Thief of Souls

by Ann Benson

  But in the middle of the final cadence, heads suddenly began to turn. The buzz of curiosity seemed to originate at the rear of the church and was moving forward in a wave that progressed at about the pace of a man’s walk. We were at the front of the congregation, so I could not see what or who had caused the commotion. All along the central aisle, heads began to nod as a small procession worked through the parting crowd.

  As they came into view, I saw first a priest in white robes—one Monsignor Olivier des Ferrieres. That in and of itself was cause for comment, for he was a rogue, loose in his beliefs, known to associate with a darker element than that which his superiors would prefer. More than once his Eminence had considered defrocking the man.

  “He is not attached to this parish,” Frère Demien whispered in surprise. “To any parish that I know of.”

  I shrugged in demonstration of my own bewilderment. I stood up on my toes and craned my neck higher in an attempt to see farther back. The last note of the choir’s chant hung in the air over all of us, in bittersweet reverberation.

  “Mon Dieu,” I heard myself say. I felt my hands make the familiar protective gesture on my chest, crossing first up and down, and then from one side to the other.

  My heart was suddenly in my throat. Lord Gilles de Rais walked slowly behind des Ferrieres, each halting step moving him toward the front of the church. He stood out from those around him by virtue of some indefinable quality of character, which had more to do with his stature as a nobleman and hero of France than any physical attribute. He was not an overly large man, just a bit more than average of height, but he had a presence about him that demanded notice. His dark hair, fashionably trimmed just above the collar of his tunic, was stark in contrast to the pallor of his skin, which had not of late been bronzed by war. He wore red that day, a shade not unlike fresh blood. On his face there was an expression more in keeping with the day of our Lord’s crucifixion than His rebirth. Milord was near to weeping, as I saw it.

  No one had expected he would come here to celebrate our Lord’s rising from the dead. “Why is he not in Machecoul, at his own chapel?” I wondered aloud.

  “He is free to worship where he sees fit, Sister.”

  “But here, today, under Jean de Malestroit’s nose, while there is still such disdain between them?”

  At about the midpoint of the aisle, he stopped and turned around. His gaze went up to the choir loft, and when his eyes found André Buchet, the whole of Milord’s body seemed to sag, as if a great weight had been settled on him.

  Therein lay the answer to the question of his unanticipated presence.

  Frère Demien leaned closer and said, “Je regrette, Guillemette, I know you love Milord well. But even you must admit that it is disgraceful how he stares at Buchet.”

  I took my eyes off the great lord who had spent countless hours on my lap as a child and looked up at the singer who held his attention. The affection and sadness in Milord’s expression unsettled me. “Regardez, mon Frère,” I said. “Buchet is like ice up there in the loft. He will not return Milord’s gaze.”

  Then Milord’s head drooped again, as if he were in complete misery. He turned around and proceeded along the main aisle as before, following the ungainly des Ferrieres toward the confessional, a peacock towed by a squab.

  Oh, Guillemette, my Etienne had mused dreamily in his final days, when he could do little more than that, you should have seen him at Orléans! We all stood in awe of him. His armor was shiny black and beautifully fitted to his body, and when he pressed his steed forward, the white plume at the peak of his helmet would lay straight back. I tell you, Wife, he was both fierce and fine; he could call upon his violent nature at any time, more readily than any of us. I saw him plunge his sword into the belly of many an Englishman—few survived if he got a decent thrust. There was not a man in that army who fought as mightily as did Gilles de Rais.

  It was in the aftermath of that great and bloody battle that he was elevated to his position of Marshal of France. Gilles rode at the side of the Maid Jean herself, she in her pure white undecorated armor, he so splendid in black.

  Coal and snow, Etienne said. How two people could be so alike and yet so disparate is unfathomable.

  My husband was not the only one who noticed their marked dissimilarity and at the same time their undisguised comradeship. Each one’s legend grew: she, an untarnished peasant girl called to arms by her “voices” (which some thought unholy, perhaps instead the whisperings of witches in her ears), and he, the epitome of worldliness, with all the glamour that his position afforded. Both were untethered in spirit and in action, though that abandon showed itself in different ways. Everything Jean d’arc did was justified by her belief that God had given her the mandate and the means to unite France under the bastard Charles; Gilles de Rais offered no justification whatsoever for what he did, as none was required of him. He had been born to entitlement and did what he wanted to do.

  They were both completely mad, Etienne would say. In view of what they did separately and together, it could not be otherwise. Yet there was a simple affinity between them that bore a disquieting resemblance to affection. They seemed inseparable while they were companions—there was even scandalous talk of “love.”

  But Jean d’arc was a virgin—Yolande d’Aragon determined this herself with an examination so thorough that the Maid was said to have been deeply offended and even injured in her private parts—and Milord was a married man who had no reputation for philandering. I never heard it said once that he took a woman other than Lady Catherine to his bed; it was more often said that he took no woman to bed at all, which declaration was more troubling to me than if he had. And while Lady Catherine was a beautiful woman, she was not of a similar mind to Milord. She was quiet, polite, courtly, and gracious, unlike her rash and adventuresome mate. It seemed to me that there was nothing he would not try.

  To Etienne, that was all so glorious; he could hardly stop speaking of the things he saw. How grand it all was, how excellent we all were, both in spirit and the flesh, a massive entourage of soldiers and noblemen, warriors gathered at last into one united army. Swordsmen, bowmen, foot soldiers, and lancers, we all lined up in proper order, fresh for the fight.

  Blood lust was in the air, he said, heightened by the sudden, miraculous announcement that day that the troops were finally to be paid, by virtue of contributions from many noble coffers, Milord’s included. All manner of men went into that battle behind this one small woman: good men, bad men, thieves, beggars, fathers, sons, and brothers, among them men who had secrets from everyone but God. Plenty of ne’er-do-wells went forth, two in Milord’s own entourage: his cousins Robert de Briqueville and Gilles de Sille—never my favorite pair, not as grown men to be sure, not even when they were young boys. There was little to be liked in either; both had an edge that gave me pause, and I was not alone in feeling thus. No one at Champtocé or Machecoul seemed to care much for them, singly or together.

  Yet for all the mischief they made in both places, the cousins were never more than shadows to Gilles. Even as a child he led them about like goats on a tether, and never did any good come of it. So many times while he was in my charge I caught myself wishing that Gilles de Rais might have chosen different playmates among those available to him; he seemed to do so well with my Michel and so poorly with the sons of Briqueville and Sille. With Michel he could be a good boy; with his cousins, he was always a rogue, vicious and sly.

  But those cousins comported themselves well at Orléans, or so it was reported; the Maid seemed to inspire all who rode beneath her banners, from the lowest peasant to the highest noble. How glorious it was to remember; how proud we all were, how quick to claim a share of Milord’s honor.

  “He was at his best in that time,” I whispered blankly to myself.

  Frère Demien looked at me in concern. “What?” he said.

  It hadn’t seemed so loud when I spoke. “I said”—hastily, and in a shaky voice—“he is not at h
is best.”

  “You said more than that.”

  I was silent. And then I looked away, back toward Milord again.

  I had unintentionally uttered a bit of truth in covering my words; he was not at his best at this time. His exquisite attire could not hide what we all saw on his visage: He looked drawn and tired, older than his thirty-six years. The crowd continued to part to let him pass, as much in wonder at his very presence as in such courtesy being his by virtue of his position. The holy book he carried was covered in gilt leather. The hilt of his ever present sword was encrusted with jewels of every color and shape. But the porter of all this finery was himself a worn and tired man, one weighted with some indefinable anguish.

  There had been distressing rumors of late that he had given himself over to some young conjurer, a dashing rogue that the priest Eustache Blanchet had found for him on a journey to Italia. It seemed an awfully long distance to go when there were charlatans aplenty hereabouts, but, then, none of our local inveiglers would seem so intriguing to Milord, who always favored the exotic over the mundane.

  Franc¸ois Prelati, this conjurer’s name was. I saw them together once in the castle at Machecoul when his Eminence brought me along on some business of state. Enraptured though I was by the familiar surroundings there, I could not help but notice the young man who had found a place by Milord’s side and rarely left that position. He looked to be quite a bit younger than Milord himself, perhaps around twenty and four, a stylish blade with strikingly handsome features and a slender build. Milord followed him around shamelessly, like a puppy. It gave me discomfort to see them together, for there was an unnatural ease between the two, a good deal more than God allows between men of honor. Milord was all aglow, as if the presence of this Prelati made him a young man again himself.

  Now this same lord approached me with leaden steps. I felt inclined, though I did not understand why, to look away—before me was a man who was almost my own son, and yet for some unnameable reason I did not want to meet his gaze should it come my way. But temptation was too strong, the pull too great; I glanced directly toward him, and for a brief moment our eyes met. First there was a spark of recognition—how could one not know one’s own nurse—and then he stopped for a moment to regard me. There was fondness in his gaze, and his expression grew more childlike as the moments passed. It was as if he were wistful about his days under my care. The eyes of those who had been watching him—nearly everyone—fell upon me as well. Milord finally broke the thread of time that connected us and moved on, but I still felt the stares of those around me. I looked around for safety and, finding only scrutiny, I turned to face him again.

  But he was too far ahead to see my frantic gestures, for I could not call out to him—it would be unseemly for a woman of my position, especially on this holiest of holy days. Wait, I wanted to say when I saw that he’d moved on, come back to me, mon fils de lait, we must speak. But it was too late—once again I was merely one of the crowd who stared in fascination as our sovereign lord headed toward the confessional.

  I watched with trepidation as Milord and his imported monsignor proceeded toward the front of the sanctuary. When they reached the end of the queue where those who required absolution waited, all those who had arrived before him stepped aside to let him pass. He waved them back to their places in line. Many of these peasants and commonfolk looked bewildered and indecisive; would they be punished for going before their lord?

  Finally, as if he understood their quandary, Gilles de Rais spoke to them. “Resume your places,” he said. His voice was troubled and utterly uncommanding. “I shall wait among you and confess in order.”

  The whole church came alive with whispers—none of his forebears had shown such deference to his subjects. Gilles’s own father, Guy de Laval, was notorious for his ill-tempered treatment of clerics, but even Lord Guy could hardly keep pace with his dastardly father-in-law Jean de Craon—and I daresay that even a steady stream of unconditional absolution might not have sufficed to save his evil soul.

  I often wish I had found the courage to chastise him publicly before he died; my position with the family afforded me a bit of impunity, and the old man never cared for me anyway. His Eminence considered the man a despot and would have secretly been pleased to know that Jean de Craon got an unpleasant earful to entertain him on his afterlife journey, which would surely not be made in a heavenward direction.

  But on this holiest of holy days, Gilles de Rais—the grandson, son, himself now a father, though his daughter was nowhere in sight on this morn—did not follow in the impatient footsteps of his ancestors. He waited with uncharacteristic humility among the lesser folk for his turn to beg forgiveness. There was little one could say to describe the feeling that permeated the sanctuary as the feared and revered Lord of Champtocé, Machecoul, and a host of other properties sat among his own trembling serfs and waited to voice all his regrets to God’s representative. I feared that those who immediately preceded him would feel compelled to hurry their confessions so as not to keep him waiting and might achieve only incomplete forgiveness—one imagines the sins of these poor folk being spit out like so many mouthfuls of angry bees.

  But Gilles never looked impatient or agitated, only somber and burdened. When it came his turn at last, he entered the confessional, and Monsignor des Ferrieres took his place on the other side of the screen. It was quite a while before they emerged again; Milord was as pale as a shade and the Monsignor had the gravest look upon his face. The penance was simple and brief, but, then, the sins of the highborn have always been more easily forgiven than the sins of those who serve them. Or perhaps the transgressions were so dire that the penance could only be symbolic. In any case, Gilles de Rais was not on his knees for long before he rose up again and approached our Brother Simon Loisel to receive Communion. He knelt down and stared at his folded hands as he awaited service.

  Jean de Malestroit, stoic and cold, watched stiffly as the wafer was placed by Loisel on the tongue of the Marshal of France. My bishop’s face was marked with a hardness that I seldom saw on it. He was a shrewd man when it was required of him, and he often showed disdain for those many he managed to outsmart, but rarely did I see on his face such a glaring look of disgust as the one he now wore. I could not help but wonder what he was thinking at that moment.

  I resolved to ask him that question later, when the intrigue and excitement prompted by the day’s remarkable events finally died down.

  Which never did happen.

  chapter 8

  My daughter’s tap shoes had been safely delivered. When I got back to my desk, there was a note staring up at me. On it, in Fred’s small and crunched handwriting, was a name, followed by the words, Ellen Leeds’s lawyer. The last word was underlined.

  I glanced at the phone and saw no message light. For some reason this lawyer had bypassed me and gone directly to Fred.

  The moment I arrived in his office he said, “Looks like you got a little problem, Dunbar. The guy called a little while ago and said forget about talking to her anymore. He was squawking about a civil suit after ‘we catch the real perpetrator,’ as he put it. How come you didn’t say anything about liking the mother for this?”

  To my momentary silence, he said, “Speak.”

  I told him what Mrs. Paulsen had said and then explained the ambiguity of Ellen Leeds’s alibi. “The ex was pretty hot under the collar when he left here to go to her apartment. He sort of told me off and then humped on out of here. They still talk to each other, and I assume he just passed it on that I sounded suspicious of her.”

  Fred offered, “Maybe he was asking himself the same question.”

  “I don’t think so. He defended her pretty vigorously.” Then I sat down. “But you know what? A little while ago I was ready to put the cuffs on her. Now I’m having second thoughts. Something’s not working here.”

  “Like what? You have a witness who saw the kid getting into the mother’s car, and there are problems with where she s
aid she was at the time it happened.”

  “Yeah. I know. But I just don’t get her for the type.”

  “Oh, come on, Lany. Dispassionate review of the evidence. That’s how we make decisions here, remember?”

  “I know, I know. But the old lady—I’m just not sure about what she told me.”

  “Is she senile?”

  “No, not really. She engaged me in a cogent conversation and was very lucid in the moment. It’s all the other moments that could be a problem. Nice lady and a real busybody, very credible-looking. Just the kind of witness you want, except for her age. She has the potential to be lawyer food on the stand.”

  “If we ever get to that point.”

  I could almost hear his thought. At the rate you’re going, she’ll be dead by then anyway.

  He said, “Is she taking any kind of medication?”

  “I didn’t ask.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m trying to build a rapport with her. And you don’t ask an elderly lady that kind of question right away. I imagine she’d view it as impolite. She likes me, I think, but I’m not sure how much she trusts me just yet.”

  “You have the people’s permission, as their employee, to be impolite. In fact, the taxpayers are counting on you to be that way on their behalf. Give her a call and ask her the same questions a defense lawyer would ask.”

  “If she is taking something, I got nothing but the jacket. Where do I go from there?”

  “Beats me. I’m just a supervisor. I delegate that problem to you, the detective.”

  “So supervise, then. Tell me what to do.”

  It was as if he were waiting for that opening. “Well, I think maybe I got something here that might get you moving.” He turned around in his swivel chair and picked up a cardboard box from the table behind his desk. He swiveled back again and put the box down in front of me.