We were to take these remains and put them in a coffer, and then convey them secretly to the castle at Machecoul. He did not say how many there were, but when we went there we found the remains of either thirty-six or forty-six children, though I cannot recall which is the correct number right now; we counted the skulls to determine it at the time.
We took these “bodies”—none was intact—to Milord’s own chamber at Machecoul. We traveled under cover of darkness, each of us riding alongside the cart in which the remains themselves were drawn. There, with the help of Jean Rossignol and André Buchet, we burned the bodies in the great hearth under Milord’s personal direction. And when the ashes were cold the next morning, we threw them into the moats and latrine pits of Machecoul. It was not a difficult thing to do, and we might have done it at Champtocé had there been time—but the Lord Duke would arrive too soon, or in his stead his emissary the Bishop Jean de Malestroit, we knew not which to expect.
I cannot say who killed these children; I do know that Milord’s cousins called frequently upon him wherever he resided there and that there was great intimacy between them, sometimes of a sodomitic nature, as often occurs between Milord and myself. I know that they led children to him, as I also did on many later occasions, to satisfy his enormous lust. Between us, perhaps there were forty brought to him over time. More than I care to recall, may God save me.
Which He surely will not do.
After Michel’s disappearance I was so steeped in grief that if evil began to sneak into the fortress at Champtocé, I could not have seen it myself. Catherine Karle, however, had none of my devotion to that fortress—she had come in and out of it over many decades, had witnessed its rise and fall without visible emotion.
“Your mother possessed wondrous powers of observation,” I said to Guillaume, “so I will have to accept that what you are telling me is truth, though I myself did not notice it.” For a brief moment I paused to reflect on my own shortcomings as an observer. “I suppose I ought to have seen it,” I said woefully, “since Champtocé was my home for many years.”
“Do not fault yourself for that, Madame. No one wishes to see such things.”
“You would be surprised, Monsieur, at the flaws one can find within, given time for consideration, of which I have had plenty. But enough of these regrets.” I laid my purpose before him unabashedly. “We are here in the hope of learning something more about my son’s disappearance.”
He drew back a bit and crossed himself. There was no need to remind this man of what had happened to Michel, which was a relief—I had once foolishly thought that each retelling of my sorrow would lessen it. “Marcel thought that there might be something more you could recall. We did not speak of it, you and I, at the time, nor did your mother and I. So now I am asking you to speak.”
He reached out and picked up the portrait of Madame Catherine and regarded it for a moment. After replacing it reverently he said, “How will you benefit by my recollections? They are sure to be woeful and nothing will be changed.”
“I cannot say, Monsieur, until I hear them said. But do not hesitate to speak plainly, for nothing you could say to me will cause me to suffer any more than I already have.”
For a moment I thought he would offer a counterargument, but instead he said, “Very well, Madame. If it is your sincere wish that I should do so, I will. But first let us sit. My bones ache all of a sudden.”
The chair into which I lowered my saddle-worn body was so comfortable that had the sun already slipped out of sight, I might have settled back in sleep at once, without a thought for the devotions that were expected of me before closing my eyes. But I sat full upright on the edge of the cushion—I wanted to see his face clearly as he spoke. Already there was anguish to be seen there.
“Mère did not speak for many hours after she came back from the initial search,” he said, “for someone who was so fond of chatter. I tried to cajole her into speaking, but she was nearly silent, as if she were struggling with some great confusion. She would respond only to the most critical medical inquiries.” He rubbed his palms together slowly; when his nervousness abated, he continued. “Mère was a strong woman with a very hardy soul; she had seen many grievous wounds and injuries in her life, suffered many trials, lived through some difficult times. I thought she had become immune to pain and shock. But there was such anger in her then . . . surely your husband must have told you what she said to him.”
I sat back in shock. “He never told of speaking with her.”
“He did not tell you of the time he met up with us in the oak grove?”
I replied with a shake of my head. I felt betrayed, somehow, more so because I could not simply turn to my husband and ask him.
Guillaume Karle must have perceived my discomfort, for he said, “Do not fret, Madame. Were I your husband, I might keep such distressing things from you as well. But I will tell you what I remember of that day. Etienne was working through a stand of brush, moving the foliage around with the tip of his sword. When he saw us, he looked almost as if he had been caught in something sinful. But he did call out a greeting, and for a brief time we spoke. Had he inquired about our business, Mère would have told him that we were in search of medicinal herbs, but he did not. He was rather caught up in what he was doing.”
When Etienne returned from those searches—always alone—his mood was dark and distant. “He went out so many times, he would have come upon numerous people, I suppose.”
“We did not see many people. I think after Guy de Laval’s goring and your son’s disappearance, no one who lived thereabouts wanted to venture into that area. As happened in Paris, when the wolves were about.”
“Ah, yes. May God save us all.”
For a week last autumn, an evil wolf, who acquired the name Courtaut by chewing off his own tail to escape a hunter’s trap, had boldly led a troupe of his brothers and sisters through the streets of Paris. Together they attacked and maimed dozens of people between Montmartre and the Porte Saint Antoine. They hid in the vineyards and the swamps and came out at night to stalk the terrified citizens who lived within the city’s walls. If they came upon a flock of sheep, their natural prey, they would leave the beasts alone and take the shepherd. When he was finally caught on Saint Martin’s Eve, Courtaut was paraded through the streets of the city in a barrow, his gaping jaw wide open to expose his bloody teeth.
“Then, if it was so dangerous, why did you and your mother go into the woods?”
“She and I were separated for several years after my birth, so she knew only too well the pain of losing one’s child. Before we were reunited, she came close many times to losing hope, or so she says.”
My eyes began to moisten. These were things I had not known. I would have offered comfort had she told me, but perhaps she had not wanted comfort—Catherine Karle was a woman whose shoulders seemed limitless in their ability to bear a burden. I lowered my gaze and said quietly, “One never loses hope. I half-expect to see Michel come walking up to me one day. My greatest fear is that if that happens, I will fail to recognize him.”
Guillaume Karle was quiet for a time, as was Frère Demien. The only sound that could be heard was our combined breathing, until Karle spoke again.
“Madame,” he whispered.
I did not look up.
He reached out and enfolded both of my hands in his. “Madame,” he said again, “I regret to tell you that your son is not going to come back.”
“One neve
r loses hope,” I repeated, “at least not until all hope is gone.”
He squeezed my hands. “All hope is gone.”
I looked up and saw terrible sadness in his eyes.
“You see, Madame—we found him.”
It was late in the day, the light fading, and we had been out since before noontime. Our horses were beginning to fidget by virtue of whatever unspoken urge it is that compels all beasts to chafe at riders near to that hour. Perhaps they sense the impending darkness and would seek cover before its full fall. One never knows, in the woods, what might cause a horse to become restless. My beast was even more unsettled than Mère’s, for though she was a woman of statuesque height, she had little meat on her bones, whereas I, whom she claimed favored my father, was far more weighty and burdensome than she.
Let us water the beasts, she’d offered, for perhaps they will be gentled by the comfort of a drink, which seemed a worthy idea to me, so I took the lead in our duet and led my horse through the stand of oaks, where we had been searching for your son. As fortune would have it, we did come upon a substantial crop of mistletoe in the oaks, which Mère and I gathered to the full extent of what we could carry in our satchels. We were still congratulating ourselves on the treasure we had found when we came upon the stream at the center of the ravine.
The rains had been hard that year, and early, and the stream was as mighty and forceful as I had ever seen it. Silt and grit and leaves marked the height on the banks to which it had risen. By this time, the waters had receded again and were then a good forearm’s length below their fullest height. Seeing this, we were careful along the edges of the stream, for the mud would be treacherous in some places and wet enough to suck in the foot and ankle of a horse, perhaps deeply enough that even the sturdiest beast might not succeed in retracting his appendage. So naturally we paid close attention to the rocks and sticks that lay there, and caused our horses to tread slowly among them.
