by James Reese
“If I do say so myself,” continued Father Louis, “I succeeded brilliantly. At trial, the nuns were unanimous in their accusations, and expressed themselves quite graphically.”
Yes, averred Madeleine, looking not at the incubus but at me, his talents, such as they are, were still new to him, and he honed them well on the nuns of A——.
“Honed them, indeed!
“There was one—perhaps it was Sister Henriette; she was rather lively—who testified that, despite her incarceration, Sister St. Colombe came to her nightly ‘to touch her bosom and kiss her all-about, and passionately.’ She actually showed the officers of the court the bruises and bite marks on her breasts, and complained of the pain her swollen nipples caused her!” Louis stopped speaking then—he was laughing too hard to continue—thus affording me the opportunity to ask a question.
“But,” I began, “how is it you went to her as a woman? I thought an incubus—”
I cooperated with him from time to time, demurred Madeleine; who quickly excused herself by adding, He begged me to. We stole a few items from the rooms of the Mother Superior, and so I easily assumed her shape.
My bewilderment at this was enough to elicit further explanation: it seems that we mortals sometimes invest our things with our selves; such entities as the elementals, taking possession of such things, can then possess us…. When, confused, I pressed the succubus, it was Father Louis who ended the matter by quoting the Bard—“‘It is all but a lust of the blood,’” said he, “‘a permission of the will’”—before going on to boast:
“And I managed to steal away with the dead priest’s shoes before they buried him, so his shape was mine…. Brilliant, it was! Brilliant!”
And, rest assured, it was no burial at a crossroads for the priest, said Madeleine, her voice heating up somewhat. So sure were her accusers of Sister St. Colombe’s crimes—chief among them the bewitchment and murder of the priest—that no one spoke of suicide, and Father Borthon received a proper burial.
“Anyway,” sighed the incubus, which sigh was intended to forestall Madeleine’s increasing anger—an anger not unrelated to a roiling wind that rose then to wrap the château and rattle its windows. His sigh, coupled with a certain look, succeeded, and the succubus grew calm. “Anyway, I had the priest’s shoes—dead Father Borthon’s—and so I easily assumed his shape.”
To torture the nuns, including his own sisters…. That was vile, Louis. Vile, indeed!
Father Louis nodded, accepting her words as one would a compliment, and continued: “I think it was Sister Humberte, another of the Borthon sisters, who told the court that she suffered visions—induced by the Mother Superior, of course—wherein her brother returned to her. What was it she said?…Oh yes, I remember: she said that he, doing the bad nun’s bidding, placed a serpent upon her, in her, where it writhed about until she fairly froze.”
“A serpent…” I repeated.
Father Louis laughed. “Yes, a serpent! She did not even know the thing for what it was!…And of course I took the occasion to grace the dead priest’s form with a serpent more potent and better envenomed than his own, which was puny and weak from want of practice.”
Oh, stop it, Louis. Tell the tale, would you please? I remind you: we’ll need to regain the road at a suitable hour if we are to keep to the moon’s calendar. With slight menace in her tone, she added, I will not wait one day longer than I must. I will not!
“Oh, all right,” said the priest, “but you must let me speak a bit more of Sister Marie, for I did my best work upon that little nun.” The priest turned from Madeleine to me, and I saw that, in his excitement, his shape had strengthened. He practically leapt about the room! He was as strong, as solid as I’d ever seen him, and the now-wild fire that shone through Madeleine’s shape was testament to this. “Remember, witch, we’d been dead less than a half-century, I think, and so our sex-talents were still new to us, unrefined…But oh how the refining of them was fun!” He wrung his hands like a moneylender.
Louis, please….
Father Louis went on: “Sister Marie testified that she’d sat on the Mother Superior’s lap once and that she’d received that woman’s fingers, like icicles, within her. (Which was true.) She said too that her own brother had worked a phallus fashioned of stiff linen upon her. (And he had.) And oh yes, she said,” and here the priest cast an opprobrious glance at Madeleine, “…she said that the Mother Superior had railed at her about certain rites of the Church…”
I did get carried away a bit that one night, admitted Madeleine, which admission drew a wide smile from the priest.
“Now little Sister Marie—who was not, curiously, a virgin—began to take communion thrice daily. She washed with holy water, passed hours at a certain shrine of the Virgin, hung amulets from the four posts of her bed, swallowed a veritable herbarium…but all in vain, for the more she sought to resist me, to ‘save herself,’ the more I visited her. As her brother, and as handsome Father François…Yes, I stayed with her all through the gathering of testimony and into the trial. I enjoyed her resistance: most nuns simply surrender.
“By the time of the exorcism, Marie was quite addled, well on her way to insane.”
“And that was all right with you?” I asked of the priest. “You rendered the girl insane with sex, and…”
“Ah, but judge not the maned beast who brings down the weakest gazelle. Nor the bear who with bladed paw scoops salmon from the river. No. In my defense, I will say only this: I did what it is in my nature to do.”
See, witch, said an amused but still impatient Madeleine, see how he is prone to pontification?…Louis, may we simply say that the trial progressed predictably, and that the verdict was never in question?
“But it was an unusual verdict, no?” I asked. “I understand that this Father François arranged it, but wasn’t exorcism more often used to elicit testimony, as with—” I stopped short of saying the name: Sabine Capeau.
Everything about such trials was unusual, said the succubus; rather, everything about them is unusual, for these trials go on still, and will go on, I suspect, forever.
“But you are correct,” said the priest, to me. “It was unusual for the nun, Sister St. Colombe, to be sentenced to exorcism, but remember: a quite ambitious young priest was at work in A——, this Father François. And also, the Borthon family demanded to know why the priest was dead and why the nuns testified to having been so defiled, so degraded…”
“And witchery,” I finished, “was as good a reason as any.”
“Precisely,” said the priest.
“Save them with the rites of the Church,” I went on. “In this case, the exorcism of their tormentor, Sister St. Colombe.”
Idiots, spat the succubus, to think they’d be saved by the work of one impure priest!
“So this Father François—” I began, only to be interrupted by Madeleine, who stood to move about the room, as Father Louis did. In contrast to his density and the measured grace with which he moved, Madeleine held to so weak, so diaphanous a shape that it seemed she floated over the carpeted floor…. I stared at them as they circled me where I sat.
Madeleine stopped to stand before the red marble hearth. It’s my turn, said she. I will tell of the exorcism. On the mantel beside her there sat the bust of a man—the Maréchal de Saxe, in the interest of fact—and the dense white weight of the porcelain, the very mass of the thing seemed to mock Madeleine’s incorporeal state. She was anxious. Angry. She seemed to slowly grow more…more solid. She said I would hear her speak of things of which she was not proud; regardless, she had done these things, and she would speak of them. She solicited the priest’s assistance. Would he help her tell the tale her way?
The priest, bowing deeply, said, “At your service, sweet hellcat,” and, smiling, he resumed his slow circling of the room.
35
Chambord, Part II
—The Continuing Charade
IT WAS A day in late November, said Madeleine,
standing in front of the fireplace, some ten or fifteen paces before me. Fresh snow had fallen in the night, its whiteness soon sullied by all those who came to witness the exorcism. By midmorning that white blanket was dark from the dirt dragged in on the heels of peasants and the mud sprayed from the wheeled conveyances of the rich. There were, perhaps, five hundred of the good men and women of God gathered in A——.
The rite would not be read in the church. This was deemed too dangerous, for what might the exorcised demons do when loosed into the House of God? A stage was erected in the shade of an ancient oak and Father François refused no one as fine a vantage point as they could afford.
As the hour drew near, Father François, resplendent in surplice and violet stole, took the stage to rhythmic applause and murmured prayer.
Sister St. Colombe sat tied to a chair that was, in its turn, fastened to the oak where it abutted the stage.
“It appeared the setting for some druidic ritual,” said Father Louis, “wherein the oak, the chair, and the witch would all rise up in one single, sacrificial flame.”
Madeleine continued: The Mother Superior was clad in a simple shift, too thin for the weather; but she was beyond discomfort, so hungry, so tired, so broken was she. The marks of the vermin with which she’d been confined showed red and purple and black upon her arms, her legs, her bare feet, and her face. Her head was shorn. To those who’d known her, she was unrecognizable.
Finally, Father François opened his Ritual Romanum and began. Louis and I were present, of course, but we held no shapes, though we might easily have done so, drawing from the depth of the drifted snows.
Madeleine paused then. Louis, she said, not looking at the priest…the words, Louis. Don’t make me repeat those words.
The priest understood. So too did I, for when next Father Louis spoke it was with a voice not his own. It was—I knew it instantly, though of course I’d never heard it—it was the voice of Father François.
I drew the ermine stole tighter around my shoulders. I heard the howling wind, felt it invade the château. I listened to the incanting incubus as he stalked around the carpet’s edge, encircling Madeleine and me.
“‘I, Father François Sidonie, Minister of Christ and the Church, in the name of Jesus Christ, command you, unclean spirit, if you lie hid in the body of this woman created by God, or if you vex her in any way, that immediately you give me some manifest sign of the certainty of your presence…’”
Madeleine resumed her narrative: The first exorcism begun, Sister St. Colombe sat upon that stage seeming less alive than the great oak to which she was tied. All stared at her, awaiting some devilish sign. None came. And then, quite contrary to the prescribed rite, Father François turned to address the assembly. He declaimed that he would rid the Mother Superior of those demons who’d used her, who’d urged her to kill the good Father Borthon and torture the innocent nuns. He proceeded to address Sister St. Colombe, who wanted only to move on to her reward: death, however unjust. Father François commanded the demons within her to declare themselves, to state their names. He inquired as to their rank and their role in the Satanic order. He asked if they proposed staying a specified time, or would they use the woman for all eternity.
“This,” chuckled the priest, “drew gasps from the crowd.”
He asked the hour and place at which the witch, or nun, had been entered. No response. Louder, ceding to some dramatic impulse, prancing about that makeshift stage as though he were host to demons, the priest demanded of the lead demon within the Mother Superior the reasons why it had come into her. Still no response.
“Madeleine,” said Father Louis to me, “was biding her time.”
I was, yes; with great effort. But then one of the assembled Faithful lobbed a snowball at the nun, who sat staring up at the priest, her face devoid of hope. Then suddenly there was an arsenal of snowballs in the air, fists of ice striking the Mother Superior. From these she could not shield herself, for her hands were bound behind her. Snowballs soon ceded to rocks, one of which split her lip. Another rent her cheek…. It was then I could wait no longer, and I…
…Let me say that Father François, that all present were rather…rather surprised when the Mother Superior first responded to the rites read upon her.
I descended, discarnate still, said Madeleine, and I hovered near that ancient oak, near the Mother Superior. Surprising myself—for it took no effort at all—I caused the chair on which she sat to rise up, slowly, as though on a current of air; it rose and rose till the ropes that bound it to the oak snapped like strings.
“You lifted it up and—?” I was confused.
I caused it to rise, as I said. The act was unrelated to physical strength; it involved the strength of the will. I willed the chair to rise.
Madeleine went on: It was then I entered Sister St. Colombe—true possession is but a simple, watery displacement—quite different from the shape-stealing effected with stolen shoes and skirts—and I caused her voice to rise up to a shout. My every word was heard.
Into that wintry silence, I said this: “I was a servant of the right God and was unjustly condemned to a living death. From Purgatory I’ve come in search of a Christian burial.” All the while I shared the body of the broken nun, who’d fainted away when I took her voice…. I willed the chair to hang high above the slatted floor of that makeshift stage. The nun was but a rag doll, and I willed her every move, caused her to jump and skip and flop about like a—
“The effect of which,” interrupted Father Louis, “was extraordinary. Extraordinary!” He moved briskly about the room, excited by these recollections, and continued his testimony: “The mob fell back from the stage. Some screamed. Others ran home to hide in their houses.”
“And what,” I asked, “was the effect of all this on the Mother Superior?”
“She was a wondrous, a frightful sight!” exclaimed the priest. In imitation of her, a laughing Father Louis threw his arms out wide, let his head loll about his shoulders, rolled his eyeballs back in his head. “Indeed, she was like a rag doll…the only animate part of which was her mouth, from which issued such invective, such filth as to—”
As regards the nun, interrupted Madeleine, she resisted me not at all; and she slipped the bonds of life as quick as she could. I said nothing; but Madeleine responded to my unasked question. You want to know if I killed her, said she. This silenced the priest, who stopped in his dance to stare at the succubus. That is what you want to know, is it not?
“Yes,” I said, “it is.”
In response I say this: I broke that chair like a twig, dashing it and the nun’s body against the oak. Freeing her of life’s fetters, I had her charge that oak like a stuck and crazed bull. She stove in her own head. She beat her body against the oak till her skin was but a sack of shattered bone…. I caused all this, yes—taking care, of course, to spare the nun’s jaw, for that I’d need if I was to continue speaking through her; but the nun was dead by then, dead and departed; her soul had slipped away…. So, no, I did not kill her; I merely occupied her, used her, and destroyed what remained of her.
“You were in her, no?” I reasoned. “You possessed her. So did you not feel that bodily pain, the breaking of every—?”
An approximation of the pain, yes. But it was nothing I could not suffer. It was like those phantom pains you felt that night at C——, reading of your tortured sisters. Madeleine hesitated, then added, raising her hands to her opened throat, I’ve known pain far worse.
I said nothing. Father Louis resumed his route around us.
I tell you, witch, the nun had already passed when I did what I did. She’d abandoned her body. She’d sat beneath that shower of stones, freezing, starving, clad in rags, knowing she would die. And so her will to live was soon gone, displaced by her desire to die.
“Still,” I insisted, “you might have saved her somehow.”
“No, no, no,” explained Father Louis. “She was a mere mortal woman, unlike you. Would you ha
ve had us revive her, untie her, brush her off, and send her on her way? Introduce ourselves to her as the eudemons who’d saved her and share with her a teary farewell?” He paused before continuing, with—thankfully—dampened sarcasm: “You don’t know, witch, how easily we can render insane those of a true faith, any faith. The streets, the asylums of every city are littered with those whose minds have been ruined by our kind, people who have seen things they ought never to have seen. No, to save Sister St. Colombe would have been unkind.”
And I say again: she wanted to die.
“How do you know that?” I asked of the succubus.
I was in her! I assumed not only her form but her will, too.
“And through her will—whatever that is—she communicated to you her desire to die?”
Well, no; not exactly, said the succubus. What I learned from her was that she wanted to kill, and only secondarily to die…. I did her bidding, that’s all. I let her die and—
“And whom did you kill for her?” I asked.
Madeleine, having made no response, spoke on:
With Buvée dead—with her soul departed—I remained in possession of her body. Now I was the sole target of the rite. I would judge its effect—if it had any: again, the priest was impure.
“You remained in literal possession of the dead Sister St. Colombe?” I asked.
“Possession,” explained Father Louis, his patience thin, “implies that the possessed person lives; so to say Madeleine possessed the nun is inaccurate. If you must have a word for it, let us say that Madeleine revivified, or reanimated her.”
As I did your red-haired visitor in the cathedral.
“I see,” said I. “She was but a vehicle, a host. A vantage point from which you might view the Church’s rite, sham that it would be.”