The Book of Shadows

by James Reese

  The Mayor, worn, exhausted, announced that the specifics of my imprisonment would be seen to by the townsmen; and he issued from the lesser library the remaining townspeople and girls.

  Within the hour Mother Marie and the one trunk allowed her—all those beautiful things! all those books left behind in her rooms!—would be thrown onto a dray hitched to the back of the Mayor’s carriage. In this fashion would the former Mother Superior of C——be led away, bouncing along the rough roads with nothing but her hands to shield her from the villagers, prone to lobbing offal and overripe produce at such a one as she.

  I stood in the library with four men, three women, and two boys of the village of C——. Two of the men held me fast while the others shoved chairs against the library’s walls, leaving nothing but the large rectangular table of oak in the center of the room, one chair at its head. The women, ragged and fat, huddled coven-like in a far corner. As for the boys, they stood untangling the chains, working wrought-iron keys the size of shinbones.

  Finally, my prison was prepared. The chains lay on the floor beside me; it looked as though someone far luckier than I had recently broken from them. The women left the library, returning moments later with a jug of water, a goblet, a loaf of hard black bread (which would prove as impenetrable as a forest turtle), and the small pail into which I was to relieve myself. They set the jug, the goblet, and the bread on the table; the pail was placed beneath the chair. Someone, I didn’t see who, brought in a straw pallet and arranged it beside the chair; the townsmen had calculated just how far I’d be able to move once chained to the table. My world, perhaps five paces in circumference, must contain all these things. I stood watching the pathetic show as one of the men sat in the chair and another circled him, holding the chain extended while a third man tried to figure it all on a scrap of paper torn, without a thought, from one of the library’s volumes, scribbling furiously with a stub of pencil, which he’d brought to a fresh point on his right incisor. Finally, in exasperation, the calculations were abandoned. No less self-satisfied, these three men then placed the shackles on me while the fourth stood by.

  I suffered the clamps being fastened around my ankles, heard the grinding bite of iron into iron. The women were made to see to the finer adjustments, which they did politely, expediently, while the men and boys huddled near the door.

  “Please to place your ankle here, miss.”

  “Settle yourself here, if you would; in this chair.”

  When the boys sniggered at some humorless thing, the father of one, to judge by the resemblance—though, by that same criterion, I might have as readily concluded that both boys had been borne of any heifer and its idiot tender—smacked both boys. Hard. And in so doing sought to impress upon them not only the mark of his hand but a sense of the occasion. “Elle est le vrai malin!” said he. I was the one and true Devil.

  Use their fear. But I’d have to do something scary enough, fearsome enough to drive all nine of them from the room. What could I do? Enervated, wanting only to be left alone, I did nothing.

  Three of the men struggled to lift the oak table a finger’s-width off the floor; the fourth man slipped the loop of the chain under the table leg and secured it with a padlock. Two short chains ran from my ankle-cuffs to a third chain secured to the table. They bade me walk a bit, to ensure that my chains would reach as far as the pallet but not as far as the door. Such was the case. They’d done well, and told each other so. And so, they were all of them free to leave the library; this they quickly did.

  I heard the long iron key turn in the lock. I heard the rasping slide of iron into stone as the bolt was thrown.

  Alone, the first thing I did was take up those chains and pull as hard as I could. This was futile, and I knew it: I’d seen the townspeople secure me; and the links on the chains were as thick as my fingers.

  I took a quick survey of the library. The earthenware pitcher was full of water. The goblet was chipped and grimy. The bread was old. No knife, no butter. They’d left a candlestick on the table, its white candle burnt halfway down; it wouldn’t last through the night. As for the pail, it had come from the stable along with the filthy straw for my pallet.

  From where I sat, the locked, main door was straight ahead. Indeed, it was out of reach, as the townsmen had so carefully calculated. At my back was the door behind which I’d hidden. That door too had been locked—I’d heard the rattle of chains on its far side. Beginning just to the right of the main door were the shelves that covered that wall and the one adjoining, the wall to my right. The wall to my left was cut with a bank of three tall, arched windows; before them ran a wide sill. As for the windows, they were tall enough to stand in, deep enough to sit in, and far enough away to be of no use at all. The glass of each window’s two wings was beveled; and their mullioned panes glistened with the last of the sunlight, the first of the moonlight. The center window was open, slightly (wide enough for my Maluenda to have leapt from its…But I would not think of that, no. Madness!). What use might I make of the opened window? My shouts might be heard by a passerby. I might toss a note from the sill…. But no. What passerby would show sympathy for the witch at the window? And what would I write the note on? What would I write it with? To whom would I address it? Marie-Edith? To the bishop? Why not God Himself?

  As for the shelves, they too were out of reach. They rose from floor to ceiling, each crammed with the centuries-long history of the Ursulines. Many of the volumes looked like they’d crumble at a touch; indeed, I knew they would, for I’d spent long hours studying in this library, and had considered and dismissed all its volumes. There were sheaves of loose parchment and large books bound in black leather, their spines gold-engraved. In the dimming light, I could not read the titles from where I sat. Nor would my length of chain allow me to take them down from the shelves. This seemed especially harsh: the last night of my life—I was certain of it!—and I would be deprived the solace of books, however bloodless they might be—papal bulls, vulgates, and the like.

  And so it had come to this.

  Silence. The library was silent but for the rattle of my chains as I shifted in that chair. At first there’d been voices on the far sides of both doors, and voices outside, cursing up at me from the yard. Soon they went away, and silence settled over all and everything.

  How sad I was then…. Sad enough to die. I wanted to die! I sat waiting for the dawn, and death. I attended death, with ever-lessening patience. And indeed, later that night, while staring deep into the flickering white candlelight, I determined to die by my own hand.

  I searched the room for the means: I had flame: the few phosphorous matches my jailers had left me, but what was there that would burn bright enough to take me up? The straw pallet: I could set that aflame. No; there was not straw enough to fuel a funeral pyre. They hadn’t left me a knife with the loaf of black bread. No shears, no keys, no tools—nothing sharp within my reach. The chains precluded a fall from the window. I’m ashamed to say that, thinking of Maluenda, I wondered what savage damage I might inflict upon myself with my teeth, my nails…but no, I could not; and such thoughts I quickly dismissed.

  I was exhausted, yet my pulse drummed on at double-time, my chest grew tight; it was difficult to breathe. I willed my blood to slow in its course, I willed my breathing to deepen. And in so doing I rendered myself ever more exhausted.

  I laid my head on the table, intending to sleep; instead, tears overtook me. The force of the tears, the flood of tears surprised me. This went on for some time; the muscles of my face and shoulders and belly grew sore. Such hysteria is strangely intoxicating. I thought that, I did: intoxicating; and in turn I thought of the wine, the broken blue bottle and, angrily, missing it, longing for its sweet relief, I swept that squat stoneware pitcher of water from the table. Rather, I tried to sweep it away; as I sat too far from it, the pitcher rolled clumsily to the side of the table and lay there, spewing its contents over the table’s edge. I sat watching the gurgling spill till it stopped,
sat watching the spreading stain.

  And all the while I could not spare myself thoughts of Sister Claire de Sazilly. She infected my mind. I would cry, hopelessly; alternately I would endure a raging anger. My Christian soul sought to assert itself. I wondered, did there burn deep within me a bit of forgiveness, a single ember smothering under an ash mound of anger? If so, and if that ember burned itself out, what would happen to me then? Would I be reduced to one of them? And who were they anyway, these simple and faithful people, this breed of Christian for whom the Devil is much more exciting, more enticing than God? Their small dark minds dwell on evil; and they create occasions for its manifestation. They see the print of cloven hoofs on everything, all the odd, disastrous, and (if they are truly good Christians) too pleasurable events of life. Alone, they are worthless; together they cannot be stopped. It is they who tossed Christians into the pit, speared “infidel” children through on the Crusades, stoned supposed witches—

  And it came to me clearly: I was that witch. I was the Radical Evil they’d long awaited.

  Dawn crept ever closer. Death crept ever closer. I bemoaned not my certain fate, but rather the long hours that had to pass before its enactment.

  I snuffed the candle flame. I would save it, relight it later perhaps. For now I’d welcome the moonlit, the starlit dark; look to lose myself in the shadowed depths of the library. I closed my eyes. I sought a deeper darkness.

  Disinclined to slip from the chair and take to the straw pallet, I set my head on the table again. Blessedly, unexpectedly, sleep came. I slept soundly, though for how long I cannot say. Hours? Minutes? I’d no clock, and the arc of the moon is imprecise, or so it is to my eye.

  It was the sound of water that “woke” me, water being poured. Waves on the distant shore? The play of a fountain? There was no fountain at C——. Rain. Was it raining? No…. I listened. It was, unmistakably, the transfer of water, or liquid, from one vessel to another. I could see little by the moon’s light, but there…In the library’s far corner…In the shadows.

  I watched, waiting for my waking eyes to overtake the dark. Were they moving, the shadows? Yes; but only as settling shadows do, in imitation of their source. They were simple shadows, I told myself. Ordinary. Not that species of shadow I’d seen in the shuttered gallery. Those shadows, I’d been certain, had harbored the presence. These shadows were not alive, as those others had seemed. I dismissed it all, told myself it was but some trick of the moon’s.

  The moon. I could see it, a perfect, prized pearl set in the indigo night, dim now behind a scrim of cloud. Staring at the moon, I thought not only of that stranger species of shadow but of the sourceless blood and the blue-smoking taper and the rich red wine. All the strangeness came back to me then. I shoved it from my mind, rudely; a bad dream.

  I fumbled over the table for the candleholder. The matches should be…yes, there they were. I struck one against the table leg and it sparked to life.

  Where was I? This was not the library as I’d left it, as it’d been when I’d surrendered to the darkness. Yes, there were the four walls, certainly, and the doors, the shelves, and the open window. But the table—what had happened to the table? Before there’d been the tipped and empty jug, the chipped goblet, the leathery bread, and the stub of candle.

  Someone had crept into the room and left a plate at the center of which sat two stuffed and roasted squab, still warm and redolent of…yes, of a thyme and cherry glaze! Herbed potatoes ringed the huge platter! And asparagus spears. Miraculous, yes; though infinitely more tasty than manna and baskets full of fish.

  Even as the strangeness of the discovery struck me, I set to eating. I was hungry, and there it sat.

  I ate greedily. Silver had been set before me. The fork was heavy as stone; in its flattened end was carved something ornate, an insignia of some kind.

  Well into my meal, as I cut into the fleshy breast of the second squab (sausage in the stuffing, was it?) I thought, absently—so absently I cannot explain it—how sweet it would be to have a glass of the wine I’d found in Peronette’s trunk. That wine; yes, if only I could slip into some drunken state, any state other than the state of self. But there was no wine. No water, even, now that I’d wasted it. But when I took up that ugly jug—righted now and within easy reach—it was heavy: full. The goblet was overturned; beside it sat a larger, finer one, glistening in the candlelight. I poured…not water; wine!

  Still I was not thinking, not really, so busy was I with the satisfaction of my urges. Surprise had ceded fast to satisfaction; and satisfaction to…to appreciation as I took in all that someone, or something had spread before me.

  Gracelessly, I picked the meat from the bones. The potatoes went one after another, as did the well-crisped asparagus spears. Only when I’d cleared its surface of food did I see that the platter was painted. With the same design that was carved into the fork’s end. Yes, at the platter’s center was a large, exquisite blue S, and in the lower curve of the S sat a fat and contented toad. Strange, I thought. But what was strangeness now?

  Finally, my rational mind set to work. As for the food, I reminded myself of the custom of granting the condemned a last meal, if rarely a feast the likes of which I’d discovered. Perhaps it all made sense. Indeed, I might have expected it. I wondered if Marie-Edith had returned, for she alone at C——was capable of such delicacies. If so, surely she’d alert someone beyond C——to my plight and…But even as I thought this, hoped it, I knew it to be fantastical, and untrue.

  I sat contemplating all the strangeness, the shadows, the sudden and silent appearance of everything—when I saw that, at the table’s end, beyond the candle’s brightest band of light, there were piled…books. Tens of books. They’d not been there earlier. Or had they? I was not sure of anything. Perhaps they had been brought down from the shelves by the same kind jailer who’d brought the meal?

  I noticed too that the candle that had been in the candleholder, stunted and half-burned, had been replaced. A taller one rose up in its stead, its flame constant and high. It was by this light that I saw again the shadows in the library’s dark corner. I waited for them to take on that life, that animate quality I’d seen earlier in the company of the cat. Nothing. Then: a rustling in the dark, down low. Movement. Nails or claws scratching over the stone floor.

  I convinced myself it was a rat; we were at times overrun with rats—no girl ever walked alone at night without a candle and a stick of considerable heft—and my attention returned to the books.

  They were piled too far away: I could not read their spines, a few of which faced me. And so I looked to the strictly ordered shelves to see where they’d been drawn down from. Please, I thought, please let them not be from the shelves of the Order’s history. I cannot pass this night with nothing but sheaves of death certificates and the brittle, eczematous lists of the forgotten dead. No; that shelf seemed intact. I looked hopefully to the lowest shelf, where certain novels were secreted, their pages well-thumbed by many a girl and nun. Neither had that shelf been disturbed. All the shelves, in fact, showed their shimmering, thick skins of dust unbroken. I could not find a single space from which a book had been removed, but this inventory was taken by the light of one candle, and the shelves sat far across a dark room.

  I stood; and, suffering the bite of the cuff—and fearing for a moment that the rat had set to on my ankle—I reached for the nearest book.

  The Cheats and Illusions of Romish Priests and Exorcists Discovered in the History of the Devils of Loudun and Louviers. I had never noticed this book before. Certainly not typical fare at C——, though it would deal with the Ursulines, and so qualify as part of the Order’s long history. But I knew the libraries at C——, each one, including that of the Mother Superior, the former Mother Superior, and this particular volume was in none of them. Odd enough. Odder still was the book itself. Its cover was of red morocco—much too fine, too extravagant for the nuns. I opened it and there, as the frontispiece, was the same illustration as
appeared on the silver and platter. The large S, and its accompanying toad. Who would mark their volumes with so strange an ex libris? And further, who—and here I tilted the page into the light—who has the means to paint, by hand, such a symbol in each of what I presumed to be many volumes? This was fine work, like that of some monk-adorned medieval manuscript.

  Another volume. Malleus Maleficarum. I knew this book: its authors had been Dominicans and for two centuries theirs had been the text of choice of all witch hunters, Lutheran, Calvinist, and Catholic. The pages were old, the corners ragged and worn. Again, the red morocco cover. Again, the ornate S.

  Supplanting one mystery with another, I shoved aside what little remained of my meal and gathered the books to me. Each elegant volume bore the S and its recumbent toad. In several languages, they were titled thusly:

  The Apprehension and Confession of Three Notorious Witches Arraigned and by Justice Condemned in the County of Essex. Histoire du couvent de Saint-Louis de Louviers. The Trial of Master Darrell, or a Collection of Defenses Against Allegations Not Yet Suffered to Receive Convenient Answers. Procès verbal fait pour délivrer une fille possédée par le malin esprit à Louviers. De Divinatione et Magicis Praestigis. A True Narration of the Strange and Grievous Vexation by the Devil of Seven Persons in Lancashire and William Summers of Nottingham. Ritualis Romani Documenta de Exorcizandis Obsessis a Daemonio.

  There were others, all studies of the Burning Days, when supposed witches had been sent to the stake by the thousands, by the tens of thousands.

  I pulled the candle nearer. I made free with the wine. Taking up a book, I settled as comfortably as I could into that chair and I began to read. (Books in German I had set off to one side; after all, this was the last night of my life.)

  Here was the drunkenness, the escape I’d sought.

  10

  Compendium Maleficarum

  AS I TOOK up the books in no order of which I was conscious, I struggled still to explain the things I’d recently seen. Inexplicable things. The mysterious S-marked books, I told myself, had simply come from some library I had not visited, perhaps in the village; and as for…Ah, but I did not dwell on those mysteries, preferring the explicable, clinging to it. Still.