by Ann Benson
He was sobbing freely by then. “I confess before God and this court that I did commit the crimes with which I have been charged, and that I did these deeds within the jurisdiction of these judges.”
I could barely hear him for the cries of the observers. I stood and cupped a hand around one ear, and thus I heard his apology. “I do humbly and devoutly ask these judges and any other ecclesiastics against whom I have said offensive things to forgive me.”
Jean de Malestroit and Friar Blouyn were stupefied. They looked at each other briefly and came to a wordless understanding. His Eminence raised a hand to quiet the court, then said, “For the love of God, Gilles de Rais, you are forgiven.”
Chapeillon found his voice. “If it please the court, I ask for permission to establish proof of the crimes contained in the articles, to which Milord has acceded.”
“The articles as submitted are admissible as evidence and constitute sufficient proof,” Friar Blouyn declared firmly.
“Then I would ask Milord to respond to the articles, to confirm that proof.”
All eyes went to Milord, who straightened under their stares. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but Jean de Malestroit raised a hand, and he stopped.
“You must first swear an oath of veracity, that what you are about to avow is the truth before God, and nothing but the truth.”
Gilles looked down at his feet for a few moments. Then we heard him say, “I so swear, before God.”
“Now you may speak.”
We sat in rapt silence as Milord Gilles declared his affirmation and accession to articles one through four of the indictment, as well as articles eight through eleven, all of which established the authority of the court and its officers. “And article fourteen, I also affirm. Regarding article thirteen, I acknowledge the existence of a cathedral in Nantes and that Jean de Malestroit is the Bishop of that church. Moreover, Milords, I affirm that the castles of Machecoul and Saint-Etienne-de-Mer-Morte lay within the bounds of that diocese.”
There was a momentary lapse, during which we all caught our collective breath.
Jean de Malestroit’s voice broke the silence like the tolling of a bell. “Go on,” he said.
Gilles cleared his throat, then proceeded anew. But the words he spoke were not what I had expected to hear. “I have accepted Christian Baptism. And as a Christian I swear that I have never invoked or caused others to invoke or summon evil spirits. Nor have I offered anything to be sacrificed to those spirits.”
Chapeillon and Blouyn exchanged another glance—clearly, they did not believe him. The air was thick with tension, which Jean de Malestroit only enhanced by saying, “Remember, Milord, that you have sworn a sacred oath.”
“I have not forgotten my oath, Milord.” He then launched into something of an explanation. “I will admit to receiving a book of alchemy from an Angevin knight who is now imprisoned for heresy and will affirm that I caused this book to be read publicly to several people at a room in Angers. I did speak with the aforesaid knight about the practice of alchemy, but I returned the book to him after not having had it for very long. I did engage in the practice of alchemy with François Prelati and the goldsmith Jean Petit, both of whom are known to you. I engaged the services of these alchemists to turn quicksilver into gold. We knew no success in our endeavors.”
Jean de Malestroit glared at him and said, “One is told that there were furnaces at Tiffauges built expressly for the purpose of alchemy.”
Gilles appeared surprised by this statement, as if the existence of those furnaces was some kind of secret. He countered it immediately. “Yes, I did cause such furnaces to be constructed. But I thought better of it before using them.”
“Is it not true, then, as we have been told, that they were dismantled primarily because the Viennese Dauphin had decided to pay you a visit and you did not wish him to see them and therefore suspect you?”
How stiff and defensive his posture became at that accusation. “It is not true, Milord Bishop, I swear it.”
Jean de Malestroit leaned back in his chair and considered what had been said. After a few moments he leaned forward again. “Milord, I shall ask you again to respond to the charge of invoking demons, and I remind you of your oath.”
Gilles de Rais would not be swayed. “I deny it. Unequivocally. And if there are witnesses who will prove by their testimony that I did invoke spirits, I shall undergo a test of fire to prove them wrong. When such witnesses come forward, I shall use their testimony to illuminate my own position on this matter.” He was full of his own certainty. “A broader definition of these matters shall emerge, I assure you.”
This avowal of innocence sent Chapeillon scurrying straight to the judges’ table, where he and the two judges entered into private conference. All wore looks of combined disgust and frustration, for things had gone well this morning until Gilles decided once again to defy them.
I had so hoped for better after our previous night’s encounter. I had prayed sincerely that Milord would enter the court this morning, admit his heresy, and accept his punishment. I was no longer driven toward hatred and vilification of this man by some shapeless rage; he had told me that he had not been the cause of Michel’s demise, and I believed him. I longed for him to be relieved of all this, though I knew it meant he would have to give up his life—such was prescribed punishment for crimes of this nature. But perhaps he might be allowed to give it up more easily, with less pain. I could not bear to see him die as Jean d’arc had.
Chapeillon moved away from the judges’ table and made a summoning motion with his hand to a cleric who had been sitting near the front of the court, one Robin Guillaumet, who was also of this diocese. Chapeillon whispered something to Guillaumet, who nodded and walked immediately to the back of the hall. There he spoke briefly to one of the guards, who conveyed Guillaumet’s order to others waiting outside the courtroom:
Bring in the witnesses.
The air in the courtroom seemed to have disappeared. But none of us were breathing at present, anyway; we were too busy watching the witnesses summoned by the cleric Robin Guillaumet. One by one, they filed silently into the court, each one looking quickly into the eyes of their liege lord, Gilles de Rais, for one guilty moment. When all were assembled before the judges’ table, Guillaumet instructed each one to step forward and be identified as his name was called.
Henriet Griart. Etienne Corrilaut, also called Poitou. François Prelati, cleric. Eustache Blanchet, also cleric. Perrine Martin.
They all stood mute and listened as an oath was read:
“. . . on the Holy Gospel to tell, depose, and attest to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, insofar as it is known to me, on the matter of the articles put forth and expressed by the prosecutor in the case and cases of this order, and also to tell the truth on the thing in general and in specific not expressed in the aforesaid articles . . .”
“Do you object to this oath on the part of the witnesses, Milord Gilles?” Jean de Malestroit asked.
Gilles shook his head in stunned silence.
“Let the record reflect the accused’s consent.”
“I speak now to both the witnesses and the accused,” his Eminence continued. “Will you swear to put aside all entreaties, love, fear, favor, rancor, hatred, mercy, friendship, and enmity, ceasing all such behaviors and attitudes during these proceedings, so they might be untainted by such emotions as occur between you?”
All agreed.
“Milord Gilles, will you accept the depositions of these sworn witnesses and any others the prosecutor may produce and similarly swear?”
“I will,” he said. His voice sounded lifeless, defeated.
“And do you intend to provoke this court by challenging the character of any of these witnesses?”
“I do not.”
“Do you intend, Milord, to interrogate them yourself, as is your right?”
“I shall rely on their consciences to guide them in their testimony.”
He reached for the gavel and was about to pound it to bring a close to the proceedings. But Gilles de Rais stepped forward while it was still raised, and when he began to speak, his Eminence set down the wood mallet before sounding it.
“Milord judges,” Gilles said, falling to his knees, “I beg you in all contrition to restore me to the sacraments. Rescind my sentence of excommunication, I implore you. I cannot bear to be denied the blessing of God’s comfort.” His face was wet with tears, and his shoulders racked with the hard motion of sobbing. “Take pity on me, a child of God, and restore me to grace, in writing.”
A moment of silence passed before Jean de Malestroit looked at Friar Blouyn. “Will you agree to this?” he said.
Friar Blouyn studied his own hands quite intensely for a few moments, perhaps contemplating the displeasure of Duke Jean at his consent to such a request. But in the end, he, too, had mercy. He nodded his accord.
“Then it shall be done,” his Eminence said. He spoke quietly to a scribe, who wrote diligently as he dictated. When the dictation was complete, his Eminence read what had been written and then signed his name.
He handed it back to the scribe. “Let many copies be made, and then post them publicly,” he said. “And let the criers know that it is so.”
I swear before Christ that Gilles would have kissed his feet had there not been a table between them. The gavel fell.
François Prelati first spoke calmly of the events that had transpired to bring him into the service of Gilles de Rais, of his enticement by Blanchet, and his engagement in the dark arts with his patron. Blanchet himself then came forward and confirmed the accounts of black magic and witchcraft, of heretical conjurings of the devil. Henriet Griart gave testimony that he had taken part in the procurement and killing of many children, and that he had willingly done so.
But it was Poitou whose account was most shocking. He described once again the hurried abandonment of the castle at Champtocé, of the removal and disposal of the forty-six bodies. But he added a new chapter to that tale as well:
That was my initiation into Milord’s sins. God save me, I myself later led many children to Milord for use in his debaucheries, perhaps as many as forty. All the while, I knew what he had in store for them. He took such pleasure in this iniquity; he would moan in delight and tremble with lust while the children wailed.
Sometimes, if the wailing became so loud that it annoyed him, or if he feared discovery, Milord would hang a child by the neck until he was almost dead and then take him down again with warnings to be silent. Or he would cajole them into thinking that he was not going to harm them, that he only wanted to have some fun with them in these pleasures. But he always killed them afterward, or had the killing done by me or another of his servants. Mostly we took them from among the poor seeking alms around Milord’s various castles, but sometimes they were of better station. He often boasted of finding more enjoyment in the killing than in the lustful activities, that he found his greatest satisfaction in seeing them languish, then cutting off their heads and members. Often he would hold up the heads of children he had killed and ask us which of them we thought most beautiful.
And when he was unable to find children suitable for his debaucheries and killing, he practiced his sodomitic lust on the children of his chapel, in particular on the two sons of Master Briand of Nantes. But those boys he would not kill—he esteemed them for their singing abilities, and they all promised to keep his acts secret.
None of us did anything to stop it, and when Master Prelati came, things got even worse. When word of the Bishop’s letters reached us—perhaps around the fifteenth of August—I would have run away, but there was nowhere for me to go. I had no money, for I had not been shrewd as had de Briqueville and de Sille, who had seen to their own safety by stealing—bit by bit—a small fortune from Milord. Henriet and I, on the other hand, had remained devoted to Milord by virtue of our affection for him, and now his fate would be ours as well.
Milord himself grew daily more despondent and constantly repeated his vow to atone with a pilgrimage to the Holy Land for the grievous sins he had committed. He promised to turn away from his evil life and come to God for mercy and forgiveness. It came to me in those dark days that God would never forgive him for what he had done, nor would He forgive me for my part in it.
Yet despite his avowals and promises to God, Milord reverted in time to his habits of debauchery. He caused me to obtain this boy—his name was Villeblanche, as I recall—from his parents with a promise of making him a page and further bade me to purchase a doublet for the lad. I did these things for him and then brought the boy to the castle at Machecoul, where he met the same fate as all the others who had innocently ventured inside with futile hopes of improvement. He was abused carnally by Milord and then murdered by me and Henriet. And when the life was gone from him, we burned his small limp body, which disappeared into the flames, just as all the others before him had. He was the last that I know of—certainly the last for me. I would do no more evil for Milord. I wept that night, for a long bitter time. And I weep now, every night.
May God have mercy on our souls.
Later that evening, after our meal—for which none of us had any appetite—the court reconvened, and new witnesses were sworn in, as my bishop was eager to get this travesty completed while there was still a bit of goodness in the world. The Marquis de Ceva, Bertrand Poulein, and Jean Rousseau, all of whom had been with Milord at Saint-Etienne-de-Mer-Morte, were deposed. They would testify to the violation of ecclesiastical immunity perpetrated by Milord against Jean le Ferron, rector of that church, who maintained possession of the property in his brother Geoffrey’s name. On Wednesday, when court reconvened in another closed session, the same witnesses would reveal to the scribes, judges, and limited observers what Jean de Malestroit already knew firsthand through our horseback observation. They would confirm that Gilles de Rais, who waived cross-examination of these witnesses—it being an act of futility—had assaulted God’s servant on earth Jean le Ferron in a desperate attempt at reacquisition that was doomed to failure from the very start. It was, in truth, an attack on God.
God was about to strike back.
chapter 32
In one of my phone conversations with Doc, he’d uttered these prophetic words:
He goes to enormous lengths to perpetrate his crimes, prepares elaborate disguises and detailed setups—it all seems ridiculous and insane. But this is all about control, and that’s how Durand achieves it. Control is supremely important to him. It often is to a person who grows up in circumstances over which he has little or no influence; from what the family friend told you, that’s how things worked out for him in the Carmichael household. Throughout his adult life, Wilbur has tried—as have so many others of his pathetic ilk in their own sick, horrible ways—to create a completely controllable life, where everything is ordered and structured exactly to his liking.
Otherwise he can’t feel safe. Not even for a minute.
They echoed in my head as I prepared to capture the man who exercised ultimate control over the boys he took, those unblemished canvases on which he practiced his depraved art, the physical representation of his younger self in the hands of Uncle Sean. He destroyed his own sense of helplessness by re-creating it in the boys, then destroying them. He was a power freak on a mission to seize back his lost childhood, and right then he had power over someone who was important to my son.
And, therefore, he had power over me. But not for much longer.
Frantic activity went on all around me. We were almost ready to head out when the front desk called. Spence picked it up.
“For who?” I heard him ask.
He listened for a few moments, then handed me the phone.
A shopping bag containing a pair of blue Nikes was downstairs.
“There are initials inside them—J.S.,” the service aide said. “But wait, there’s a note too. . . .”
I heard paper crinkling through the phone.
“What the heck. All it says is, But take your shoes off before you come in the house.”
I slammed down the phone and swore like a sailor.
“What?” Spence demanded.
“He’s got him at the house. I had it in my mind that he would go to the studio—”
“Okay, all right, that’s where we head, then,” Escobar said. He could not have heard the electricity in his own voice, but I did. You could almost smell the adrenaline; we were all practically bleeding the stuff. Our training and practice, our procedural and equipment drills—it all had a purpose. The rituals of combat, on which we had all been tested, would now be put to the test themselves. In the end, our success would rise and fall on will—if the will to triumph was there, the skills and tools would work as intended. Everything came down to state of mind. Once again I became the huntress in lion skins, but this time I was surrounded by like-thinking hunters. We had sharpened our spears. We were setting out at a trot with our spears in hand. We were hungry.
We would eat.
Jeff’s sneakers were an engraved invitation. Come and get me, they said.
As we wound through the lower streets of Brentwood, my heartbeat picked up. Trees and fences whizzed by, leaving neon-type trails in my mind’s eye; dogs barked in slow motion. The splat of a bug on the windshield sounded like a pile driver. While Spence drove, I tried to concentrate on the layout of the house.
Thinking, thinking. Trying hard to anticipate what he would do. In the end, I could come to only one conclusion.
“He has to have him in his home studio. That’s where we have to go first.”
“Why do you think that?”
“Because this guy is a control freak, and he wouldn’t make that kind of mess anywhere else in his house.”