The Book of Shadows

by James Reese

  Levitation would be difficult. So it was determined during the cabal’s daily meeting in the apothecary to begin with the easiest proofs: those of language. As for levitation and the rest? Well, all in due time.

  And so the Canon set to work, as best he could, teaching Greek to Sabine and Hebrew to Madeleine. He read aloud from ancient texts, the words rattling off his rusted tongue. He understood little of the Greek he recited, none of the Hebrew. The Canon had the girls read aloud, hours each day; they approximated what appeared on the page or they simply parroted the Canon. Birch rod in hand, he ensured that the two languages did not sound alike, for that was all that mattered.

  Sabine was tested first, with Madeleine directed to follow her lead. The cabal did not expect a show from Madeleine; obedience was all they asked for, demanded; and obedience they received, for it was during these sessions that the Canon said, “Perhaps, Madeleine, you will be let to keep that child of yours, if our end is achieved.” As for the crazed Capeau girl, well who knew what she might do?

  A table had been brought into the court and on it was spread an odd collection of objects from the church, the market, and Monsieur Adam’s shop. A small iron crucifix, identical bottles—one filled with oil, the other holy water; an ear of corn; spices; a sow’s ear; metal bracelets; several hard cheeses, et cetera. Speaking in Greek, the Canon told Sabine to approach the table, say an Ave Maria, and pick up the star anise. They’d rehearsed this; nevertheless, Sabine chose a pin and a clod of dirt, and did not even essay the prayer.

  Madeleine, truly deviled by thoughts of Louis and her child, did as she was told. In Hebrew, or a perversion thereof.

  It was the Canon who excused Sabine’s error by stating, simply, that the girl was host to uneducated devils. Devils who had not traveled, and thus had never heard the tongue of Greece. Of course they’d misunderstood the Canon’s command. The magistrates nodded solemnly at the Canon’s logic, though giggles rose like breaking bubbles from the gallery.

  That very night, Mannoury and Adam came to the girls’ room. Madeleine woke to rattling chains and whispers. She feigned sleep, hoping that the men had not come for her. She listened with horror as the Surgeon held Sabine down and Monsieur Adam daubed her lips with sulfur. Maybe now, said he, she would speak as instructed.

  Sabine said not a word through burning lips that night, shed not a tear. As soon as the men had left, she got out of bed, walked to her bureau, smashed a bottle of perfume on the floor and knelt cross-vigil on the shards of glass. She was like that still when Madeleine woke, four hours later.

  Madeleine worried that she too might lose her mind. Her only hope was escape. But how? Every door was locked behind her. Her Keeper and Sabine’s nurse were ever near. Even if she were to somehow open the bedroom window, it was a three-story fall to the courtyard below, too far to jump certainly, and too far for a rope tied of the two girls’ bedclothes. And if she freed herself, how would she free Louis? No. She’d have to wait. Testify, and somehow effect her plan.

  When Sabine was seen in court with deep orange sores on her lips and chin, she testified that such sores had recurred since first she’d given the Devil his Kiss. The gray and blood-black bruises blossoming on her hands and forearms she attributed to the Devil’s grasp. This said, she redoubled her efforts to please:

  She put on such a show of possession that the bishop’s dictates of proof were forgotten. The exorcist said in all his years he’d never come across a case like this strange Mademoiselle Capeau. The square was abuzz with bloodlust, for a pamphlet printed the night of her testimony gave this summary:

  …the little hunchback, her lips dripping blood, fell on the floor; she spat and vomited such as we have never seen. She passed her left foot over her shoulder to her cheek. She passed her feet over her head till the big toes touched the nose, and then let come a black gas from her bottom side, such that the ladies of the assembly held kerchiefs to their faces. She stretched her legs so far to the left and to the right that she sat flat on the ground, with no space visible beneath her, and bounced, as if to copulate. She stretched her legs to a length well nigh seven feet, though she herself stands but four, bent as she is…

  Indeed, Sabine did vomit. Monsieur Adam had seen to that, giving the girl’s nurse “medication,” which was to be mixed into her breakfast each morning. Sabine’s medicine rendered her vomit a bright, crowd-pleasing blue. Additionally, the apothecary had crafted other items which the Prosecutor produced as evidence, saying that Sabine had expelled them in the night. One was a wad of paper, stained with three drops of blood and containing three orange seeds. Another was a bundle of straw and pieces of rag that were “wet with woman’s waste.” A third was made of dried mud with cinders, hair and nail parings pressed into it alongside purple pieces of worm. These were quickly passed among the magistrates. According to Dog’s Tail, one of Sabine’s demons, who spoke through the girl in a horrible high-pitched voice, the favorite pact of the court contained a piece of the heart of a child boiled at a Sabbat in Orleans as well as the ashes of a consecrated wafer, all of which was seasoned with the curé’s semen. Sabine swore that she’d swallowed these pacts some time ago, when first she’d consigned herself to the curé and His Prince.

  Some members of the gallery were greatly amused; others sighed; some went sick at the stomach and had to excuse themselves. Those in the square loved it. Monsieur Adam joked privately that not only had the question of levitation been forgotten, it was as though it had never been raised.

  The trial proceeded just as the cabal had hoped.

  In the days that followed her vomiting, Sabine identified her devils for the court. In addition to Dog’s Tail of the Order of the Archangels, Sabine hosted Leviathan in the center of her forehead and Beherit in her stomach. Balaam was resident under the second rib on the left side. Isacaaron lived in her heart. As Madeleine sat silently by, Sabine deigned to identify hers as well: she kept the Enemy of the Virgin in her neck, Verrine in her left temple, and Concupiscence, of the Order of Cherubim, in her right. Asmodeus had her heart.

  Someone in the gallery called out, wanting to know what lucky devil had Sabine’s hump. The court erupted with laughter. Old Father Tranquille rose to restore order with prayer. To no avail. He invoked the bishop’s name. The king’s as well. Still nothing. It was Sabine who silenced the assembly, rising to deliver more testimony of her own authoring.

  Soon it was Madeleine’s turn to take the birch rod. She was, it was said, insubordinate. No member of the cabal dared strike the girl—respecting not her condition, but her father’s changeable wrath—and so the Surgeon hired a boy out of the square for three sous. One night in the quiet of the Capeau house, the boy brought the rod down again and again on Madeleine’s bared lower back as the Canon demanded to know why, if she’d put on such a show for her Keeper, and if she’d sworn to him her hatred of the curé, why did she not do so now in court? She tried to say that she’d been lying. She tried to tell the Canon the truth, but he refuted her with shouted scripture.

  Her plan having failed, broken in body and spirit, Madeleine sat silently by as Sabine carried on, contorting her misshapen self and spouting her untruths. When next she tried to tell the truth she was delivered back to the village boy and his birch rod. She was beaten at night, with no member of the cabal present; her hands were tied to a tether, which was passed over an open door, so that she hung like a side of meat. Sabine watched from her bed, bouncing about on all fours begging for the rod.

  How Madeleine hated Sabine! Hatred too for her father and his plotting friends, for the magistrates who’d sold their souls, for the assembly with its silks and basket lunches, for the rabble that lived as one multilimbed, foul-breathed beast in the squalor of the square…but yes, hatred above all for Sabine. Sabine, who cheered her beatings. Sabine, who would slaughter Father Louis with her words. Ugly, mad, evil Sabine. Sabine, who yammered all night in a dozen different voices, and who cried out for the Canon each day at dawn. Sabine, who convulsed
and contorted in court. Grotesque Sabine. Heroic Sabine, fending off Satan in the name of Christ and His Church. Crazed Sabine Capeau, the cabal’s toy and martyr to the mob. Martyr, indeed. Sabine would find her fate, as surely as she was sending the curé to his. Madeleine would see to it.

  Finally, the trial ended and the matter was turned over to the magistrates.

  But first Louis, who’d been denied a doctor (he had the Surgeon, after all), a confessor (Canon Mignon was available to him, of course), and a counselor (the Prosecutor…), at last, before the trial’s end, Father Louis was allowed to speak in his own defense. This was no concession to the law, to the principles of justice; no, the mob simply wanted the devil-priest to speak, demanded that he speak.

  Father Louis could barely stand. He was thin and weak and fevered. He’d not slept for some time: the day-and-night din of the square, the curses hurled up at him by a thousand voices as he lay in the attic…Still, he rose to speak and the court fell quiet.

  “I call God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, together with the Virgin, my sole advocate, to say that I have never been a sorcerer, have never known Satan, have never committed sacrilege, and have never acknowledged any magic other than that of Holy Scripture, the which I have faithfully preached. I adore my Savior and pray that I may partake in the merit of the blood of His Passion.”

  The curé then fell back heavily onto his stool. Silence in the court. Quiet outside in the square. Tears were shed in the gallery.

  Now, thought Madeleine. Now! And she shot up from her seat to speak, to recant, to save her Louis, to—

  She was not heard. For just as she rose to speak, so too did Sabine.

  Madeleine was led struggling from court by three clerks. Sabine was left standing on the table, where she lifted her skirts high over her head and howled that Isacaaron, on orders of the curé, was taking her then and there. She gyrated and ground her hips lasciviously. She worked the cleft of her sex with her fingers. She spouted such obscenities that it was the duty of the finer ladies of the assembly to faint away.

  Within an hour the verdict was returned and read:

  Thirteen counts of guilt. On the morrow Father Louis was to be subjected to the Question, both ordinary and extraordinary (the former as punishment, the latter to elicit a confession and the names of accomplices). He was to kneel at the doors of St. Pierre and beg forgiveness of God, the king, and Justice. Then he was to be led across the square, tied to the stake, and burned. Alive. After which his ashes were to be scattered to the four winds. The clerk concluded the reading of the sentence by saying that a plaque, commemorating the event, was to be placed on the door of St. Pierre at the cost of one hundred and fifty livres, chargeable to the condemned’s confiscated estate.

  Court was dismissed.

  Sabine was led into the square, where a makeshift stage was set up for her. As her testimony had not yet rid her of her devils, she was able to oblige the crowd: she spat and twisted and grimaced and brayed like an ass till a soft but persistent rain drove her audience into the taverns ringing the square.

  Father Louis was being held in a back chamber of the courthouse. It was considered too dangerous to return him to his attic cell; the mob might feel free to steal the curé and exact their own rough justice. Far better he be burned by the Church. But before that happened, there remained one small detail:

  A confession. The curé’s signature on a single piece of paper absolving the Prosecutor and the Canon, and by extension the bishop, the cardinal, and the king, from all guilt, from any charges of wrongdoing that might be brought before the Parliament of Paris or some such body.

  Father Louis, wholly broken, body and soul, said that he could not confess to crimes he had not committed. Neither could he identify accomplices he had never known.

  But that wouldn’t do. Not at all. He must sign. Only a signed confession would silence the skeptics, the anti-cardinalists or other critics of the proceedings who might speak up despite the fines. No, the facts of the trial would not, could not be called into question, and so a confession was all-important. Of course, such a document could easily be forged, but the bishop had warned the cabal against this, expressly.

  Father Louis refused. Once, twice…twenty times. The cabal conferred. What to do? Perhaps the priest would change his mind under the Question; after all, hadn’t that device drawn its share of confessions? “Still,” said the Prosecutor, “let us put the screws to the goat, tonight,” and so the executioner was sent for. Found at his dinner table, the family gathered to dine on celebratory duck (for the executioner had been paid in advance for the next day’s work), the executioner excused himself and his eldest son who, at sixteen, six months into his apprenticeship, had not yet mastered the screws, and the two set off for the courthouse.

  Just as the executioner (Monsieur Martin Boileau by name, who’d learned his trade at his father’s side and was now first in his field, having hanged and tortured hundreds, from Marseilles to Poitiers) and his son (Boileau fils, named Jacques) arrived at court, a clerk announced that Madeleine de la Mettrie wished to be heard.

  “Pardon me, sir, if you will,” said the red-faced clerk.

  “What is it? Speak,” said the Prosecutor.

  “The witch, sir…I mean, the girl…your daughter is here. At the back door, sir.”

  The Prosecutor refused her, said that the proceedings had been concluded. Court had been dismissed. The thirteen magistrates were disbanded, were scattered about in as many taverns taking their supper. No. Deny her. Send the girl away. He then ordered the executioner to set the screws on the priest’s left hand. “Leave the right free to sign the confession—but tear the nails off if need be.”

  But as the clerk turned to leave the chamber and return to Madeleine, the exorcist raised his tubular device of carved elm and enameled tortoise shell to his ear and asked what the matter was. When told, he said that he would hear the girl.

  The Prosecutor seethed. He asked, begged the exorcist to reconsider. When he would not, the Prosecutor directed the executioner to turn the thumbscrew, and so it was that Madeleine entered the antechamber to the accompaniment of her beloved’s screams.

  Madeleine saw again the wraith, the man who had once been the handsome and prideful Curé of St. Pierre. She stood before him now as the blood pulsed from his thumb, spurted up into the air, higher with each turn of the screw. She could not look away. Neither could she speak.

  After the verdict, she’d returned unguarded to the Capeau home, for she’d nowhere else to go. There, she listened to Sabine being cheered in the square, asking herself how it had come to this. The sounds of the square resounded in her head. Then there came the blessed rain, and the square quieted. She could think. She could hate herself for the foolish plan she’d had. How could she have been so naive? Now Louis would burn, and she was as much to blame as crooked, conniving, crazed Sabine. Yes, she and her coming child would be marked forever by the blood of the priest, blood that would boil on the morrow.

  Moments before Sabine returned home (drunk for the first time, having happily agreed to dine with the rich cardinalist, Monsieur de Sourdis and his family), Madeleine came to understand that she was unguarded, after long months of captivity. Of course: what did they care for her now that the trial was over? She’d come back to this prison of her own accord.

  Quickly, she gathered up a cloak belonging to Monsieur Capeau. She found an oil lantern. She fashioned a noose from the leather tether that fell down through the house’s three stories and was tied to the servant’s bell in the kitchen. Then she slipped from the kitchen into a back alley. Alley to alley in the cold rain, shadow to shadow through the darkest parts of the night, she made her way to the courthouse. Did she think that her Louis would be there alone? That she’d finally be able to tell him what she’d done, beg his forgiveness for having failed him? Effect a rescue? Or had she known that the core of the court, minus the magistrates, would still be convened? Had she hoped to be heard as, now, sh
e was?

  Madeleine was led by the clerk into that antechamber of the courthouse, its stone walls ringing with the screams of the man she’d come to save.

  Then: “Speak, child.” It was the exorcist.

  The executioner’s son stopped turning the screws. Louis, his drawn face and chest awash with blood, was conscious, barely so. His head lolled about on his shoulders, rolled right to left, forward and back, as though his neck had been broken.

  Her father stood far across the room staring out a high window at the starless dark, his arms folded across his chest. Canon Mignon glared at her through tiny reptilian eyes, beads of sweat slipping over his high freckled forehead, over his razor-thin upper lip. As Madeleine spoke, all present turned from her. All save the exorcist.

  Madeleine explained every part of her plan and how it had failed. She said she had lied. She was not lying now as she told of the midnight marriage, the child to come, and the love she bore for the priest. The love he had shown her. She was let to speak the truth; and the priest’s condemnation was complete.

  For, learning of that sacrilegious ceremony and its satanic issue, staring at its living proof, the exorcist averred that he’d heard the most damning and damaging words of all. On behalf of the bishop, the cardinal, and the king, he ordered the “whore-child” out of the courthouse.

  Madeleine screamed, started to scream and could not stop. The clerk could not control her. The executioner’s son laid his bloodied hands on her. She managed to show the noose (only then did she know why she’d crafted it, expertly, as she’d seen her father do countless times; it was a hobby of his: nooses of rope, twine, licorice…). “If you kill him,” said she, swinging the noose toward the priest, who’d come to full consciousness, “you kill us! You will all stew an eternity in our innocent blood!” She damned them all. She taunted her father with her swelled stomach.