by Dan Davis
His face took on the aspect of true despair, then. It seemed he had been hoping that the King would come.
“So be it,” he managed to say.
“I will ensure they ask you about Joan of Lorraine,” I said. “Everything about the Maiden. Where you found her, how you educated and trained her. It will be entered into the court documents and all France will know she was a fraud.”
He sagged further and collapsed down into a chair by the window, hanging his head. “That is not it at all.”
“Well, we will see,” I replied. “I for one will delight in hearing your manipulations. You say that her trial was theatre to convince the masses that she had always been false but there are many in France who still believe in her. In her divine mission. One might say it yet moves the hearts of the common soldiery so that they fight with her inspiration stirring their hearts. But the Inquisition will pull the truth from your flesh and you will tell how you turned a young girl into a blood drinking demon and manipulated her into doing your bidding. Into deceiving even the King. Do you think France will still be inspired by her after the masses hear your words? Do you think the King will remember you well? Yes, I shall enjoy the sight of your tortures very much indeed, sir.”
He gaped at me as I spoke and when he did not respond, I turned and strode away from him to lift the latch and so leave him to his fate.
“Wait!” he cried. “Wait. I will confess.”
I turned from the door. “Come again?”
His face was white. “Call the Inquisitor. Call him now. I will confess my crimes now, this very night. The illusion has gone on as long as it needs to. I will tell it all.”
“All?” I asked. “You will tell them that you are over two hundred years old and a drinker of blood? You will tell them of William?”
“Oh?” he said, a sly look creeping onto his face. “The whole truth concerns you, does it, Richard? You will be undone if I do, is that it? Perhaps I will tell them everything, not only about my own crimes but about yours as well.”
“Feel free to do so. It will serve only to condemn you to die as a madman as well as a murderer.”
He sagged again. “Yes, yes. What you say is true. And so I mean only that I will confess my crimes with the poor children. Then they will hang me.” His voice shook as he spoke. “They will hang me and then, praise God, it will be done.”
“You will hang,” I said. “And you will burn.”
He nodded, though he hid his face with his hands as he did so.
“Stephen,” I said through the door. “Can you hear this?”
From the other side of the oak timbers, he replied without delay. “I will bring the Inquisitor at once,” Stephen said.
While we waited, I observed Gilles de Rais, slumped in his chair. He seemed defeated but whether it was an act, a play performed only for me, I could not say. I recalled then the grand play he had put on in Orléans, an event so lavish that it had almost ruined the richest man in the kingdom. He had been playing the parts of so many men for so many years that surely deceit came easily to him. It certainly came increasingly easily to me and I had suffered and continued to suffer the consequences of it. All I could hold on to was that I was, by birth and by heart, an English knight. With that core knowledge of who I was, I could weather the storms of self-doubt and look to sustain the moral framework that such knowledge provided.
But Gilles was nobody. The son of a carpenter, he had said, who had likely gone off to war and done well. Perhaps he was destined to be a man-at-arms, for a lord or as a mercenary or as a roadside robber. But then he had become immortal, required to drink blood, and had been given a quest by a powerful immortal to grow rich and powerful and he had done it. To get there, however, he had been one man after another. Whatever his birth name had been, he had become Charles de Coussey, a routier knight. Later, he had made himself into a noble, and become Jean de Craon, a famed brute but a lordly one. And finally, he had become Gilles de Rais, a famed soldier, companion of Joan the Maiden, become a Marshal of France. Who was he, really? Was he any of them? Which one of those men was sitting before me in that luxurious prison in Nantes? Did he even know himself?
“You need blood,” I said, drawing his attention. “You need blood every day or two. Every three at the most, or else you will grow sick and lose your wits.”
He eyed me warily. “Yes. But I am strong. From all the blood I have taken.”
“Someone has been feeding you blood,” I said.
He scoffed. “No.”
“Who is helping you?” I asked, considering that his vast wealth would open many doors and perhaps even veins. “You have bought off servants, even here?” He clamped his mouth shut and turned away. “I suppose it hardly matters. Of course you have paid men to care for you. You have spent many lifetimes accumulating riches but you have never been shy about spending it to achieve your aims. You made and spent a fortune as if it were nothing to you. Are you being honest about your low birth? Or are you a nobleman after all?”
“I have no need to convince you of anything further,” he said, and yet he continued. “I was born as low as can be. My father was not even competent as a carpenter. He could barely construct a coherent sentence, let alone build well or make wealth. If he had seen me as I was to become, he would have bowed and scraped low, like the miserable fool he was. I am to him as an angel might be to a mortal. The worlds I have seen would be so far beyond his comprehension that he would be forever blind to them and yet look what I became. It was difficult, at first, painful even. Learning to read and to write but there was some indefinable magic to it all that drove me on, some deep fascinating at the wisdom that might be contained in those black scribblings upon the page. In time, I found such a great love of literature in Latin and in Greek. By God, how I have loved the Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius. Do you know it, sir?”
It sounded familiar, but I could not bring myself to admit my ignorance to such a monster. “I cannot say that literature has touched me as deeply as it has you.”
“Ah, such a magnificent work. Do you know, he describes the third emperor, who was Tiberius, as a man who enjoyed the secret practice of abominable lewdness? At his secluded palace, he entertained companies of young girls and catamites and assembled from all across his lands inventors of unnatural copulations, who defiled one another in his presence to inflame his ardour. He had several special chambers set round with pictures and statues in the most lascivious attitudes, contrived recesses in his groves for the gratification of lust, where young persons of both sexes prostituted themselves in caves and hollow rocks, in the disguise of little Pans and Nymphs before he himself—”
“Enough of your damned perversions!” I snapped. “Your professed love of literature is revealed as nothing more than your love of depravity. Not finding enough of it in Christian lands, you found it in the wicked texts of pagan kings and sought to fulfil it in life. It is all very clear, sir. Now, hold your damned tongue until the lords of the court come to hear your confession.”
Gilles curled his lip in disgust and could not control himself enough to cease his crowing. “The subject may be depraved but the quality of the literature is itself inspiring. You would not understand. My lord said your soul was a small and shrivelled thing and I see that it is so.”
“My soul is not perfect but yours has led you into a miserable existence, scurrying from murder to murder in the dark.”
“Are you certain that you do not speak of yourself, sir?” His lip curled as he regarded me. “I made myself the most celebrated man in France. I wrote poetry and plays. I won the war for France, did I not?”
“And yet here you are. Soon to be hanged. A wasted life, is it not? You failed my brother.”
His eyes flashed. “He failed me!”
“How so?”
Gilles almost wailed as he spoke. “He has abandoned us.”
Us, he said.
“Who has William abandoned other than you? Certainly you do not speak of your vil
e servants in such terms.”
Gilles covered his eyes with his hands and when he looked up and spoke, he seemed calm once more. “He has abandoned Christendom. A betrayal. Such a betrayal. And where does his betrayal leave me? What now am I?”
“A murderer of children?”
He grimaced. “Am I? Is that what I am? That is how the world will remember Gilles de Rais, no doubt. But that does not undo all that I have become.”
“Some deeds are so evil that they define a life.”
“I suppose that is true. I did try to stop it. I hope that I am allowed to beg you this much. That you believe I did try to stop it. But I was weak. I was powerless.”
“There can be no excuses for this evil.”
“I remain a good Christian. A perfect Christian, from my youth until this moment.”
“You make a mockery of your words. You are a heretic.”
“Never! Never that, never. I love Christ. He will forgive me. I will enter Heaven.”
“If you make it to Heaven, I will slay you there, also.”
He smiled. “What makes you believe you will go to Heaven? Do you attend Mass? Do you confess your sins? Do you believe in your heart that only Jesus Christ can bring you salvation?”
“I will not be questioned on my faith by you, demon.”
“You and your traitorous brother are the cause of this evil, not me. I am a victim of it.”
There was more truth in that than I cared to consider. “After you, William will die also. Have no fear of that.”
“I pray that you each slay the other.”
“What else has he done to you? Other than to abandon you after promising to return. You say he has turned against Christendom. How can you know this, if you have not heard from him?”
He opened his mouth, whether to answer or to deflect I do not know, as the door behind me was thrown open and the Chief Inquisitor strode in with the other chiefs of both courts trailing behind him in a swirling mass of robes and finery.
“What is this about a confession?”
“Praise God!” Gilles cried, and fell to his knees, clasping his hands together. “Please, Inquisitor, I beg you. Hear my honest and true and freely given confession and after, have me executed so that my torment is finally ended!”
***
Present for the confession along with the Inquisitor was the Bishop of Saint-Brieuc representing the ecclesiastical court, and Master Pierre de L’Hopital from the civic court, Captain Jean Labbe on behalf of the Duke, and Stephen, the prosecutor. The Inquisition’s scribes wrote down what was said and servants attended to their masters.
I was present, as a squire in service of the ecclesiastical court, and none of those great lords attempted to be rid of me, for they were rightly afraid of Gilles de Rais, a big and powerful soldier as well as likely heretic and murderer, and needed a brute like me to make them feel secure.
He was seated in a chair by the narrow window, facing us. We stood or sat or leaned in a great arc around him, from one side of the room to another. The Inquisitor sat at the centre, upright and leaned forward on a rather high stool.
“So, then,” the Inquisitor said. “On the subject of the abduction and death of many children, and the libidinous, sodomitic, and unnatural vice, the cruel and horrible manner of the killings, and also the invocations of demons, oblations, immolations or sacrifices, the promises made or the obligations contracted with the demons by you, you wish to make a statement of confession?”
“Yes,” the Marshal said without hesitation. “Yes, to all.”
The Inquisitor sighed and looked down his nose. “You shall have to do better than that, my lord.”
He nodded frantically. “I will say anything that I am required to say to swiftly end this ordeal. An ordeal I richly deserve, of course, my lords. And so I must say that I freely, voluntarily, and grievously confess to committing each and every crime for which I am charged by both courts. I have committed and maliciously perpetrated on numerous children the crimes, the sins, and offences of… of homicide and… sodomy. I confess also that I have committed the invocations of demons, what was it? Oblations and immolations. That I made promises and obligations, as stated, to demons. And done all the other things to which I am charged.”
“Very good. We will require more. We must have details. We must have reasons.”
“Reasons, my lord?”
“Your motivations, no matter how perverse, for committing these crimes.”
“Yes, yes, of course. How would you like me to say it?”
“In your own words, tell me, when did you begin committing these crimes?”
“In the Champtoce Castle, during the time when my grandfather was alive. I do not know what year. I suppose it really started when my grandfather died and Gilles de Rais took over. When I inherited.”
“Who persuaded you to commit these crimes?”
“Persuaded me? No one persuaded me. I committed them according to my imagination and my ideas, without anyone’s counsel and following my own feelings, sir.”
“But, for what purpose?”
For the purpose of blood, I thought. For his need to drink. But of course it was far more than that.
“Solely for my pleasure and my carnal delight. And not with any other intention or to any other end.” As he said this, he glanced briefly at me and then looked quickly away.
“I struggle to understand,” the Inquisitor said, shaking his head. “I find it very surprising that a man could commit crimes such as this for no reason. To what ends have you had the children killed and committed on them the sins we have heard about and had their cadavers burned?”
“I confess that I took pleasure in the hurting and the killing of them. Some I killed by removing their heads from their bodies, others by striking with clubs on their heads or necks. Others I throttled by hand or by ropes and cords, suspending them from hooks and pegs on my walls. It gave me joy to watch their anguish and confusion as they died. I delighted in destroying innocence, I suppose. It was satisfying to me to eradicate their innocence in every way that I could imagine. I am the opposite of innocence, you see. It is the antithesis to what I have become. It is something so far removed from what I have made myself that I sought to destroy it from the face of the earth. And my perversions knew no bounds. Even in death, I enjoyed defiling their corpses further. After so many killed, it slowly became tedious to me and I had to become ever more creative in my activities in order to maintain the joy. Even then, it grew ever more mundane until I found myself filled with misery but unable to stop.” He broke off, his voice shaking.
“Please, continue to explain your crimes.”
“Alas, my lord, you torment yourself and me along with you!”
The Inquisitor looked down his nose and replied calmly. “I do not torment myself in the least but I am very surprised at what you have told me and simply cannot be satisfied with it. I desire and would like to know the absolute truth from you for the reasons I have already told you.”
Gilles glanced at me again. “Truly, there was no other cause, no other end nor intention, if not what I have told you. I have admitted to enough to kill ten thousand men. Let it be done but once to me.”
“Well, my lord, we shall certainly see it done but it must be done in the proper, legal fashion. And so I will have you speak of your dealings with the invocation of demons and the oblation of the blood of the said small children and the places where you performed these acts.”
“In order to solicit from the demon’s evil, I had a note drafted in my own blood promising to give the devil, when he appeared, whatever he required excepting my life and my soul. My soul is still mine and God’s and has always remained so. I must be sure that you understand that. I must be sure.”
“I hear you and your assertion is so recorded. Continue.”
Gilles took a slow breath and nodded. “Prelati summoned them many times and told me he saw them and spoke to them but I never did see them, not once, sadly. I gave him w
hatever he needed, whether it be blood or limbs or gold.”
“Why did you wish to summon a demon or many demons? For what purpose?”
“To have powerful creatures to do my bidding. Prelati assured me that a demon would help in the transmutation.”
“You wanted the demons to help to create gold?”
“Yes, indeed. I found myself in financial difficulties due to large expenses and I wished to recover it, and to make more. To make a fortune. To make myself richer than any king. Alas, alas, it did not work.”
“We have heard from Prelati, who stated that you provided him the blood, the hands, eyes, and the hearts of children. You did this in the hopes of creating gold?”
“It is true, yes.”
The Inquisitor sighed and rubbed his eyes. “We shall end this now. I suggest that you repeat what you have spoken here during the next session of the court and the Bishop will move to pass sentence.”
“I will,” Gilles de Rais said. “Praise God.”
We filed out and before I left I looked back at him. He seemed relieved and that was understandable, assuming he was seeking the relief of death. But I thought I sensed something else. Just a hint of triumph, quickly suppressed. At the time, I convinced myself that I was imagining things. I would soon discover it was triumph indeed and everything was going according to his plan.
But the overwhelming thoughts on my mind after I left was how impassioned Gilles had been when he spoke of Joan.
Do not speak of her! he had said, raging at me. Even you must know her trial was a nonsense. Everything about it, from start to finish. It was theatre, played to convince the masses that her brilliance was not only over but that it had always been false.
It was plain to see that it had affected him profoundly. Perhaps her death was what had finally driven him into madness.