The witching hour - By Anne Rice Page 0,195

your hand and let the good Father Louvier meet his fate without your help.

I should say further that no one among us fails to understand your desire to pursue this fiend and its witch to Saint-Domingue. What would I not give to speak to such a person as this Charlotte, and to ask what she has learnt from her mother, and what she means to do.

But Petyr, you yourself have described the power of this demon. You have related faithfully the strange statements made in regard to it by the late Comtesse Deborah Mayfair de Montcleve. You must know that this thing will seek to prevent your coming between it and Charlotte, and that it is capable of bringing you to a bad end as it did with the late Comte de Montcleve.

You cannot be other than right in your conclusion that the thing is more clever than most daimons, if only in what it has said to the witch, if not in what it does.

Aye, it is quite irresistible to us, this tragic story. But you must come home to write your letters to the daughter of Deborah, from the safety of Amsterdam allowing our Dutch ships to take them over the sea.

It may interest you to know as you prepare for your return journey, that we have only lately heard that word of Father Louvier’s death has reached the French court.

That a storm struck the town of Montcleve on the day of the execution of Deborah de Montcleve you will not be surprised to know. That it was sent by God to show his displeasure over the extent of witchcraft in France, and his condemnation in particular of this unrepentant woman who would not confess even under torture, you may be very interested to learn.

And that the good Father Louvier died attempting to shelter others from falling brickbats will no doubt touch your heart. The dead numbered some fifteen, we are told, and the brave people of Montcleve burnt the witch, thereby ending the tempest, God willing, and the lesson in all this is that the Lord Jesus Christ would see more witches discovered and burnt. Amen.

How soon I wonder will we see this in a pamphlet replete with the usual drawings, and a litany of untruths? No doubt the printing presses, which forever feed the flames that burn witches, are already hard at work.

And where, pray tell, is the witch judge who spent a warm night by the fire of the cunning woman of Donnelaith, and showed her the dark drawings in his demonology? Is he dead and burning in hell? We shall never know.

Petyr, do not take time to write to us. Only come home. Know that we love you, and that we do not condemn you for what you have done, or for anything that you may do. We say what we believe we must say!

Yours Faithfully in the Talamasca,

Stefan Franck

Amsterdam

Dear Stefan,

I write in haste as I am already on board the French ship Sainte-Hélène, bound for the New World, and a boy is waiting here to take this to be posted to you at once.

Before your letter reached me I had drawn from our agents all that I required for the journey, and have purchased what clothing and medicines I fear I shall need.

I go to Charlotte as I can do nothing else, and this will not surprise you, and please tell Alexander for me that I know he would do nothing else were he in my place.

But Stefan, you judge me wrongly when you say that I have been caught up in the evil of this daimon. True, I have broken the rules of the order only on account of Deborah Mayfair, both in the past and in the present; but the daimon was never any part of my love of Deborah, and when I struck down the witch judge I did what I wanted to do.

I struck him down for Deborah, and for all the poor and ignorant women I have seen screaming in the flames, for the women who have expired on the rack or in cold prison cells, for the families destroyed and for the villages laid waste by these awful lies.

But I waste time with this defense of myself. You are good not to condemn me, for it was murder, nevertheless.

Let me also say in great haste that the tale of the storm of Montcleve reached here some time ago, and is much garbled. It is ascribed to the