The Book of Shadows (11 page)

It was then, finally, that I determined to leave; but as I bent to take up the cat I heard again my name. Spoken by Sister Claire de Sazilly, who stood now just on the other side of the door. “You cannot leave us to that witch's ways!” said she to the Mayor.

“No,” enjoined her disciples, “you cannot! You cannot leave with
her
among us!” The Mayor had pronounced upon Mother Marie, which was all well and good, but what about
me
, what about the witch who walked among them still?

More accusations.
I
was the devil who'd ridden the girls in frenzied dreams. It was I who'd stirred the storm. I who'd won Peronette and the Mother Superior to my ways. And so on, till finally I was the witch who'd brought a plague of mice into C——three years prior, who'd blasted the cellarer's tomato crop, who'd killed off the entire farrow when our prized sow had finally pigged.

I raised the blue bottle high, threw my head back, and drank.

Maluenda stirred at my foot. She sniffed under the door, scratched at it, turned herself around and around in tight circles. I worried that she'd give us away. I took her up into my arms to calm her. No wonder she grew wild at the sound of Sister Claire's voice, for if
she
hadn't shorn the cat's ears herself, surely she'd been present when the deed had been done. Every time Sister Claire spoke the cat seemed newly crazed. She verily shredded the pink net of tulle I wore; the satin underdress too was torn. It was all I could do to hold onto Maluenda
and
the wine
and
listen to the hateful sister speak.

She was going on about how I'd come to her in dreams, how I'd taken different shapes to tease and torment her, to urge her to “impurity of thought and deed.” Two of the older girls, when questioned by Sister Claire, averred I'd done the same to them.

The Mayor, ruffled by the nature of all he'd already heard, would brook no further testimony. Far easier for him to curse the Darkness in certain terms and vow to see the nuns and girls returned to the care of the Prince of Peace. Just how, I wondered, would the old fool accomplish this? When next he spoke, his plan came clear:

“Where then,” he asked, “is this Herculine?” At this the assembled rose to fever pitch:

“We ran her from the hall,” said one, “and we've searched for her all afternoon.”

“I watched as she ran, fast as a man, up the drive, on and on.”

“She lay down upon the dirt and had relations with it.”

“Surely she jumped astride the horses pulling her sister-witch Peronette—”

“No,” said Sister Claire. “She remains among us, for the Devil's work is never done.”

And so on and so on, till all and sundry impossibilities were addressed.

It was the Mayor finally who broke this chain of accusation, which had rendered me still when I ought to have run. “We must find her,” said he, his words all afumble, “and find her we will. She can't have gone far. She can't have gone far and we must find her. We will get from her the answers we need. Answers, indeed.” He directed all present to break into smaller groups; by his calculation there were some forty people in the library. Each group, led by a townsman, would search a part of the convent and grounds. Though long minutes were spent debating the plan's finer points, it was finally adopted by all, and bore the sanction of Sister Claire.

Meanwhile, I stood listening, dumbstruck, Maluenda growing ever wilder in my arms. Still I did not leave. I could not leave. I could not even reason that it was the wisest course of action. My sole thought was,
How
can this be happening? Here was a drama from the Burning Days! Had I truly seen what I'd seen, heard what I'd heard?

Screams within the library. Louder than any I'd heard earlier. And seemingly directed at the door behind which I stood! I peered between the warped boards but saw nothing, nothing save for the all-obscuring rush toward the door behind which I—

It happened in an instant. Apparently, in my effort to calm the cat, I'd
shown
myself. Perhaps I'd let my booted foot get too close to the door, and someone, one of the girls, spied it there, no doubt the same girl who shouted: “She's come! There!
There!
”

Moving too suddenly back from the door, three things happened in quick succession: I dropped the bottle of burgundy and saw it shatter on the stone floor; Maluenda leapt from my arms; and the back door of the lesser library opened inward and…and there I stood.
There
. Staring back at the council, at all assembled. Looking foolish—not to say
hellish
—in that ill-fitting torn pink finery. A blue stone rosary hanging round my neck. My familiar at my side.

All I remember is a panicky dance—as on a listing ship—for the girls and townspeople pushed toward the library's primary door. Trying to flee. From
me
! The Mayor and an elderly townsman clung to each other like widowed sisters. Only Sister Claire dared approach me.

“You,” she spat. “You who dare to—” But Sister Claire de Sazilly would never finish that sentence; for, with preternatural speed, the speed and strength of a thousand cats,
ten
thousand cats, Maluenda sprang at the nun, her claws splayed like sets of knives.

All save the cat and Sister Claire were still, staring down at the scene. Sister Claire had fallen to the floor when struck by the springing cat's weight. She struggled beneath Maluenda, who'd fast taken hold of the nun's flesh with her foreclaws. With her hind legs she scratched furiously at the nun's torso, shredding that rough tunic and the hair shirt she wore beneath it. On the pale plane of Sister Claire's stomach I saw the scars of her decades-long mortification, the thorns' work, matched now by the work of the cat's claws.

Sister Claire's disciples suffered fits, hopping and stomping and screaming, but not a one came to her aid. “I'm going to be sick!” promised one, who promptly was, distracting no one. And indeed my stomach was unsettled, too; as it had been years back, when I'd witnessed an extern cleave from her hand the tips of two fingers, which lay twitching beside the roast that she'd been working.

When finally Maluenda leapt from Sister Claire, she left the nun a bloodied mass on the stone floor, rigid with shock, staring wide-eyed at nothing at all. Maluenda, seemingly loathe to leave the nun, bounded up easily onto the windowsill and, after turning to look back at me, to purr, to pass a paw over her torn-away ears, she leapt from the window, two tall stories above the ground.

“No!”
I shouted, stepping into the room. “Maluenda!” But to cross the room, to go to the sill, I'd have had to step over the seizing body of Sister Claire de Sazilly; and that I found I could not do. I stared down with revulsion. I hated the woman, yes; but had I ever wished for it to come to this? Sister Claire was…unrecognizable. It might have been any woman's or man's face there under cover of all that blood. I saw that the cat had torn away the lobe of one ear.

As I stood staring down at the nun, prostrate at my booted feet, as I stood marveling at the wounds my Maluenda had inflicted, I was grabbed by two, perhaps four townsmen. They'd come up behind me at the Mayor's silent direction. Brave souls, they were. Remember what it was they believed me to be. Surely, if I'd had my wits about me, I might have used their belief against them—
Use their fear!
—scared them so badly they'd have refused to restrain me. If I'd spun around like a dervish or swung at them or sputtered something in a foreign tongue, perhaps I'd have walked from that room, from C——, that very evening. As it was, I offered no resistance at all.

T
HE MAYOR STEPPED
forward to stand between the still-prone Sister Claire and myself. With whispers he directed two boys of the village; they then made their way shyly, hurriedly, through the girl-thick crowd, and disappeared. Shaking from infirmity or fright, and not daring to look directly at me, the Mayor puffed himself up to offer the following by way of pronouncement:

“This child,” said he, grandly, raising his ringed fist at me, that fist from which a gouty finger sprouted, its long nail buffed to a sheen. “This child—”

“Guilty!” rose the cry. The townsman holding fast to my left arm cried out. I tried to break free of his hold; this of course set the assembly off—some among them cried,
screamed
that I would free myself and in league with Satan whisk them all away to some black rapture.

The Mayor insisted on silence, without result. He asked for silence. He
begged
for silence. But only when Sister Claire stood, unsteadily, having been revived by Sister Clothilde's fistful of salts, did silence come. And the Mayor spoke on:

“This child shall be held here, secured overnight. At sunrise this council will reconvene to decide her fate and—”

It was then both Sisters Catherine and Clothilde tried to ask again about the bishop. Sister Margarethe stood idly by throughout. Sister Claire wrested her arm from the infirmarian, who stepped warily away from the Head, and said that these were “civil” concerns, to be decided within the House; no need to bother the bishop, who'd surely agree with Monsieur Le Maire. At this the old man demurred, slyly deeming himself unworthy of any alliance with the bishop; but before he could conclude his sentencing—his posture now perfect, his pointed chin protuberant—the girls handed down sentences of their own: I should be burned, banished, pressed beneath boards piled with twice my weight in stones. I stood silent before them, stunned by their
savagery
. By their anachronistic sentencing—burning? suffocation?

When finally the Mayor was let to speak, it was decided: I would be held overnight and tried at dawn. As for Sister Claire de Sazilly, who stood staring at me, her ruined face still horrid with shock, the same sunrise would greet her as the new Mother Superior of C——.

The assembly cheered. The Mayor, as though he
were
the bishop, offered a prayer for Sister Claire's quick recovery, and he blessed her coming rule. With that Sister Claire was led from the library by her lieutenants, with the infirmarian, the cellarer, and an abashed Sister Catherine of the Holy Child following.

Sister Claire had barely passed from sight when I heard behind me the rattle and clank of chains. I turned—as best I could with those townsmen holding tightly to me—and I saw those boys who'd been dispatched by the Mayor. Their mission, having been accomplished, was clear: they'd been sent down the back stairwell to the stables in search of something to restrain me, something to secure me overnight. They had in hand those chains—ancient, thick-linked, crusted with rust and mud—that were used when the horses were bled or otherwise worked upon; at the ends of the chains were the cuffs that were clamped around the horses' legs, just above the fetlock. Instantly, accurately, I gauged that there'd be no slipping from them in the night.

The Mayor, worn, exhausted, announced that the specifics of my imprisonment would be seen to by the townsmen; and he issued from the lesser library the remaining townspeople and girls.

Within the hour Mother Marie and the one trunk allowed her—all those beautiful things! all those books left behind in her rooms!—would be thrown onto a dray hitched to the back of the Mayor's carriage. In this fashion would the former Mother Superior of C——be led away, bouncing along the rough roads with nothing but her hands to shield her from the villagers, prone to lobbing offal and overripe produce at such a one as she.

I stood in the library with four men, three women, and two boys of the village of C——. Two of the men held me fast while the others shoved chairs against the library's walls, leaving nothing but the large rectangular table of oak in the center of the room, one chair at its head. The women, ragged and fat, huddled coven-like in a far corner. As for the boys, they stood untangling the chains, working wrought-iron keys the size of shinbones.

Finally, my prison was prepared. The chains lay on the floor beside me; it looked as though someone far luckier than I had recently broken from them. The women left the library, returning moments later with a jug of water, a goblet, a loaf of hard black bread (which would prove as impenetrable as a forest turtle), and the small pail into which I was to relieve myself. They set the jug, the goblet, and the bread on the table; the pail was placed beneath the chair. Someone, I didn't see who, brought in a straw pallet and arranged it beside the chair; the townsmen had calculated just how far I'd be able to move once chained to the table. My world, perhaps five paces in circumference, must contain all these things. I stood watching the pathetic show as one of the men sat in the chair and another circled him, holding the chain extended while a third man tried to figure it all on a scrap of paper torn, without a thought, from one of the library's volumes, scribbling furiously with a stub of pencil, which he'd brought to a fresh point on his right incisor. Finally, in exasperation, the calculations were abandoned. No less self-satisfied, these three men then placed the shackles on me while the fourth stood by.

I suffered the clamps being fastened around my ankles, heard the grinding bite of iron into iron. The women were made to see to the finer adjustments, which they did politely, expediently, while the men and boys huddled near the door.

“Please to place your ankle here, miss.”

“Settle yourself here, if you would; in this chair.”

When the boys sniggered at some humorless thing, the father of one, to judge by the resemblance—though, by that same criterion, I might have as readily concluded that both boys had been borne of any heifer and its idiot tender—smacked both boys. Hard. And in so doing sought to impress upon them not only the mark of his hand but a sense of the occasion.
“Elle est le vrai malin!”
said he. I was the one and true Devil.

Use their fear
. But I'd have to do something scary enough,
fearsome
enough to drive all nine of them from the room. What could I do? Enervated, wanting only to be left alone, I did nothing.

Three of the men struggled to lift the oak table a finger's-width off the floor; the fourth man slipped the loop of the chain under the table leg and secured it with a padlock. Two short chains ran from my ankle-cuffs to a third chain secured to the table. They bade me walk a bit, to ensure that my chains would reach as far as the pallet but not as far as the door. Such was the case. They'd done well, and told each other so. And so, they were all of them free to leave the library; this they quickly did.

I heard the long iron key turn in the lock. I heard the rasping slide of iron into stone as the bolt was thrown.

Alone, the first thing I did was take up those chains and pull as hard as I could. This was futile, and I knew it: I'd
seen
the townspeople secure me; and the links on the chains were as thick as my fingers.

I took a quick survey of the library. The earthenware pitcher was full of water. The goblet was chipped and grimy. The bread was old. No knife, no butter. They'd left a candlestick on the table, its white candle burnt halfway down; it wouldn't last through the night. As for the pail, it had come from the stable along with the filthy straw for my pallet.

From where I sat, the locked, main door was straight ahead. Indeed, it
was
out of reach, as the townsmen had so carefully calculated. At my back was the door behind which I'd hidden. That door too had been locked—I'd heard the rattle of chains on its far side. Beginning just to the right of the main door were the shelves that covered that wall and the one adjoining, the wall to my right. The wall to my left was cut with a bank of three tall, arched windows; before them ran a wide sill. As for the windows, they were tall enough to stand in, deep enough to sit in, and far enough away to be of no use at all. The glass of each window's two wings was beveled; and their mullioned panes glistened with the last of the sunlight, the first of the moonlight. The center window was open, slightly (wide enough for my Maluenda to have leapt from its…But I would
not
think of that, no.
Madness!
). What use might I make of the opened window? My shouts might be heard by a passerby. I might toss a note from the sill…. But no. What passerby would show sympathy for the witch at the window? And what would I write the note on? What would I write it with? To whom would I address it? Marie-Edith? To the bishop? Why not God Himself?

As for the shelves, they too were out of reach. They rose from floor to ceiling, each crammed with the centuries-long history of the Ursulines. Many of the volumes looked like they'd crumble at a touch; indeed, I
knew
they would, for I'd spent long hours studying in this library, and had considered and dismissed all its volumes. There were sheaves of loose parchment and large books bound in black leather, their spines gold-engraved. In the dimming light, I could not read the titles from where I sat. Nor would my length of chain allow me to take them down from the shelves. This seemed especially harsh: the last night of my life—I was
certain
of it!—and I would be deprived the solace of books, however bloodless they might be—papal bulls, vulgates, and the like.

And so it had come to this.

Silence. The library was silent but for the rattle of my chains as I shifted in that chair. At first there'd been voices on the far sides of both doors, and voices outside, cursing up at me from the yard. Soon they went away, and silence settled over all and everything.

How sad I was then…. Sad enough to die. I
wanted
to die! I sat waiting for the dawn, and death. I
attended
death, with ever-lessening patience. And indeed, later that night, while staring deep into the flickering white candlelight, I determined to die by my own hand.

I searched the room for the means: I had flame: the few phosphorous matches my jailers had left me, but what was there that would burn bright enough to take me up? The straw pallet: I could set
that
aflame. No; there was not straw enough to fuel a funeral pyre. They hadn't left me a knife with the loaf of black bread. No shears, no keys, no tools—nothing sharp within my reach. The chains precluded a fall from the window. I'm ashamed to say that, thinking of Maluenda, I wondered what savage damage I might inflict upon myself with my teeth, my nails…but no, I could not; and such thoughts I quickly dismissed.

I was exhausted, yet my pulse drummed on at double-time, my chest grew tight; it was difficult to breathe. I
willed
my blood to slow in its course, I
willed
my breathing to deepen. And in so doing I rendered myself ever more exhausted.

I laid my head on the table, intending to sleep; instead, tears overtook me. The force of the tears, the
flood
of tears surprised me. This went on for some time; the muscles of my face and shoulders and belly grew sore. Such hysteria is strangely intoxicating. I thought that, I did:
intoxicating
; and in turn I thought of the wine, the broken blue bottle and, angrily, missing it, longing for its sweet relief, I swept that squat stoneware pitcher of water from the table. Rather, I
tried
to sweep it away; as I sat too far from it, the pitcher rolled clumsily to the side of the table and lay there, spewing its contents over the table's edge. I sat watching the gurgling spill till it stopped, sat watching the spreading stain.

And all the while I could not spare myself thoughts of Sister Claire de Sazilly. She
infected
my mind. I would cry, hopelessly; alternately I would endure a
raging
anger. My Christian soul sought to assert itself. I wondered, did there burn deep within me a bit of forgiveness, a single ember smothering under an ash mound of anger? If so, and if that ember burned itself out, what would happen to me then? Would I be reduced to one of
them
? And who were
they
anyway, these simple and faithful people, this breed of Christian for whom the Devil is much more exciting, more enticing than God? Their small dark minds dwell on evil; and they create occasions for its manifestation. They see the print of cloven hoofs on everything, all the odd, disastrous, and (if they are truly
good
Christians) too pleasurable events of life. Alone, they are worthless; together they cannot be stopped. It is they who tossed Christians into the pit, speared “infidel” children through on the Crusades, stoned supposed witches—

And it came to me clearly: I was that witch. I was the Radical Evil they'd long awaited.

Dawn crept ever closer. Death crept ever closer. I bemoaned not my certain fate, but rather the long hours that had to pass before its enactment.

I snuffed the candle flame. I would save it, relight it later perhaps. For now I'd welcome the moonlit, the starlit dark; look to lose myself in the shadowed depths of the library. I closed my eyes. I sought a deeper darkness.

Disinclined to slip from the chair and take to the straw pallet, I set my head on the table again. Blessedly, unexpectedly, sleep came. I slept soundly, though for how long I cannot say. Hours? Minutes? I'd no clock, and the arc of the moon is imprecise, or so it is to my eye.

It was the sound of water that “woke” me, water being poured. Waves on the distant shore? The play of a fountain? There was no fountain at C——. Rain. Was it raining? No…. I listened. It was, unmistakably, the transfer of water, or
liquid
, from one vessel to another. I could see little by the moon's light, but there…In the library's far corner…In the shadows.