The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,163

is unconfessed, he will not deny it to her.”

“Ah but you see, she could seduce Satan. And that is why they have called her his bride.”

“But she cannot seduce the witch judge,” says I. And they all nodded, not seeming to know that I spoke this in bitter jest.

“And the daughter,” I asked, “what did she say on the matter of her mother’s guilt before she made her escape?”

“Not a single word to any person. And in the dead of night, she slipped away.”

“A witch,” said the innkeeper’s son, “or how could she have left her mother to die alone with her sons turned against her?”

This no one could answer, but I could well guess.

By this time, Stefan, I had little appetite for anything but to get clear of this inn and speak to the parish priest, though this, as you know, is always the most dangerous part. For what if the inquisitor were to be roused from wherever he sat feasting and drinking on the money earned from this madness, and he should know me from some other place, and horror of horrors know my work and my impostures.

Meanwhile my newfound friends drank even more of my wine, and talked on that the young Comtesse had been painted by many a renowned artist in Amsterdam, so great was her beauty; but then I might have told them that part of the story, and so fell silent, in anguish, quietly paying for another bottle for the company before I took my leave.

The night was warm and full of talk and laughter everywhere it seemed, with windows open and some still coming and going from the cathedral, and others camped along the walls and ready for the spectacle, and no light in the high barred window of the prison beside the steeple where the woman was held.

I stepped over those seated and chatting in the dark as I went to the sacristy on the other side of the great edifice and there struck the knocker until an old woman led me in and called the pastor of the place. A bent and gray-haired man came at once to greet me saying that he wished he had known of a traveling priest come to visit, and I must move from the inn at once and lodge with him.

But my apologies he accepted quick enough as well as my excuses about the pain in my hands which prevents me now from saying Mass any longer, for which I have a dispensation, and all the other lies I have to tell.

As luck would have it, the inquisitor was being put up in fine style by the old Comtesse at the château outside the town gates, and as all the great cronies of the place were gone thither to dine with him, he would not show his face again tonight.

On this account the pastor was obviously injured, as he had been by the whole proceedings, for everything had been taken out of his hands by the witch judge and the witch pricker and all the other ecclesiastic filth which rains down upon such affairs as this.

How fortunate you are, I thought as he showed me into his dingy rooms, for had she broken under the torture and named names, half your town would be in jail and everyone in a state of terror. But she has chosen to die alone, by what strength I cannot conceive of.

Though you know, Stefan, there are always persons who do resist, though we have naught but sympathy for those who find it impossible.

“Come in and sit with me for a while,” said the priest, “and I’ll tell you what I know of her.”

To him immediately I put my most important questions, on the thin hope that the townsfolk might have been wrong. Had there been an appeal to the local bishop? Yes, and he had condemned her. And to the Parliament of Paris? Yes, and they had refused to hear her case.

“You have seen these documents yourself?”

He gave me a grave nod, and then from a drawer in his cabinet produced for me the hated pamphlet of which they had spoken, with its evil engraving of Suzanne Mayfair perishing in artful flames. I put this bit of trash away from me.

“Is the Comtesse such a terrible witch?” I said.

“It was known far and wide,” he said in a whisper, with a great lift of his eyebrows, “only no one had the courage to speak the truth. And so the