This was just as Justus had imagined. It was too perfect. It was as though the Devil himself were testing him through this woman, just as he had tested Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. First greed. Then avarice. Now lust. It mattered not to what sin she appealed, however; Justus was not one to be turned from his task. He was as the rock, impervious to her charms.
“No, you shall not tempt me.”
He coughed. She was burning something foul in her cheap candle. The smoke was filthy and acrid, stinging his eyes, cloying in his throat. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. Some witch, he thought. She could not even trim a candle properly.
“Let me go, I beg you. I shall leave and not return.”
Pleading. After denials and bribes it always came to pleading. Why, he should write his own treatise on interviewing heretics. Something that would put De Gui’s nonsensical scribbles to shame. How his wisdom would be revered.
Alice hung her head. “What … what will happen to me now?”
And there it was. The final phase: resignation and fear, and so quickly arrived at.
“Will you turn me over to the bishop?”
“That fat Irish fool. Hmm, perhaps, but I shall have a few questions for you myself first.”
Yes, she would face questioning from a real inquisitor. No doubt she would lie and he would be forced to employ harsher measures. Slowly the lies would give way to half-truths, and then the sweet moment would arrive when she would tell him everything: all her filthy secrets; the names of all her acolytes, all her accomplices, and all those who had offered her succor and comfort. Anything he wanted.
“If you cooperate fully and throw yourself on God’s mercy, there may yet be redemption, even for one such as you.”
Her redemption would be the fire. She would burn when he was done with her. He had no doubt of that. But let her nurse some slim hope. She would be far more malleable and willing to confess to her crimes if she thought that she might thereby receive mercy.
Justus coughed again, a dry hacking cough that almost bent him over. His eyes were tearing up from that foul smoke. As much as he was enjoying himself, it was time to end this exchange and take her somewhere where the examination might be more intimate and where there would be no damned untrimmed smoky candles. There was no ventilation at all in this miserable squat hole.
Justus reached into his bag. He would shackle her hand and foot and parade her through the village like the wicked temptress she was.
“Come now, matham, ith time for uth to go.”
The friar was appalled to find that his words had come out slurred, almost like those of a drunken sot. He coughed again. The smoke was becoming unbearable, choking almost, and it was burning his eyes. He scrubbed angrily at them to clear his vision. The light from the candle seemed to be getting blurry. He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes again. But it was not just the light that was blurry. Her face was blurry too, and the room was beginning to spin. Justus shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts.
The hand that held the candle was no longer trembling, and Alice smiled slowly—an unpleasant, knowing smile that chilled the Dominican’s blood.
“I am sorry, is my candle bothering you, priest? I made it myself, you know. It is somewhat acrid I must admit, but I have become used to it. To others the smoke can be irritating, though—deadly even.”
She had such bright teeth. Her eyes seemed to change color, and they were so large, the pupils huge, the entire eye almost black. Justus was entranced by her, spellbound, and could not look away.
“You see the irritation from the smoke encourages the rubbing of eyes, allowing the poison to seep deeper into the body. It is quite a clever trick, really. I actually got the idea from the common nettle. Who would have thought it? Scratching at the nettle rash only makes it worse, you see.”
She laughed out loud. The sound was tinny in his ears.
“And you thought I would poison you with wine. How crude, when there are so many more effective methods. The poison enters the body so much more quickly, so much more effectively, through the eyes. But then, as an experienced herbalist, you would understand this.”
She was mocking him, but the Dominican found that he scarcely cared. He was coughing harder now, his breath wheezing in his chest. It was becoming difficult to inhale, and he was dragging air into his lungs.
Alice jutted out her lower lip and pouted at him. “But, Friar, you do not seem interested in my candle at all, and after I spent so much time in its crafting. I am quite hurt. Was this not precisely the sort of thing that you came here to find?”
Her face was swimming before him now. If he did not leave at once, he was sure he would faint.
“No!” he exclaimed loudly, tearing his eyes away from her. He stumbled backward, tore open the door, and lurched out into the night, sucking in great lungfuls of air. He had dropped his staff somewhere. He did not remember having done so. And that scent—he could not get it out of his nostrils. It was making it difficult for him to concentrate. Difficult to breathe.
Justus staggered away from the hut on unsteady legs, walking like a drunken man. He could sense her behind him and hear the drag-thump of his satchel as she trailed it along the floor. He had dropped that as well, it would seem.
The Dominican took a few more stiff steps and fell to his knees. He turned to see her close behind him. Her eyes were full black now, her face pale like that of a corpse, all except her lips, which were blood-red and peeled back to reveal such bright, white teeth.
Justus threw his hands into the air and lifted his face to the heavens: “Oh, Lord, send fire, send lightning, let the earth open and swallow her.”
Alice paused and looked about, turning her face first to one side and then the other.
“Shall we give Him a moment or two?” she asked in a perversely reasonable manner.
She lifted the hem of her shift and stamped on the ground. “No, nothing, I’m afraid.”
“O Lord,” he wailed, “burn the foul mocking words in her mouth; set her tongue on fire that she might not pollute this world with her filthy sacrilege. Let her taste naught but the ashes of her corruption.”
Alice smiled and licked her lips slowly, lasciviously, the pink tongue circling her mouth fully. “Still nothing? Well, I imagine He is terribly busy, what with all the wailing and fawning that goes on in church these days. There is so much for Him to listen to. So many favors asked. So many sinners who wish to unburden their souls. You should not take it personally.”
She stepped closer, and Justus shrank away from her, falling over backward, bumping his backside hard on the ground and sending a jarring pain up through his spine.
“God shall smite you,” he tossed over his shoulder as he crawled away. “He shall burn you in the fires of hell. He shall—”
His latest outburst was greeted by gales of mocking laughter. “Oh, you men and your hellfire. I know, I know, Eve’s daughter and all that.” She wiped a tear from her eye. “You are such a silly old goat, but I must confess I have not had as good a laugh in some time. Well, I would hate to disappoint you, and we really must be moving along. I have things to do and places to go—a ship to catch before the next tide turns. I have so very little time for this sort of thing. I am sure that you understand.”
“You would not dare to touch a servant of the Lord. Stay back, you whore of Satan. Beelzebub’s bitch!”
Justus fumbled at his chest for the cross that hung there. He thrust it out at her and turned his head aside, his eyes screwed firmly shut.
And suddenly, something wonderful happened. Something miraculous. She stopped, rooted to the spot. The Dominican opened first one eye, then the other, and was surprised to see her standing dumbfounded, a startled expression on her face. A surge of triumph flowed though him. God had answered his pleas and confounded her. He had given his servant power over the witch.
His lips curled in triumph, and grasping the cross more tightly, he staggered to his knees, thrusting it to
ward her, feeling its power, God’s own grace working through him. The witch was confused. Dazed. Paralyzed. It was as though God had turned her into a pillar of salt as he did with Lot’s wife.
“Yes, yes, feel the might of the Lord,” he sneered. “Feel him acting through his loyal servant. How great Thou art, Lord,” he proclaimed loudly, casting a tear-streaked face upward. “Thou hast blessed thy servant indeed this night!”
Alice’s face suffused with delight, and she clapped her hands together in glee.
“Oh, that’s wonderful, Father. I shall have to remember that. I have been called so many things, but never that. Beelzebub’s bitch,” she repeated, rolling the words around appreciatively in her mouth. “It has a certain … cadence to it. You really are so very clever.”
She reached down, plucked the cross from his nerveless fingers, and gave his nose a playful little tweak. The Dominican blinked once in shock, then let out a piteous howl.
Justus was sobbing as he half-stumbled, half-crawled toward a small byre where he imagined the cottage’s inhabitants must have kept their animals when the living still claimed this unholy place. His left leg seemed to have stopped working altogether, and he dragged it along behind him. Scrape, thump. Scrape, thump. It was almost too much effort to move anymore, and he barely made it into the little shed before collapsing onto his face, tasting dirt and aged, rotten straw in his mouth, no longer able to move any of his limbs, as helpless as a landed fish. He could hear a strange keening whine and realized it was coming from him. Drool was dribbling down his chin, and he feared he might just have emptied his bladder.
He could only move his head now, and so he did, and then wished he hadn’t as he saw a madman stripped to his waist and lashed to a post, his bulging eyes rolling white, and his mouth twisted and frothy with spittle. The madman looked remarkably like De Bray’s chaplain. Or how the man might appear if beggared and reduced to imbecility. On seeing Justus, he began a strange ululating laughter that ended in something Justus could only describe as a maniacal cackle; a cackle that itself ended in a sob and then pathetic little whimpering sounds once Alice stepped over the threshold.
“Ah, I see you have found my other guest. You may remember Father Elyas. Well, at least that was what he called himself for a while. He came here thinking to extort from me. Imagine, trying to take advantage of a poor defenseless woman. And such things he suggested. Why, it would make you blush. I truly doubt there will be any place for him in God’s kingdom. Your visit, by contrast, has been quite amusing.”
Justus wanted to curse her again, but his tongue was numb, and he could only manage to utter small half sounds from his throat.
“Wi’ed, wi’ed, mmppff—”
She stuffed a smelly, greasy rag into his mouth, wadding it inside until his cheeks bulged.
“That’s quite enough now. I am starting to get offended. You shall soon be completely unable to move, though I am afraid you will feel all.”
A muffled moan escaped from somewhere deep in his throat.
“Now what comes first in your torture—ah, sorry, your interview? Oh yes, I have it. Women always need to have their clothes removed, don’t they? It makes them more compliant, I understand. But that is of no great moment to me. I have been removing my clothes for men since I was a slip of a girl. I imagine it might make you a little uncomfortable, however. But you should remember we are all the same before God. And besides, I have seen it all before.”
Justus looked up at her helplessly. Her hair had become disheveled and hung loosely about her like a mane. The lines of her face had hardened, and her eyes glinted with crazed malice. Her voice was no longer soft and honeyed, but as hard as flint, as cold as ice, filled with bitterness and fury.
“Did you truly imagine you could challenge me? That you could gainsay and humiliate me? A pathetic creature such as you, who comes here with your cheap bag of tricks and lies? I shall show you terror from which no cross nor monkish robe can protect you. I shall bring you to your knees in horror, little man.”
Justus mewled in terror, and the thing that had once called itself Elyas looked on with goggling eyes, cackling wildly, drool dribbling down from a crooked, sagging mouth.
CHAPTER 26
Friar Justus had seen his victory crumble and turn to ash in his hands. In the end, it was Thomas who found him. He had been stripped naked and was shackled with his own irons. His elbows were trussed to his knees. His bony backside, blackened with pitch and covered with feathers, was thrust up in the air. Strips of his own robes had been stuffed deep into his mouth. On hearing someone approach, he began squirming about frantically, uttering a tirade of muffled squeals.
The memory brought a smile to Thomas’s face even now.
As for Alice, she had completely disappeared with all her belongings. How she had contrived to do so, he could not say. And yet there could be no doubt that she was gone. Seeing what she had wrought, Thomas felt no need to follow and make sure of her safety. Rather, he pitied those who crossed her path.
Thomas stood by the rood screen of Saint Mary’s Church. He had found his murderer there, knelt before the very altar he had desecrated, staring about him wildly, the altar cloth gripped tightly in his fist as though it was the last stick of a capsized ship. There appeared to be little left of the man he had been. His face was drawn and pale, the cheeks hollow, his hair bristling this way and that as though he had been dragged backward more than once through a hedge. His tattered robe did little to cover his dignity and looked to be stained with what Thomas suspected was his own night soil.
“I seen it, I tell you,” he wailed. “Those eyes. It’s the Devil I seen. The Devil! It’s coming for me. For what I done.”
It had been like that all morning. Every now and then he would scream and flap his arms in front of his face like he was warding off a swarm of stinging flies. Sometimes he would curl up into a tight ball, rocking backward and forward with his arms wrapped protectively around his head. And sometimes he would just stare vacantly, drool dribbling down his chin.
“Oh, Jesu miserere. Domine ne in furore,” he pleaded, tears streaming down his face.
Thomas heard the sound of sandaled feet, and the young Dominican friar walked up next to him. For a moment he stood watching the babbling remnant of De Bray’s chaplain in silence.
“His mind has completely gone. There is nothing left of the man.” Thomas could not recall having heard the young friar speak before. “I wonder what she did to him.”
“I don’t know,” replied Thomas, “but he will not leave the altar. He screams if anyone tries to pull him from it. Brother Eustace said to leave him there until he exhausts himself.”
“Did he really do all of those terrible things?”
Thomas nodded. “Those things and many more, I suspect.”
The madman’s eyes fell on the friar. “Oh, Father in heaven, bless me, please. Bless me, for I am in hell!”
He started to crawl toward Dominic but then hesitated and scuttled back to the altar, wiping his grimy cheek against the cloth still clutched in his fist.
It would have been easy for Dominic to go to him, to bless him as he asked. But he was apparently disinclined to do so. “Who is he?”
Thomas shook his head. “I do not know. But he is not Father Elyas. I suspect that poor man lies in a ditch or marsh somewhere between here and Oxford. I do not know who he truly is or where he is from. Or what drove him to this.”
“Do you think we shall ever know?”
“I doubt it. As you said, his wits are gone.”
“Look at the way his eyes roll, Thomas. The way he flaps his arms before him. What is it that he sees? Of what is he afraid?”
“I don’t know. I don’t want to know.”
That was not entirely true. Thomas did know of hexes like this one, and what visions they could conjure, but he had never seen one so powerful or one that worked so fast.
Dominic shrugged. “Well, God has surely punished him for his sins now. Who is
to say this fate is not worse than others that might await him. The sheriff may still choose to hang him, of course.”
A mad cackle erupted from the creature, followed by another look of mortal terror.
“Though a noose may be a kindness to him now. I do wonder what could have happened to him. I suppose we will never know. And why did he kill the old man, Lacy, in the first place? A harmless beggar?”
“Some mad reason of his own, I suppose,” Thomas answered evasively. He was not about to betray what he knew. The letters he had taken from the chaplain’s hidey-hole were still stuffed inside the breast of his tunic, and they would remain there until he could return them to their author.
Dominic looked at Thomas for a long while without saying anything, until the madman began wailing again.
“I didn’t see. I didn’t see. Not at first. How could I? Oh, God, please help me. She says he’ll come for me. That he’ll drag me down to hell, where I shall roast in hellfire, where I shall be tormented without end. That demons will feast upon my very soul!”
Having seen enough, Thomas and the friar walked outside, where they saw Justus sitting astride a mule, looking at Thomas with hate-filled eyes.
“Thomas,” began Dominic, “my brother asked that I speak with you on his behalf. It is our desire that this matter be considered concluded. You have your murderer. There is no need for any more to be said.”
“And what of blasphemy? What of heresy?”
“As far as I can tell the priest died of a heart condition; three others died at the hands of a madman. What need is there to discuss blasphemy?”
Thomas jerked his chin at Justus. “And he is alright with that?”
Dominic shrugged. “He wants nothing said. His pride would be crushed were it to be known that he had Kyteler in his grasp and lost her through his own arrogance. That and the things she did to him. He will take that to the grave, I think. In some ways she broke him as surely as she did the fool at the altar. No, as far as anybody but we few know, Dame Alice was never here. There was no heresy. There was no witch. Soon the Church shall forget about this place, and its people can all go back to the quietude and anonymity they enjoyed before ever any of us arrived. I think that is best for all concerned.”
Those Who Go by Night Page 25