THE FILE ON THE MAYFAIR WITCHES 2 page

“And would there were a Solomon about,” I said, “so that he might concur.”

But this they did not hear.

“If there was another witch, it was Charlotte,” said the old vintner. “You never saw such a sight as her Negroes, coming into the very church with her to Sunday Mass, with fine wigs and satin clothes! And the three mulatto maids for her infant boy. And her husband, tall and pale and like unto a willow tree, and suffering as he does from a great weakness which has afflicted him from childhood and which not even Charlotte’s mother could cure. And oh, to see Charlotte command the Negroes to carry their master about the village, down the steps and up the steps, and to pour his wine for him and hold the cup to his lip and the napkin to his chin. At this very table they sat, the man as gaunt as a saint on the church wall, and the black shining faces around him, and the tallest and blackest of them all, Reginald, they called him, reading to his master from a book in a booming voice. And to think Charlotte has lived among such persons since the age of eighteen, having married this Antoine Fontenay of Martinique at that tender age.”

“Surely it was Charlotte who stole the doll from the cabinet,” said the innkeeper’s son, “before the priest could lay hands on it, for who else in the terrified household would have touched such a thing?”

“But you have said that the mother could not cure the husband’s illness?” I asked gently. “And plainly Charlotte herself could not cure it. Maybe these women are not witches.”

“Ah, but curing and cursing are two separate things,” said the vintner. “Would they had applied their talent merely to curing! But what had the evil doll to do with curing?”

“And what of Charlotte’s desertion?” asked another, who had only just joined the congregation and seemed powerfully excited. “What can it mean but that they were witches together? No sooner was the mother arrested than Charlotte fled with her husband and her child, and her Negroes, back to the West Indies whence they came. But not before Charlotte had gone to be with her mother in the prison, and been locked up with her alone for more than an hour, this request granted only for those in attendance were foolish enough to believe that Charlotte would persuade her mother to confess, which of course she did not do.”

“Seemed the wise thing to have done,” said I. “And where has Charlotte gone?”

“To Martinique once more, it is said, with the pale skin and bone crippled husband, who has made a fortune there in the plantations, but no one knows that this is true. The inquisitor has written to Martinique to demand of the authorities that they question Charlotte, but they have not answered him, though there has been time enough, and what hope has he of justice being done in such a place as that?”

For over half an hour I listened on to this chatter, as the trial was described to me, and how Deborah protested her innocence, even before the judges and before those of the village who were admitted to witness it, and how she herself had written to His Majesty King Louis, and how they had sent to Dole for the witch pricker, and had then stripped her naked in her cell, and cut off her long raven hair, shaving her head after that, and searched her for the devil’s mark.

“And did they find it?” I asked, trembling inside with disgust at these proceedings, and trying not to recall in my mind’s eyes the girl I remembered from the past.

“Aye, two marks they found,” said the innkeeper, who had now joined us with a third bottle of white wine paid for by me and poured it out for all to enjoy. “And these she claimed she had from birth and that they were the same as countless persons had upon their bodies, demanding that all the town be searched for such marks, if they were to prove anything, but no one believed her, and she was by then worn white and thin from starvation and torture, yet her beauty was not gone.”

“How so, not gone?” asked I.

“Oh, like a lily she looks now,” said the old vintner sadly, “very white and pure. Even her jailers love her, so great is her power to charm everyone. And the priest weeps when he takes her Communion, for though she is unconfessed, he will not deny it to her.”

“Ah but you see, she could seduce Satan. And that is why they have called her his bride.”

“But she cannot seduce the witch judge,” says I. And they all nodded, not seeming to know that I spoke this in bitter jest.

“And the daughter,” I asked, “what did she say on the matter of her mother’s guilt before she made her escape?”

“Not a single word to any person. And in the dead of night, she slipped away.”

“A witch,” said the innkeeper’s son, “or how could she have left her mother to die alone with her sons turned against her?”

This no one could answer, but I could well guess.

By this time, Stefan, I had little appetite for anything but to get clear of this inn and speak to the parish priest, though this, as you know, is always the most dangerous part. For what if the inquisitor were to be roused from wherever he sat feasting and drinking on the money earned from this madness, and he should know me from some other place, and horror of horrors know my work and my impostures.

Meanwhile my newfound friends drank even more of my wine, and talked on that the young Comtesse had been painted by many a renowned artist in Amsterdam, so great was her beauty; but then I might have told them that part of the story, and so fell silent, in anguish, quietly paying for another bottle for the company before I took my leave.

The night was warm and full of talk and laughter everywhere it seemed, with windows open and some still coming and going from the cathedral, and others camped along the walls and ready for the spectacle, and no light in the high barred window of the prison beside the steeple where the woman was held.

I stepped over those seated and chatting in the dark as I went to the sacristy on the other side of the great edifice and there struck the knocker until an old woman led me in and called the pastor of the place. A bent and gray-haired man came at once to greet me saying that he wished he had known of a traveling priest come to visit, and I must move from the inn at once and lodge with him.

But my apologies he accepted quick enough as well as my excuses about the pain in my hands which prevents me now from saying Mass any longer, for which I have a dispensation, and all the other lies I have to tell.

As luck would have it, the inquisitor was being put up in fine style by the old Comtesse at the château outside the town gates, and as all the great cronies of the place were gone thither to dine with him, he would not show his face again tonight.

On this account the pastor was obviously injured, as he had been by the whole proceedings, for everything had been taken out of his hands by the witch judge and the witch pricker and all the other ecclesiastic filth which rains down upon such affairs as this.

How fortunate you are, I thought as he showed me into his dingy rooms, for had she broken under the torture and named names, half your town would be in jail and everyone in a state of terror. But she has chosen to die alone, by what strength I cannot conceive of.

Though you know, Stefan, there are always persons who do resist, though we have naught but sympathy for those who find it impossible.

“Come in and sit with me for a while,” said the priest, “and I’ll tell you what I know of her.”

To him immediately I put my most important questions, on the thin hope that the townsfolk might have been wrong. Had there been an appeal to the local bishop? Yes, and he had condemned her. And to the Parliament of Paris? Yes, and they had refused to hear her case.

“You have seen these documents yourself?”

He gave me a grave nod, and then from a drawer in his cabinet produced for me the hated pamphlet of which they had spoken, with its evil engraving of Suzanne Mayfair perishing in artful flames. I put this bit of trash away from me.

“Is the Comtesse such a terrible witch?” I said.

“It was known far and wide,” he said in a whisper, with a great lift of his eyebrows, “only no one had the courage to speak the truth. And so the dying Comte spoke it, to clear his conscience as it were, and the old Comtesse, having read the Demonologie of the inquisitor, found in it the proper descriptions of all the strange things which she and her grandsons had long seen.” He gave a great sigh. “And I shall tell you another loathsome secret.” And here he dropped his voice to a whisper. “The Comte had a mistress, a very great and powerful lady whose name must not be spoken in connection with these proceedings. But we have it from her own lips that the Comte was terrified of the Comtesse, and took great pains to banish all thoughts of his mistress from his mind when he entered the presence of his wife, for she could read such things in his heart.”

“Many a married man might follow that advice,” I said in disgust. “So what does it prove? Nothing.”

“Ah, but don’t you see? This was her reason for poisoning her husband, once he had fallen from the horse, and she thought that on account of the fall, she might not be blamed.”

I said nothing.

“But it is known hereabout,” he said slyly, “and tomorrow when the crowd gathers, watch the eyes and upon whom they settle, and you will see the Comtesse de Chamillart, from Carcassonne, in the viewing stand before the jail. However, mark me. I do not say that it is she.”

I said nothing, but sank only further into hopelessness.

“You cannot imagine the power which the devil has over the witch,” he continued.

“Pray, enlighten me.”

“Even after the rack on which she was cruelly tortured, and the boot being put on her foot to crush it, and the irons being applied to the soles of her feet, she confessed nothing, but did scream for her mother in torment, and cry out: ‘Roelant, Roelant,’ and then ‘Petyr,’ which were surely the names of her devils, as they belong to no one of her acquaintance here, and at once, through the agency of these daimons she fell to dreaming, and could not be made to feel the slightest pain.”

I could listen no more!

“May I see her?” I asked. “It is so important for me to gaze with my own eyes upon the woman, to question her if I might.” And here I produced my big thick book of scholarly observations in Latin, which this old man could scarcely read, I should say, and I babbled on about the trials I had witnessed at Bramberg, and the witch house there, where they had tortured hundreds, and many other things which impressed this priest sufficiently enough.

“I’ll take you to her,” he said finally, “but I warn you, it is most dangerous. When you see her you’ll understand.”

“How exactly?” I inquired, as he led me down the stairs with a candle.

“Why, she is still beautiful! That is how much the devil loves her. That is why they call her the devil’s bride.”

He then directed me to a tunnel which ran beneath the nave of the cathedral where the Romans had buried their dead in olden times in this region, and through this we passed to the jail on the other side. Then up the winding stairs we went to the highest floor, where she was kept beyond a door so thick the jailers themselves could scarce open it, and holding his candle aloft, the priest pointed then to the far corner of a deep cell.

Only a trace of light came through the bars. The rest fell from the candle. And there on a heap of hay I beheld her, bald and thin and wretched, in a ragged gown of coarse cloth, yet pure and shining as a lily as her admirers had so described. They had shaved even the eyebrows from her, and the perfect shape of her bare head and her hairlessness gave an unearthly radiance to her eyes and to her countenance as she looked up at us, from one to the other, carefully, with a slight and indifferent nod.

It was the face one expects to see at the center of a halo, Stefan. And you, too, have seen this face, Stefan, rendered in oil on canvas, as I shall clarify for you by and by.

She did not even move, but merely regarded us calmly and in silence. Her knees were drawn up in front of her, and she had wrapped her arms about her legs, as if she were cold.

Now you know, Stefan, that as I knew this woman, there was the strong chance that at this moment she would know me, that she should speak to me or implore me or even curse me in some way as to cause my authenticity to be questioned, but I tell you in truth I had not even thought of this in my haste.

But let me break off my account of this miserable night, and tell you now the whole tale before I proceed to relate what little did here take place.

Before you read another word I have written, leave your chamber, go down the stairs into the main hall of the Motherhouse, and look at the portrait of the dark-haired woman by Rembrandt van Rijn which hangs just at the foot of the stairs. That is my Deborah Mayfair, Stefan. This is the woman, now shorn of her long dark hair, who sits shivering now as I write, in the prison across the square.

I am in my room at the inn, having only lately left her. I have candles aplenty, as I have told you, and too much wine to drink and a bit of a fire to drive out the cold. I am seated at the table facing the window, and in our common code I will now tell you all.

For it was twenty-five years ago that I first came upon this woman, as I have told you, and I was a young man of eighteen years then and she only a girl of twelve.

This was before your time in the Talamasca, Stefan, and I had come to it only some six years before as an orphaned child. It seemed the pyres of the witches were burning from one end of Europe to the other, and so I had been sent out early from my studies to accompany Junius Paulus Keppelmeister, our old witch scholar, on his travels throughout Europe, and he had only just begun to show to me his few poor methods of trying to save the witches, by defending them where he could and inclining them in private to name as accomplices their accusers as well as the wives of the most prominent citizens of the town so the entire investigation might be discredited, and the original charges be thrown out.

And I had only lately been made to understand, as I traveled with him, that we were always in search of the true magical person—the reader of minds, the mover of objects, the commander of spirits, though seldom if ever, even in the worst persecutions, was any true sorcerer to be found.

It was my eighteenth year as I have told you, and my first to venture out of the Motherhouse since I had begun my education there, and when Junius took ill and died in Edinburgh, I was at my wit’s end. We had been on our way to investigate the trial of a Scottish cunning woman, very much famed for her healing power, who had cursed a milkmaid in her village and been accused of witchcraft though no evil had befallen the maid.

On his last night in this world, Junius ordered me to continue to the Highland village without him; and told me to cling fast to my disguise as a Swiss Calvinist scholar. I was far too young to be called a minister by anyone, and so could not make use of Junius’s documents as such; but I had traveled as his scholarly companion in plain Protestant clothes, and so went on in this manner on my own.

You cannot imagine my fear, Stefan.

And the burnings of Scotland terrified me. The Scots are and were, as you know, as fierce and terrible as the French and Germans, learning nothing it seems from the more merciful and reasonable English. And so afraid was I on this my first journey that even the beauty of the Highlands did not work its spell upon me.

Rather when I saw that the village was small and at a great remove from its nearest neighbor, and that its people were sheepherders, I knew even greater dread for their ignorance and the ferocity of their superstition. And to the dreary aspect of the whole was added the nearby ruins of a once great cathedral, rising like the bones of a leviathan out of the high grass, and far beyond across a deep valley, the forlorn picture of a castle of rounded towers and tiny windows, which might have been an empty ruin, for all I could see.

How shall I ever be of assistance here, I thought, without Junius to aid me? And riding into the village proper I soon discovered I had come too late, for the witch had been burnt that very day, and the wagons had just come to clear away the pyre.

Cart after cart was filled with ashes and charred bits of wood and bone and coal, and then the procession moved out of the little place, with its solemn-faced folk standing about, and into the green country again, and it was then that I laid eyes upon Deborah Mayfair, the witch’s daughter.

Her hands bound, her dress ragged and dirty, she had been taken to witness the casting of her mother’s ashes to the four winds.

Mute she stood there, her black hair parted in the middle and hanging down her back in rich waves, her blue eyes dry of all tears.

“ ’Tis the mark of the witch,” said an old woman who stood by watching, “that she cannot shed a tear.”

Ahh, but I knew the child’s blank face; I knew her sleeplike walk, her slow indifference to what she saw as the ashes were dumped out and the horses rode through them to scatter them. I knew because I knew myself in childhood, orphaned and roaming the streets of Amsterdam after the death of my father; and I remembered how when men and women spoke to me, it did not even cross my mind to answer, or to look away, or to change my manner for any reason. And even when I was slapped or shaken, I retained this extraordinary quietude, only wondering mildly why they would bother to do such a curious thing; better to look perhaps at the slant of the sunlight striking the wall behind them, as at the furious expressions on their faces, or take heed of the growls that came from their lips.

This tall and stately girl of twelve had been flogged as they burnt her mother. They had turned her head to make her watch, as the lash fell.

“What will they do with her?” I asked the old woman.

“They should burn her, but they are afraid to,” she answered. “She is so young and a merry-begot, and no one would bring harm to a merry-begot, and who knows who her father might be.” And with that the old woman turned and gave a grave look to the castle that stood, leagues away across the green valley, clinging to the high and barren rocks.

You know, Stefan, many a child has been executed in these persecutions. But each village is different. And this was Scotland. And I did not know what was a merry-begot or who lived in the castle or how much any of this might mean.

I watched in silence as they put the child on a cart and drove her back towards the town. Her dark hair blew out with the wind as the horses picked up speed. She did not turn her head to left or right, but stared straight forward, the ruffian beside her holding onto her to keep her from falling as the rough wooden wheels bounced over the ruts of the road.

“Ah, but they should burn her and be done with it,” said the old woman now, as if I had argued with her, when in truth I had said nothing, and then she spat to one side, and said: “If the Duke does not move to stop them,” and here she looked once more to the distant castle, “I think that burn her they will.”

Then and there I made my decision. I would take her, by some ruse if I could.

Leaving the old woman to return on foot to her farm, I followed the girl in the cart back to the village, and only once did I see her wake from her seeming stupor, and this was when we passed the ancient stones outside the village, and I mean by this those huge standing stones in a circle, from the dark times before history, of which you know more than I will ever know. To a circle of these she looked with great and lingering curiosity, though why it was not possible to see.

For naught but a lone man stood far out in the field, in their midst, staring back at her, with the powerful light of the open valley beyond him—a man no older than myself perhaps, tall and slight of build with dark hair, but I could hardly see him, for so bright was the horizon that he seemed transparent, and I thought perhaps he was a spirit and not a man at all.

It did seem that their glances met as the girl’s cart passed, but of none of this part am I certain, only that some person or thing was momentarily there. I marked it only for she was so lifeless, and it may have some bearing upon our story; and I think now that it does indeed have bearing; but that is for us both to determine at some later time. I shall go on.

I went to the minister at once, and to the commission which had been appointed by the Scottish Privy Council and had not yet disbanded, for it was at this very hour dining, as was the custom, with a good meal being provided by the estate of the dead witch. She had had much gold in her hut, said the innkeeper to me as I entered, and this gold had paid for her trial, her torture, the witch pricker, the witch judge who tried her, and the wood and the coal used to burn her, and indeed the carts that carried her ashes away.

“Sup with us,” said the fellow to me as he explained all this, “for the witch is paying. And there’s more gold still.”

I declined. And was not pressed for explanation, thank heaven, and going right to the men at the board I declared myself to be a student of the Bible and a God-fearing man. Might I take the witch’s child with me to Switzerland, to a good Calvinist minister there who would take her in and educate her and make a Christian of her and wipe the memory of her mother from her mind?

I said far too much to these men. Little was required. To wit, only the word Switzerland was required. For they wanted to rid themselves of her, they said it straight out, and the Duke wanted them to be rid of her, and not to burn her, and she was a merry-begot, which made the villagers most afraid.

“And what is that, pray tell?” I asked.

To which they explained that the people of Highland villages were most attached still to the old customs, and that on the eve of May 1 they built great bonfires in the open grass, these being lighted only from the needfire, or the fire they made themselves from sticks, and they danced all night about the bonfires, making merry. And in such revelry, this child’s mother, Suzanne, the fairest in the village and the May Queen of that year, had conceived of Deborah, the surviving child.

A merry-begot she was, and therefore much beloved, for no one knew who was her father and it could have been any of the village men. It could have been a man with noble blood. And in the olden times, which were the times of the pagans and best forgotten, though they could never make these villagers forget them, the merry-begots were the children of the gods.

“Take her now, brother,” they said, “to this good minister in Switzerland and the Duke will be glad of it, but have something to eat and drink before you go, for the witch has paid for it, and there is plenty for all.”

Within the hour, I rode out of the town with the child on my horse before me. And we rode right through the ashes at the crossroads, to which she did not to my knowledge give even a glance. To the circle of stones, she never once looked that I could tell. And she gave no farewell to the castle either as we rode down to the road that runs on the banks of Loch Donnelaith.

As soon as we reached the first inn in which we had to lodge, I knew full well what I had done. The girl was in my possession, mute, defenseless, and very beautiful, and big as a woman in some respects, and there I was, little more than a boy, but plenty more to make the difference, and I had taken her with no permission from the Talamasca and might face the most terrible storm of reprimands when I returned.

We put up in two rooms as was only proper, for she looked more woman than child. But I was afraid to leave her alone lest she run away, and wrapping my cloak about me, as if it would somehow restrain me, I lay down on the hay opposite her and stared at her, and tried to think what to do.

I observed now by the light of the reeking candle that she wore a few locks of her black hair in two small knots on either side of her head, high up, so as to keep back the bulk of it, and that her eyes were very like the eyes of a cat. By this I mean they were oval and narrow and turned up ever so little on the outside ends, and they had a shine to them. And beneath them she had rounded though dainty cheeks. It was no peasant face by any measure, but far too delicate, and beneath her ragged gown hung the high full breasts of a woman, and her ankles which she crossed before her as she sat on the floor were very shapely indeed. Her mouth I could not look at without wanting to kiss it, and I was ashamed of these fancies in my head.

I had not given the slightest thought to anything but rescuing her. And now my heart beat with desire for her. And she a girl of twelve merely sat looking at me.

What were her thoughts, I wondered, and sought to read them, but it seemed she knew this, and closed her mind to me.

At last I thought of the simple things, that she must have food and decent clothes—this seemed rather like discovering that sunlight makes one warm and water satisfies thirst—and so I went out to procure food for her and wine, and to acquire a proper dress, and a bucket of warm water for washing, and a brush for her hair.

She stared at these things as if she did not know what they were. And I could see now, by the light of the candle, that she was covered with filth and marks from the lash, and that the bones showed through her skin.

Stefan, does it take a Dutchman to abhor such a condition? I swear to you that I was consumed with pity as I undressed her and bathed her, but the man in me was burning in hell. Her skin was fair and soft to the touch, and she was ready for childbearing, and she gave me not the slightest resistance as I cleaned her, and then dressed her and at last brushed her hair.

Now I had by that time learned something of women, but it was not as much as I knew of books. And this creature seemed all the more mysterious to me for her nakedness and helpless quiet; but all the while, she peered out at me from the prison of her body with fierce, silent eyes that frightened me somewhat, and made me feel that, were my hands to stray in some improper way upon her body, she might strike me dead.

She did not flinch when I washed the marks of the lash on her back.

I fed her the food with a wooden spoon, Stefan, and though she took each morsel from me, she would reach for nothing and assist in nothing, on her own.

During the night I woke dreaming that I had taken her, much relieved to discover that I had not. But she was awake and watching me, and with the eyes of a cat. For some time I stared at her, again trying to divine her thoughts. The moonlight was pouring into the uncovered window, along with a good deal of bracing cold air, and I saw by the light that she had lost her blank expression and now seemed malevolent and angry, and this was frightening to me. She seemed a wild thing, dressed in her stiff starched white collar and bonnet, and blue dress.

In a soothing voice I tried to tell her in English that she was safe with me, that I would take her to a place where no one would accuse her of witchcraft, and that those who had descended upon her mother were themselves wicked and cruel.

At this she seemed puzzled, but she said nothing. I told her that I had heard tell of her mother, that her mother was a healer and could help the afflicted, and that such persons have always existed, and no one called them witches until these terrible times. But an awful superstition was afoot in Europe; and whereas in the olden days, men were admonished not to believe that people could speak to devils, now the church itself believed such things, and went looking for witches in every hamlet and town.

Nothing came from her, but it seemed her face grew less terrible, as though my words had melted her anger. And I saw the look of bewilderment again.

I told her I was of an order of good people who did not want to hurt or burn the old healers. And that I would take her to our Motherhouse, where men scoffed at the things which the witch hunters believed. “This is not in Switzerland,” I said, “as I told the bad men in your village, but in Amsterdam. Have you ever heard of this city? It is a great place indeed.”

It seemed then the coldness came back to her. Surely she understood my words. She gave a faint sneer at me, and I heard her whisper under her breath in English, “You are no churchman. You are a liar!”

At once I went to her and took her hand. I was greatly pleased to see she understood English and did not speak only the hopeless dialects one finds in these places, for now I could talk to her with more courage. I explained that I had told these lies to save her, and that she must believe that I was good.

But then she faded before my eyes, drawing away from me, like a flower closing up.

All the next day she spoke nothing to me, and all the next night the same, though she ate now unaided and well, I thought, and seemed to be gaining in strength.

Date: 2015-12-18; view: 576