The Book of Shadows (46 page)

“I've heard you and Father Louis speak of that, yes; but I don't really know what you mean.”

No, you don't, witch,
said she.
You've no idea.

“So tell me!” I said, surprising myself. “Tell me all you know of death.”

That said, we sat staring forward a long while, both of us—
enfin,
all
three
of us—in the otherwise empty church.

Her words, when finally she spoke, were these:

In the years since my death I have traveled widely, and with one intent: to find an avenue back into life.

…What I sought, failing always, was some small portion of a life's span. I didn't care if the body I gained was that of a baby or a beggar woman, a fool or a nun; I wanted only to return to mortality, to live again so that I might finally, truly die. To quit this…this infinite suspension…or this suspension within the Infinite that some rite or ritual of the Church has condemned me to.

“You believe the Church has done this to you?” I asked.

I know she has. It was an act of the Church; not an act of any god…. But just how it was done, I've no idea.
It was Madeleine's face I saw then beneath the veil, risen above the other, divorced from it and turned to me.
And if I've no idea how it was done, how then do I undo it? How might anyone, anything undo it?

Of course, my thought was this: how am
I
to undo it? I didn't ask that question. Instead, I sat listening. And looking. In the cool dark, in the multihued shadows of the cathedral, I marveled at the hands of Madeleine's…host. Pretty, long and slender fingers tapering down to well-tended nails. Nothing like Madeleine's cracked and overgrown curling nails—filthy, always, hers were; like those of something…
feral
.

Madeleine resumed:
All I have learned these long years of searching is that I cannot suffer this fate for all time. I cannot! I need the whole of life, or the whole of death. I cannot suffer this…this
stasis
any longer!

As she lapsed into silence, I looked from Madeleine to the bank of glowing red votives before which an old man had come to kneel; his grief—as evinced by his hands, clasped fast in prayer, and his heaving shoulders—was great.

I have sought a way in all the Church's rituals, without success. But I've a final hope:

We are traveling to disinter my body, to alter it at the suicides' unconsecrated crossroads to which it was condemned, banished from the Church's blessed earth. It's my hope that this—if done by the darkness of a new moon, and with certain rites read by both Louis and you, a new and strong witch…Well, perhaps I shall rest at last. Perhaps I shall finally die.

It seemed I'd little say in my own fate, yet here I was with the succubus dependent upon me to decide hers! All I could think to offer was a pathetic, “I'll try, Madeleine. I will.”

Yes, you will,
said the succubus.

“But what rites am I to read? You mentioned rites…”

Yes, yes, the rites. Bell, Book, and Candle,
said she
. Are you familiar, witch, with the rites of excommunication?

I said I was not, adding, “But those are for a priest to read, no?”

At this the succubus issued a derisive laugh.
No, thank you,
said she.
I've had my fill of priests. And Sebastiana says you have access to worlds priests and pagans can only pray to.

“Why me?” I asked.

New witches are not so easily come by,
said Madeleine.
I've waited
—

“No; I mean why me and not Sebastiana?”

Back in her day, you mean, when
she
was new? Well, by the time I met her, during the Terror, her strength had already ebbed, and she was still shy of her powers, having unwittingly rained down such storms as
—

“Yes, yes, I know of the storms,” I said.

And that witch, your Mystic Sister…well, she tried to help me but once, and only after much persuasion, by myself and Louis as well. The attempt was halfhearted and without effect; without effect on
me,
I should say.

I asked what she meant.

Madeleine hesitated.
Well,
she began,
Sebastiana worked the Craft that day with little confidence and an unsure hand,
the result being…well, it was sometime later we learned of the unfortunate effects, the…the
hemorrhagic
effects her Craft had had on several dogs in the vicinity of Chaillot. Apparently,
said the succubus with a mischievous shrug,
it was not pleasant. “Explosive,” was the word used by one tearful woman who, with the aid of the authorities, tried to puzzle out the loss of her poodles.

Resuming her…her
graver
tone, Madeleine went on:
Ah, witch,
said she,
there are more important things to speak of now. As my priest says, “Paris is passed”…I ask again: what do you know of the rite of Bell, Book, and Candle?

Before I could answer, she spoke on:

…It was the springtime of 1670 or '80; I forget the exact year, but I'd not yet been dead a half-century, that I know. From a traveler in the South, a dealer in champagne, I heard tell of a strangler in the Midi. This traveler had just received word from some man of his family that a suspect had been caught—a mute. I was suspicious; with good reason, as it turned out.

“But why would you be interested in—?”

—Because surely there'd be punishment meted out, and that most often meant the taking of life, the loosing of a soul into that same oblivion in which I dwell. And so, as I'd had my fun with that traveler—I was a bit more mischievous then—I set off.

“Mischievous?” I didn't ask for details; I didn't need to.

Louis was off in Bordeaux somewhere, keeping company with a family of daughters, so I traveled to the Midi alone…. To say I “traveled” to the Midi is inaccurate; discarnate, I had only to will myself there.
She asked did I understand; I lied that I did. In truth, that—the omnipotent will—seems destined to remain a mystery to me.

I don't recall the name of the village, but it doesn't matter. Neither does it matter that the priest involved in events there was one Monseigneur de Pericaud, the first priest I'd hear read the rite of excommunication.

The situation, I should say, was this: the mute stood accused of strangling, bare-handed, two women of that town. One victim was a widowed midwife, little better than a witch, it was said…dispensable, in other words. But the second victim was the pregnant wife of the mayor's son; and so a condemnable man was sought. It was easily decided that the mute who lived without family on the edge of the village, caring for hens and carrying their eggs to market weekly, would make a convenient suspect. The evidence was easily arranged. The trial was quick, the verdict unanimous. Interestingly, the mute was not to be strangled, as would have been customary: an eye for an eye, and so on. No, he was to be excommunicated, for he was of the Faith. And so, though his life would be spared, his soul would be cast off into damnation eternal. This, for the mute, was a fate worse than death. But it suited his accusers, for it spared their consciences—if not their souls.

On three consecutive Sundays the priest rang a large bell on the steps of the wooden church, distinguished only by the shortness of its spire, an embarrassment to the villagers, for it formed the town's sole renown. At the pealing of this bell, the villagers assembled. The monseigneur asked were there any present who might bear witness to the mute's innocence. No one spoke. Finally, on the fourth Sunday—and I assure you, by now I was ready for the rite to be read; I'd grown quite impatient, and I'd already ensured that the actual strangler would strangle no more—on that fourth Sunday, with no one speaking on behalf of the condemned, the verdict stood. The ritual commenced at noon.

A thick white taper, representing the soul of the condemned, was set on the church's top step.

“The rite is read outside?” I asked.

Not typically,
said Madeleine,
but too many people had come to see the mute's soul cast out, and that ramshackle church, its timbers rotted, the whole resembling nothing if
not a piece of carved coal, could not accommodate the crowd.

“What happened then?” I asked. “Did the mute—”

Madeleine's slow turning…no, the
corpse's
slow turning toward me, accompanied by a terrible…
cracking,
told me wordlessly that I ought not to interrupt. Lest I misunderstand, the succubus added:
It's a short tale, witch; and I'll tell it fast.

…The taper was lit, and a glass cylinder was placed over it, against the wind. More bells were rung. As some of these were brass, I suffered a bit, had to surrender the shape I'd taken, that of an old hag, ignored at the edge of the crowd. No one noticed as the shawl I abandoned sank to the ground. I rose up unseen, hovered above the crowd and watched, disembodied.

“The bells…?” I prompted. “Why brass?”

To ward off those demons who'd ascend to fight for the outcast soul.

“And were there demons?”

Again, that slow turning of the veiled face toward mine.
Just me,
said Madeleine; and the corners of the corpse's lips twitched, convulsed into a sickly smile.

“But you weren't there for the
soul
of the mute. It was the body you wanted, no?”

Yes, it was a body I sought, initially; but the strange verdict had fouled my plan. Still, I grew intrigued: if the soul and body were indeed to be separated, with some part of the soul of a still-living man cast off into the void…If this spell of the Church's worked, and body and soul were somehow severed…well then, I might be shown some avenue I'd not contemplated before.

Madeleine hesitated, lowered her voice till it was nearly inaudible. I wonder, did she worry what might happen when she recited those words, there in the cathedral? She did, after all, believe; she'd reason to. But then, in full voice, causing the grieving man before the votives to turn, Madeleine recited those words she'd first heard a century and a half earlier:

“We exclude him from the bosom of our Holy Mother the Church,”
said she, her voice so deep, her words so deliberate it seemed I was listening to the monseigneur himself; and I wondered did the elementals' talents for mimicry, effigy, and shape-shifting extend to the replication of voices lost to time?
“…And we judge him condemned to Holy Fire with Satan and his Angels and all the Reprobate, so long as he will not burst the fetters of his demons, do penance, and satisfy the Church.”

Madeleine fell silent. The left leg of the redheaded woman twitched terribly, so terribly I thought Madeleine had meant to kick me.
It seems this body is dying still,
said she lightly, in fast apology; and then she spoke on:

With more of the rite read, the monseigneur closed his dark text and tucked it up under his arm. The wind twisted his black shift about his legs and he, along with all those assembled, stared not at the mute but at the dancing flame behind the glass, emblematic of the mute's soul. Carefully, the glass was lifted off the candle and the priest, quick as a cat, snatched up the taper and waved it in the air. The flame blew out, and just as quickly the mute's soul was cast from God's sight. The priest then, quite showily—this angered me, for it is
not
part of the prescribed rite—tossed the taper into the crowd, where, with shouts and cries and prayers, the assembled faithful shrank from it.

“And the mute?”

Yes, well, the mute…Nothing. He simply walked from the village under a shower of stones, all his worldly goods slung over his shoulder, tied into a square of soiled canvas.

“His soul…?”

Unaffected.

“The rite, then, it didn't…”

“Sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Such rites, you see,
if they are to work at all, must be read by one who is “pure.” The Roman Ritual, the rite of exorcism, states it plainly: the reading priest must be pure.

“And the monseigneur?”

Impure,
said Madeleine flatly.
As are so many, for it seems to me the Church holds to a standard quite apart from life. Mind you, I make no excuses for the impure, none at all.

“The mute…?”

Unchanged, as regarded the state of his soul. This I've told you
—

“Yes, but did you tell
him
this? If he was a faithful man, then—”

No, I did not. I was, you understand, quite disappointed myself, for I'd learned nothing I did not know. And neither am I inclined to impart confidences to mortals; in this I do them a favor, for not everyone suffers as well as you the acquaintance of eudemons.

“Yes, but—”

Leave off, witch! It is over and done, and all those concerned have long since passed to their just reward. Would you have me somehow turn back time to talk to a mute?

Silence then.

But I believe still,
said Madeleine,
that there is something to that rite. I've long wondered what it—or a rite derived from it—might effect if read by one who is pure. Pure as you are.

Still we knelt shoulder to shoulder. The cathedral was empty and nearly dark now, the stained glass faintly aglow with the last light of day. I sat looking up at the windows when suddenly Madeleine abandoned her host and it—the redheaded corpse—toppled toward me like a felled tree! I scrambled out from under it to see Madeleine standing in the church's center aisle. She appeared as always, in her cerements, wild-looking. I saw clearly her ragged wound; free now of the obscuring blood, it was even more horrible. But then…above the throat, there floated her ethereal face, her beautiful face, frozen forever in her youth yet masking such a very old soul.