The Book of Shadows (16 page)

At the bishop's order, a Dr. Lucien Epernon was dispatched to Q——to examine the bewitched. He determined that Sabine showed no signs of possession, that no war was being waged for her soul; rather, he reported that “the girl suffers from a species of uterine fury, whose symptoms are an excessive heat on the body, an inextinguishable appetite for venery, and an inability to talk about anything but the body and the veneric act.” He opined that she was “highly impressionable, for she felt pain when I told her she ought, though no source of said pain existed.” The doctor's report, a simple inquiry, more a matter of custom than law, according to the bishop, was filed deep in the bowels of the bishopric. Dr. Epernon himself was dispatched to the Auvergne on six-month assignment.

As for the cabal, its members took turns coaching Sabine. Canon Mignon continued his daily tutorials, of course. Mannoury arranged to keep Monsieur Capeau in Marseilles, dumb and disinterested. The Prosecutor and Monsieur Adam, with calisthenics, pills, and potions, put Sabine through her paces. Acrobatics had so impressed judges at trials in the past—no better show than a nun or good girl suddenly taken with an urge to do the splits in open court! But little Sabine was brittle-boned and stiff. Still, she progressed. Soon she could, if seated, raise each foot to touch the opposite shoulder. And, with a literal blast of good fortune, it was discovered that this pose rendered the girl flatulent. Further testimony.

When finally Sabine was ready to show, and with the curé chained away in a sweltering attic, the cabal recruited the bit players. Willing witnesses were auditioned, hired, and readied for the trial. A jury of thirteen magistrates was assembled by means of blackmail and cash.

Though the arrogant and too pretty priest had grown less popular, still many people of Q——doubted the charges and pitied him. The curé's lovers of both sexes were all tears and stifled support. They smuggled unsigned letters of support into his attic via the boy who emptied his bucket, but these were slight consolation; still no one spoke publicly in his defense. He'd gotten word to his family to stay away, lest they be implicated. So, denied counsel, Father Louis waited patiently to speak in his own defense; that opportunity, if it came at all, would come at trial and not before.

No. Neither his lovers nor his family nor his friends could counter the opposition—the Prosecutor, the bishop, the cardinal, and, by extension, the king. Only a fool would have spoken in the curé's defense. A fool, or someone in love.

And lest such a one come forward, it was decreed that any person speaking against the proceedings would be fined ten thousand livres; further, any group of three or more unrelated persons meeting without permission and for unclear purposes, would be liable to a fine of fifty thousand livres. And as no man relished the prospect of a stay in debtor's prison, no one spoke against the proceedings. Indeed, many good and just people of Q——saw fit to travel; the time was opportune.

The prosecution progressed quickly that horrible hot summer. But not too quickly…

For, as word of the curé's certain condemnation spread, a tide of tourists flooded Q——. The town happily suffered twice its normal number of inhabitants. Innkeepers tripled their rates and still turned people away. Strangers walked door to door in search of a cot and some ale. Business had never been better. Bakers fired their ovens both day and night. Many men and all the whores of Q——became rich that long summer. Monsieur Adam convinced his fellow merchants to pay for the printing of broadsides detailing the charges against the curé, each more exaggerated than the last; men and boys were hired to spread these sheets through every village less than two days travel from Q——. Not since a troupe of acrobats had come from Paris, with dwarfs and dancing bears, had Q——seen such a show as this!

Father Louis could see the crowded square through the slats of his attic cell. The noise kept the priest awake at night; rooms, crammed with cots, were rented in shifts and so scores of tourists drank and danced; fighting, fornicating, roasting bothersome mutts on pits set up for boar, they awaited their turn to sleep. Friends traveling separately from Marseilles and lesser cities made plans to meet in the square at Q——, beneath the Bourbon standard. The priest knew that this did not bode well: no one traveled to witness a trial; only an execution.

Words of the bewitching in Q——, of the capture and killing (premature, of course) of a devil, spread wide and fast. Few peasants could read and so, traveling by tongue, the tale grew ever more fantastical; and Madeleine heard enough to puzzle out the cabal's progress as she sat beside her shuttered window, listening to talk in the narrow street below. And lest she harbor hopes of reunion, her Keeper cruelly slipped beneath her door the merchants' broadside, detailing in words and sketches the many misdeeds of the Devil-Priest of Q——.

Madeleine knew she must do something. In two days' time she had a plan:

She would testify against Louis. Wasn't it widely rumored that he had ruined her? She was the
perfect
witness. She'd show little Capeau, the vicious bitch! For wasn't seduction—and all of Q——knew she'd been seduced—wasn't seduction just below bewitchment on the Devil's agenda? Yes, she'd say or do anything to be at that trial. Anything to see Louis again.

Surely she knew enough about other trials, about testimony and false religion, to appear
afflicted
. She knew enough about witchcraft and such. She could do it. She
had
to.

And when she saw Louis, as soon as she stood before him in open court, she would recant. Recant, recant, recant! Take back every word. And save him! Say that she loved him and that he loved her. That yes, he was the father of her child. Yes, they were going to spend the rest of their lives together, for they were married…more or less.

Madeleine held to the sweet memory as she lay plotting in her airless cell. The memory of their midnight marriage. The night she'd slipped from her home to meet the priest at St. Pierre. It was a cool night in early spring, with a quarter moon high in the sky, sharp as a sickle. The night had been so quiet! A lone raven far away. The lazy turn of wagon wheels on cobblestoned streets. A fecund wind, not unpleasant, swirled within the village walls. Careful lest she be discovered, she'd slipped into the shadows at the slightest noise; and slipped finally into the great church on the square, its spires rising up sharp and high enough to tear the black fabric of the night.

Louis was waiting for her. As he'd promised. In his arms were thirteen red roses. “For my most beautiful rose,” he whispered.

Their footsteps echoed in the cold and empty church. He'd met her at the front door, answering to her three light raps. She'd stepped quickly through the small door cut into the larger. He took her hand and they walked, wordlessly, down the length of the nave to the altar, which he'd illumined with white votives. Hundreds of candles, it seemed; she was deeply moved. The candles lit the carved Christ on His cross above the altar, and for a moment Madeleine was scared. She'd never been in an empty church. Strange, since she'd been coming to St. Pierre all her life, that she was just now noticing its details: how the stained glass windows, twice as tall as she, depicted the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary; how the moonlight lit the glass faces of the saints; and how the blue and gray panes of the Virgin's robe fit together so well, looking as though they might move on the slightest wind; the lingering incense; the worn wood of the pews, as cold and smooth as the attendant statues…and the glistening altar, all gold and bright white cloth.

As priest, Father Louis asked himself did he take Madeleine to be his wife; as bridegroom he answered in the affirmative and slipped a thin band of ivory onto her finger. As priest he invoked a blessing; as groom he knelt to receive it.

Madeleine giggled and cried through the ceremony, said in defiance of law and custom, Church and state. She was scared, and excited.

Yes, in her heart and mind she was married.

Sweeter still the memory of how, the ceremony said, the impassive faces of the glass saints staring, he had carried her into the sacristy and taken her for the first time, slowly, smoothly, on the stony floor, not fifteen paces from the sacrament…. How it had hurt…How Louis had held her, whispered words about
her
most beautiful rose…How she'd bled onto the stones, and how he'd wiped up her blood with the whitest cloth…

Yes, she must save him. Do whatever she had to do to save him.

And so, when her Keeper came to her one morning shortly thereafter, to lead her to that putrid bath, Madeleine took the woman's hand and sucked hungrily, wildly at her fleshy fingers—“as my devils suck at my teats,” said she—and averred,
sotto voce
, that she was indeed bedeviled, and that her devils had turned against their brother and instrument, the parish priest of Q——, “that goat in a biretta, that cassocked Priapus.”

By midday, Madeleine had had an audience with the cabal—all save her father; and that night she was slipped unseen into the Capeau home.

The cabal convinced the Prosecutor to let Madeleine testify. She was the perfect witness, they said. She'd rid them of the confessor once and for all, and wasn't that their goal? It was indeed. She, the Prosecutor's daughter, could help them achieve it, especially if her Keeper would attest to what she'd seen the girl do, especially if Madeleine's resident devils could be coaxed into a second appearance. Yes, said the cabal, the girl ought to be brought in to testify. To be
trained
to testify. Clearly she was willing. And vengeful. The Prosecutor relented. Madeleine would testify, but he would not see her outside of court, and at the conclusion of the trial she would be “dealt with,” sent away. Somewhere. He didn't care where. The cabal swore they would see to it.

Canon Mignon was, at first, careful with Madeleine. He knew what he'd achieved with Sabine—though just
how
he'd achieved it he could not have said—but what had he here, in Madeleine? Her state—she was
enceinte
, seven months into her term—added to the priest's fear. Still, he played his part: tutor to the possessed.

They sat sequestered in the Capeaus' library. They read aloud accounts of other trials—the testimony and detailed descriptions of how the possessed had behaved. They prayed aloud that they would be able to prove what the curé and his demons had done to them.

Of course, this was all more than Madeleine had expected. The crowds. The court already in session, she carried on: she had no choice. She did what the Canon said, and he was pleased. Yes, everything he said was true. Yes, she would swear to it. The descriptions of the possessed might have been written of her. Yes, yes, and yes again. Her tongue was slick with lies, and her limbs grew slack from the acrobatics. She was ready to spout the cabal's truths, ready to scamper about the court as they wished. Ready, indeed. She begged to speak against the Devil. She
begged
to be taken to the trial.

While Madeleine made of herself the perfect pawn, Sabine grew ever more difficult:

She ended each session by falling into fits, by demanding in top-voice that her demons take their leave, by condemning the Devil-devout curé to an eternity in heaven. The Canon pleaded with the girl: wouldn't she do better to save her strength for the trial? She said the decision was not hers. Her demons had her.

Canon Mignon reported to the cabal that Sabine had become too much for him. He was aging at double-speed. She'd even knocked him over once as he'd tried to calm her, and he'd fallen head first onto the hearth. Had badly cut his head. He worried that the girl would be the death of him. He needed help.

But the cabal, knowing well the Canon's vanity, only commended him on a job well done; this worked: the Canon returned to the Capeaus' the very next afternoon. “Ah, but I'm afraid all credit goes to the child,” he demurred. “She took over some time ago,” adding in a whisper, “now she
believes
herself!”

Monsieur Adam mixed some more of Sabine's soporific. He'd concocted so many variations of the original that there was no longer a recipe. Still, Sabine would not sleep, and so the apothecary threw in a little of this; she grew constipated, and so in went a little of that. She began to rave. Mannoury bled the girl, to no effect. The Canon kept a store of dried blood gathered by the Visitandines of Annecy from the tomb of St. Francis de Sales; he gave up a cherished clot for the girl to eat. Nothing. No improvement at all. The Canon was at a loss. Monsieur Adam had mixed his best. Mannoury reported that there was nothing in Aristotle or Augustine, nothing in Gallen or the Arabians that might explain away Sabine's behavior. They knew not what to do.

The trial of the Curé of St. Pierre of Q——convened on 2 September, 16—.

The monitory had ensured that there would be no shortage of testimony. The townspeople of Q——vied for a chance to speak against the curé; for them, the trial was a mere extension of the games they'd been playing all summer long in the pubs, over tankards of rotgut and ale. Their testimony—lies and tales—was reported to the thousands who gathered in the square, too poor to pay their way into court.

Of course, some few told the truth. Far less damning, and wholly believable. In this number were the curé's spurned lovers and their spouses.

The secondary priest of St. Pierre was all cooperation. Throughout the testimony he sat in the front row, in full view of the magistrates, and watched Canon Mignon; when the Canon rubbed the cross pendant from his neck with his left hand (the agreed-upon sign), the aspirant would rise and vehemently affirm the testimony. After all, as second in command at St. Pierre, who'd know better than he what atrocities Father Louis had committed? Meanwhile, in a locked box beneath his bed, the priest kept a postdated letter appointing him curé upon the condemnation of the accused.