The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,184

years before.

“What fancies, Petyr,” she said. Then her smile grew even broader, and she looked half mad in the candlelight, or even more like an angel or a mad saint. Her white face was as beautiful as the candle flame itself. “My life is over, but I have traveled far and wide from this little cell,” she said. “Now go. Go and send my message to Charlotte, but only when you are safely away from this town.”

I kissed her hands, They had burnt the palms when they tortured her. There were deep scabs on them, and these too I kissed. I did not care.

“I have always loved you,” I said to her. And I said other things, many things, foolish and tender, which I will not write here. All this she bore with perfect resignation, and she knew what I had only just discovered: that I regretted that I had not gone off with her, that I despised myself and my work and all my life.

This will pass, Stefan. I know it. I knew it then, only hours ago when I left her cell. But it is true now, and I am like St. John of the Cross in his “Dark Night of the Soul.” I tell you all consolation has left me. And on what account?

That I love her, and only that. For I know that her daimon has destroyed her, as surely as it destroyed her mother. And that all the warnings of Roemer and Geertruid and all the wizards of the ages, have been proven here to be true.

I could not leave her without embracing her and kissing her. But I could feel her agony when I held her—the agony of the burns and the bruises on her body, and her muscles torn from the rack. And this had been my beautiful Deborah, this ruin that clung to me, and wept suddenly as if I had turned a key in a lock.

“I am sorry, my beloved,” I said, for I blamed myself for these tears.

“It is sweet to hold you,” she whispered. And then she pushed me away from her. “Go now, and remember everything that I have said.”

I went out a madman. The square was still filling with those who had come to see the execution. By torchlight there were those putting up their stalls, and others sleeping under blankets along the walls.

I told the old priest I was not at all convinced the woman was a witch, and I wanted to see the inquisitor at once. I tell you, Stefan, I was bound to move heaven and earth for her.

But you know how it went.

We came to the chateau and they admitted us, and this fool priest was very glad to be with someone of importance, barging in upon the banquet to which he had not been invited, but I pulled myself up now, and used my most impressive manner, questioning the inquisitor directly in Latin, and the old Comtesse, a dark-skinned woman, very Spanish in appearance, who received me with extraordinary patience considering the manner in which I began.

The inquisitor, Father Louvier, handsome and very well fed, with fine groomed beard and hair and twinkling black eyes, saw nothing suspicious in my manner, and became obsequious to me as if I were from the Vatican, which I might be for all he knew, and merely sought to comfort me when I said perhaps an innocent woman was to be burnt.

“You never saw such a witch,” said the Comtesse, who laughed in an ugly deep-throated fashion and offered me some wine. She then presented me to the Comtesse de Chamillart, who sat beside her, and to every other noble of the surrounding area who had come to lodge at the chateau and see the witch burnt.

Every question I asked and objection I raised and suggestion I made to offer was met with the same easy conviction by this assemblage. For them the battle had been fought and won. All that remained was the celebration that would take place in the morning.

The boys were crying in their chambers, true, but they would recover. And there was nothing to fear from Deborah, for if her demon were strong enough to free her he would have done so by now. And was it not so with all witches? Once they were in chains, the devil left them to their fate.

“But this woman has not confessed,” I declared, “and her husband fell from his horse in the forest, by