by Ann Benson
As if it were some entertainment to which they had been invited, the lords and ladies of Brittany turned out in force, handsomely clad in the most admirable finery, almost to rival Milord himself, who had attired his person to the utmost for the opening hour of his final judgment. I gaped shamelessly at the jewels and beautiful embroideries worn by men and women alike; I had never been draped in such things, even on the day of my wedding.
“You are staring,” Frère Demien observed quietly.
“Please allow me to have my moment of sin undisturbed.”
Frère Demien sighed and shook his head but said nothing more of my base-minded preoccupation. Shortly our attention was drawn back to the proceedings by the sound of a new voice, that of Jacques de Pencoëtdic, venerable doctor of law. He would serve on this day as the prosecutor, by agreement of all parties; he was an experienced man with an unassailable reputation for crisp justice, an excellent choice. He had a way of turning the most confounding matter into something pure and simple.
The air was thick with the rich sound of his words, and the drama of it all was consuming—great lords and beautiful ladies craned their necks to listen, even to the long and tortuous legal description of the court’s authority.
But the crowd’s fascination rose further when the descriptions of the crimes began in earnest.
“. . . that these same boys and girls were abducted by the said Gilles de Rais, the accused, and by his adherents . . . that by them these children had their throats cut and had been killed and dismembered and burned and in other manners shamefully tormented. That the same Milord Gilles de Rais, the accused, had sacrificed the bodies of these children to demons in a damnable manner, that by many other reports the said Gilles de Rais invoked demons and evil spirits and sacrificed the said children to them, sometimes after they were dead, sometimes as they were dying; that the aforesaid accused also horribly and ignobly exercised the sin of sodomy on these children, disdaining the girls’ natural vessel . . . that the said Gilles de Rais, filled with evil spirits, bypassing all hope of salvation, took, killed, and butchered many children, as many by himself as by the aforesaid accomplices. That he caused and ordered the bodies of these children to be burned, reduced or converted to ashes, and thrown into hiding places . . . that during the said fourteen years he also held discourse with conjurers and heretics, that he solicited their aid numerous times to carry out his purposes, that he communicated and collaborated with them, hearing their dogmas, studying and reading their books concerning the forbidden arts of alchemy and witchcraft . . .”
In all, forty-five articles of indictment were read aloud—by their finish, several of the ladies were in near faint. The crowd of observers, at once aghast and intrigued, had grown quiet during the repeated recitations of horror upon horror and seemed now to be completely numbed by it all. But two among them seemed to dwell on every word, ladies both, Mesdames Jarville and Thomin d’Araguin, who looked as if they wanted more horrors when the readings were done. They were fixed upon Milord as a believer fixes on the image of a saint, hoping for some saintliness to rub off.
“Scandalous,” Frère Demien said when he saw me staring. “I have heard it said that Poitou brought these two into Champtocé and allowed them to watch some of the killings from a secluded place. That they were extremely desirous to watch such activities again.”
I sat back, shocked; how any woman, even one whose womb had not brought forth life, could watch the destruction of a child was beyond understanding. And then, to say nothing—
De Pencoëtdic’s voice rescued me from my melancholy; he called out Milord’s name and bade him stand to face the court. Gilles de Rais came to his full height and faced the panel of judges at the front of the court.
“You will respond, sir,” de Pencoëtdic said with gravity, “to these ponderous charges. You will do so under oath and in the French language to each and every article of these indictments.”
The defendant surveyed the great hall, now and then catching the eye of one of his peers. Only his two female admirers would return his glance for more than a flash of time. The implications of holding the gaze of such a man were dire indeed.
“Do you intend to respond, sir?” de Pencoëtdic asked again.
The courtroom was so silent that we could hear flies buzzing, and remained so, because Milord said nothing at all to the prosecutor’s request. All eyes were steadied upon the great Marshal of France. The next sound we heard was de Pencoëtdic’s sigh of disappointment, which drew the eyes of the assembled to him instead. Slowly, in keeping with the stiffness of his age, he turned to face his Eminence and Friar Blouyn. He gave the slightest nod, some sort of prearranged signal, then sat down in the velvet-cushioned seat from which he had previously risen, a voiceless old man once again.
Jean de Malestroit inclined himself forward slightly and said, “You will respond, Milord.”
Why he would reply to his Eminence, an enemy of many years, but not to de Pencoëtdic, who bore him no enmity, I cannot say. But that is precisely what he did. Gilles de Rais looked directly at Jean de Malestroit and said, with pronounced haughtiness, “I will not.”
The crowd took in a collective gasp. To refuse to answer to God’s representative was an act of heresy in and of itself. To speak to him without the use of a respectful title was equally unthinkable.
“I say again, Milord, and I advise you to consider the disposition of your immortal soul before refusing, you will respond.”
Gilles de Rais was visibly holding himself back from explosion—he was seething, almost shaking.
I swear, Etienne, I thought he would burst—when he could not have what he asked for he held his breath until he began to turn blue. Then, when he let it out, he was all rage, like a young bull who had been poked in the eye! The boy accepts no refusal of his desires without rejoinder. . . . Sometimes I am inclined to take the lash to him myself, were it not forbidden.
Contain yourself, Guillemette. It is not your place to correct the child.
If not mine, then whose? It must be done.
Here before us now was the result of that failing, whosesoever it might have been.
“I will not respond,” he vowed again. He looked first at Jean de Malestroit and then at Friar Blouyn. His expression was rife with pride and disdain. “You are not now nor have you ever been my judges.”
“In the name of God, who is and always will be your judge, I demand that you respond to the charges that have been presented to you today.”
Now Gilles de Rais began to shout at Jean de Malestroit and his judicial compatriots. On the assault of his words, all three shrank back in self-defense. “You are all thieving rogues who have accepted bribes to condemn me,” he shrieked, “and I would rather be hanged by a rope at the neck than respond to such judges as you are.”
He turned and began to walk toward the door but was stopped by two guards. He struggled against them and for a moment it seemed that he would break free. The courtroom dissolved into pure chaos. Jean de Malestroit was up on his feet, shouting above the fray as Gilles de Rais was dragged back and placed before him.
“Perhaps you do not understand these charges against you completely, Milord.” He turned to one of the scribes. “Repeat the indictments in French,” he cried, “so Baron de Rais might understand them, as he seems not to comprehend the gravity of his situation when it is described to him in Latin.”
He flailed in impotent protest. “Je comprends le Latin!”
“Too well,” I whispered under my breath.
I could barely pry The Twelve Caesars away from him when he was a child. It was a book whose contents made me shudder. The things these wretches did in the name of sovereignty! Such tales as these might damage a small boy by numbing his soul to carnage. But Jean de Craon insisted that it be part of his education, and Guy de Laval would not override him.
The poor little scribe rose up instantly, parchment in hand, and commenced a shaky impromptu translation. Milord began to tremble,
and we all heard him shout, “I am not an imbecile! I understand Latin as well as the next fool.”
The frightened scribe stopped speaking and looked to my bishop, whose glower ordered a continuation.
Gilles de Rais stopped struggling finally and glared at his Eminence as the French words were hastily spoken. It was the same look I had seen on his face when he reached his majority and threw off the tyranny of Jean de Craon: pure, cold defiance. His voice rose once again over the timid words of the scribe. “I will do nothing that you ask of me as Bishop of Nantes,” he hissed. As he struggled against the grip of his guards, he looked from one to the other, as if to intimidate them with anger. Neither would hold his gaze. Another guard was called forward to assist, and Milord was finally overpowered.
A dreadful, silent gravity fell upon us all as Gilles de Rais made a pathetic attempt to restore himself to nobility. He straightened his garments and smoothed his hair, then looked around the room. He found no support in the observers.
There came over him a calm of the sort that always seems to show itself before a tempest.
I could almost hear Jean de Malestroit’s thought prayer: Father, if this cup can be taken from me . . . But he pressed on nevertheless, demanding once again of the prisoner if he would respond or object to any of the charges in the lengthy indictment.
And so it continued. By the last of Jean de Malestroit’s demands for submission, Gilles de Rais’s fatigued refusals had become so hushed and small that we could barely hear them.
Then his Eminence stunned us all.
“By all the saints, Gilles de Rais, you shall force us to excommunicate you from the holy Catholic faith with these heretical refusals.”
The Gilles of old returned with a vengeful wrath. He rose up and roared out oaths against his Eminence that I cannot repeat for fear of losing my salvation. Then he cried, “I am as familiar with the Catholic faith as any of you. And I am no heretic!” He further declared, “If I had committed the crimes with which I am charged in these articles, then I should be deviant from my faith. From which condition I do not suffer.”
“Perhaps not, Milord,” Jean de Malestroit said, “but you seem to suffer from the conditions of impudence and lunacy. You feign ignorance, but your denials are not to be believed.”
“I would never engage in pretense in a matter so grave as this!” His words were more pleas than declarations. “And I am shocked,” he went on, “that Monsieur l’Hôpital would give what meager information he has on the events you speak of to the ecclesiastical court and moreover that he would allow me to be so charged on Duke Jean’s behalf in the first place.”
It was all goose feathers. De Pencoëtdic rose up from his ornate chair and turned to the judges. “On behalf of Duke Jean,” he said, “I demand that this man be held in deliberate contempt of this court for his refusal, despite our canonical exhortation, to answer to the charges before him.”
Upon which request the judges looked at each other with silent understanding. Jean de Malestroit took up his pen and a fresh piece of parchment, and he began to write on it, forming his letters quickly but with visible care, for the words that the prosecutor read from that page when it was handed to him were as serious as words could be.
“Gilles de Rais, by the authority vested in us by his holiness Pope Eugène, you are hereby excommunicated from the holy Catholic Church.”
“I appeal! A pen, a parchment, I shall write my appeal!”
They had anticipated everything. Jean de Malestroit nodded to a scribe who rose up and read from a parchment that must have been written long before. “This appeal is forthwith denied because of the nature of this case and the cases of this order, and also on account of the monstrous and enormous crimes with which you have been charged.”
A gasp rose out of the silence, then wails of despair, cries for mercy, pleas to God for salvation, and prayers of thanks, all simultaneously. There followed a state of disorder as great as any we had seen in the proceedings to date. De Pencoëtdic stood and shouted over the crowd in his loudest voice, “We shall proceed.”
“We shall not!” Milord countered.
“Oh, indeed, sir, we shall.”
Yet another proof of authority was read, as Gilles went wild with anger and rage.
“Whereas according to the Apostle, the evil of heresy spreads like a canker and treacherously destroys pure souls if not extirpated in time by the diligent work of the Inquisition, it is meet and fitting to proceed advantageously with all the authority and dignity of the office of the Inquisition against heretics and their defenders, and also against those accused or suspected of heresy and against hinderers and disturbers of the faith—”
Gilles thrashed about like a captured serpent. With unanticipated strength, he broke free of his guards and lunged toward the judges’ table. My heart leaped upward into my throat; this was a warrior, bent on attacking a bishop, who had not the skills or the means to defend himself. With his hands alone, Gilles de Rais could tear out Jean de Malestroit’s throat. The two guards bolted forward but did not catch him on their first attempt. From somewhere within the folds of his garment came a dagger, which he brought high into the air as if to strike. It was already in downward motion when the guards caught hold of his arm.
My gorge rose and my hand went to my mouth. But as the guards fought with his attacker only an arm’s length away, Jean de Malestroit sat, motionless and sure. His eyes burned into Gilles’s, delivering the silent message: Struggle if you wish, but you will be brought down. Such is my power over you.
I watched in shame and disgust as the guards took Milord away. They dragged him out on his knees, a position he assumed only when absolution was at hand. In that moment, he was as far from absolution as he had been in his life, and more in need of it than ever.
chapter 30
Six days, no Wilbur. We had surveillance teams in place at the house and the studio, his two main haunts, but no one had seen him. Employees came, went, and were watched, to the degree that we could get away with it. The land-line phones in both places were monitored, but there were twelve cell phones in use by Angel Productions, and there was no telling which one Durand might have.
We actually talked about getting court orders for every one of them, that’s how desperate we were. Fred brought us back to reality.
“He probably walked up to one of those mall carts disguised as a hooker and prepaid for a phone.”
It was maddening, the way he could change shapes. There was no guarantee that he was doing that—he was the ultimate nonentity in default mode. But the possibility that he did morph himself into something else colored everything we tried to do to find him.
Description of the suspect: 5′9" to 5′10" tall, medium to slim build. Mid-thirties to early forties. White. Male or female.
Only twenty or thirty million people in the United States fit that description.
I made sure there was no green food on the table that night.
“Mom,” Frannie told me, “we want you to have big cases more often. We like the food when you do.”
Everyone agreed, most heartily Evan, whose adolescent predestiny was to despise everything his mother claimed to be beneficial—things like sleep, homework, the OFF button on the clicker, and broccoli.
After the kitchen was cleaned up, we all settled down in front of the TV and watched Wheel of Fortune. Frannie kicked our combined butts, once even solving a puzzle with only the spaces, no letters yet.
“The Wind in the Willows,” she said. “I just read the book. Piece of cake.”
The conversation that followed was not a piece of cake.
“Evan,” I said, “shut the TV off.”
“But Jeopardy! is coming on next,” he said. “You always let us watch Jeopardy!”
It was true. “Not tonight. I need to talk to all of you, and since we’re together for a change, I want to do it now.”
A unison groan of dismay rose up. Julia whined, “Oh, no, are we having money troubles a
gain?”
The previous year had been tough; the engine blew on my car, my mother exceeded the limit on her prescription coverage and needed help, and Evan got braces. We went through a cautious period of belt-tightening, which had the unexpected benefit of teaching my kids about some of the economic realities of adult life. “We’ll get through it okay,” I’d told them, and we had. A lesson learned. They had less fear of money now, and that was good, but that didn’t mean they liked it.
I wished it was that simple this time. “No,” I said. “Just the opposite. I’m picking up lots of overtime. We’ll have a really good vacation this year.”
This time the unison noise was a cheer. It was a good omen—perhaps this discussion would go better than I had thought it would.
“But there’s a reason why I’m getting all that overtime. You know that big case with the man who directed They Eat Small Children There?”
Of course they did. They were all over me with what they’d heard.
“It’s my case.”
No way that’s awesome Mom cut it out you know Wilbur Durand tell us all about him. It all blended into one sentence, the speakers indistinguishable.
“It’s true. I’ve been in on it since the very beginning. I was the one who noticed the pattern.”
More shouts of excitement. Wait till I tell Mrs. Adamy and Mr. Forsyth they’ll think it’s so cool where’s the phone I want to call Samantha and tell her.
They needed to know, but they couldn’t run out and brag—it just wasn’t a good idea at this point. I hated to tamp down that glee. “Listen, guys, I know this is a lot to ask, but I’d rather you didn’t talk about it any more than necessary. I know that will be hard, and I’m sorry. But it needs to stay that way for the time being.”
“Mom, come on, we have to tell someone.”
I would have to make them understand the danger, to make it personal for them. “Are you prepared for the possibility that it might have an effect on us if you do?”
