The Master's Apprentice - Oliver Potzsch Page 0,149

he could feel a cold draft sweep through the room when he spoke the name.

“Yes, Gilles de Rais.” Celtis nodded. “May his name be cursed for all eternity. I, too, was once preoccupied with Gilles de Rais, with the dark, the evil in this world. Youth is always fascinated by evil because it goes against order. It is the spirit that denies—much like small children like to say ‘no’ just to oppose their parents. Evil is the chaos that rails against the established truths and perpetually promises new beginnings. I admit, it’s a tempting thought. And I know from personal experience: once a thought has taken root in one’s mind, it gnaws and eats and doesn’t go away. That is why I decided to tell you about Gilles de Rais. So it stops eating away at you.” Celtis paused and stared into the fire, as if the answer to all questions lay in the flames. Then he turned back to Johann.

“Gilles de Rais was no scholar but a French military leader. In fact, he was one of the most famous and bravest knights that country full of noble warriors ever produced. He was a marshal of France and fought alongside the Maid of Orléans, whom the French venerated as a martyr and the English had burned at the stake as a sorceress and heretic. France and England were fighting a war that lasted for over a hundred years and only ended a few decades ago. De Rais was doubtlessly a brave knight, a baron from the lands near the Loire River, and a favorite of the king. He also was a friend of the arts, owned a large library, and tried his hand at acting, bookbinding, and illustrating. But as it often happens, his rapid climb was followed by a dramatic downfall—a fall right down into the depths of hell.”

“What happened?” asked Johann in a whisper.

“Gilles de Rais lived the lifestyle of an emperor, holding grand tournaments and feasts. Nothing was good enough for him, and eventually he ran out of money. First he sold and mortgaged his lands. When that no longer sufficed, he turned to alchemy. He hired a throng of alchemists to find the philosopher’s stone for him and turn lead to gold. He hoped to pay off his debts that way.”

“And? Did he succeed?”

Celtis smiled. “Well, the alchemists, at least, became rich—from his money. De Rais himself sank deeper and deeper into poverty.” He paused, and again the only sound came from the crackling logs in the fire. “It must have been around then that he first turned to the devil.”

“The . . . the devil?”

Celtis nodded. “He made a pact with him. What exactly this pact entailed we don’t know. The interrogation transcripts only tell us what the devil demanded of him—or at least what de Rais believed the devil wanted from him.”

“His soul?” guessed Johann.

“No. That was probably too black even for the devil.” Celtis shook his head. “De Rais gave him the most innocent thing that exists in the world: children.”

One of the burning logs cracked loudly, and Johann shuddered despite the warmth.

Small, twitching bundles in the trees . . .

“De Rais sacrificed children to the devil,” Celtis continued. “Not one, not two or three, but hundreds. He slit them open, bathed in their blood, and drank it. Sometimes he watched the children die and violated them at the same time. Others he suspended with ropes from the ceiling of his bedchamber and watched with relish as they danced and squirmed. Allegedly, he’d chant Christian hymns as they died. He also used their blood to write magic formulas to invoke the devil.”

Celtis sighed; he seemed to find it hard to tell Johann all this, and yet he went on.

“Some of the children were only four or five years old, and others were older. De Rais lured them into his château by the Loire with sweets and promises, and he kept their heads as mementos. Sometimes he painted the faces and asked his servants which head they thought the prettiest. The commoners knew about it, but no one believed them. They hid their children, but de Rais sent out his henchmen and took them all, one by one. He burned the bodies on large andirons and hid the bones in his castles, where they piled up like in ossuaries. It took decades before he was found out by the authorities. The only reason it came to a trial at all was that the king