The Book of Shadows

by James Reese

“Don’t be a fool, man! The worst criminal need not see his confessor as often and as long as that!”

  “There it is then!” fumed the Prosecutor. “Another victory for the cassocked pig!”

  The Canon counseled patience: “Take your ease, man,” said he. “As you all know, I am confessor to Mademoiselle Sabine Capeau—”

  “The hunchback child?”

  “The same; but she is hardly a child. Indeed, she speaks to me of…of certain things…. Let me simply say she has strong, very strong feelings for the priest.”

  “As do they all…. As do they all.”

  The Canon continued, “Oui, but this Capeau is different, I tell you. She is,” and here he paused, sought just the right word, “desperate. She is desperate. The things she says I have never heard before—not from a woman, certainly, but neither from a man; not even, I swear it, from a criminal about to swing at the city gates! She talks of crimes, of carnality! She has thoughts that would shame the Devil’s maids! And all her thoughts feature the curé…. Oh, how she hates that man!”

  “But what of it? What does the crooked little cuss have to do with us, with our plan?” The plan, of course, was the ruin of Father Louis.

  The Prosecutor said what they were all thinking: that perhaps they’d found the bishop’s witness.

  It took but a few short weeks for the cabal to convince Sabine Capeau that she was possessed.

  At twenty-two years of age, Sabine Capeau was an old maid of Q——. Her mother long dead, the girl lived alone with her father, a rich and disreputable ship’s chandler, in the finest home of Q——, just off the square. In fact, Monsieur Capeau was rarely at home—his business and a favorite whore kept him in Marseilles many a night—and when he was in residence he and Sabine hardly spoke. They took their meals at opposite ends of a long table, the wrought-silver screen of a branched candelabra rising up between them. Once a year they rode in ritualized silence to Madame Capeau’s grave.

  Monsieur Capeau had found himself unable to love his deformed daughter; to assuage his guilt at this, he spoiled her. Sabine had a maid and a cook. She had the finest dresses, tailored with some difficulty. She had money of her own to spend in the square and at market, when on rare occasions she ventured out, and she was accountable to no one. Monsieur Capeau was a bankroll and nothing more to his daughter; this was as he wished it. Sabine had even managed to save a great deal of money over the years; for, in addition to an ample allowance, she stole from her father. It was a hobby of sorts. Had she been “normal,” these monies might have been added to a dowry, something to sweeten a marriage deal; but Sabine was not “normal,” and no dowry, no matter how great, would render her marriageable. This her father told her.

  Sabine, at the age of seven, with her mother not six months in the grave, had been packed off to live at an abbey on the River L——. Though the prioress was well-paid to keep her, some months later Sabine returned home with a kind yet emphatic note recommending a regime of prayer and regular bloodletting, “to loose the dark humors from the child.”

  As her father had been assured that young, misshapen Sabine would not attain the age of ten, the party marking said occasion was a grand affair, a feast for all the village held in the square. Free food and drink drew nearly all the villagers (if not their children), few of whom addressed Sabine.

  First from the nuns, and then from a series of tutors, Sabine received the rudimentary education offered to girls. She was smart, and supplemented her schooling by reading on her own. However, Monsieur Capeau would allow only theology texts in his library; and so it was Sabine grew devout by default. Sadly, at a most impressionable time, she discovered the Old Testament.

  Due to her unnamed affliction, she grew increasingly misshapen over the years till, at twenty-two, with her outsized features and humped back, she had the appearance of a gnome. Or—more accurately, if less kindly—a troll. This might have made the girl the focus of sympathy had it not been for her disposition.

  She was by nature melancholic; the events of her life rendered her first sad, then bitter; and in time she’d turned sour, if not acidic. In town it was joked that she’d once bled venom when cut. A shepherd, misused by her father, held that one look from “la petite Capeau” could kill a lamb, and cross words could ruin a flock.

  Sabine had withdrawn from the world, was already living as a recluse—friendless, loveless, without family, she had no one to see, nowhere to go—when the new confessor came to Q——. She spied him from the parlor window one Sunday morning, dressed in full canonicals, making his way through the square to the doors of St. Pierre. That afternoon Sabine’s maid had two errands: deliver her mistress’s card to Father Louis and inform old Canon Mignon that his services as confessor were no longer needed.

  Sabine waited patiently for the priest to arrive. Finally he came, unprepared; and the look on his handsome face when he was led into the parlor to meet Sabine seared itself into the girl’s brain like a brand. Father Louis agreed to hear the girl’s confession but, despite the sum offered, then doubled, he would not come but once a month. Nor would he stay for supper, not even when Sabine had gone so far as to have the table set with linen and silver and china, and laid with fruits and sundry viands; still the priest excused himself with fast politesse.

  After three months Father Louis stopped going to the Capeaus’ altogether. A two-line note said his schedule did not allow it. As apology, he promised to pray for Sabine. Her gift of an ivory cross inlaid with small emeralds was returned.

  Of course, Canon Mignon returned to hear the girl’s confession, but not without feigning hurt at having been dismissed. Sabine apologized, and the Canon accepted and sold the ivory and emerald cross. And so each Friday the Canon sat beside Sabine in the parlor, blushing at the changed content of her confessions.

  In the following weeks, the cabal’s plan in place, no one noticed that Canon Mignon spent his days at the Capeau house. Monsieur Capeau stayed happily away. The servants did not care what their mistress did, so long as she left them alone. As for the neighbors…well, so disliked were father and daughter that their neighbors had stopped gossiping long ago. So barren were their lives, especially that of the humpbacked girl, that no one begrudged them their finery, their furnishings, their three-story home dominating the square.

  Sabine and the Canon met in the library. They sat knee to knee, with the Canon whispering. It was quite warm, with spring quickly ceding to summer, but the Canon insisted on keeping all the doors and windows shut. He told Sabine he feared the spirits; in truth, he feared the servants, or anyone else who might overhear and one day testify to the content of these sessions. They prayed, but only as much as necessary, which is to say not much at all. Mostly Canon Mignon asked questions of Sabine, leading the girl like a beast on a leash. Wasn’t it true that the curé came to the girl in dreams? He did indeed. And wasn’t it true that he committed unspeakable crimes in the course of those dreams? He did. And hadn’t she, when first she’d seen the curé, been seized by a violence the likes of which she’d never known, one that began with the deepest of thrills and localized to a…wetness, to contractions of certain muscles…? Hadn’t she wanted then and there to offer her womanhood? Yes! Yes it was true, every word. And wasn’t it true that the man was a devil? Yes! A thousand times yes!

  On and on it went. With the Canon telling tales of mystics and saints, of Satan and his ways, of the Five Sorrowful Mysteries, of wrongdoers and the Wrath of God, et cetera. He brought in books on devilry for Sabine to read. They reviewed the transcripts of countless trials. They read the testimony aloud, with Sabine taking the role of the possessed, the witness, the witch; the Canon, of course, was the Inquisitor.

  Summer came, and their sweat-drenched sessions continued in the library, which wore now its summer dress, as did the whole house—woven mats where thick carpets had lain, damask panels in place of the velvet curtains. The shut-up room was airless and powerfully hot. The Canon went through countless collars. Sabine lay on the
daybed (on her stomach, of course: pressure on her hump pained her) and pulled at the string that made a fan of a large palm leaf. Periodically, the Canon would calm her with a concoction of Monsieur Adam’s. Sabine, tired by the heat and lessons, would doze and dream. Upon waking she’d call for the Canon, who was always there, waiting to record her words. Such dreams she spoke of!

  After one particularly successful session, during which Sabine put a gilded candlestick to abominable use, the Canon reported to the cabal that their witness was ready. Ready to go before the baron, the bishop, and God’s good people. She was all the proof anyone would need to condemn the curé.

  That very day, Father Louis was formally accused of having had commerce with the Devil and of bewitching Sabine Capeau.

  As for the bishop, he sent his promoter to Q——to meet with Sabine, to hear her testimony. And so the company—including the promoter, his lieutenant, two magistrates, one clerk, the baron, and, of course, the cabal—crowded into the Capeaus’ library on a steamy afternoon in early August.

  The Prosecutor produced two pacts, which, he said, were proof that Sabine had sworn herself to the Devil: bunched hawthorn prickles, which he said she’d vomited up, and a witch’s ladder—a cord tied with nine knots—which Sabine woke one afternoon to find pendant from her belt. To her visitors, and in response to no particular question, Sabine averred that “men such as I have never seen come to me in my dreams; they come from the Darkness and each one, speaking words of devilled Latin, changes his shape and speech till each becomes the Curé of St. Pierre; and then I know that he is with me, to tell of the Devil’s amours, to ply me with caresses, to work my own hands upon me in self-abuse, which sometimes lasts the night long and leaves me swollen, and to ask me with words insolent and unchaste to offer up to the Devil my womanhood…” Et cetera.

  Such talk, accompanied by minor acrobatics, convinced the bishop’s party. They returned to P——without meeting the accused, imprisoned in an attic across the square. They advised the bishop to proceed. In haste.

  Which he did. He issued a monitory against Father Louis, denouncing him, inviting the faithful to inform against him. The monitory, fixed to doors throughout Q——, quoted the Malleus Maleficarum: “…for witchcraft is high treason against God’s majesty. And so the accused must be put to the torture to make them confess. Any person, whatever his rank or position, upon such an accusation may be put to torture. This is the right of the Church, thus decreed. And he who is found guilty, even if he confesses his crimes, let him be racked, let him suffer the tortures prescribed by law in order that he may be punished in proportion to his crimes, in order that the faithful may triumph over the Prince of This World in the good and great name of the Prince of Peace…”

  At the bishop’s order, a Dr. Lucien Epernon was dispatched to Q——to examine the bewitched. He determined that Sabine showed no signs of possession, that no war was being waged for her soul; rather, he reported that “the girl suffers from a species of uterine fury, whose symptoms are an excessive heat on the body, an inextinguishable appetite for venery, and an inability to talk about anything but the body and the veneric act.” He opined that she was “highly impressionable, for she felt pain when I told her she ought, though no source of said pain existed.” The doctor’s report, a simple inquiry, more a matter of custom than law, according to the bishop, was filed deep in the bowels of the bishopric. Dr. Epernon himself was dispatched to the Auvergne on six-month assignment.

  As for the cabal, its members took turns coaching Sabine. Canon Mignon continued his daily tutorials, of course. Mannoury arranged to keep Monsieur Capeau in Marseilles, dumb and disinterested. The Prosecutor and Monsieur Adam, with calisthenics, pills, and potions, put Sabine through her paces. Acrobatics had so impressed judges at trials in the past—no better show than a nun or good girl suddenly taken with an urge to do the splits in open court! But little Sabine was brittle-boned and stiff. Still, she progressed. Soon she could, if seated, raise each foot to touch the opposite shoulder. And, with a literal blast of good fortune, it was discovered that this pose rendered the girl flatulent. Further testimony.

  When finally Sabine was ready to show, and with the curé chained away in a sweltering attic, the cabal recruited the bit players. Willing witnesses were auditioned, hired, and readied for the trial. A jury of thirteen magistrates was assembled by means of blackmail and cash.

  Though the arrogant and too pretty priest had grown less popular, still many people of Q——doubted the charges and pitied him. The curé’s lovers of both sexes were all tears and stifled support. They smuggled unsigned letters of support into his attic via the boy who emptied his bucket, but these were slight consolation; still no one spoke publicly in his defense. He’d gotten word to his family to stay away, lest they be implicated. So, denied counsel, Father Louis waited patiently to speak in his own defense; that opportunity, if it came at all, would come at trial and not before.

  No. Neither his lovers nor his family nor his friends could counter the opposition—the Prosecutor, the bishop, the cardinal, and, by extension, the king. Only a fool would have spoken in the curé’s defense. A fool, or someone in love.

  And lest such a one come forward, it was decreed that any person speaking against the proceedings would be fined ten thousand livres; further, any group of three or more unrelated persons meeting without permission and for unclear purposes, would be liable to a fine of fifty thousand livres. And as no man relished the prospect of a stay in debtor’s prison, no one spoke against the proceedings. Indeed, many good and just people of Q——saw fit to travel; the time was opportune.

  The prosecution progressed quickly that horrible hot summer. But not too quickly…

  For, as word of the curé’s certain condemnation spread, a tide of tourists flooded Q——. The town happily suffered twice its normal number of inhabitants. Innkeepers tripled their rates and still turned people away. Strangers walked door to door in search of a cot and some ale. Business had never been better. Bakers fired their ovens both day and night. Many men and all the whores of Q——became rich that long summer. Monsieur Adam convinced his fellow merchants to pay for the printing of broadsides detailing the charges against the curé, each more exaggerated than the last; men and boys were hired to spread these sheets through every village less than two days travel from Q——. Not since a troupe of acrobats had come from Paris, with dwarfs and dancing bears, had Q——seen such a show as this!

  Father Louis could see the crowded square through the slats of his attic cell. The noise kept the priest awake at night; rooms, crammed with cots, were rented in shifts and so scores of tourists drank and danced; fighting, fornicating, roasting bothersome mutts on pits set up for boar, they awaited their turn to sleep. Friends traveling separately from Marseilles and lesser cities made plans to meet in the square at Q——, beneath the Bourbon standard. The priest knew that this did not bode well: no one traveled to witness a trial; only an execution.

  Words of the bewitching in Q——, of the capture and killing (premature, of course) of a devil, spread wide and fast. Few peasants could read and so, traveling by tongue, the tale grew ever more fantastical; and Madeleine heard enough to puzzle out the cabal’s progress as she sat beside her shuttered window, listening to talk in the narrow street below. And lest she harbor hopes of reunion, her Keeper cruelly slipped beneath her door the merchants’ broadside, detailing in words and sketches the many misdeeds of the Devil-Priest of Q——.

  Madeleine knew she must do something. In two days’ time she had a plan:

  She would testify against Louis. Wasn’t it widely rumored that he had ruined her? She was the perfect witness. She’d show little Capeau, the vicious bitch! For wasn’t seduction—and all of Q——knew she’d been seduced—wasn’t seduction just below bewitchment on the Devil’s agenda? Yes, she’d say or do anything to be at that trial. Anything to see Louis again.

  Surely she knew enough about other trials, about testimony and false religi
on, to appear afflicted. She knew enough about witchcraft and such. She could do it. She had to.

  And when she saw Louis, as soon as she stood before him in open court, she would recant. Recant, recant, recant! Take back every word. And save him! Say that she loved him and that he loved her. That yes, he was the father of her child. Yes, they were going to spend the rest of their lives together, for they were married…more or less.

  Madeleine held to the sweet memory as she lay plotting in her airless cell. The memory of their midnight marriage. The night she’d slipped from her home to meet the priest at St. Pierre. It was a cool night in early spring, with a quarter moon high in the sky, sharp as a sickle. The night had been so quiet! A lone raven far away. The lazy turn of wagon wheels on cobblestoned streets. A fecund wind, not unpleasant, swirled within the village walls. Careful lest she be discovered, she’d slipped into the shadows at the slightest noise; and slipped finally into the great church on the square, its spires rising up sharp and high enough to tear the black fabric of the night.

  Louis was waiting for her. As he’d promised. In his arms were thirteen red roses. “For my most beautiful rose,” he whispered.

  Their footsteps echoed in the cold and empty church. He’d met her at the front door, answering to her three light raps. She’d stepped quickly through the small door cut into the larger. He took her hand and they walked, wordlessly, down the length of the nave to the altar, which he’d illumined with white votives. Hundreds of candles, it seemed; she was deeply moved. The candles lit the carved Christ on His cross above the altar, and for a moment Madeleine was scared. She’d never been in an empty church. Strange, since she’d been coming to St. Pierre all her life, that she was just now noticing its details: how the stained glass windows, twice as tall as she, depicted the Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary; how the moonlight lit the glass faces of the saints; and how the blue and gray panes of the Virgin’s robe fit together so well, looking as though they might move on the slightest wind; the lingering incense; the worn wood of the pews, as cold and smooth as the attendant statues…and the glistening altar, all gold and bright white cloth.