The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,189

shutters of the inns had begun to flap on their hinges, and my Deborah screamed again over this noise and over the frantic cries of the crowd.

“Come now, my Lasher, be my avenger, strike down my enemies!” Bending double, she raised her hands, her face red and stricken with her rage. “I see you, Lasher, I know you! I call you!” And straightening and flinging out her arms: “Destroy my sons, destroy my accusers! Destroy those who have come to see me die!”

And the tiles came crashing down off the roofs, off the church and the jail and the sacristy, and off the roofs of the inns, striking the heads of those screaming below, and in the wind, the viewing stand, built of fragile boards and sticks and ropes with crude mortar, began to rock as those clinging to it shrieked for their lives.

Only Father Louvier stood firm. “Burn the witch!” he shouted, trying to get through the panic-stricken men and women who tumbled over one another to get away. “Burn the witch and you stop the storm.”

No one moved to obey him, and though the church alone could provide shelter from this tempest, no one dared moved towards it as Deborah commanded the door, her arms outstretched. The armed men had run away from her in their panic. The parish priest had shrunk to the far side. The mayor was gone from view.

Overhead the very sky had gone dark, and people were fighting and cursing and falling in the crush, and in the fierce rain of tiles the old Comtesse was struck and slumped over, losing her balance and vaulting down over the bodies writhing in front of her, onto the very stones. The two boys clung to each other as a shower of loose stones broke upon them from the facade of the church. Chrétien was bowed under the stones as a tree in a hail storm, and then struck unconscious, falling to his knees. The stand itself now collapsed, taking down with it both boys and some twenty or more persons still struggling to get clear.

As far as I could see, all the guards had deserted the square, and the pastor had run away. And now I beheld my Deborah move backwards into the shadows, though her eyes were still on the heavens:

“I see you, Lasher!” she cried out. “My strong and beautiful Lasher!” And she vanished into the dark of the nave.

At this I ran from the window and down the stairs and into the frenzy of the square. What was in my mind I could not tell you, save somehow I could reach her, and under cover of the panic around us, get her free from this place.

But as I ran across the open space, the tiles flew every which way, and one struck my shoulder, and another my left hand. I could see nothing of her, only the doors of the church which were, in spite of their great heaviness, swinging in the wind.

Shutters had broken loose and were coming down upon the mad folk who could not get out through the little streets. Bodies lay piled at every arch and doorway. The old Comtesse lay dead, staring upwards, men and women tripping over her limbs. And in the ruin of the viewing stand lay the body of Chrétien, the little one, twisted so as it could not have had life in it.

Philippe, the elder, crawled upon his knees to seek shelter, his leg broken it appeared, when a wooden shutter came down striking his neck and breaking it as well so that he fell dead.

Then someone near me, cowering against the wall, screamed:

“The Comtesse!” and pointed up.

There she stood, high on the parapets of the church, for she had gone in and upwards, and balancing perilously upon the wall, she once again raised her hands to heaven and cried out to her spirit. But in the howling of the wind, in the screaming of the afflicted, in the falling of the tiles and the stones and the broken wood, I could not hope to hear her words.

I ran for the church, and once inside searched in panic for the steps. There was Louvier, the inquisitor, running back and forth, and then finding the steps before me, leading the way.

Up and up I ran after him, seeing his black skirts high above me, and his heels clacking on the stones. Oh, Stefan, if I had had a dagger, but I had no dagger.

And as