by Tarr, Judith
The new witness was a stranger to Jehan, a man in the garb of a Benedictine novice. He had a handsome languid face and the air of a nobleman, but some ruthless barber had cropped his hair to stubble.
By that Jehan knew him. He took in the stranger’s lazy grace, his expression of worldly ennui, and detested him instantly, utterly.
He performed an obeisance that was proper to the point of parody and sat where he was bidden, enduring Brother Adam’s introduction with every evidence of boredom. When he spoke, it was to Alf. “So, Brother. You look well in chains.”
“And you," Alf said, “look ill in that habit.”
Joscelin smiled. “Maybe it’s your ham-handed barbering.”
“Brother,” Adam said, with the first small hint of sharpness Jehan had heard from him, “you are here to tell your tale.”
“So I am,” Joscelin agreed, unruffled. “Well now. How shall I begin?”
“At the beginning,” Adam suggested.
Joscelin settled more comfortably. “So. The beginning. A good enough place, isn’t it, pretty Brother?” He caught Adam’s eye and grimaced. “Very well. I’ll begin. I was the King’s esquire then, and proud of it too. A little more than a sennight past, I walked out with friends for an evening’s pleasure. On the way we met with yonder beauty.”
Jehan clenched his fists. Olivier had told the truth as much as he might, but this was truth twisted out of all recognition.
As Joscelin told it, he and his fellow squires had taken Alf with them out of sheer goodwill, with a touch of censure for his most unclerical fondness for ale.
“And for the serving wench,” said Joscelin with a wry look, half the admiring young squire, half the new-hatched cleric. Alf had gone upstairs with them, though reluctantly, Joscelin conceded; but then, he had been with the King not long before.
No one mistook the implication. Alf stared at his feet, fists clenched about his chains.
“He was even more reluctant when he saw the woman,” Joscelin said. “We did wrong, I'd be the first to admit it, my lords, but we were drunk, and so was he. We got him out of his habit.” He paused, shook his head and sighed. “Brothers, before God, it was perilous to look at him. Nakedness of course is a sin, and when you couple it with such a body...pardieu! He looks a pretty fool, like a girl with her hair cut off; but the rest of him—”
“You stripped him,” Adam broke in. “And then?”
One or two of the listeners sat back in ill-concealed disappointment. Joscelin sighed and resumed his tale. A sword had appeared in Alf’s hand; Joscelin had tried to dissuade him; he had threatened, and the squire had lured him down to the common room, where the public eye might shock the monk back to his senses.
It did not. He covered himself in a robe of darkness and worked his magic with the sword, and before half a hundred startled men, he vanished.
Adam nodded as he finished. “We have found and questioned a number of the witnesses,” he said, taking from his wallet a folded parchment and placing it in the Bishop’s hand. “This, my lord, is their assembled testimony. All have sworn, separately and similarly, that he clothed his body with nothing more substantial than shadows and that he disappeared from the midst of them all. We have his habit and his cloak, taken from the room in the inn, certain proof of his presence there.”
“And from thence he was taken up to heaven, alleluia.”
Not a few of those there had expected it; but that uncanny voice roused them to superstitious terror. Brother Adam raised his arms. “In the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be thou still!”
For a long moment no one breathed. The voice was silent.
Slowly each man relaxed, although he looked about uneasily, signed himself, and muttered a prayer. Adam let his arms fall.
Eldritch laughter mocked all their folly.
A flush stained Adam’s pale face. “Brothers,” he said, “my lord Bishops, surely it is clear to you all that the Evil One lurks among us. One of his servants stands before you. The other you have heard; and of that one I have somewhat to say. For I have learned from witnesses that the accused is not alone in his sorcery. A familiar serves him, a creature of darkness which takes most often the shape of hound. It is a clever being, more clever if I may say it than its master, for we have been unable to capture it. Yet there are many who have seen it, and one man has observed it in its sorceries.” He nodded to Joscelin, who retired to a seat among the monks, and raised his voice. “Brother! You may come in.”
It was Reynaud who took his place before the judge, that hated face, that hated smile. Olivier had borne witness for fear, Joscelin for malice, but this man testified for the love of it. He had found Alf, he had begun the pursuit; now he bent to rend the throat of his quarry.
He spoke calmly, distinctly, with none of the false friendliness Jehan had known. From the first day of Alf’s arrival in the camp, he had watched and recorded and judged, and he had missed very little. His tale took in Olivier’s and Joscelin’s and the accounts of many witnesses, and shaped from them a larger whole, the portrait of a sorcerer.
And of his familiar. “A white hound,” he said, “with red ears like the beasts of the pagan superstitions, and in its eyes the intelligence of a child of Hell. But when it chooses, it walks erect in human form.”
“In what likeness?” Adam asked him.
“A shadow-shape, cowled like a monk but speaking with the voice of a beautiful woman.”
And he told of the night in the stable, word for word. Eyes turned to Jehan as he spoke; the novice glared back. “Yes!” he wanted to shout. “I was there. I knew it all. Burn me, too!”
He could not speak. His tongue felt enormous, leaden; when he tried to form words, his mind blurred. He sat in silence, raging.
Reynaud ended at last. The monks stirred and murmured.
“The Gloria Dei,” someone said in a stunned voice. “He wrote the Gloria Dei?”
“Demonic mockery,” Reynaud answered firmly, “intended to lead the young novice astray.”
Jehan leaped to his feet.
The door burst open. A battle raged through it. Pauline white and grey, Benedictine black, and in the midst of it a whirlwind.
The struggle parted. Its center hurled itself forward, full upon Reynaud. Together they toppled.
Jehan plunged into the fray. A wild blur of faces—Bishop Foulques’s beyond, crumbling into terror—a white shape, a tangle of bronze-gold hair. Jehan stared into Thea’s wide feral eyes.
Adam’s voice rose above the tumult. “What is this?”
The battle resolved into individual shapes. Reynaud sagged in his fellows’ arms, groaning, his face bleeding from a dozen deep scratches. No one else had come to harm.
Jehan let Thea go and backed away. She stood breathing hard, her hair falling about her face. Her gown was rent and torn; white flesh gleamed beneath.
She tossed back her hair. Some shrank from her; others started forward. She froze them all with her glare, her great eyes like a cat’s, golden, wild. Her beauty smote Jehan’s heart.
Again Adam spoke. “What is this?”
It was she who responded. Her voice they all knew, though this was born of throat and tongue and lips, a living voice as that other had not been. “I am not what. I am who. Is it a work of your famous Christian charity to wound a harmless woman?”
One of the monks called out, “It’s a demon! It appeared before us; it tried to lure us away; Brother Andreas pretended to yield, and I struck it with the flat of my knife.” He held it up, a small blade, too blunt for aught but cutting bread.
She whirled upon him. He raised the knife; she recoiled.
“Aye,” she cried, “he struck me, damn him to his own Hell; he burned me horribly.” Across the palm of her hand spread a long red weal. She cradled it against her breast. “I shall demand redress.”
Adam regarded her with an uncanny mingling of triumph and horror. “What sort of creature is this, that the flat of a blade will burn it?”
> “The blade was iron,” she said, shuddering, holding her wounded hand close. “Cursed iron. I would have gone free if he had not struck me with it.”
“You should never have come!”
All eyes turned to Alf. He had fought his own battle to escape from his guards; two gripped him still, although he no longer struggled. “You should never have come,” he repeated.
“What! and miss such a splendid game?”
“It is no game for me, nor now for you. For God’s sake, escape while you still can.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I’m bound.”
“You’re no more bound than—”
“Little Brother,” she said to him, half in scorn, half in tenderness, “there’s honor even in the hollow hills.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to die with me!”
“No?” She turned away from him to Brother Adam. “Yon holy saint, sir, is as witless as he is beautiful. My grief, for I saw him as he rode in the wood, and he was as fair as the princes of my own people; I set my heart upon him. But a greater fool never left an abbey. Would he dance with me? Would he let me sing to him? Would he be my paramour? No, and no, and no: and Lord have mercy, and begone, foul fiend, and back to his prayers again. Prayers, forsooth! and he so fair that the Goddess herself couldn’t ask for better.”
Adam’s thin nostrils flared. Here was a gift to lay at the feet of the Pope himself: no mere witch or heretic but a true child of old Night. “Are you aware that this is a trial, and that Brother Alfred is accused of serious crimes against the Church?”
“Crimes? He doesn’t even know how to sin!”
“He stands accused of sorcery, for which the penalty is death.”
“He?” She laughed, that same wild laughter which had run bodiless to the vaulted roof. “That child could walk among us and pass for one of us, but he’s altogether a son of Earth.”
“The evidence—”
“Lies,” she said. “Lies and twisted truth.”
Bishop Foulques moved suddenly to strike his crozier upon the floor. “This is a mockery! Brother, rid us of this creature.”
She regarded him in amazement. “What! The stones can speak?”
A flush suffused the Bishop’s waxen cheeks. “Adam! Do as I say.”
Aylmer rose. Through all of that turmoil, he had not moved or spoken, had shown no fear or surprise. When he stood, it was as if one of the carven angels had stepped down from its pillar. “My lord Bishop,” he said, “it is my understanding that you wish to determine the guilt of a sorcerer. The Brothers have gathered their evidence scrupulously enough, although I find certain of their methods somewhat questionable and their motives disturbing. It concerns me particularly that no attempt has been made on the part of this court to defend the innocence of the accused. Yet it seems to me that this lady, however unorthodox her arrival and her origins may be, has undertaken to do precisely that. Will you prevent her from doing so?”
Foulques seemed close to an apoplectic fit. “She has invaded the precincts of the Church’s justice, has—”
“Justice?” Aylmer asked. “Is it justice to refuse to consider evidence of a person’s innocence? In the court of His Holiness in Rome, even the Devil has his Advocate.”
As Aylmer spoke, Adam had approached Foulques and whispered urgently in his ear. He shook his head, glowering; Adam persisted; at length, with obvious reluctance, he nodded.
Adam faced Bishop Aylmer. “My lord will permit her to testify. Yet she should be aware that her testimony may lead to her own trial and possible conviction; for we are committed to the destruction of all of Satan’s works and creatures.”
“Then,” said Thea, “you would do well to burn your King.”
Aylmer considered her for a long moment. “Maybe it will come to that, my lady,” he said. “When the King’s friend is in danger, can the King himself be safe?”
“The King has been bewitched,” Adam said sharply. “We seek to protect him from such evil and to destroy the source of it.”
Aylmer nodded to himself. “Ah, yes. I’m bewitched, too. Well then, continue with your mummery.” He beckoned. “Come here, Jehan. Sit and let them entertain us.”
Adam chose to ignore him. He glanced about, saw that a man guarded the door with drawn sword, faced Thea. “You say that you are bound. How so?”
She gestured toward the monk with the knife. “He touched me with iron, and it has a stronger magic than mine. I can’t leave unless he bids me.”
“Indeed.” Adam indicated the stool. “Sit.”
“I prefer to stand.”
He did not press her. “Very well. First, your name.”
“Oh, no,” she said. “Iron binds me tightly enough. I won’t give you that power besides.”
Reynaud shook off the hands which had supported him.
“Thea. They called you Thea.”
Her lip curled. “Jackal. Vulture. I scented you on our path. Would to Annwn I had done as my heart bade me and torn out your throat.”
“Your name is Thea?” Adam asked her quietly.
Her eyes burned upon him. “Yes. But you gain no power by it. It’s not my true name.”
“Thea, then. Not a name of this land.”
“And not the truth.”
“So.” Adam looked her up and down. "You are of the Fair Folk?”
“Haven’t I said so? I saw your Brother Alfred as he rode through Bowland; I followed him.”
“In the likeness of a white hound?”
“A hound!” She tossed her head. “Should I so degrade myself? I followed him; now and then I let him see me. He would have nothing to do with me. Such a little saint, he is. Either he tried to exorcise me or he tried to make a Christian of me. I tempted him with enchantments; he prayed them away.”
“Enchantments?” asked Adam. “How so?”
“So,” she shot back. “One night three young hellions trapped him in a tavern. I want him to be a man and not a mumbling priest—but the Grey Man can have us both before I let any mortal woman have him. I gave him a sword and the skill to use it; I clothed him in spells; and he escaped. Did he thank me for it? No, before all the gods! He cursed me and bade me begone.”
“That’s not so!” Alf cried.
She raised her hand. He gasped and swayed. “Love is a blind god,” she said, “and an utter fool, else why do I endure this? See how he tries to save me, who never had a kind word for me when I begged him to love me.”
“You contend that he has practiced no sorcery?” Adam demanded of her.
“So does he,” she pointed out.
“The sorceries ascribed to him are in fact yours.”
“Sorceries,” she said, “no. We don’t traffic with the Dark. But the spells were mine. I was abasing myself to win that iron heart. I made his way easy for him. I warmed the water he washed in, I healed the man he tended, I set a hound to guard him. All useless. He’s as cold as ever.”
He stood mute as Jehan had stood, white with the strain of his resistance. She regarded him sadly. “Little Brother, I didn’t know the humans would try to burn you for what I did.”
“You say he is of mortal descent.”
“Entirely.”
“We have gathered certain evidence—”
“Nonsense,” she said. “Look at him! No one of the true blood could wear a cross or bear such chains. All your so-called evidence is a travesty.”
“So is your testimony!” Reynaud burst out. “I say that you are both witches and sorcerers; that you aided and abetted each other, and that you both should go to the fire.”
She spat at him. “Cur! You would give your soul to gnaw our bones.”
“Silence!” Adam commanded them. To Foulques he said, “My lord, I am inclined to support Brother Reynaud. I was not aware of this woman’s existence or intervention, both of which alter the charges somewhat. That she may have worked her witchery as she has told us, I believe, yet I am not convinced of the other’s innocence. Surely he yielded t
o her to some extent; he made use in the inn of the gifts she gave him, whatever he may have told her afterward.”
“The stable,” Reynaud said. “Their speech—”
“Devilish mockery, you said yourself,” she broke in. “You can’t have it both ways, jackal. If our little Brother, our beardless boy, is the greatest of your theologians, then surely he must be of our blood, for the book he wrote is twice as old as his face. But that can’t be possible, can it? You didn’t hear what you thought you heard, what you wanted to hear in your lust for his death.”
“Witch!” he hissed.
“I madden you. You can’t bear it that I should want him and not you. If I promised to take you, you would do everything in your power to have me set free. You’d even promise to free him—but that would be a lie.”
Beneath the livid marks of her nails, his face was a mask of fury. “Demon! Tempter!”
“But not a liar,” she said. “It’s you who lie. You want him to die, for your own glory and for the King’s grief. You haven't deigned to mention all the accomplices who must have known what our Brother was, raised him and trained him and made a monk of him—they’re too many and too far away, and much too powerful. You haven’t even called Master Jehan to account for his guilt, though in your tale he’s as much at fault as the rest of us, for he doesn’t matter to you and he has kin who could avenge him. The King’s kin are his enemies and urge you on, and the little Brother has none.”
Adam stepped between them. “We do not act at the bidding of any temporal power. Our part is to search out and destroy the enemies of the Church; here in this court we judge by that Law which commands, ‘There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or is an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter of familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord.’ And in speaking of punishment, the Law is most simple and most strict: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ ”