La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages Part 7

"But oh, sir, is it mine to give away? My poor husband! you used to love him--you said so: you promised----"

"Your husband! You forget. Are you sure your thoughts were always kept upon him? Your soul! I ask for it as a favour; but it is already mine."

"No, sir," she says--her pride once more returning to her, even in so dire a strait--"no, sir; that soul belongs to me, to my husband, to our marriage rites."

"Ah, incorrigible little fool! you would struggle still, even now that you are under the goad! I have seen your soul at all hours; I know it better than you yourself. Day by day did I mark your first reluctances, your pains, and your fits of despair. I saw how disheartened you were when, in a low tone, you said that no one could be held to an impossibility. And then I saw you growing more resigned.

You were beaten a little, and you cried out not very loud. As for me, I ask for your soul simply because you have already lost it.

Meanwhile, your husband is dying. What is to be done? I am sorry for you: I have you in my power; but I want something more. You must grant it frankly and of free will, or else he is a dead man."

She answered very low, in her sleep, "Ah me! my body and my miserable flesh, you may take them to save my husband; but my heart, never. No one has ever had it, and I cannot give it away."

So, all resignedly she waited there. And he flung at her two words: "Keep them, and they will save you." Therewith she shuddered, felt within her a horrible thrill of fire, and, uttering a loud cry, awoke in the arms of her astonished husband, to drown him in a flood of tears.

She tore herself away by force, and got up, fearing lest she should forget those two important words. Her husband was alarmed; for, without looking even at him, she darted on the wall a glance as piercing as that of Medea. Never was she more handsome. In her dark eye and the yellowish white around it played such a glimmer as one durst not face--a glimmer like the sulphurous jet of a volcano.

She walked straight to the town. The first word was "_Green_." Hanging at a tradesman's door she beheld a green gown--the colour of the Prince of the World--an old gown, which as she put it on became new and glossy. Then she walked, without asking anyone, straight to the door of a Jew, at which she knocked loudly. It was opened with great caution. The poor Jew was sitting on the ground, covered over with ashes. "My dear, I must have a hundred pounds."

"Oh, madam, how am I to get them? The Prince-bishop of the town has just had my teeth drawn to make me say where my gold lies.[31] Look at my bleeding mouth."

[31] This was a common way of extracting help from the Jews.

King John Lackland often tried it.

"I know, I know; but I come to obtain from you the very means of destroying your Bishop. When the Pope gets a cuffing, the Bishop will not hold out long."

"Who says so?"

"_Toledo._"[32]

[32] Toledo seems to have been the holy city of Wizards, who in Spain were numberless. These relations with the civilized Moors, with the Jews so learned and paramount in Spain, as managers of the royal revenues, had given them a very high degree of culture, and in Toledo they formed a kind of University. In the sixteenth century, it was christianised, remodelled, reduced to mere _white magic_. See the _Deposition of the Wizard Achard, Lord of Beaumont, a Physician of Poitou_. Lancre, _Incredulite_, p. 781.

He hung his head. She spoke and blew: within her was her own soul and the Devil to boot. A wondrous warmth filled the room: he himself was aware of a kind of fiery fountain. "Madam," said he, looking at her from under his eyes, "poor and ruined as I am, I had some pence still in store to sustain my poor children."

"You will not repent of it, Jew. I will swear to you the _great oath_ that kills whoso breaks it. What you are about to give me, you shall receive back in a week, at an early hour in the morning. This I swear by your _great oath_ and by mine, which is yet greater: '_Toledo_.'"

A year went by. She had grown round and plump; had made herself one ma.s.s of gold. Men were amazed at her power of charming. Every one admired and obeyed her. By some devilish miracle the Jew had grown so generous as to lend at the slightest signal. By herself she maintained the castle, both through her own credit in the town, and through the fear inspired in the village by her rough extortion. The all-powerful green gown floated to and fro, ever newer and more beautiful. Her own beauty grew, as it were, colossal with success and pride. Frightened at a result so natural, everyone said, "At her time of life how tall she grows!"

Meanwhile we have some news: the lord is coming home. The lady, who for a long time had not dared to come forth, lest she might meet the face of this other woman down below, now mounted her white horse.

Surrounded by all her people, she goes to meet her husband; she stops and salutes him.

And, first of all, she says, "How long I have been looking for you!

Why did you leave your faithful wife so long a languis.h.i.+ng widow? And yet I will not take you in to-night, unless you grant me a boon."

"Ask it, ask it, fair lady," says the gentleman laughing; "but make haste, for I am eager to embrace you. How beautiful you have grown!"

She whispered in his ear, so that no one knew what she said. Before going up to the castle the worthy lord dismounts by the village church, and goes in. Under the porch, at the head of the chief people, he beholds a lady, to whom without knowing her he offers a low salute.

With matchless pride she bears high over the men's heads the towering horned bonnet (_hennin_[33]) of the period; the triumphal cap of the Devil, as it was often called, because of the two horns wherewith it was embellished. The real lady, blus.h.i.+ng at her eclipse, went out looking very small. Anon she muttered, angrily, "There goes your serf.

It is all over: everything has changed places: the a.s.s insults the horse."

[33] The absurd head-dress of the women, with its one and often two horns sloping back from the head, in the fourteenth century.--TRANS.

As they are going off, a bold page, a pet of the lady's, draws from his girdle a well-sharpened dagger, and with a single turn cleverly cuts the fine robe along her loins.[34] The crowd was astonished, but began to make it out when it saw the whole of the Baron's household going off in pursuit of her. Swift and merciless about her whistled and fell the strokes of the whip. She flies, but slowly, being already grown somewhat heavy. She has hardly gone twenty paces when she stumbles; her best friend having put a stone in her way to trip her up. Amidst roars of laughter she sprawls yelling on the ground. But the ruthless pages flog her up again. The n.o.ble handsome greyhounds help in the chase and bite her in the tenderest places. At last, in sad disorder, amidst the terrible crowd, she reaches the door of her house. It is shut. There with hands and feet she beats away, crying, "Quick, quick, my love, open the door for me!" There hung she, like the hapless screech-owl whom they nail up on a farm-house door; and still as hard as ever rained the blows. Within the house all is deaf.

Is the husband there? Or rather, being rich and frightened, does he dread the crowd, lest they should sack his house?

[34] Such cruel outrages were common in those days. By the French and Anglo-Saxon laws, lewdness was thus punished.

Grimm, 679, 711. Sternhook, 19, 326. Ducange, iii. 52.

Michelet, _Origines_, 386, 389. By and by, the same rough usage is dealt out to honest women, to citizen's wives, whose pride the n.o.bles seek to abase. We know the kind of ambush into which the tyrant Hagenbach drew the honourable ladies of the chief burghers in Alsace, probably in scorn of their rich and royal costume, all silks and gold. In my _Origines_ I have also related the strange claim made by the Lord of Pace, in Anjou, on the pretty (and honest) women of the neighbourhood. They were to bring to the castle fourpence and a chaplet of flowers, and to dance with his officers: a dangerous trip, in which they might well fear some such affronts as those offered by Hagenbach. They were forced to obey by the threat of being stripped and p.r.i.c.ked with a goad bearing the impress of the lord's arms.

And now she has borne such misery, such strokes, such sounding buffets, that she sinks down in a swoon. On the cold stone threshold she finds herself seated, naked, half-dead, her bleeding flesh covered with little else than the waves of her long hair. Some one from the castle says, "No more now! We do not want her to die."

They leave her alone, to hide herself. But in spirit she can see the merriment going on at the castle. The lord however, somewhat dazed, said that he was sorry for it. But the chaplain says, in his meek way, "If this woman is _bedevilled_, as they say, my lord, you owe it to your good va.s.sals, you owe it to the whole country, to hand her over to Holy Church. Since all that business with the Templars and the Pope, what way the Demon is making! Nothing but fire will do for him."

Upon which a Dominican says, "Your reverence has spoken right well.

This devilry is a heresy in the highest degree. The bedevilled, like the heretic, should be burnt. Some of our good fathers, however, do not trust themselves now even to the fire. Wisely they desire that, before all things, the soul may be slowly purged, tried, subdued by fastings; that it may not be burnt in its pride, that it shall not triumph at the stake. If you, madam, in the greatness of your piety, of your charity, would take the trouble to work upon this woman, putting her for some years _in pace_ in a safe cell, of which you only should have the key,--by thus keeping up the chastening process you might be doing good to her soul, shaming the Devil, and giving herself up meek and humble into the hands of the Church."

CHAPTER VI.

THE COVENANT.

Nothing was wanting but the victim. They knew that to bring this woman before her was the most charming present she could receive. Tenderly would she have acknowledged the devotion of anyone who would have given her so great a token of his love, by delivering that poor bleeding body into her hands.

But the prey was aware of the hunters. A few minutes later and she would have been carried off, to be for ever sealed up beneath the stone. Wrapping herself in some rags found by chance in the stable, she took to herself wings of some kind, and before midnight gained some out-of-the-way spot on a lonely moor all covered with briars and thistles. It was on the skirts of a wood, where by the uncertain light she might gather a few acorns, to swallow them like a beast. Ages had elapsed since evening; she was utterly changed. Beauty and queen of the village no more, she seemed with the change in her spirit to have changed her postures also. Among her acorns she squatted like a boar or a monkey. Thoughts far from human circled within her as she heard, or seemed to hear the hooting of an owl, followed by a burst of shrill laughter. She felt afraid, but perhaps it was the merry mockbird mimicking all those sounds, according to its wonted fas.h.i.+on.

But the laughter begins again: whence comes it? She can see nothing.

Apparently it comes from an old oak. Distinctly, however, she hears these words: "So, here you are at last! You have come with an ill grace; nor would you have come now, if you had not tried the full depth of your last need. You were fain first to run the gauntlet of whips; to cry out and plead for mercy, haughty as you were; to be mocked, undone, forsaken, unsheltered even by your husband. Where would you have been this night, if I had not been charitable enough to show you the _in pace_ getting ready for you in the tower? Late, very late, you are in coming to me, and only after they have called you the _old woman_. In your youth you did not treat me well, when I was your wee goblin, so eager to serve you. Now take your turn, if so I wish it, to serve me and kiss my feet.

"You were mine from birth through your inborn wickedness, through those devilish charms of yours. I was your lover, your husband. Your own has shut his door against you: I will not shut mine. I welcome you to my domains, my free prairies, my woods. How am I the gainer, you may say? Could I not long since have had you at any hour? Were you not invaded, possessed, filled with my flame? I changed your blood and renewed it: not a vein in your body where I do not flow. You know not yourself how utterly you are mine. But our wedding has yet to be celebrated with all the forms. I have some manners, and feel rather scrupulous. Let us be one for everlasting."

"Oh! sir, in my present state, what should I say? For a long, long while back have I felt, too truly felt, that you were all my fate.

With evil intent you caressed me, loaded me with favours, and made me rich, in order at length to cast me down. Yesterday, when the black greyhound bit my poor naked flesh, its teeth scorched me, and I said, ''Tis he!' At night when that daughter of Herodias with her foul language scared the company, somebody put them up to the promising her my blood; and that was you!"

"True; but 'twas I who saved you and brought you hither. I did everything, as you have guessed. I ruined you, and why? That I might have you all to myself. To speak frankly, I was tired of your husband.

You took to haggling and pettifogging: far otherwise do I go to work; I want all or none. This is why I have moulded and drilled you, polished and ripened you, for my own behoof. Such, you see, is my delicacy of taste. I don't take, as people imagine, those foolish souls who would give themselves up at once. I prefer the choicer spirits, who have reached a certain dainty stage of fury and despair.

Stop: I must let you know how pleasant you look at this moment. You are a great beauty, a most desirable soul. I have loved you ever so long, but now I am hungering for you.

"I will do things on a large scale, not being one of those husbands who reckon with their betrothed. If you wanted only riches, you should have them in a trice. If you wanted to be queen in the stead of Joan of Navarre, that too, though difficult, should be done, and the King would not lose much thereby in the matter of pride and haughtiness. My wife is greater than a queen. But, come, tell me what you wish."

"Sir, I ask only for the power of doing evil."

"A delightful answer, very delightful! Have I not cause to love you?

In reality those words contain all the law and all the prophets. Since you have made so good a choice, all the rest shall be thrown in, over and above. You shall learn all my secrets. You shall see into the depths of the earth. The whole world shall come and pour out gold at thy feet. See here, my bride, I give you the true diamond, _Vengeance_. I know you, rogue; I know your most hidden desires. Ay, our hearts on that point understand each other well! Therein at least shall I have full possession of you. You shall behold your enemy on her knees at your feet, begging and praying for mercy, and only too happy to earn her release by doing whatever she has made you do. She will burst into tears; and you will graciously say, _No_: whereon she will cry, 'Death and d.a.m.nation!' ... Come, I will make this my special business."