The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,182

Paris, but here she silenced me with a simple gesture and said:

“I shall die here on the morrow, and there is nothing that you can do.”

“Ah, but there is one small mercy,” I said, “for I have in my possession a powder, which when mixed with water and drunk, will make you stuporous and you will not suffer as you might. Nay, I can give you such a measure of it that you will die, if that is your wish, and thereby cheat the flames altogether. I know that I can put this into your hands. The old priest is a fool.”

She seemed most deeply affected by my offer, though in no urgency to accept it. “Petyr, I must have my wits about when I am taken down into the square. I warn you, do not be in the town when this takes place. Or be safe behind a shuttered window, if you must remain to see it for yourself.”

“Are you speaking of escape, Deborah?” I asked, for I had to admit that my imagination was at once inflamed. If only I could save her, cause a great confusion and then take her away by some means. But how could I do such a thing?

“No, no, Petyr, that is beyond my power and the power of him whom I command. It is a simple thing for a spirit to transport a small jewel or a gold coin into the hands of a witch, but to open prison doors, to overcome armed guards? This cannot be done.” Then, as if distracted, her eyes glancing wildly about, she said, “Do you know my own sons have testified against me? That my beloved Chrétien has called his mother a witch?”

“I think they made him do it, Deborah. Shall I go to see him? What can I do that will help?”

“Oh, kind, dear Petyr,” she said. “Why did you not listen to me when I begged you to come with me? But this is not your doing, all this. It is mine.”

“How so, Deborah? That you were innocent I never doubted. If you could have cured your husband of his injury, there never would have been a cry of ‘witch.’ ”

She shook her head at this. “There is so much more to the story. When he died I believed myself to be blameless. But I have spent many a long month in this cell thinking on it, Petyr. And hunger and pain make the mind grow sharp.”

“Deborah, do not believe what your enemies say of you, no matter how often or well they say it!”

She did not answer me. She seemed indifferent to it. And then she turned to me again. “Petyr, do these things for me. If on the morrow I am brought bound into the square, which is my worst fear, demand that my arms and legs be freed that I may carry the heavy candle in penance, as has always been the custom in these parts. Do not let my crippled feet wring pity from you, Petyr. I fear the bonds worse than I fear the flames!”

“I will do it,” I said, “but there is no cause for concern. They will make you carry the candle, and make you walk the length of the town. You will be made to bring it to the steps of the cathedral, and only then will they bind you and take you to the pyre.” I could scarce continue.

“Listen, I have more to ask of you.” she said.

“Yes, please, go on.”

“When it is finished, and you leave this town, then to my daughter, Charlotte Fontenay, wife of Antoine Fontenay, in Saint-Domingue, which is in Hispaniola, in care of the merchant Jean-Jacques Toussaint, Port-au-Prince, write what I tell you to say.”

I repeated the name and full address to her. “Tell Charlotte that I did not suffer in the flames even if this is not true.”

“I will make her believe it.”

At this she smiled bitterly. “Perhaps not,” she said. “But do your best at it, for me.”

“What else?”

“Give her a further message, and this you must remember word for word. Tell her to proceed with care—that he whom I have sent to obey her sometimes does those things for us which he believes we want him to do. And further tell her that he whom I am sending to her draws his belief in our purpose as much from our random thoughts, as from the careful words we speak.”

“Oh, Deborah!”

“You understand what I am saying to you,