The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,190

we reached the open parapets, as he ran out before me, I saw Deborah’s thin body fly, as it were, from the roof. Reaching the edge, I peered down upon the carnage and saw her lying broken on the stones. Her face was turned upwards—one arm beneath her head, and the other limp across her chest—and her eyes were closed as though she slept.

Louvier cursed when he saw her. “Burn her, take her body up to the pyre,” he cried, but it was useless. No one could hear him. In consternation he turned, perhaps to go back down and further command the proceedings, when he beheld me standing there.

And with a great look of amazement on his face, he regarded me helplessly and in confusion as, without hesitation, I pushed him with all my might, squarely in the chest, and backwards, so that he went flying off the edge of the roof.

No one saw this, Stefan. We were at the highest point of Montcleve. No other rooftop rose above that of the church. Even the distant château had no view of this parapet, and those below could not have seen me, as I was shielded from view by Louvier himself as I struck the blow.

But even if I am wrong as to the possibility of it, the fact of it is that no one did see me.

Retreating at once, making certain that no one had followed me to this place, I went down and to the church door. There lay my handiwork, Louvier, as dead as my Deborah, and lying very near her, his skull crushed and bleeding and his eyes open, in that dull stupid expression that the dead have which is almost never approximated by a human being in life.

How long the gale continued I cannot tell you, only that it was already falling off when I reached the church door. Perhaps a quarter of an hour, the very time the fiend had allotted for Deborah to die on the pyre.

From the shadows of the church foyer, I saw the square finally emptied, the very last climbing over the bodies that now blocked the side streets. I saw the light brighten. I heard the storm die away. I stood still regarding in silence the body of my Deborah, and saw that the blood now poured from her mouth, and that her white gown was stained with blood as well.

After a great while, numerous persons moved into the open place, examining the bodies of the dead, and the bodies of those who were still living and weeping and begging for assistance; and here and there the wounded were picked up and carried away. The innkeeper ran out, with his son beside him, and knelt down beside the body of Louvier.

It was the son who saw me and came to me and told me in great agitation that the parish priest had perished and so had the mayor. The son had a wild look to him, as if he could not believe that he was still living, and had witnessed such a thing.

“I told you she was a great witch,” he whispered to me. And as he stood beside me, staring at her, we saw the armed guards gathering, very shaken and bruised and fearful as, at the command of a young cleric with a bleeding forehead, they lifted up Deborah and looking about as if they feared the storm would come again, though it did not, they took her to the pyre. The wood and coal began to tumble down as they climbed the ladder propped against it, and they laid her gently down and hurried away.

Others gathered as the young cleric in his torn robe, and with his head still bleeding, lighted the torches, and very soon the thing was set ablaze. The young cleric stood very near, watching the wood burn, and then backed away from it, and weaving, finally fell over in a faint, or perhaps dead.

I hoped dead.

Once again I climbed the steps. I went out upon the roof of the church. I looked down upon the body of my Deborah, dead and still and beyond all pain, as it was consumed by the flames. I looked out over the rooftops, now spotted all over where the tiles had been ripped out, and I thought of the spirit of Deborah and wondered if it had risen into the clouds.

Only when the rising smoke had become so thick and odoriferous from the coals and wood and

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