The Fiery Angel (42 page)

“In case of extremity you must act as you think fit, though we shall try to prevent it from going as far as torture. But remember in general that we are planning a dangerous game, and that you will ruin yourself for certain if you in any way betray your compassion for or intimacy with the accused. It were best for you not to disclose your face to her, and, if she should herself name you as her accomplice, deny it firmly. Now let us be going, and may Hermes, the god of all cunning, render us aid.”

Having thus agreed, we made our way to the convent for the second time.

At the gates there awaited us, by the order of the Archbishop, a monk, who, after gruffly and disrespectfully remarking to us that we were late, conducted us to the eastern wall of the temple, where, near the door of the sacristy, there appeared to be yet another, low and embedded in the earth, a door that led into the chapel vaults. By the light of a torch made of pitch, carried by our guide, we descended down a dark, slippery passage, through musty air, to a depth of more than one flight, then crossed two arched chambers, and at last, through a side arch, entered a subterranean hall, lit sparingly, so that everything within it appeared as if in twilight. In a corner of the wall, where was fixed a long torch, stood a heavy oak table, perhaps equal in years to the vaults themselves, and at that table, on a bench, sat two figures, in whom we soon recognised the Archbishop and the inquisitor, while, at some distance, were visible the dark forms and glittered the arms and trappings of the guards. And when the Count had apologised in elegant terms for his delay, and we had taken our places, also on the decayed bench, eaten away by the moisture of centuries, I distinguished in the opposite corner the vague ghost of a pole with a crossbar and a rope, and, realising that this was the strappado, I involuntarily felt for the hilt of my trusted sword. I shall remark also that the Count took his seat in line with the other judges, while I preferred to sit at the very end of the table, firstly because this was required by my respect for the rank of the Archbishop, and second, because there the light of the torch barely penetrated, and I could justly count upon my face remaining in shadow, and consequently not being recognised by Renata.

After the arrival of the Count, and seeing that I had taken out my field-inkstand, made ready my pen and spread the paper, the Archbishop turned to the inquisitor with the invitation:

“Brother Thomas, proceed with your duties.”

Now, however, there ensued between the Archbishop and the inquisitor a polite altercation as to which of them should preside over the case, for each courteously relinquished the honour to the other. The Archbishop referred to the exact instruction of the papal bull, in which the Vice-Regent of Peter confers upon the inquisitors, directly appointed by him, the right to conduct trials of persons accused of the crime of magic, of commerce with demons, of flights to the Sabbath, and so forth, to throw them into prison, submit them to torture, and determine their punishment. But Brother Thomas, humbling himself hypocritically, admitted these rights as being his only by request of the prince of the district in which the criminal is discovered, and pointed out that, moreover, sorcery was a mixed crime,
crimen fori mixtum
, subject both to the ecclesiastical court, as a heresy, and to the civil court, in that it brings damage and ruin to people, and that therefore it was most becoming that the Archbishop, who united both authorities in his person, should take it into his competence. Interrupting this fruitless argument, the Count decided the question by suggesting that the Archbishop preside over the enquiry as seigneur of the Trier Kurfürstendom, and the inquisitor assume the conduct of the examination proper, as one endowed with direct authority by His Holiness, which decision I duly entered at the head of my melancholy report.

This, however, did not complete the preparatory deliberations, for Brother Thomas, dragging a paper from his deep pockets and holding it to his very nose, for it was not light enough for easy reading, made the following communication to us:

“Beloved brethren! In accordance with the recommendations of just and learned men, here is a Summons, which I shall nail to-day to the gates of this convent, should you approve it: ‘We, known in the Dominican Order as the humble Brother Inquisitor Thomas, inspired by living affection for the Christian people and prompted by a thirst to maintain it in the unity and purity of the Catholic faith, and purge it of any contagion of heretic error, having to this end the dispensation and commission of His Holiness, the Vice-Regent of Christ, Paul III, and the sanction of His Reverend Eminence the Archbishop of Trier, Iohann, do, by virtue of the powers with which we are invested, exhort and command, in the name of holy obedience to the Church, on pain of ruinous excommunication from Her, that any body, who knows or has heard of any other body, that he be a heretic, or practises sorcery, enjoys notoriety of doing so or be suspected of it, in particular if he be using various secret means to damage persons, animals, the fruits of the earth, or any part of the earth—that in the course of twelve days he report to us of such, and if in the course of twelve days he shall not have submitted to this our persuasion and command, let it be known to him that he himself, as a heretic and sinner, is subject to excommunication.’”

At this point in his speech, Brother Thomas made a pause, glanced in triumph at his two companions, and, hearing no argument in contraversion, continued:

“But in this particular case we have no need, so I presume, either of a report, or any
inscriptio
, for we ourselves have been witnesses of the appalling infidelity into which Sister Maria has fallen, in yielding to the temptations of the Fiend, and therefore we can proceed immediately to conduct the case by Inquisition procedure. If, during the examination, there should come to light evidence against other sisters in this holy cloister, we shall have a witness against them ready to our hand, for in such a terrible matter as sorcery no evidence must be despised. And let us remember the words contained for us in the precepts of the Saviour Himself, ‘If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out.’”

Now I believe that an assured and experienced man could have destroyed the arguments of the Dominican, and snatched, if only temporarily, the prey from his jaws, as, according to the story, Agrippa of Nettesheim once saved, by reasoned arguments, a woman accused of witchcraft from the hands of another inquisitor in the town of Metz some fifteen years before. But who out of us three could have taken upon himself the part of the great scientist: the Archbishop, in no degree less than Brother Thomas, was full of zeal to master the wiles of the Devil, and being shaken, apparently, by all that he had witnessed at the convent, was only glad that someone else had taken it upon himself to conduct the case; if the Count had even begun to speak, it is hardly likely that the other judges would have listened to him, for he himself was under suspicion as a heretic and friend of the humanists; and could I have raised my voice here, a humble scribe from the castle, only by chance having been awarded the post of court clerk? And therefore no one opposed the inquisitor, who felt as merry, in this business of the trial of a witch, as a pike in a fish pen, and who, having concluded his explanations, gave an order with the air of a commander addressing his soldiers:

“Lead hither the accused!”

Once more my heart fell, like a shot squirrel from a tall pine, and two of the guards quickly disappeared into the subterranean depths, as if diving into its damp twilight, and then, after an interval, reappeared, not so much leading as dragging behind them a woman: it was Renata, her hair in disarray, in a torn monastic robe, her hands twisted behind her by a rope. When Renata had been led nearer to the table I was able to distinguish her quite pale face in the unclear light of the torch, and, knowing thoroughly all the peculiarities of its expressions, I immediately perceived that she was in that state of exhaustion and helplessness that always came upon her after a fit of possession, and during which there always ruled in her soul a consciousness of sin and an insurmountable desire for death. When the guards released her, she almost fell to the floor, but then, mastering herself, she remained standing before the court, bending like a stem in the wind, scarcely raising her eyes, and only at times trailing her clouded glance along those present, as if not comprehending what she was seeing—and I think that, after all, she never noticed my presence in the midst of the collegium of her judges.

For the space of several minutes Brother Thomas silently inspected Renata, as a tom-cat studies a mouse he has caught, and then put his first question, which sounded sharply, and slashed our silence like a knife:

“How are you named?”

Renata just barely raised her head, but without looking at the examiner, and uttered in reply, softly, almost whispering:

“My name has been taken from me. I have no name.”

Brother Thomas turned to me and said:

“Write down: she refused to give her Christian name, given to her in holy baptism.”

Then Brother Thomas again addressed Renata, with the following harangue:

“My pretty one! You know that we have all been witnesses of the fact that you are in league with the Devil. Moreover, the pious Mother Superior of this convent has informed us of the faithlessness that has established itself in this place from the very day on which you came here to live, certainly moved by the intention of seducing and destroying the gracious souls of the sisters of this cloister. Your accomplices have already all repented before us and denounced your shameful machinations, so that your denial will avail you nothing. It were better for you to confess all your sins and imaginings with an open heart, and then, by the majesty of the Holy Father himself, I promise you mercy.”

I looked askance at the monk, and it seemed to me that he smiled, for, as I knew, the word “mercy” always means in such promises “mercy for the judges” or “mercy for the people,” just as the word “life” in the promises of the inquisitors usually means “life eternal.” But Renata did not notice the deceit in the words of the examiner, or perhaps it was the same to her before whom she confessed, only, with that same sincerity with which she had made her confessions to me in the happy days of our intimacy, she replied:

“I seek no mercy. I desire and seek death. I believe in the mercy of God at the last judgment, if here I do expiate my sins.”

Brother Thomas looked at me, queried: “recorded?” and again asked Renata:

“So you confess that you have made a pact with the Devil?”

Renata answered:

“Fearful are my sins, I could not enumerate their number, even if I were to speak from morning until nightfall. But I renounced evil, and thought that the Lord had accepted my repentance. I do not seek to exculpate my sins, but, by the living God, I swear to you that I came to this cloister to seek peace and consolation, and not to instil strife! But the Lord permitted that even here I might not hide from mine Enemy, whom I myself gave power over me. Burn me, Master Judges, I thirst for fire, as for a liberation, for I see that there is nowhere on this earth where I may live in peace!”

Overcoming her weakness, Renata spoke these words with passion, and it was well that I was sitting away from the others, for my eyes filled with tears when I heard these terrible avowals, but they produced no effect on the Dominican, who interrupted Renata, saying:

“Not so fast, my pretty. We shall put the questions to you, and do you answer.”

After this Brother Thomas took from his pocket a little book, which I recognised, by various signs, as the “
Malleus Maleficarum in tres partes divisus
” of Sprenger and Institor, and referring to this handbook, he began to put detailed questions to Renata, which, as well as the answers that followed them, I had to write down, though at times they made, me grind my teeth in despair. This whole examination I shall record here exactly as I then wrote it down, for each ruinous question sucked at my soul like a tentacle of the ocean octopus, and each melancholy confession of Renata remained in my memory like the words of a prayer learned by heart in childhood. Methinks that not a word will I have altered in reproducing this record of mine in the pages of this faithful narrative.

I will remark here that Renata replied to the first questions hesitantly, disconnectedly, and shortly, in an exhausted voice, as if it were too great an effort for her to pronounce the words, but gradually she somehow livened, she even held herself on her feet with more confidence, and her voice became stronger and regained all its usual resonance. To the final questions she replied even with eagerness, humbly explaining every point about which she was asked, ardently and longwindedly relating even much that was irrelevant, going into unnecessary details, not being abashed to touch upon ignoble matters, as was her custom, and as if intentionally seeking out more and more horrible accusations against herself. Remembering the experiences of my life in company with Renata, I am inclined to think that much of her confession was untrue, and that much was invented on the spur of the moment, mercilessly to calumniate herself to some end incomprehensible to me, if it were not that some inimical demon possessed her soul the while, and spoke with her lips, to destroy her the more certainly.

I will observe, also, that the further the examination proceeded, the more obviously satisfied and yet more satisfied grew Brother Thomas, and I noticed how his nostrils quivered as he listened to the shameless admissions of Renata, how taut became the veins of his hands, as he leaned on them, drawing himself up, how all his body swayed with an overflow of joy, as he saw his hopes and suppositions justifying themselves. The Archbishop, on the contrary, already seemed tired very soon after the examination had begun, and in no degree exhibited that same firmness with which he had astonished me in the morning—he was suffering, no doubt, from the fetid subterranean air, wearied from sitting on the wooden bench, and probably he found nothing entertaining in the revelations of Sister Maria. While the Count contrived all the time to remain stern and dispassionate, his face not betraying the movements of his soul, only arresting me from time to time with a meaning glance, when I, losing control over myself at the horrible proceedings, was about to cry out some imprudent words, or even to commit some demented action, which of course could have led to no other result than my immediate arrest also, as accomplice of the criminal.