TALES OF
AVEROIGNE

BY
CLARK ASHTON SMITH

Contents

THE END OF THE STORY 1
THE SATYR 17
VARIANT CONCLUSION TO "THE SATYR" 22
A RENDEZVOUS IN AVEROIGNE 24
THE MAKER OF GARGOYLES 37
THE HOLINESS OF AZÉDARAC 49
THE COLOSSUS OF YLOURGNE 68
THE MANDRAKES 101
THE BEAST OF AVEROIGNE 107
THE DISINTERMENT OF VENUS 116
MOTHER OF TOADS 123
THE ENCHANTRESS OF SYLAIRE 130
THE ORACLE OF SADOQUA 143
THE DOOM OF AZEDERAC 145. _

The End of the Story
THE FOLLOWING NARRATIVE was found among the papers of
Christophe Morand, a young law-student of Tours, after his
unaccountable disappearance during a visit at his father's home near
Moulins, in November, 1798:
A sinister brownish-purple autumn twilight, made premature by the
imminence of a sudden thunderstorm, had filled the forest of
Averoigne. The trees along my road were already blurred to ebon
masses, and the road itself, pale and spectral before me in the
thickening gloom, seemed to waver and quiver slightly, as with the
tremor of some mysterious earthquake. I spurred my horse, who was
woefully tired with a journey begun at dawn, and had fallen hours ago
to a protesting and reluctant trot, and we galloped adown the darkening
road between enormous oaks that seemed to lean toward us with
boughs like clutching fingers as we passed.
With dreadful rapidity, the night was upon us, the blackness
became a tangible clinging veil; a nightrnare confusion and desperation
drove me to spur my mount again with a more cruel rigor; and now, as
we went, the first far-off mutter of the storm mingled with the clatter of
my horse's hoofs, and the first lightning flashes illumed our way, which,
to my amazement (since I believed myself on the main highway
through Averoigne), had inexplicably narrowed to a well-trodden
footpath. Feeling sure that I had gone astray, but not caring to retrace
my steps in the teeth of darkness and the towering clouds of the
tempest, I hurried on, hoping, as seemed reasonable, that a path so
plainly worn would lead eventually to some house or chateau. where I
could find refuge for the night. My hope was wellfounded, for within a
few minutes I descried a glimmering light through the forest-boughs,
and came suddenly to an open glade, where, on a gentle eminence, a
large building loomed, with several litten windows in the lower story,
and a top that was well-nigh indistinguishable against the bulks of
driven cloud.
'Doubtless a monastery,' I thought, as I drew rein, and descending
from my exhausted mount, lifted the heavy brazen knocker in the form
of a dog's head and let it fall on the oaken door. The sound was.
unexpectedly loud and sonorous, with a reverberation almost
sepulchral, and I shivered involuntarily, with a sense of startlement, of
unwonted dismay. This, a moment later, was wholly dissipated when
the door was thrown open and a tall, ruddyfeatured monk stood before
me in the cheerful glow of the cressets that illumed a capacious
hallway.
'I bid you welcome to the abbey of Perigon,' he said, in a suave
rumble, and even as he spoke, another robed and hooded figure
appeared and took my horse in charge. As I murmured my thanks and
acknowledgments, the storm broke and tremendous gusts of rain,
accompanied by evernearing peals of thunder, drove with demoniac
fury on the door that had closed behind me.
'It is fortunate that you found us when you did,' observed my host.
"Twere ill for man and beast to be abroad in such a hell-brew.'
Divining without question that I was hungry as well as tired, he led
me to the refectory and set before me a bountiful meal of mutton,
brown bread, lentils aad a strong excellent red wine.
He sat opposite me at the refectory table while I ate, and, with my
hunger a little mollifed, I took occasion to scan him more attentively.
He was both tall and stoutly built, and his features, where the brow was
no less broad than the powerful jaw, betokened intellect as well as a
love for good living. A certain delicacy and refinement, an air of
scholarship, of good taste and good breeding, emanated from him, and
I thought to myself: 'This monk is probably a connoisseur of books as
well as of wines.' Doubtless my expression betrayed the quickening of
my curiosity, for he said, as if in answer:
'I am Hilaire, the abbot of Perigon. We are a Benedictine order, who
live in amity with God and with all men, and we do not hold that the
spirit is to be enriched by the mortification or impoverishment of the
body. We have in our butteries an abundance of wholesome fare, in our
cellars the best and oldest vintages of the district of Averoigne. And, if
such thiags interest you, as mayhap they do, we have a library that is
stocked with rare tomes, with precious manuscripts, with the finest
works of heathendom and Christendom, even to certain unique
writings that survived the holocaust of Alexandria.'
'I appreciate your hospitality,' I said, bowing. 'I am Christophe
Morand, a law-student, on my way home from Tours to my father's
estate near Moulins. I, too, am a lover of books, and nothing would
delight me more than the privilege of inspecting a library so rich and
curious as the one whereof you speak.'
Forthwith, while I finished my meal, we fell to discussing the
classics, and to quoting and capping passages from Latin, Greek or. _
Christian authors. My host, I soon discovered, was a scholar of
uncommon attainments, with an erudition, a ready familiarity with
both ancient and modern literature that made my own seem as that of
the merest beginner by comparison. He, on his part, was so good as to
commend my far from perfect Latin, and by the time I had emptied my
bottle of red wine we were chatting familiarly like old friends.
All my fatigue had now flown, to be succeeded by a rare sense of
well-being, of physical comfort combined with mental alertness and
keenness. So, when the abbot suggested that we pay a visit to the
library, I assented with alacrity.
He led me down a long corridor, on each side of which were cells
belonging to the brothers of the order, and unlocked, with a huge
brazen key that depended from his girdle, the door of a great room with
lofty ceiling and several deep-set windows. Truly, he had not
exaggerated the resources of the library; for the long shelves were
overcrowded with books, and many volumes were piled high on the
tables or stacked in corners. There were rolls of papyrus, of parchment,
of vellum; there were strange Byzantine or Coptic bibles; there were old
Arabic and Persian manuscripts with floriated or jewel-studded covers;
there were scores of incunabula from the first printing-presses; there
were innumerable monkish copies of antique authors, bound in wood
or ivory, with rich illuminations and lettering that was often in itself a
work of art.
With a care that was both loving and meticulous, the abbot Hilaire
brought out volume after volume for my inspection. Many of them I
had never seen before; some were unknown to me even by fame or
rumor. My excited interest, my unfeigned enthusiasm, evidently
pleased him, for at length he pressed a hidden spring in one of the
library tables and drew out a long drawer, in which, he told me, were
certain treasures that he did not care to bring forth for the edification or
delectation of many, and whose very existence was undreamed of by
the monks.
'Here,' he continued, 'are three odes by Catullus which you will not
find in any published edition of his works. Here, also, is an original
manuscript of Sappho Š a complete copy of a poem otherwise extant
only in brief fragments; here are two of the lost tales of Miletus, a letter
of Perides to Aspasia, an unknown dialogue of Plato and an old
Arabian work on astronomy, by some anonymous author, in which the
theories of Copernicus are anticipated. And, lastly, here is the
somewhat infamous Histoire d'Amour, by Bernard de Vaillantcoeur,
which was destroyed immediately upon publication, and of which only
one other copy is known to exist.'.
As I gazed with mingled awe and curiosity on the unique, unheard-
of treasures he displayed, I saw in one corner of the drawer what
appeared to be a thin volume with plain untitled binding of dark
leather. I ventured to pick it up, and found that it contained a few
sheets of ciosely written manuscript in old French.
'And this?' I queried, turning to look at Hilaire, whose face, to my
amazement, had suddenly assumed a melancholy and troubled
expression.
'It were better not to ask, my son.' He crossed himself as he spoke,
and his voice was no longer mellow, but harsh, agitated, full of a
sorrowful perturbation. 'There is a curse on the pages that you hold in
your hand: an evil spell, a malign power is attached to them, and he
who would venture to peruse them is henceforward in dire peril both of
body and soul.' He took the little volume from me as he spoke, and
returned it to the drawer, again crossing himself carefully as he did so.
'But, father,' I dared to expostulate, 'how can such things be? How
can there be danger in a few written sheets of parchment?'
'Christophe, there are things beyond your understanding, things
that it were not well for you to know. The might of Satan is
manifestable in devious modes, in diverse manners; there are other
temptations than those of the world and the flesh, there are evils no less
subtle than irresistible, there are hidden heresies, and necromancies
other than those which sorcerers practise.'
'With what, then, are these pages concerned, that such occult peril,
such unholy power lurks within them?'
'I forbid you to ask.' His tone was one of great rigor, with a finality
that dissuaded me from further questioning.
'For you, my son,' he went on, 'the danger would be doubly great,
because you are young, ardent, full of desires and curiosities. Believe
me, it is better to forget that you have ever seen this manuscript.' He
closed the hidden drawer, and as he did so, the melancholy troubled
look was replaced by his former benignity.
'Now,' he said, as he turned to one of the book-shelves, 'I will show
you the copy of Ovid that was owned by the poet Petrarch.' He was
again the mellow scholar, the kindly, jovial host, and it was evident that
the mysterious manuscript was not to be referred to again. But his odd
perturbation, the dark and awful hints he had let fall, the vague terrific
terms of his proscription, had all served to awaken my wildest curiosity,
and, though I felt the obsession to be unreasonable, I was quite unable
to think of anything else for the rest of the evening. All manner of
speculations, fantastic, absurd, outrageous, ludicrous, terrible, defiled. ¢
through my brain as I duly admired the incunabula which Hilaire took
down so tenderly from the shelves for my delectation.
At last, toward midnight, he led me to my room Š a room
especially reserved for visitors, and with more of comfort, of actual
luxury in its hangings, carpets and deeply quilted bed than was
allowable in the cells of the monks or of the abbot himself. Even when
Hilaire had withdrawn, and I had proved for my satisfaction the
softness of the bed allotted me, my brain still whirled with questions
concerning the forbidden manuscript. Though the storm had now
ceased, it was long before I fell asleep; but slumber, when it finally
came, was dreamless and profound.
When I awoke, a river of sunshine clear as molten gold was pouring
through my wmdow. The storm had wholly vanished, and no lightest
tatter of cloud was visible anywhere in the pale-blue October heavens. I
ran to the window and peered out on a world of autumnal forest and
fields all a-sparkle with the diamonds of rain. All was beautiful, all was
idyllic to a degree that could be fully appreciated only by one who had
lived for a long time, as I had, within the walls of a city, with towered
buildings in lieu of trees and cobbled pavements where grass should be.
But, charming as it was, the foreground held my gaze only for a few
moments; then, beyond the tops of the trees, I saw a hill, not more than
a mile distant, on whose summit there stood the ruins of some old
chateau, the crumbling, brokendown condition of whose walls and
towers was plainly visible. It drew my gaze irresistibly, with an
overpowering sense of romantic attraction, which somehow seemed so
natural, so inevitable, that I did not pause to analyze or wonder; and
once having seen it, I could not take my eyes away, but lingering at the
window for how long I knew not, scrutinizing as closely as I could the
details of each timeshaken turret and bastion. Some undefinable
fascination was inherent in the very form, the extent, the disposition of
the pile Š some fascination not dissimilar to that exerted by a strain of
music, by a magical combination of words in poetry, by the features of
a beloved face. Gazing, I lost myself in reveries that I could not recall
afterward, but which left behind them the same tantalizing sense of
innominable delight which forgotten nocturnal dreams may sometimes
leave.
I was recalled to the actualities of life by a gentle knock at my door,
and realized that I had forgotten to dress myself. It was the abbot, who
came to inquire how I had passed the night, and to tell me that
breakfast was ready whenever I should care to arise. For some reason, I
felt a little embarrassed, even shamefaced, to have been caught day-
dreaming; and though this was doubtless unnecessary, I apologized for. ¡
my dilatoriness. Hilaire, I thought, gave me a keen, inquiring look,
which was quickly withdrawn, as, with the suave courtesy of a good
host, he assured me that there was nothing whatever for which I need
apologize.
When I had breakfast, I told Hilaire, with many expressions of
gratitude for his hospitality, that it was time for me to resume my
journey. But his regret at the announcement of my departure was so
unfeigned, his invitation to tarry for at least another night was so
genuinely hearty, so sincerely urgent, that I consented to remain. In
truth, I required no great amount of solicitation, for, apart from the real
liking I had taken to Hilaire, the mystery of the forbidden manuscript
had entirely enslaved my imagination, and I was loth to leave without
having learned more concerning it. Also, for a youth with scholastic
leanings, the freedom of the abbot's library was a rare privilege, a
precious opportunity not to be passed over.
'I should like,' I said, 'to pursue certain studies while I am here, with
the aid of your incomparable collection.'
'My son, you are more than welcome to remain for any length of
time, and you can have access to my books whenever it suits your need
or inclination.' So saying, Hilaire detached the key of the library from
his girdle and gave it to me. 'There are duties,' he went on, 'which will
call me away from the monastery for a few hours today, and doubtless
you will desire to study in my absence.'
A little later, he excused himself and departed. With inward
felicitations on the longed-for opportunity that had fallen so readily into
my hands, I hastened to the library, with no thought save to read the
proscribed manuscript. Giving scarcely a glance at the laden shelves, I
sought the table with the secret drawer, and fumbled for the spring.
After a little anxious delay, I pressed the proper spot and drew forth the
drawer. An impulsion that had become a veritable obsession, a fever of
curiosity that bordered upon actual madness, drove me, and if the
safety of my soul had really depended upon it, I could not have denied
the desire which forced me to take from the drawer the thin volume
with plain unlettered binding.
Seating myself in a chair near one of the windows, I began to peruse
the pages, which were only six in number. The writing was peculiar,
with letter-forms of a fantasticality I had never met before, and the
French was not only old but well-night barbarous in its quaint
singularity. Notwithstanding the difficulty I found in deciphering them,
a mad, unaccountable thrill ran through me at the first words, and I
read on with all the sensations of a man who had been bewitched or
who had drunken a philtre of bewildering potency.. ˆ
There was no title, no date, and the writing was a narrative which
began almost as abruptly as it ended. It concerned one Gerard, Comte
de Venteillon, who, on the eve of his marriage to the renowned and
beautiful demoiselle, Eleanor des Lys, had met in the forest near his
chateau a strange, half-human creature with hoofs and horns. Now
Gerard, as the narrative explained, was a knightly youth of indisputably
proven valor, as wdl as a true Christian; so, in the name of our Savior,
Jesus Christ, he bade the creature stand and give an account of itself.
Laughing wildly in the twilight, the bizarre being capered before
him, and cried:
'I am a satyr, and your Christ is less to me than the weeds that grow
on your kitchen-middens.'
Appalled by such blasphemy, Gerard would have drawn his sword
to slay the creature, but again it cried, saying:
'Stay, Gerard de Venteillon, and I will tell you a secret, knowing
which, you will forget the worship of Christ, and forget your beautiful
bride of tomorrow, and turn your back on the world and on the very
sun itself with no reluctance and no regret.'
Now, albeit half uawillingly, Gerard lent the satyr an ear and it came
closer and whispered to him. And that which it whispered is not
known; but before it vanished amid the blackening shadows of the
forest, the satyr spoke aloud once more, and said:
'The power of Christ has prevailed like a black frost on all the
woods, the fields, the rivers, the mountains, where abode in their
felicity the glad, immortal goddesses and nymphs of yore. But still, in
the cryptic caverns of earth, in places far underground, like the hell
your priests have fabled, there dwells the pagan loveliness, there cry the
pagan ecstasies.' And with the last words, the creature laughed again its
wild unhuman laugh, and disappeared among the darkening boles of
the twilight trees.
From that moment, a change was upon Gerard de Venteillon. He
returned to his chateau with downcast mien, speaking no cheery or
kindly word to his retainers, as was his wont, but sitting or pacing
always in silence, and scarcely heeding the food that was set before
him. Nor did he go that evening to visit his betrothed, as he had
promised; but, toward midnight, when a waning moon had arisen red
as from a bath of blood, he went forth clandestinely by the postern
door of the chateau, and followed an old, halfobliterated trail through
the woods, found his way to the ruins of the Chateau des
Faussesflammes, which stands on a hill opposite the Benedictine abbey
of Perigon.. ÿ
Now these ruins (said the manuscript) are very old, and have long
been avoided by the people of the district; for a legendry of
immemorial evil clings about them, and it is said that they are the
dwelling-place of foul spirits, the rendezvous of sorcerers and succubi.
But Gerard, as if oblivious or fearless of their ill renown, plunged like
one who is devil-driven into the shadow of the crumbling walls, and
went, with the careful-groping of a man who follows some given
direction, to the northern end of the courtyard. There, directly between
and below the two centermost windows, which, it may be, looked forth
from the chamber of forgotten chatelaines, he pressed with his right
foot on a flagstone differing from those about it in being of a triangular
form. And the flagstone moved and tilted beneath his foot, revealing a
flight of granite steps that went down into the earth. Then, lighting a
taper he had brought with him, Gerard descended the steps, and the
flagstone swung into place behind him.
On the morrow, his betrothed, Eleanor des Lys, and all her bridal
train, waited vainly for him at the cathedral of Vyones, the principal
town of Averoigne, where the wedding had been set. And from that
time his face was beheld by no man, and no vaguest rumor of Gerard
de Venteillon or of the fate that befell him has ever passed among the
living...
Such was the substance of the forbidden manuscript, and thus it
ended. As I have said before, there was no date, nor was there anything
to indicate by whom it had been written or how the knowledge of the
happenings related had come into the writer's possession. But, oddly
enough, it did not occur to me to doubt their veridity for a moment;
and the curiosity I had felt concerning the contents of the manuscript
was now replaced by a burning desire, a thousandfold more powerful,
more obsessive, to know the ending of the story and to learn what
Gerard de Venteillon had found when he descended the hidden steps.
In reading the tale, it had of course occurred to me that the ruins of
the Chateau des Faussesflammes, described therein, were the very
same ruins I had seen that morning from my chamber window; and
pondering this, I became more and more possessed by an insane fever,
by a frenetic, unholy excitement. Returning the manuscript to the
secret drawer, I left the library and wandered for awhile in an aimless
fashion about the corridors of the monastery. Chancing to meet there
the same monk who had taken my horse in charge the previous
evening, I ventured to question him, as discreetly and casually as I
could, regarding the ruins which were visible from the abbey windows.
He crossed himself, and a frightened look came over his broad,
placid face at my query.. ½
'The ruins are those of the Chateau des Faussesflammes,' he replied.
'For untold years, men say, they have been the haunt of unholy spirits,
of witches and demons; and festivals not to be described or even
named are held within their walls. No weapon known to man, no
exorcism or holy water, has ever prevailed against these demons; many
brave cavaliers and monks have disappeared amid the shadows of
Faussesflammes, never to return; and once, it is told, an abbot of
Perigon went thither to make war on the powers of evil; but what befell
him at the hands of the succubi is not known or conjectured. Some say
that the demons are abominable hags whose bodies terminate in
serpentine coils; others that they are women of more than mortal
beauty, whose kisses are a diabolic delight that consumes the flesh of
men with the fierceness of hell-fire... As for me, I know not whether
such tales are true; but I should not care to venture within the walls of
Faussesflammes.'
Before he had finished speaking, a resolve had sprung to life full-
born in my mind: I felt that I must go to the Chateau des
Faussesflammes and learn for myself, if possible, all that could be
learned. The impulse was immediate, overwhehning, ineluctable; and
even if I had so desired, I could no more have fought against it than if I
had been the victim of some sorcerer's invultuation. The proscription
of the abbot Hilaire, the strange unfinished tale in the old manuscript,
the evil legendry at which the monk had now hinted Š all these, it
would seem, should have served to frighten and deter me from such a
resolve; but, on the contrary, by some bizarre inversion of thought,
they seemed to conceal some delectable mystery, to denote a hidden
world of ineffable things, of vague undreamable pleasures that set my
brain on fire and made my pulses throb deliriously. I did not know, I
could not conceive, of what these pleasures would consist; but in some
mystical manner I was as sure of their ultimate reality as the abbot
Hilaire was sure of heaven.
I determined to go that very afternoon, in the absence of Hilaire,
who, I felt instinctively, might be suspicious of any such intention on
my part and would surely be inimical toward its fulfillment.
My preparations were very simple: I put in my pockets a small taper
from my room and the heel of a loaf of bread from the refectory; and
making sure that a little dagger which I always carried was in its sheath,
I left the monastery forthwith. Meeting two of the brothers in the
courtyard, I told them I was going for a short walk in the neighboring
woods. They gave me a jovial 'pax vobiscum' and went upon their way
in the spirit of the words.._
Heading directly as I could for Faussesflammes, whose turrets were
often lost behind the high and interlacing boughs, I entered the forest.
There were no paths, and often I was conpelled to brief detours and
divagations by the thickness of the underbrush. In my feverous hurry to
reach the ruins, it seemed hours before I came to the top of the hill
which Faussesflammes surmounted, but probably it was little more
than thirty minutes. Climbing the last declivity of the boulder-strewn
slope, I came suddenly within view of the chateau, standing close at
hand in the center of the level table which formed the summit. Trees
had taken root in its broken-down walls, and the ruinous gateway that
gave on the courtyard was half-choked by bushes, brambles and nettle-
plants. Forcing my way through, not without difficulty, and with
clothing that had suffered from the bramblethorns, I went, like Gerard
de Venteillon in the old manuscript, to the northern end of the court.
Enormous evil-looking weeds were rooted between the flagstones,
rearing their thick and fleshy leaves that had turned to dull sinister
maroons and purples with the onset of autumn. But I soon found the
triangular flagstone indicated in the tale, and without the slightest delay
or hesitation I pressed upon it with my right foot.
A mad shiver, a thrill of adventurous triumph that was mingled with
something of trepidation, leaped through me when the great flagstone
tilted easily beneath my foot, disclosing dark steps of granite, even as in
the story. Now, for a moment, the vaguely hinted horrors of the
monkish legends became imminently real in my imagination, and I
paused before the black opening that was to engulf me, eondering if
some satanic spell had not drawn me thither to perils of unknown terror
and inconceivable gravity.
Only for a few instants, however, did I hesitate. Then the sense of
peril faded, the monkish horrors became a fantastic dream, and the
charm of things unformulable, but ever closer at hand, always more
readily attainable, tightened about me like the embrace of amorous
arms. I lit my taper, I descended the stair; and even as behind Gerard
de Venteillon, the triangular block of stone silently resumed its place in
the paving of the court above me. Doubtless it was moved by some
mechanism operable by a man's weight on one of the steps; but I did
not pause to consider its modus operandi, or to wonder if there were
any way by which it could be worked from beneath to permit my
return.
There were perhaps a dozen steps, terminating in a low, narrow,
musty vault that was void of anything more substantial than ancient,
dust-encumbered cobwebs. At the end, a small doorway admitted me
to a second vault that differed from the first only in being larger and. __
dustier. I passed through several such vaults, and then found myself in
a long passage or tunnel, half blocked in places by boulders or heaps of
rubble that had fallen from the crumbling sides. It was very damp, and
full of the noisome odor of stagnant waters and subterranean mold. My
feet splashed more than once in little pools, aad drops fell upon me
from above, fetid and foul as if they had oozed from a charnel.
Beyond the wavering circle of light that my taper maintained, it
seemed to me that the coils of dim and shadowy serpents slithered
away in the darkness at my approach; but I could not be sure whether
they really were serpents, or only the troubled and retreating shadows,
seen by an eye that was still unaccustomed to the gloom of the vaults.
Rounding a sudden turn in the passage, I saw the last thing I had
dreamt of seeing Š the gleam of sunlight at what was apparently the
tunnel's end. I scarcely know what I had expected to find, but such an
eventuation was somehow altogether unanticipated. I hurried on, in
some confusion of thought, and stumbled through the opening, to find
myself blinking in the full rays of the sun.
Even before I had sufficiently recovered my wits and my eyesight to
take note of the landscape before me, I was struck by a strange
circumstance: Though it had been early afternoon when I entered the
vaults, and though my passage through them could have been a matter
of no more than a few minutes, the sun was now nearing the horizon.
There was also a difference in its light, which was both brighter and
mellower than the sun I had seen above Averoigne; and the sky itself
was intensely blue, with no hint of autumnal pallor.
Now, with ever-increasing stupefaction, I stared about me, and
could find nothing familiar or even credible in the scene upon which I
had emerged. Contrary to all reasonable expectation, there was no
semblance of the hill upon which Faussesflammes stood, or of the
adjoining country; but around me was a placid land of rolling
meadows, through which a golden-gleaming river meandered toward a
sea of deepest azure that was visible beyond the tops of laureltrees...
But there are no laurel-trees in Averoigne, and the sea is hundreds of
miles away: judge, then, my complete confusion and dumbfoundment.
It was a scene of such loveliness as I have never before beheld. The
meadow-grass at my feet was softer and more lustrous than emerald
velvet, and was full of violets and many-colored asphodels. The dark
green of ilex-trees was mirrored in the golden river, and far away I saw
the pale gleam of a marble acropolis on a low summit above the plain.
All things bore the aspect of a mild and clement spring that was verging
upon an opulent summer. I felt as if I had stepped into a land of classic
myth, of Grecian legend; and moment by moment, all surprise, all._
wonder as to how I could have come there, was drowned in a sense of
ever-growing ecstasy before the utter, ineffable beauty of the landscape.
Near by, in a laurel-grove, a white roof shone in the late rays of the
sun. I was drawn toward it by the same allurement, only far more
potent and urgent, which I had felt on seeing the forbidden manuscript
and the ruins of Faussesflammes. Here, I knew with an esoteric
certainty, was the culmination of my quest, the reward of all my mad
and perhaps impious curiosity.
As I entered the grove, I heard laughter among the trees, blending
harmoniously with the low murmur of their leaves in a soft, balmy
wind. I thought I saw vague forms that melted among the boles at my
approach; and once a shaggy, goat-like creature with human head and
body ran across my path, as if in pursuit of a flying nymph.
In the heart of the grove, I found a marble place with a portico of
Doric columns. As I neared it, I was greeted by two women in the
costume of ancient slaves; and though my Greek is of the meagerest, I
found no difficulty in comprehending their speech, which was of Attic
purity.
'Our mistress, Nycea, awaits you,' they told me. I could no longer
marvel at anything, but accepted my situation without question or
surmise, like one who resigns himself to the progress of some delightful
dream. Probably, I thought, it was a dream, and I was still lying in my
bed at the monastery; but never before had I been favored by nocturnal
visions of such clarity and surpassing loveliness. The interior of the
palace was full of a luxury that verged upon the barbaric, and which
evidently belonged to the period of Greek decadence, with its
intermingling of Oriental influences. I was led through a hallway
gIeaming with onyx and polished porphyry, into an opulently furnished
room, where, on a couch of gorgeous fabrics, there reclined a woman
of goddess-like beauty.
At sight of her, I trembled from head to foot with the violence of a
strange emotion. I had heard of the sudden mad loves by which men
are seized on beholding for the first time a certain face and form; but
never before had I experienced a passion of such intensity, such all-
consuming ardor, as the one I conceived immediately for this woman.
Indeed, it seemed as if I had loved her for a long time, without knowing
that it was she whom I loved, and without being able to identify the
nature of my enotion or to orient the feeling in any manner.
She was not tall, but was formed with exquisite voluptuous purity of
line and contour. Her eyes were of a dark sapphire blue, with molten
depths into which the soul was fain to plunge as into the soft abysses of
a summer ocean. The curve of her lips was enigmatic, a little mournful,. __
and gravely tender as the lips of an antique Venus. Her hair, brownish
rather than blond, fell over her neck and ears and forehead in delicious
ripples confined by a plain fillet of silver. In her expression, there was a
mixture of pride and voluptuousness, of regal imperiousness and
feminine yielding. Her moverneats were all as efFortless and graceful as
those of a serpent.
'I knew you would come,' she murmured in the same softvoweled
Greek I had heard from the lips of her servants. 'I have waited for you
long; but when you sought refuge from the storm in the abbey of
Perigon, and saw the manuscript in the secret drawer, I knew that the
hour of your arrival was at hand. Ah! you did not dream that the spell
which drew you so irresistibly, with such unaccountable potency, was
the spell of my beauty, the magical allurement of my love!'
'Who are you?' I queried. I spoke readily in Greek, which would
have surprised me greatly an hour before. But now, I was prepared to
accept anything whatever, no matter how fantastic or preposterous, as
part of the miraculous fortune, the unbelievable adventure which had
befallen me.
'I am Nycea,' she replied to my question. 'I love you, and the
hospitality of my palace and of my arms is at your disposal. Need you
know anything nore?'
The slaves had disappeared. I flung myself beside the couch and
kissed the hand she ofered me, pouring out protestations that were no
doubt incoherent, but were nevertheless full of an ardor that made her
smile tenderly. Her hand was cool to my lips, but the touch of it fired
my passion. I ventured to seat myself beside her on the couch, and she
did not deny my familiarity. While a soft purple twilight began to fill
the corners of the chamber, we conversed happily, saying over and over
again all the sweet absurd litanies, all the felicitous nothings that come
instinctively to the lips of lovers. She was incredibly soft in my arms,
and it seemed almost as if the completeness of her yielding was
unhindered by the presence of bones in her lovely body.
The servants entered noiselessly, lighting rich lamps of intricately
carven gold, and setting before us a meal of spicy meats, of unknown
savorous fruits and potent wines. But I could eat little, and while I
drank, I thirsted for the sweeter wine of Nycea's mouth.
I do not know when we fell asleep; but the evening had flown like an
enchanted moment. Heavy with felicity, I drifted off on a silken tide of
drowsiness, and the golden lamps and the face of Nycea blurred in a
blissful mist and were seen no more.
Suddenly, from the depths of a slumber beyond all dreams, I found
myself compelled into full wakefulness. For an instant, I did not even._
realize where I was, still less what had aroused me. Then I heard a
footfall in the open doorway of the room, and peering across the
sleeping head of Nycea, saw in the lamplight the abbot Hilaire, who
had paused on the threshold, A look of absolute horror was imprinted
upon his face, and as he caught sight of me, he began to gibber in
Latin, in tones where something of fear was blended with fanatical
abhorrence and hatred. I saw that he carried in his hands a large bottle
and an aspergillus. I felt sure that the bottle was full of holy water, and
of course divined the use for which it was intended.
Looking at Nycea, I saw that she too was awake, and knew that she
was aware of the abbot's presence. She gave me a strange smile, in
which I read an affectionate pity, mingled with the reassurance that a
woman offers a frightened child.
'Do not fear for me,' she whispered.
'Foul vampire! accursed lamia! she-serpent of hell!' thundered the
abbot suddenly, as he crossed the threshold of the room, raising the
aspergillus aloft. At the same moment, Nycea glided from the couch,
with an unbelievable swiftness of motion, and vanished through an
outer door that gave upon the forest of laurels. Her voice hovered in
my ear, seeming to come from an immense distance:
'Farewell for awhile, Christophe. But have no fear. You shall find
me again if you are brave and patient.'
As the words ended, the holy water from the aspergillus fell on the
floor of the chamber and on the couch where Nycea had lain beside
me. There was a crash as of many thunders, and the golden lamps went
out in a darkness that seemed full of falling dust, of raining fragments. I
lost all consciousness, and when I recovered, I found myself lying on a
heap of rubble in one of the vaults I had traversed earlier in the day.
With a taper in his hand, and an expression of great solicitude, of
infinite pity upon his face, Hilaire was stooping over me. Beside him
lay the bottle and the dripping aspergillus.
'I thank God, my son, that I found you in good time,' he said. 'When
I returned to the abbey this evening and learned that you were gone, I
surmised all that had happened. I knew you had read the accursed
manuscript in my absence, and had fallen under its baleful spell, as
have so many others, even to a certain reverend abbot, one of my
predecessors. All of them, alas! beginning hundreds of years ago with
Gerard de Venteillon, have fallen victims to the lamia who dwells in
these vaults.'
'The lamia?' I questioned, hardly comprehending his words.
'Yes, my son, the beautiful Nycea who lay in your arms this night is
a lamia, an ancient vampire, who maintains in these noisome vaults her. _¢
palace of beatific illusions. How she came to take up her abode at
Faussesflammes is not known, for her coming antedates the memory of
men. She is old as paganism; the Greeks knew her; she was exorcised
by Apollonius of Tyana; and if you could behold her as she really is,
you would see, in lieu of her voluptuous body, the folds of a foul and
monstrous serpent. All those whom she loves and admits to her
hospitality, she devours in the end, after she has drained them of life
and vigor with the diabolic delight of her kisses. The laurel-wooded
plain you saw, the ilex-bordered river, the marble palace and all the
luxury therein, were no more than a satanic delusion, a lovely bubble
that rose from the dust and mold of immemorial death, of ancient
corruption. They crumbled at the kiss of the holy water I brought with
me when I followed you. But Nycea, alas! has escaped, and I fear she
will still survive, to build again her palace of demoniacal enchantments,
to commit again and again the unspeakable abomination of her sins.'
Still in a sort of stupor at the ruin of my new-found happiness, at
the singular revelations made by the abbot, I followed him obediently
as he led the way through the vaults of Faussesflammes. He mounted
the stairway by which I had descended, and as he neared the top and
was forced to stoop a little, the great flagstone swung upward, letting in
a stream of chill moonlight. We emerged; and I permitted him to take
me back to the monastery.
As my brain began to clear, and the confusion into which I had
been thrown resolved itself, a feeling of resentment grew apace Š a
keen anger at the interference of Hilaire. Unheedful whether or not he
had rescued me from dire physical and spiritual perils, I lamented the
beautiful dream of which he had deprived me. The kisses of Nycea
burned softly in my memory, and I knew that whatever she was,
woman or demon or serpent, there was no one in all the world who
could ever arouse in me the same love and the same delight. I took
care, however, to conceal my feellings fron Hilaire, realizing that a
betrayal of such emotions would merely lead him to look upon me as a
soul that was lost beyond redemption.
On the morrow, pleading the urgency of my return home, I
departed from Perigon. Now, in the library of my father's house near
Moulins, I write this account of my adventures. The memory of Nycea
is magically clear, ineffably dear as if she were still beside me, and still I
see the rich draperies of a midnight chamber illumined by lamps of
curiously carven gold, and still I hear the words of her farewell:
'Have no fear. You shall find me again if you are brave and patient.'
Soon I shall return, to visit again the ruins of the Chateau des
Faussesflammes, and redescend into the vaults below the triangular.¡
flagstone. But, in spite of the nearness of Perigon to Faussesflammes, in
spite of my esteem for the abbot, my gratitude for his hospitality and
my admiration for his incomparable library, I shall not care to revisit
my friend Hilaire.
[1930]. _ˆ
The Satyr
RAOUL, COMTE DE LA FRENAIE, was by nature the most unsuspicious
of husbands. His lack of suspicion, perhaps, was partly lack of
imagination; and, for the rest, was doubtless due to the dulling of his
observational faculties by the heavy wines of Averoigne. At any rate, he
had never seen anything amiss in the friendship of his wife, Adele, with
Olivier du Montoir, a young poet who might in time have rivalled
Ronsard as one of the most brilliant luminaries of the Pleiade, if it had
not been for an unforeseen but fatal circumstance. Indeed, M. le
Comte had been rather proud than otherwise, because of the interest
shown in Mme. la Comtesse by this erudite and comely youth, who
had already moistened his lips at the fount of Helicon and was
becoming known throughout other provinces than Averoigne for his
melodious villanelles and graceful ballades. Nor was Raoul disturbed
by the fact that many of these same villanelles and ballades were
patently written in celebration of Adele's visible charms, and made
liberal mention of her wine-dark tresses, her golden eyes, and sundry
other details no less alluring, and equally essential to feminine
perfection. M. le Comte did not pretend to understand poetry: like
many others, he considered it something apart frorn all common sense
or mundane relevancy; and his mental powers became totally paralysed
whenever they were confronted by anything in rhyme and metre. In the
meanwhile, the ballades and their author were gradually waxing in
boldness.
That year, the snows of an austere winter had melted away in a
week of halcyon warmth; and the land was filled with the tender green
and chrysolite and chrysoprase of early spring. Olivier came oftener
and oftener to the chateau de la Frenaie, and he and Adele were often
alone, since they had so much to talk that was beyond the interests or
the comprehension of M. le Comte. And now, sometimes, they walked
abroad in the forest about the chateau the forest that rolled a sea of
vernal verdure almost to the grey walls and barbican, and within whose
sun-warm glades the perfume of the first wild flowers was tingeing
delicately the quiet air. If people gossiped, they did so discreetly and
beyond hearing of Raoul, or of Adele and Olivier..ÿ
All things being as they were, it is hard to know just why M. le
Comte became suddenly troubled concerning the integrity of his
marital honour. Perhaps, in some interim of the hunting and drinking
between which he divided nearly all his time, he had noticed that his
wife was growing younger and fairer and was blooming as a woman
never blooms except to the magical sunlight of love. Perhaps he had
caught some glance of ardent or affectionate understanding between
Adele and Olivier; or, perhaps, it was the infuence of the premature
spring, which had pierced the vinous muddlernent of his brain with an
obscure stirring of forgotten thoughts and emotions, and thus had
given him a flash of insight. At any rate, he was troubled when, on this
afternoon of earliest April, he returned to the chateau from Vyones,
where he had gone on business, and learned from his servitors that
Mme. la Comtesse and Olivier du Montoir had left a few minutes
previously for a promenade in the forest. His dull face, however,
betrayed little. He seemed to reflect for a moment. Then:
'Which way did they go? I have reason to see Mme. la Cormtesse at
once.'
His servants gave him the required direction, and he went out,
following slowly the footpath they had indicated, till he was beyond
sight of the chateau. Then he quickened his pace, and began to finger
the hilt of his rapier as he went on through the thickening woods.
'I am a little afraid, Olivier. Shall we go any farther?'
Adele and Olivier had wandered beyond the limits of their
customary stroll, and were nearing a portion of the forest of Averoigne
where the trees were older and taller than all others. Here, some of the
huge oaks were said to date back to pagan days. Few people ever
passed beneath them; and queer beliefs and legends concerning them
had been prevalent among the local peasantry for ages. Things had
been seen within these precincts, whose very existence was an affront
to science and a blasphemy to religion; and evil influences were said to
attend those who dared to intrude upon the sullen umbrage of the
immemorial glades and thickets. The beliefs varied, and the legends
were far from explicit; but all agreed that the wood was haunted by
some entity inimical to man, some primordial spirit of ill that was
ancienter than Christ or Satan. Panic, madness, demoniac possession,
or baleful, unreasoning passions that led them to doom, were the lot of
all who had trodden the demesnes of this entity. There were those who
whispered what the spirit was, who told incredible tales regarding its
true nature, and described its true aspect; but such tales were not meet
for the ear of devout Christians.. _½
'Prithee, let us go on,' said Olivier. 'Look you, Madame, and see
how the ancient trees have put on the emerald freshness of April, how
innocently they rejoice in the sun's return.'
'But the stories people tell, Olivier.'
'They are stories to frighten children. Let us go on. There is nothing
to harm us here, but much of beauty to enchant.'
Indeed, as he had said, the great-limbed oaks and venerable beeches
were fresh with their new-born foliage. The forest wore an aspect of
blitheness and vertumnal gaiety, and it was hard to believe the old
superstitions and legends. The day was one of those days when hearts
that feel the urgency of an unavowed love are fain to wander
indefinitely. So, after certain feminine demurs, and many reassurances,
Adele allowed Olivier to persuade her, and they ment on.
The feet of anirnals, if not of men, had continued the path they
were following, and had made an easy way into the wood of fabulous
evil. The drooping boughs enfolded them with arms of soft verdure,
and seemed to draw them in; and shafts of yellow sunshine rifted the
high trees, to aureole the lovely secret lilies that bloomed about the
darkly writhing coils of enormous roots. The trees were twisted and
knotted, were heavy with centurial incrustations of bark, were humped
and misshapen with the growth of unremembered years; but there was
an air of antique wisdom about them, together with a tranquil
friendliness. Adele exclaimed with delight; and neither she nor Olivier
was aware of anything sinister or doubtful in the unison of exquisite
beauty and gnarled quaintness which the old forest offered to them.
'Was I not right?' Olivier queried. 'Is there ought to fear in harmless
trees and flowers?'
Adele smiled, but made no other answer. In the circle of bright
sunlight where they were now standing, she and Olivier looked at each
other with a new and pervasive intimacy. There was a strange perfume
on the windless air, coming in slow wafts from an undiscernible source
- a perfume that seemed to speak insidiously of love and langour and
amorous yielding. Neither knew the flower from which it issued, for all
at once there were many unfamiliar blossoms around their feet, with
heavy bells of carnal white or pink, or curled and twining petals, or
hearts like a rosy wound. Looking, they saw each other as in a sudden
dazzle of flame; and each felt a violent quickening of the blood, as if
they had drunk a sovereign philtre. The same thought was manifest in
the bold fervour of Olivier's eyes, and the modest flush upon the cheeks
of Mme. la Comtesse. The long-cherished love, which neither had
openly declared up to this hour, was clamouring importunately in the._
veins of both. They resumed their onward walk; and both were now
silent through the self-same feeling of embarrassment and constraint.
They dared not look at each other; and neither of them had eyes for
the changing character of the wood through which they wandered; and
neither saw the foul, obscene deformity of the grey boles that gathered
on each hand, or the shameful and monstrous fungi that reared their
spotted pallor in the shade, or the red, venerous flowers that flaunted
themselves in the sun. The spell of their desire was upon the lovers;
they were drugged with the mandragora of passion; and everything
beyond their own bodies, their own hearts, the throbbing of their own
delirious blood, was vaguer than a dream.
The wood grew thicker and the arching boughs above were a weft
of manifold gloom. The eyes of ferine animals peered from their
hidden burrows, with gleams of crafty crimson or chill, ferocious beryl;
and the dank smell of stagnant waters, choked with the leaves of
bygone autumn, arose to greet Adele and Olivier, and to break a' little
the perilous charm that possessed them.
They paused on the edge of a rock-encircled pool, above which the
ancient alders twined their decaying tops, as if to maintain forever the
mad posture of a superannuate frenzy. And there, between the nether
boughs of the alders in a frame of new leaves, they saw the face that
leered upon them.
The apparition was incredible; and, for the space of a long breath,
they could not believe they had really seen it. There were two horns in
a matted mass of coarse, animal-like hair above the semi-human face
with its obliquely slitted eyes and fang-revealing mouth and beard of
wild-boar bristles. The face was old - incomputably old; and its lines
and wrinkles were those of unreckoned years of lust; and its look was
filled with the slow, unceasing increment of all the malignity and
corruption and cruelty of elder ages. It was the face of Pan, as he glared
from his, secret wood upon travellers taken unaware.
Adele and Olivier were seized by a nightmare terror, as they:
recalled the old legends. The charm of their passionate obsession was
broken, and the drug of desire relinquished its hold on their senses.
Like people awakened from a heavy sleep, they saw thc face, and heard
through the tumult of their blood the cachinnation of a wild and evil
and panic laughter, as the apparition vanished among the boughs.
Shuddering, Adele flung herself for the first time into the arms of
her lover.
'Did you see it?' she whispered, as she clung to him.
0livier drew her close. In that delicious nearness, the horrible thing
he had seen and heard became somehow improbable and unreal. There. __
must have been a double sorcery abroad, to lull his horror thus; but he
knew not whether the thing had been a momentary hallucination, a
fantasy wrought by the sun amid the alder-leaves, or the demon that
was fabled to dwell in Averoigne; and the startlement he had felt was
somehow without meaning or reason. He could even thank the
apparition, whatever it was, because it had thrown Adele into his
embrace. He could think of nothing now but the proximity of that
warm, delectable mouth, for which he had hungered so long. He began
to reassure her, to make light of her fears, to pretend that she could
have seen nothing; and his reassurances merged into ardent
protestations of love. He kissed her... and they both forgot the vision of
the satyr....
They were lying on a gatch of golden moss, where the sunrays fell
through a single cleft in the high foliage, when Raoul found them. They
did not see or hear him, as he paused and stood with drawn rapier
before the vision of their unlawful happiness.
He was about to fling himself upon them and impale the two with a
single thrust where they lay, when an unlooked-for and scarce
conceivable thing occurred. With swiftness veritably supernatural, a
brown hairy creature, a being that was not wholly man, not wholly
animal, but some hellish mixture of both, sprang from amid the alder
branches and snatched Adele from Olivier's embrace. Olivier and
Raoul saw it only in one fleeting glimpse, and neither could have
described it clearly afterwards. But the face was that which had leered
upon the lovers from the foliage; and the shaggy' legs and body were
those of a creature of antique legend. It disappeared as incredibly as it
had come, bearing the woman in its arms; and her shrieks of terror
were surmounted by the pealing of its mad, diabolical laughter.
The shrieks and laughter died away at some distant remove in the
green silence of the forest, and were not followed by any other sound.
Raoul and Olivier could only stare at each other in complete
stupefaction.
[1931]._
Variant Conclusion to
"The Satyr"
[Clark Ashton Smith completed "The Satyr", his second story set in the
milieu of Averoigne, in the early spring of 1930. Manuscript materials
preserved in Brown University's Smith Papers Collection demonstrate
that Smith had first envisioned a conclusion for this tale that differs
from the final published version. This earlier variant conclusion is
reprinted below, and replaces the last three paragraphs of the published
story (Genius Loci).
It is not known whether Smith rethought his original conclusion
with an eye towards the story's saleability, in view of the sexual nature
of the final scene. - Steve Behrends]
From: The Dark Eidolon 3, 1993, Necronomicon Press.
THEY WERE LYING coupled on a bed of golden moss, where the
sunrays fell through a cleft in the high foliage, when Raoul fond them.
They did not see or hear him; and their first intimation of his corning,
as well as their last, was the rapier which he drove through Olivier's
body till it pierced the bosom of Adele.
Adele screamed and twisted the corpse of Olivier moved in limp
unison with her twisting. Raoul drew the rapier out and made sure of
the woman with a second thrust. Then, with a vague feeling that he had
avenged his fashion, and a sense of dull, unhappy confusion, of
muddled and bleary wonder as to what it was all about, he stood
looking down at his victims.. __
They were both very quiet now, as beseems a couple who have been
slain in open adultery. And there was no movement, no sign of life, in
the lonely forest where so few people ever came. Therefore, M. Le
Comte was startled beyond all measure when he heard the wild,
malign, unhuman and diabolical cachinnation witch issued from the
alder boughs.
He raised his bloody rapier, and peered at the boughs, but he could
see nothing. The laughter ceased, and was not followed by any other
sound. He crossed himself, and began hurriedly to retrace the path by
which he had entered the wood.._
A Rendezvous in
Averoigne
GERARD DE L'AUTOMNE was meditating the rimes of a new ballade in
honor of Fleurette, as he followed the leaf-arrased pathway toward
Vyones through the woodland of Averoigne. Since he was on his way
to meet Fleurette, who had promised to keep a rendezvous among the
oaks and beeches like any peasant girl, Gerard himself made better
progress than the ballade. His love was at that stage which, even for a
professional troubadour, is more productive of distraction than
inspiration; and he was recurrently absorbed in a meditation upon
other than merely verbal felicities.
The grass and trees had assumed the fresh enamel of a mediaeval
May; the turf was figured with little blossoms of azure and white and
yellow, like an ornate broidery; and there was a pebbly stream that
murmured beside the way, as if the voices of undines were parleying
deliciously beneath its waters. The sun-lulled air was laden with a
wafture of youth and romance; and the longing that welled from the
heart of Gerard seemed to mingle mystically with the balsams of the
wood.
Gerard was a trouvere whose scant years and many wanderings had
brought him a certain renown. After the fashion of his kind he had
roamed from court to court, from chateau to chateau; and he was now
the guest of the Comte de la Frenaie, whose high castle held dominion
over half the surrounding forest. Visiting one day that quaint cathedral
town, Vyones, which lies so near to the ancient wood of Averoigne,
Gerard had seen Fleurette, the daughter of a well-to-do mercer named
Guillaume Cochin; and had become more sincerely enamored of her
blonde piquancy than was to be expected from one who had been so
frequently susceptible in such matters. He had managed to make his
feelings known to her; and, after a month of billets-doux, ballades, and
stolen interviews contrived by the help of a complaisant waiting-
woman, she had made this woodland tryst with him in the absence of
her father from Vyones. Accompanied by her maid and a man-servant,. _¢
she was to leave the town early that afternoon and meet Gerard under a
certain beech-tree of enormous age and size. The servants would then
withdraw discreetly; and the lovers, to all intents and purposes, would
be alone. It was not likely that they would be seen or interrupted; for
the gnarled and immemorial wood possessed an ill repute among the
peasantry. Somewhere in this wood there was the ruinous and haunted
Chateau des Faussesflammes; and, also, there was a double tomb,
within which the Sieur Hugh du Malinbois and his chatelaine, who
were notorious for sorcery in their time, had lain unconsecrated for
more than two hundred years. Of these, and their phantoms, there were
grisly tales; and there were stories of loup-garous and goblins, of fays
and devils and vampires that infested Averoigne. But to these tales
Gerard had given little heed, considering it improbable that such
creatures would fare abroad in open daylight. The madcap Fleurette
had professed herself unafraid also; but it had been necessary to
promise the servants a substantial pourboire, since they shared fully the
local superstitions.
Gerard had wholly forgotten the legendry of Averoigne, as he
hastened along the sun-flecked path. He was nearing the appointed
beech-tree, which a turn of the path would soon reveal; and his pulses
quickened and became tremulous, as he wondered if Fleurette had
already reached the trysting-place. He abandoned all effort to continue
his ballade, which, in the three miles he had walked from La Frenaie,
had not progressed beyond the middle of a tentative first stanza.
His thoughts were such as would befit an ardent and impatient
lover. They were now interrupted by a shrill scream that rose to an
unendurable pitch of fear and horror, issuing from the green stillness of
the pines beside the way. Startled, he peered at the thick branches; and
as the scream fell back to silence, he heard the sound of dull and
hurrying footfalls, and a scuffling as of several bodies. Again the
scream arose. It was plainly the voice of a woman in some distressful
peril. Loosening his dagger in its sheath, and clutching more firmly a
long hornbeam staff which he had brought with him as a protection
against the vipers which were said to lurk in Averoigne, he plunged
without hesitation or premeditation among the low-hanging boughs
from which the voice had seemed to emerge.
In a small open space beyond the trees, he saw a woman who was
struggling with three ruffians of exceptionally brutal and evil aspect.
Even in the haste and vehemence of the moment, Gerard realized that
he had never before seen such men or such a woman. The woman was
clad in a gown of emerald green that matched her eyes; in her face was
the pallor of dead things, together with a faery beauty; and her lips.¡
were dyed as with the scarlet of newly flowing blood. The men were
dark as Moors, and their eyes were red slits of flame beneath oblique
brows with animal-like bristles. There was something very peculiar in
the shape of their feet; but Gerard did not realize the exact nature of
the peculiarity till long afterwards. Then he remembered that all of
them were seemingly club-footed, though they were able to move with
surpassing agility. Somehow, he could never recall what sort of clothing
they had worn.
The woman turned a beseeching gaze upon Gerard as he sprang
forth from amid the boughs. The men, however, did not seem to heed
his coming; though one of them caught in a hairy clutch the hands
which the woman sought to reach toward her rescuer.
Lifting his staff, Gerard rushed upon the ruffians. He struck a
tremendous blow at the head of the nearest one a blow that should have
levelled the fellow to earth. But the staff came down on unresisting air,
and Gerard staggered and almost fell headlong in trying to recover his
equilibrium. Dazed and uncomprehending, he saw that the knot of
struggling figures had vanished utterly. At least, the three men had
vanished; but from the middle branches of a tall pine beyond the open
space, the death-white features of the woman smiled upon him for a
moment with faint, inscrutable guile ere they melted among the
needles.
Gerard understood now; and he shivered as he crossed himself. He
had been deluded by phantoms or demons, doubtless for no good
purpose; he had been the gull of a questionable enchantment. Plainly
there was something after all in the legends he had heard, in the ill-
renown of the forest of Averoigne.
He retraced his way toward the path he had been following. But
when he thought to reach again the spot from which he had heard that
shrill unearthly scream, he saw that there was no longer a path; nor,
indeed, any feature of the forest which he could remember or
recognize. The foliage about him no longer displayed a brilliant
verdure; it was sad and funereal, and the trees themselves were either
cypress-like, or were already sere with autumn or decay. In lieu of the
purling brook there lay before him a tarn of waters that were dark and
dull as clotting blood, and which gave back no reflection of the brown
autumnal sedges that trailed therein like the hair of suicides, and the
skeletons of rotting osiers that writhed above them.
Now, beyond all question, Gerard knew that he was the victim of an
evil enchantment. In answering that beguileful cry for succor, he had
exposed himself to the spell, had been lured within the circle of its
power. He could not know what forces of wizardry or demonry had. _ˆ
willed to draw him thus; but he knew that his situation was fraught with
supernatural menace. He gripped the hornbeam staff more tightly in
his hand, and prayed to all the saints he could remember, as he peered
about for some tangible bodily presence of ill.
The scene was utterly desolate and lifeless, like a place where
cadavers might keep their tryst with demons. Nothing stirred, not even
a dead leaf; and there was no whisper of dry grass or foliage, no song of
birds nor murmuring of bees, no sigh nor chuckle of water. The
corpse-grey heavens above seemed never to have held a sun; and the
chill, unchanging light was without source or destination, without
beams or shadows.
Gerard surveyed his environment with a cautious eye; and the more
he looked the less he liked it: for some new and disagreeable detail was
manifest at every glance. There were moving lights in the wood that
vanished if he eyed them intently; there were drowned faces in the tarn
that came and went like livid bubbles before he could discern their
features. And, peering across the lake, he wondered why he had not
seen the many-turreted castle of hoary stone whose nearer walls were
based in the dead waters. It was so grey and still and vasty, that it
seemed to have stood for incomputable ages between the stagnant tarn
and the equally stagnant heavens. It was ancienter than the world, it
was older than the light: it was coeval with fear and darkness; and a
horror dwelt upon it and crept unseen but palpable along its bastions.
There was no sign of life about the castle; and no banners flew
above its turrets or its donjon. But Gerard knew, as surely as if a voice
had spoken aloud to warn him, that here was the fountainhead of the
sorcery by which he had been beguiled. A growing panic whispered in
his brain, he seemed to hear the rustle of malignant plumes, the mutter
of demonian threats and plottings. He turned, and fled among the
funereal trees.
Amid his dismay and wilderment, even as he fled, he thought of
Fleurette and wondered if she were awaiting him at their place of
rendezvous, or if she and her companions had also been enticed and
led astray in a realm of damnable unrealities. He renewed his prayers,
and implored the saints for her safety as well as his own.
The forest through which he ran was a maze of bafflement and
eeriness. There were no landmarks, there were no tracks of animals or
men; and the swart cypresses and sere autumnal trees grew thicker and
thicker as if some malevolent will were marshalling them against his
progress. The boughs were like implacable arms that strove to retard
him; he could have sworn that he felt them twine about him with the
strength and suppleness of living things. He fought them, insanely,.ÿ
desperately, and seemed to hear a crackling of infernal laughter in their
twigs as he fought. At last, with a sob of relief, he broke through into a
sort of trail. Along this trail, in the mad hope of eventual escape, he ran
like one whom a fiend pursues; and after a short interval he came again
to the shores of the tarn, above whose motionless waters the high and
hoary turrets of that time-forgotten castle were still dominant. Again he
turned and fled; and once more, after similar wanderings and like
struggles, he came back to the inevitable tarn.
With a leaden sinking of his heart, as into some ultimate slough of
despair and terror, he resigned himself and made no further effort to
escape. His very will was benumbed, was crushed down as by the
incumbence of a superior volition that would no longer permit his puny
recalcitrance. He was unable to resist when a strong and hateful
compulsion drew his footsteps along the margent of the tarn toward the
looming castle.
When he came nearer, he saw that the edifice was surrounded by a
moat whose waters were stagnant as those of the lake, and were
mantled with the iridescent scum of corruption. The drawbridge was
down and the gates were open, as if to receive an expected guest. But
still there was no sign of human occupancy; and the walls of the great
grey building were silent as those of a sepulcher. And more tomb-like
even than the rest was the square and over-towering bulk of the mighty
donjon.
Impelled by the same power that had drawn him along the
lakeshore, Gerard crossed the drawbridge and passed beneath the
frowning barbican into a vacant courtyard. Barred windows looked
blankly down; and at the opposite end of the court a door stood
mysteriously open, revealing a dark hall. As he approached the
doorway, he saw that a man was standing on the threshold; though a
moment previous he could have sworn that it was untenanted by any
visible form.
Gerard had retained his hornbeam staff; and though his reason told
him that such a weapon was futile against any supernatural foe, some
obscure instinct prompted him to clasp it valiantly as he neared the
waiting figure on the sill.
The man was inordinately tall and cadaverous, and was dressed in
black garments of a superannuate mode. His lips were strangely red,
amid his bluish beard and the mortuary whiteness of his face. They
were like the lips of the woman who, with her assailants, had
disappeared in a manner so dubious when Gerard had approached
them. His eyes were pale and luminous as marsh-lights; and Gerard
shuddered at his gaze and at the cold, ironic smile of his scarlet lips,. _½
that seemed to reserve a world of secrets all too dreadful and hideous to
be disclosed.
"I am the Sieur du Malinbois," the man announced. His tones were
both unctuous and hollow, and served to increase the repugnance felt
by the young troubadour. And when his lips parted, Gerard had a
glimpse of teeth that were unnaturally small and were pointed like the
fangs of some fierce animal.
"Fortune has willed that you should become my guest," the man
went on. "The hospitality which I can proffer you is rough and
inadequate, and it may be that you will find my abode a trifle dismal.
But at least I can assure you of a welcome no less ready than sincere."
"I thank you for your kind offer," said Gerard. "But I have an
appointment with a friend; and I seem in some unaccountable manner
to have lost my way. I should be profoundly grateful if you would
direct me toward Vyones. There should be a path not far from here;
and I have been so stupid as to stray from it."
The words rang empty and hopeless in his own ears even as he
uttered them; and the name that his strange host had given the Sieur du
Malinbois was haunting his mind like the funereal accents of a knell;
though he could not recall at that moment the macabre and spectral
ideas which the name tended to evoke,
"Unfortunately, there are no paths from my chateau to Vyones," the
stranger replied. "As for your rendezvous, it will be kept in another
manner, at another place, than the one appointed. I must therefore
insist that you accept my hospitality. Enter, I pray; but leave your
hornbeam staff at the door. You will have no need of it any longer."
Gerard thought that he made a moue of distaste and aversion with
his over-red lips as he spoke the last sentences; and that his eyes
lingered on the staff with an obscure apprehensiveness. And the strange
emphasis of his words and demeanor served to awaken other
phantasmal and macabre thoughts in Gerard's brain; though he could
not formulate them fully till afterwards. And somehow he was
prompted to retain the weapon, no matter how useless it might be
against an enemy of spectral or diabolic nature. So he said:
"I must crave your indulgence if I retain the staff. I have made a
vow to carry it with me, in my right hand or never beyond arm's reach,
till I have slain two vipers."
"That is a queer vow," rejoined his host. "However, bring it with you
if you like. It is of no matter to me if you choose to encumber yourself
with a wooden stick,"
He turned abruptly, motioning Gerard to follow him. The
troubadour obeyed unwillingly, with one rearward glance at the vacant._
heavens and the empty courtyard. He saw with no great surprise that a
sudden and furtive darkness had closed in upon the chateau without
moon or star, as if it had been merely waiting for him to enter before it
descended. It was thick as the folds of a serecloth, it was airless and
stifling like the gloom of a sepulcher that has been sealed for ages; and
Gerard was aware of a veritable oppression, a corporeal and psychic
difficulty in breathing, as he crossed the threshold.
He saw that cressets were now burning in the dim hall to which his
host had admitted him; though he had not perceived the time and
agency of their lighting. The illumination they afforded was singularly
vague and indistinct, and the thronging shadows of the hall were
unexplainably numerous, and moved with a mysterious disquiet;
though the flames themselves were still as tapers that burn for the dead
in a windless vault.
At the end of the passage, the Sieur du Malinbois flung open a
heavy door of dark and somber wood. Beyond, in what was plainly the
eating-room of the chateau, several people were seated about a long
table by the light of cressets no less dreary and dismal than those in the
hall. In the strange, uncertain glow, their faces were touched with a
gloomy dubiety, with a lurid distortion; and it seemed to Gerard that
shadows hardly distinguishable from the figures were gathered around
the board. But nevertheless he recognized the woman in emerald green
who had vanished in so doubtful a fashion amid the pines when Gerard
answered her call for succor. At one side, looking very pale and forlorn
and frightened, was Fleurette Cochin. At the lower end reserved for
retainers and inferiors, there sat the maid and the man-servant who had
accompanied Fleurette to her rendezvous with Gerard.
The Sieur du Malinbois turned to the troubadour with a smile of
sardonic amusement.
"I believe you have already met everyone assembled," he observed.
"But you have not yet been formally presented to my wife, Agathe, who
is presiding over the board. Agathe, I bring to you Gerard de
l'Automne, a young troubadour of much note and merit."
The woman nodded slightly, without speaking, and pointed to a
chair opposite Fleurette. Gerard seated himself, and the Sieur du
Malinbois assumed according to feudal custom a place at the head of
the table beside his wife.
Now, for the first time, Gerard noticed that there were servitors
who came and went in the room, setting upon the table various wines
and viands. The servitors were preternaturally swift and noiseless, and
somehow it was very difficult to be sure of their precise features or their
costumes. They seemed to walk in an adumbration of sinister insoluble. __
twilight. But the troubadour was disturbed by a feeling that they
resembled the swart demoniac ruffians who had disappeared together
with the woman in green when he approached them.
The meal that ensued was a weird and funereal affair. A sense of
insuperable constraint, of smothering horror and hideous oppression,
was upon Gerard; and though he wanted to ask Fleurette a hundred
questions, and also demand an explanation of sundry matters from his
host and hostess, he was totally unable to frame the words or to utter
them. He could only look at Fleurette, and read in her eyes a
duplication of his own helpless bewilderment and nightmare thralldom.
Nothing was said by the Sieur du Malinbois and his lady, who were
exchanging glances of a secret and baleful intelligence all through the
meal; and Fleurette's maid and man-servant were obviously paralyzed
by terror, like birds beneath the hypnotic gaze of deadly serpents.
The foods were rich and of strange savor; and the wines were
fabulously old, and seemed to retain in their topaz or violet depths the
unextinguished fire of buried centuries. But Gerard and Fleurette could
barely touch them; and they saw that the Sieur du Malinbois and his
lady did not eat or drink at all. The gloom of the chamber deepened;
the servitors became more furtive and spectral in their movements; the
stifling air was laden with unformulable menace, was constrained by
the spell of a black and lethal necromancy. Above the aromas of the
rare foods, the bouquets of the antique wines, there crept forth the
choking mustiness of hidden vaults and embalmed centurial
corruption, together with the ghostly spice of a strange perfume that
seemed to emanate from the person of the chatelaine. And now Gerard
was remembering many tales from the legendry of Averoigne, which he
had heard and disregarded; was recalling the story of a Sieur du
Malinbois and his lady, the last of the name and the most evil, who had
been buried somewhere in this forest hundreds of years ago; and whose
tomb was shunned by the peasantry, since they were said to continue
their sorceries even in death. He wondered what influence had
bedrugged his memory, that he had not recalled it wholly when he had
first heard the name. And he was remembering other things and other
stories, all of which confirmed his instinctive belief regarding the nature
of the people into whose hands he had fallen. Also, he recalled a
folklore superstition concerning the use to which a wooden stake can be
put; and realized why the Sieur du Malinbois had shown a peculiar
interest in the hornbeam staff. Gerard had laid the staff beside his chair
when he sat down; and he was reassured to find that it had not
vanished. Very quietly and unobtrusively, he placed his foot upon it.._
The uncanny meal came to an end; and the host and his chatelaine
arose.
"I shall now conduct you to your rooms," said the Sieur du
Malinbois, including all of his guests in a dark, inscrutable glance.
"Each of you can have a separate chamber, if you so desire; or
Fleurette Cochin and her maid Angelique can remain together; and the
man-servant Raoul can sleep in the same room with Messire Gerard."
A preference for the latter procedure was voiced by Fleurette and
the troubadour. The thought of uncompanioned solitude in that castle
of timeless midnight and nameless mystery was abhorrent to an
insupportable degree.
The four were now led to their respective chambers, on opposite
sides of a hall whose length was but indeterminately revealed by the
dismal lights. Fleurette and Gerard bade each other a dismayed and
reluctant good-night beneath the constraining eye of their host. Their
rendezvous was hardly the one which they had thought to keep; and
both were overwhelmed by the supernatural situation amid whose
dubious horrors and ineluctable sorceries they had somehow become
involved. And no sooner had Gerard left Fleurette than he began to
curse himself for a poltroon because he had not refused to part from
her side; and he marvelled at the spell of drug-like involition that had
bedrowsed all his faculties. It seemed that his will was not his own, but
had been thrust down and throttled by an alien power.
The room assigned to Gerard and Raoul was furnished with a
couch, and a great bed whose curtains were of antique fashion and
fabric. It was lighted with tapers that had a funereal suggestion in their
form, and which burned dully in an air that was stagnant with the
mustiness of dead years.
"May you sleep soundly," said the Sieur du Malinbois. The smile
that accompanied and followed the words was no less unpleasant than
the oily and sepulchral tone in which they were uttered. The
troubadour and the servant were conscious of profound relief when he
went out and closed the leaden-clanging door. And their relief was
hardly diminished even when they heard the click of a key in the lock.
Gerard was now inspecting the room; and he went to the one
window, through whose small and deep-set panes he could see only the
pressing darkness of a night that was veritably solid, as if the whole
place were buried beneath the earth and were closed in by clinging
mould. Then, with an access of unsmothered rage at his separation
from Fleurette, he ran to the door and hurled himself against it, he beat
upon it with his clenched fists, but in vain. Realizing his folly, and
desisting at last, he turned to Raoul.. __
"Well, Raoul," he said, "what do you think of all this?" Raoul crossed
himself before he answered; and his face had assumed the vizard of a
mortal fear.
"I think, Messire," he finally replied, "that we have all been decoyed
by a malefic sorcery; and that you, myself, the demoiselle Fleurette, and
the maid Angelique, are all in deadly peril of both soul and body."
"That, also, is my thought," said Gerard. "And I believe it would be
well that you and I should sleep only by turns; and that he who keeps
vigil should retain in his hands my hornbeam staff, whose end I shall
now sharpen with my dagger. I am sure that you know the manner in
which it should be employed if there are any intruders; for if such
should come, there would be no doubt as to their character and their
intentions. We are in a castle which has no legitimate existence, as the
guests of people who have been dead, or supposedly dead, for more
than two hundred years. And such people, when they stir abroad, are
prone to habits which I need not specify."
"Yes, Messire," Raoul shuddered; but he watched the sharpening of
the staff with considerable interest. Gerard whittled the hard wood to a
lance-like point, and hid the shavings carefully. He even carved the
outline of a little cross near the middle of the staff, thinking that this
might increase its efficacy or save it from molestation. Then, with the
staff in his hand, he sat down upon the bed, where he could survey the
litten room from between the curtains.
"You can sleep first, Raoul." He indicated the couch, which was
near the door.
The two conversed in a fitful manner for some minutes. After
hearing Raoul's tale of how Fleurette, Angelique, and himself had been
led astray by the sobbing of a woman amid the pines, and had been
unable to retrace their way, the troubadour changed the theme. And
henceforth he spoke idly and of matters remote from his real
preoccupations, to fight down his torturing concern for the safety o f
Fleurette. Suddenly he became aware that Raoul had ceased to reply;
and saw that the servant had fallen asleep on the couch. At the same
time an irresistible drowsiness surged upon Gerard himself in spite of
all his volition, in spite of the eldritch terrors and forebodings that still
murmured in his brain. He heard through his growing hebetude a
whisper as of shadowy wings in the castle halls; he caught the sibilation
of ominous voices, like those of familiars that respond to the
summoning of wizards; and he seemed to hear, even in the vaults and
towers and remote chambers, the tread of feet that were hurrying on
malign and secret errands. But oblivion was around him like the._
meshes of a sable net; and it closed in relentlessly upon his troubled
mind, and drowned the alarms of his agitated senses.
When Gerard awoke at length, the tapers had burned to their
sockets; and a sad and sunless daylight was filtering through the
window. The staff was still in his hand; and though his senses were still
dull with the strange slumber that had drugged them, he felt that he
was unharmed. But peering between the curtains, he saw that Raoul
was lying mortally pale and lifeless on the couch, with the air and look
of an exhausted moribund.
He crossed the room, and stooped above the servant. There was a
small red wound on Raoul's neck; and his pulses were slow and feeble,
like those of one who has lost a great amount of blood. His very
appearance was withered and vein-drawn. And a phantom spice arose
from the couch a lingering wraith of the perfume worn by the
chatelaine Agathe.
Gerard succeeded at last in arousing the man; but Raoul was very
weak and drowsy. He could remember nothing of what had happened
during the night; and his horror was pitiful to behold when he realized
the truth.
"It will be your turn next, Messire," he cried. "These vampires mean
to hold us here amid their unhallowed necromancies till they have
drained us of our last drop of blood. Their spells are like mandragora
or the sleepy sirups of Cathay; and no man can keep awake in their
despite."
Gerard was trying the door; and somewhat to his surprise he found
it unlocked. The departing vampire had been careless, in the lethargy
of her repletion. The castle was very still; and it seemed to Gerard that
the animating spirit of evil was now quiescent; that the shadowy wings
of horror and malignity, the feet that had sped on baleful errands, the
summoning sorcerers, the responding familiars, were all lulled in a
temporary slumber.
He opened the door, he tiptoed along the deserted hall, and knocked
at the portal of the chamber allotted to Fleurette and her maid.
Fleurette, fully dressed, answered his knock immediately; and he
caught her in his arms without a word, searching her wan face with a
tender anxiety. Over her shoulder he could see the maid Angelique,
who was sitting listlessly on the bed with a mark on her white neck
similar to the wound that had been suffered by Raoul. He knew, even
before Fleurette began to speak, that the nocturnal experiences of the
demoiselle and her maid had been identical with those of himself and
the man-servant.. _¢
While he tried to comfort Fleurette and reassure her, his thoughts
were now busy with a rather curious problem. No one was abroad in
the castle; and it was more than probable that the Sieur du Malinbois
and his lady were both asleep after the nocturnal feast which they had
undoubtedly enjoyed. Gerard pictured to himself the place and the
fashion of their slumber; and he grew even more reflective as certain
possibilities occurred to him.
"Be of good cheer, sweetheart," he said to Fleurette. "It is in my
mind that we may soon escape from this abominable mesh of
enchantments. But I must leave you for a little and speak again with
Raoul, whose help I shall require in a certain matter."
He went back to his own chamber. The man-servant was sitting on
the couch and was crossing himself feebly and muttering prayers with a
faint, hollow voice.
"Raoul," said the troubadour a little sternly, "you must gather all
your strength and come with me. Amid the gloomy walls that surround
us, the somber ancient halls, the high towers and the heavy bastions,
there is but one thing that veritably exists; and all the rest is a fabric of
illusion. We must find the reality whereof I speak, and deal with it like
true and valiant Christians. Come, we will now search the castle ere the
lord and chatelaine shall awaken from their vampire lethargy."
He led the way along the devious corridors with a swiftness that
betokened much forethought. He had reconstructed in his mind the
hoary pile of battlements and turrets as he had seen them on the
previous day; and he felt that the great donjon, being the center and
stronghold of the edifice, might well be the place which he sought.
With the sharpened staff in his hand, with Raoul lagging bloodlessly at
his heels, he passed the doors of many secret rooms, the many windows
that gave on the blindness of an inner court, and came at last to the
lower story of the donjon-keep.
It was a large, bare room, entirely built of stone, and illumined only
by narrow slits high up in the wall, that had been designed for the use
of archers. The place was very dim; but Gerard could see the
glimmering outlines of an object not ordinarily to be looked for in such
a situation, that arose from the middle of the floor. It was a tomb of
marble; and stepping nearer, he saw that it was strangely weather-worn
and was blotched by lichens of grey and yellow, such as flourish only
within access of the sun. The slab that covered it was doubly broad and
massive, and would require the full strength of two men to lift.
Raoul was staring stupidly at the tomb. "What now, Messire?" he
queried..¡
"You and I, Raoul, are about to intrude upon the bedchamber of
our host and hostess."
At his direction, Raoul seized one end of the slab; and he himself
took the other. With a mighty effort that strained their bones and
sinews to the cracking-point, they sought to remove it; but the slab
hardly stirred. At length, by grasping the same end in unison, they were
able to tilt the slab; and it slid away and dropped to the floor with a
thunderous crash. Within, there were two open coffins, one of which
contained the Sieur Hugh du Malinbois and the other his lady Agathe.
Both of them appeared to be slumbering peacefully as infants; a look of
tranquil evil, of pacified malignity, was imprinted upon their features;
and their lips were dyed with a fresher scarlet than before.
Without hesitation or delay, Gerard plunged the lance-like end of
his staff into the bosom of the Sieur du Malinbois. The body crumbled
as if it were wrought of ashes kneaded and painted to human
semblance; and a slight odor as of age-old corruption arose to the
nostrils of Gerard. Then the troubadour pierced in like manner the
bosom of the chatelaine. And simultaneously with her dissolution, the
walls and floor of the donjon seemed to dissolve like a sullen vapor,
they rolled away on every side with a shock as of unheard thunder.
With a sense of weird vertigo and confusion Gerard and Raoul saw that
the whole chateau had vanished like the towers and battlements of a
bygone storm; that the dead lake and its rotting shores no longer
offered their malefical illusions to the eye. They were standing in a
forest glade, in the full unshadowed light of the afternoon sun; and all
that remained of the dismal castle was the lichen-mantled tomb that
stood open beside them. Fleurette and her maid were a little distance
away; and Gerard ran to the mercer's daughter and took her in his
arms. She was dazed with wonderment, like one who emerges from the
night-long labyrinth of an evil dream, and finds that all is well.
"I think, sweetheart," said Gerard, "that our next rendezvous will not
be interrupted by the Sieur du Malinbois and his chatelaine."
But Fleurette was still bemused with wonder, and could only respond
to his words with a kiss.
[1931]. _ˆ
The Maker of Gargoyles
AMONG THE MANY gargoyles that frowned or leered from the roof of
the new-built cathedral of Vyones, two were pre-eminent above the rest
by virtue of their fine workmanship and their supreme grotesquery.
These two had been wrought by the stone-carver Blaise Reynard, a
native of Vyones, who had lately returned from a long sojourn in the
cities of Provence, and had secured employment on the cathedral when
the three years' task of its construction and ornamentation was well-
nigh completed. In view of the wonderful artistry shown by Reynard, it
was regretted by Ambrosius, the archbishop, that it had not been
possible to commit the execution of all the gargoyles to this delicate and
accomplished workman; but other people, with less liberal tastes than
Ambrosius, were heard to express a different opinion.
This opinion, perhaps, was tinged by the personal dislike that had
been generally felt toward Reynard in Vyones even from his boyhood;
and which had been revived with some virulence on his return.
Whether rightly or unjustly, his very physiognomy had always marked
him out for public disfavor: he was inordinately dark, with hair and
beard of a preternatural bluish-black, and slanting, ill-matched eyes
that gave him a sinister and cunning air. His taciturn and saturnine
ways were such as a superstitious people would identify with
necromantic knowledge or complicity; and there were those who
covertly accused him of being in league with Satan; though the
accusations were little more than vague, anonymous rumors, even to
the end, through lack of veritable evidence.
However, the people who suspected Reynard of diabolic affiliations
were wont for awhile to instance the two gargoyles as sufficient proof.
No man, they contended, who was so inspired by the Arch-Enemy,
could have carven anything so sheerly evil and malignant, could have
embodied so consummately in mere stone the living lineaments of the
most demoniacal of all the deadly Sins.
The two gargoyles were perched on opposite corners of a high
tower of the cathedral. One was a snarling, murderous, cat-headed
monster, with retracted lips revealing formidable fangs, and eyes that
glared intolerable hatred from beneath ferine brows. This creature had.ÿ
the claws and wings of a griffin, and seemed as if it were poised in
readiness to swoop down on the city of Vyones, like a harpy on its prey.
Its companion was a horned satyr, with the vans of some great bat such
as might roam the nether caverns, with sharp, clenching talons, and a
look of Satanically brooding lust, as if it were gloating above the
helpless object of its unclean desire. Both figures were complete, even
to the hindquarters, and were not mere conventional adjuncts of the
roof. One would have expected them to start at any moment from the
stone in which they were mortised.
Ambrosius, a lover of art, had been openly delighted with these
creations, because of their high technical merit and their verisimilitude
as works of sculpture. But others, including many humbler dignitaries
of the Church, were more or less scandalized, and said that the
workman had informed these figures with the visible likeness of his own
vices, to the glory of Belial rather than of God, and had thus
perpetrated a sort of blasphemy. Of course, they admitted, a certain
amount of grotesquery was requisite in gargoyles; but in this case the
allowable bounds had been egregiously overpassed.
However, with the completion of the cathedral, and in spite of all
this adverse criticism, the high-poised gargoyles of Blaise Reynard, like
all other details of the building, were soon taken for granted through
mere everyday familiarity; and eventually they were almost forgotten.
The scandal of opposition died down, and the stone-carver himself,
though the town-folk continued to eye him askance, was able to secure
other work through the favor of discriminating patrons. He remained in
Vyones; and paid his addresses, albeit without visible success, to a
taverner's daughter, one Nicolette Villom, of whom, it was said, he had
long been enamored in his own surly and reticent fashion.
But Reynard himself had not forgotten the gargoyles. Often, in
passing the superb pile of the cathedral, he would gaze up at them with
a secret satisfaction whose cause he could hardly have assigned or
delimited. They seemed to retain for him a rare and mystical meaning,
to signalize an obscure but pleasurable triumph.
He would have said, if asked for the reason for his satisfaction, that
he was proud of a skilful piece of handiwork. He would not have said,
and perhaps would not even have known, that in one of the gargoyles
he had imprisoned all his festering rancor, all his answering spleen and
hatred toward the people of Vyones, who had always hated him; and
had set the image of this rancor to peer venomously down for ever
from a lofty place. And perhaps he would not even have dreamt that in
the second gargoyle he had somehow expressed his own dour and
satyr-like passion for the girl Nicolette Š a passion that had brought. _½
him back to the detested city of his youth after years of wandering; a
passion singularly tenacious of one object, and differing in this regard
from the ordinary lusts of a nature so brutal as Reynard's.
Always to the stone-cutter, even more than to those who had
criticized and abhorred his productions, the gargoyles were alive, they
possessed a vitality and a sentiency of their own. And most of all did
they seem to live when the summer drew to an end and the autumn
rains had gathered upon Vyones. Then, when the full cathedral gutters
poured above the streets, one might have thought that the actual spittle
of a foul maelevolence, the very slaver of an impure lust, had somehow
been mingled with the water that ran in rills from the mouths of the
gargoyles.
At that time, in the year of our Lord, 1138, Vyones was the
principal town of the province of Averoigne. On two sides the great,
shadow-haunted forest, a place of equivocal legends, of loups-garous
and phantoms, approached to the very walls and flung its umbrage
upon them at early forenoon and evening. On the other sides there lay
cultivated fields, and gentle streams that meandered among willows or
poplars, and roads that ran through an open plain to the high chateaux
of noble lords and to regions beyond Averoigne.
The town itself was prosperous, and had never shared in the ill-
fame of the bordering forest. It had long been sanctified by the
presence of two nunneries and a monastery; and now, with the
completion of the long-planned cathedral, it was thought that Vyones
would have henceforward the additional protection of a more august
holiness; that demon and stryge and incubus would keep their distance
from its heaven-favored purlieus with a more meticulous caution than
before.
Of course, as in all mediaeval towns, there had been occasional
instances of alleged sorcery or demoniacal possession; and, once or
twice, the perilous temptations of succubi had made their inroads on
the pious virtue of Vyones. But this was nothing more than might be
expected, in a world where the Devil and his works were always more
or less rampant. No one could possibly have anticipated the reign of
infernal horrors that was to make hideous the latter months of autumn,
following the cathedral's erection.
To make the matter even more inexplicable, and more
blasphemously dreadful than it would otherwise have been, the first of
these horrors occurred in the neighborhood of the cathedral itself and
almost beneath its sheltering shadow.
Two men, a respectable clothier named Guillaume Maspier and an
equally reputable cooper, one Gerome Mazzal, were returning to their._
lodgings in the late hours of a November eve, after imbibing both the
red and white wines of the countryside in more than one tavern.
According to Maspier, who alone survived to tell the tale, they were
passing along a street that skirted the cathedral square, and could see
the bulk of the great building against the stars, when a flying monster,
black as the soot of Abaddon, had descended upon them from the
heavens and assailed Gerome Mazzal, beating him down with its
heavily flapping wings and seizing him with its inch-long teeth and
talons.
Maspier was unable to describe the creature with minuteness, for he
had seen it but dimly and partially in the unlit street; and moreover, the
fate of his companion, who had fallen to the cobblestones with the
black devil snarling and tearing at his throat, had not induced Maspier
to linger in that vicinity. He had betaken himself from the scene with all
the celerity of which he was capable, and had stopped only at the house
of a priest, many streets away, where he had related his adventure
between shudderings and hiccuppings.
Armed with holy water and aspergillus, and accompanied by many
of the towns-people carrying torches, staves and halberds, the priest
was led by Maspier to the place of the horror; and there they had found
the body of Mazzal, with fearfully mangled face, and throat and bosom
lined with bloody lacerations. The demoniac assailant had flown, and it
was not seen or encountered again that night; but those who had
beheld its work returned aghast to their homes, feeling that a creature
of nethermost hell had come to visit the city, and perchance to abide
therein.
Consternation was rife on the morrow, when the story became
generally known; and rites of exorcism against the invading demon
were performed by the clergy in all public places and before thresholds.
But the sprinkling of holy water and the mumbling of the stated forms
were futile; for the evil spirit was still abroad, and its malignity was
proved once more, on the night following the ghastly death of Gerome
Mazzal.
This time, it claimed two victims, burghers of high probity and
some consequence, on whom it descended in a narrow alley, slaying
one of them instantaneously, and dragging down the other from behind
as he sought to flee. The shrill cries of the helpless men, and the
guttural growling of the demon, were heard by people in the houses
along the alley; and some, who were hardy enough to peer from their
windows, had seen the departure of the infamous assailant, blotting out
the autumn stars with the sable and misshapen foulness of its wings,
and hovering in execrable menace above the house-tops.. __
After this, few people would venture abroad at night, unless in case
of dire and exigent need; and those who did venture went in armed
companies and were all furnished with flambeaux, thinking thus to
frighten away the demon, which they adjudged a creature of darkness
that would abhor the light and shrink therefrom, through the nature of
its kind. But the boldness of this fiend was beyond measure; for it
proceeded to attack more than one company of worthy citizens,
disregarding the flaring torches that were thrust in its face, or putting
them out with th stenchful wind of its wide vans.
Evidently it was a spirit of homicidal hate, for all the people on
whom it seized were grievously mangled or torn to numberless shreds
by its teeth and talons. Those who saw it, and survived, were wont to
describe it variously and with much ambiguity; but all agreed in
attributing to it the head of a ferocious animal and the wings of a
monstrous bird. Some, the most learned in demonology, were fain to
identify it with Modo, the spirit of murder; and others took it for one of
the great lieutenants of Satan, perhaps Amaimon or Alastor, gone mad
with exasperation at the impregnable supremacy of Christ in the holy
city of Vyones.
The terror that soon prevailed, beneath the widening scope of these
Satanical incursions and depredations, was beyond all belief Š a
clotted, seething, devil-ridden gloom of superstitious obsession, not to
be hinted at in modern language. Even by daylight, the Gothic wings of
nightmare seemed to brood in underparting oppression above the city;
and fear was everywhere, like the foul contagion of some epidemic
plague. The inhabitants went their way in prayer and trembling; and
the archbishop himself, as well as the subordinate clergy, confessed an
inability to cope with the ever-growing horror. An emissary was sent to
Rome, to procure water that had been specially sanctified by the Pope.
This alone it was thought, would be efficacious enough to drive away
the dreadful visitant.
In the meantime, the horror waxed, and mounted to its culmination.
One eve, toward the middle of November, the abbot of the local
monastery of Cordeliers, who had gone forth to administer extreme
unction to a dying friend, was seized by the black devil just as he
approached the threshold of his destination, and was slain in the same
atrocious manner as the other victims.
To this doubly infamous deed, a scarce-believable blasphemy was
soon added. On the very next night, while the torn body of the abbot
lay on a rich catafalque in the cathedral, and masses were being said
and tapers burnt, the demon invaded the high nave through the open
door, extinguished all the candles with one flap of its sooty wings, and._
dragged down no less than three of the officiating priests to an unholy
death in the darkness.
Every one now felt that a truly formidable assault was being made
by the powers of Evil on the Christian probity of Vyones. In the
condition of abject terror, of extreme disorder and demoralization that
followed upon this new atrocity, there was a deplorable outbreak of
human crime, of murder and rapine and thievery, together with covert
manifestations of Satanism, and celebrations of the Black Mass
attended by many neophytes.
Then, in the midst of all this pandemoniacal fear and confusion, it
was rumored that a second devil had been seen in Vyones; that the
murderous fiend was accompanied by a spirit of equal deformity and
darkness, whose intentions were those of lechery, and which molested
none but women. This creature had frightened several dames and
demoiselles and maid-servants into a veritable hysteria by peering
through their bedroom windows; and had sidled lasciviously, with
uncouth mows and grimaces, and grotesque flappings of its bat-shaped
wings, toward others who had occasion to fare from house to house
across the nocturnal streets.
However, strange to say, there were no authentic instances in which
the chastity of any woman had suffered actual harm from this noisome
incubus. Many were approached by it, and were terrified immoderately
by the hideousness and lustfulness of its demeanor; but no one was
ever touched. Even in that time of horror, both spiritual and corporeal,
there were those who made a ribald jest of this singular abstention on
the part of the demon, and said it was seeking throughout Vyones for
some one whom it had not yet found.
The lodgings of Blaise Reynard were separated only by the length of
a dark and crooked alley from the tavern kept by Jean Villom, the father
of Nicolette. In this tavern, Reynard had been wont to spend his
evenings; though his suit was frowned upon by Jean Villom, and had
received but scant encouragement from the girl herself. However,
because of his well-filled purse and his almost illimitable capacity for
wine, Reynard was tolerated. He came early each night, with the falling
of darkness, and would sit in silence hour after hour, staring with hot
and sullen eyes at Nicolette, and gulping joylessly the potent vintages of
Averoigne. Apart from their desire to retain his custom, the people of
the tavern were a little afraid of him, on account of his dubious an
semi-sorcerous reputation, and also because of his surly temper. They
did not wish to antagonize him more than was necessary.
Like everyone else in Vyones, Reynard had felt the suffocating
burden of superstitious terror during those nights when the fiendish. __
marauder was hovering above the town and might descend on the
luckless wayfarer at any moment, in any locality. Nothing less urgent
and imperative than the obsession of his half-bestial longing for
Nicolette could have induced him to traverse after dark the length of
the winding alley to the tavern door.
The autumn nights had been moonless. Now, on the evening that
followed the desecration of the cathedral itself by the murderous devil,
a new-born crescent was lowering its fragile, sanguine-colored horn
beyond the house-tops as Reynard went forth from his lodgings at the
accustomed hour. He lost sight of its comforting beam in the high-
walled and narrow alley, and shivered with dread as he hastened
onward through shadows that were dissipated only by the rare and
timid ray from some lofty window. It seemed to him, at each turn and
angle, that the gloom was curded by the unclean umbrage of Satanic
wings, and might reveal in another instant the gleaming of abhorrent
eyes ignited by the everlasting coals of the Pit. When he came forth at
the alley's end, he saw with a start of fresh panic that the crescent moon
was blotted out by a cloud that had the semblance of uncouthly arched
and pointed vans.
He reached the tavern with a sense of supreme relief, for he had
begun to feel a distinct intuition that someone or something was
following him, unheard and invisible Š a presence that seemed to load
the dusk with prodigious menace. He entered, and closed the door
behind him very quickly, as if he were shutting it in the face of a dread
pursuer.
There were few people in the tavern that evening. The girl Nicolette
was serving wine to a mercer's assistant, one Raoul Coupain, a
personable youth and a newcomer in the neighborhood, and she was
laughing with what Reynard considered unseemly gayety at the broad
jests and amorous sallies of this Raoul. Jean Villom was discussing in a
low voice the latest enormities and was drinking fully as much liquor as
his customers.
Glowering with jealousy at the presence of Raoul Coupain, whom
he suspected of being a favored rival, Reynard seated himself in silence
and stared malignly at the flirtatious couple. No one seemed to have
noticed his entrance; for Villom went on talking to his cronies without
pause or interruption, and Nicolette and her companion were equally
oblivious. To his jealous rage, Reynard soon added the resentment of
one who feels that he is being deliberately ignored. He began to pound
on the table with his heavy fists, to attract attention.
Villom, who had been sitting all the while his back turned, now
called out to Nicolette without even troubling to face around on his._
stool, telling her to serve Reynard. Giving a backward smile at
Coupain, she came slowly and with open reluctance to the stone-
carver's table.
She was small and buxom, with reddish-gold hair that curled
luxuriantly above the short, delicious oval of her face; and she was
gowned in a tight-fitting dress of apple-green that revealed the firm,
seductive outlines of her hips and bosom. Her air was disdainful and a
little cold, for she did not like Reynard and had taken small pains at any
time to conceal her aversion. But to Reynard she was lovelier and more
desirable than ever, and he felt a savage impulse to seize her in his arms
and carry her bodily away from the tavern before the eyes of Raoul
Coupain and her father.
"Bring me a pitcher of La Frenaie," he ordered gruffly, in a voice
that betrayed his mingled resentment and desire.
Tossing her head lightly and scornfully, with more glances at
Coupain, the girl obeyed. She placed the fierey, blood-dark wine before
Reynard without speaking, and then went back to resume her bantering
with the mercer's assistant.
Reynard began to drink, and the potent vintage merely served to
inflame his smoldering enmity and passion. His eyes became
venomous, his curling lips malignant as those of the gargoyles he had
carved on the new cathedral. A baleful, primordial anger, like the rage
of some morose and thwarted faun, burned within him with its slow red
fire; but he strove to repress it, and sat silent and motionless, except for
the frequent filling and emptying of his wine-cup.
Raoul Coupain had also consumed a liberal quantity of wine. As a
result, he soon became bolder in his love-making, and strove to kiss the
hand of Nicolette, who had now seated herself on the bench beside
him. The hand was playfully with-held; and then, after its owner had
cuffed Raoul very lightly and briskly, was granted to the claimant in a
fashion that struck Reynard as being no less than wanton.
Snarling inarticulately, with a mad impulse to rush forward and slay
the successful rival with his bare hands, he started to his feet and
stepped toward the playful pair. His movement was noted by one of the
men in the far corner, who spoke warningly to Villom. The tavern-
keeper arose, lurching a little from his potations, and came warily
across the room with his eyes on Reynard, ready to interfere in case of
violence.
Reynard paused with momentary irresolution, and then went on,
half insane with a mounting hatred for them all. He longed to kill
Villom and Coupain, to kill the hateful cronies who sat staring from the. _¢
corner, and then, above their throttled corpses, to ravage with fierce
kisses and vehement caresses the shrinking lips and body of Nicolette.
Seeing the approach of the stone-carver, and knowing his evil
temper and dark jealousy, Coupain also rose to his feet and plucked
stealthily beneath his cloak at the hilt of a little dagger which he carried.
In the meanwhile, Jean Villom had interposed his burly bulk between
the rivals. For the sake of the tavern's good repute, he wished to
prevent the possible brawl.
"Back to your table, stone-cutter," he roared belligerently at
Reynard.
Being unarmed, and seeing himself outnumbered, Reynard paused
again, though his anger still simmered within him like the contents of a
sorcerer's cauldron. With ruddy points of murderous flame in his
hollow, slitted eyes, he glared at the three people before him, and saw
beyond them, with instictive rather than conscious awareness, the
leaded panes of the tavern window, in whose glass the room was dimly
reflected with its glowing tapers, its glimmering tableware, the heads of
Coupain and Villom and the girl Nicolette, and his own shadowy face
among them.
Strangely, and, it would seem, inconsequntly, he remembered at
that moment the dark, ambiguous cloud he had seen across the moon,
and the insistent feeling of obscure pursuit while he had traversed the
alley.
Then, as he still gazed irresolutely at the group before him, and its
vague reflection in the glass beyond, there came a thunderous crash,
and the panes of the window with their pictured scene were shattered
inward in a score of fragments. Ere the litter of falling glass had
reached the tavern floor, a swart and monstrous form flew into the
room, with a beating of heavy vans that caused the tapers to flare
troublously, and the shadows to dance like a sabbat of misshapen
devils. The thing hovered for a moment, and seemed to tower in a
great darkness higher than the ceiling above the heads of Reynard and
the others as they turned toward it. They saw the malignant burning of
its eyes, like coals in the depth of Tartarean pits, and the curling of its
hateful lips on the bared teeth that were longer and sharper than
serpent-fangs.
Behind it now, another shadowy flying monster came in through the
broken window with a loud flapping of its ribbed and pointed wings.
There was something lascivious in the very motion of its flight, even as
homicidal hatred and malignity were manifest in the flight of the other.
Its satyr-like face was twisted in a horrible, never-changing leer, and its.¡
lustful eyes were fixed on Nicolette as it hung in air beside the first
intruder.
Reynard, as well as the other men, was petrified by a feeling of
astonishment and consternation so extreme as almost to preclude
terror. Voiceless and motionless, they beheld the demoniac intrusion;
and the consternation of Reynard, in particular, was mingled with an
element of unspeakable surprise, together with a dreadful recognizance.
But the girl Nicolette, with a mad scream of horror, turned and started
to flee across the room.
As if her cry had been the one provocation needed, the two demons
swooped upon their victims. One, with a ferocious slash of its
outstretched claws, tore open the throat of Jean Villom, who fell with a
gurgling, blood-choked groan; and then, in the same fashion, it assailed
Raoul Coupain. The other, in the meanwhile, had pursued and
overtaken the fleeing girl, and had seized her in its bestial forearms,
with the ribbed wings enfolding her like a hellish drapery.
The room was filled by a moaning whirlwind, by a chaos of wild
cries and tossing, struggling shadows. Reynard heard the guttural
snarling of the murderous monster, muffled by the body of Coupain,
whom it was tearing with its teeth; and he heard the lubricous laughter
of the incubus, above the shrieks of the hysterically frightened girl.
Then the grotesquely flaring tapers went out in a gust of swirling air,
and Reynard received a violent blow in the darkness Š the blow of
some rushing object, perhaps of a passing wing, that was hard and
heavy as stone. He fell, and became insensible.
Dully and confusedly, with much effort, Reynard struggled back to
consciousness. For a brief interim, he could not remember where he
was nor what had happened. He was troubled by the painful throbbing
of his head, by the humming of agitated voices about him, by the
glaring of many lights and the thronging of many faces when he
opened his eyes; and above all, by the sense of nameless but grievous
calamity and uttermost horror that weighed him down from the first
dawning of sentiency.
Memory returned to him, laggard and reluctant; and with it, a full
awareness of his surroundings and situation. He was lying on the tavern
floor, and his own warm, sticky blood was rilling across his face from
the wound on his aching head. The long room was half filled with
people of the neighborhood, bearing torches and knives and halberds,
who had entered and were peering at the corpses of Villom and
Coupain, which lay amid pools of wine-diluted blood and the wreckage
of the shattered furniture and tableware.. _ˆ
Nicolette, with her green gown in shreds, and her body crushed by
the embraces of the demon, was moaning feebly while women crowded
about her with ineffectual cries and questions which she could not even
hear or understand. The two cronies of Villom, horribly clawed and
mangled, were dead beside their over-turned table.
Stupefied with horror, and still dizzy from the blow that had laid
him unconscious, Reynard staggered to his feet, and found himself
surrounded at once by inquiring faces and voices. Some of the people
were a little suspicious of him, since he was the sole survivor in the
tavern, and bore an ill repute, but his replies to their questions soon
convinced them that the new crime was wholly the work of the same
demons that had plagued Vyones in so monstrous a fashion for weeks
past.
Reynard, however, was unable to tell them all that he had seen, or to
confess the ultimate sources of his fear and stupefaction. The secret of
that which he knew was locked in the seething pit of his tortured and
devil-ridden soul.
Somehow, he left the ravaged inn, he pushed his way through the
gathering crowd with its terror-muted murmurs, and found himself
alone on the midnight streets. Heedless of his own possible peril, and
scarcely knowing where he went, he wandered through Vyones for
many hours; and somewhile in his wanderings, he came to his own
workshop. With no assignable reason for the act, he entered, and re-
emerged with a heavy hammer, which he carried with him during his
subsequent peregrinations. Then, driven by his awful and unremissive
torture, he went on till the pale dawn had touched the spires and the
house-tops with a ghostly glimmering.
By a half-conscious compulsion, his steps had led him to the square
before the cathedral. Ignoring the amazed verger, who had just opened
the doors, he entered and sought a stairway that wound tortuously
upward to the tower on which his own gargoyles were ensconced.
In the chill and livid light of sunless morning, he emerged on the
roof; and leaning perilously from the verge, he examined the carven
figures. He felt no surprise, only the hideous confirmation of a fear too
ghastly to be named, when he saw that the teeth and claws of the
malign, cat-headed griffin were stained with darkening blood; and that
shreds of apple-green cloth were hanging from the talons of the lustful,
bat-winged satyr.
It seemed to Reynard, in the dim ashen light, that a look of
unspeakable triumph, of intolerable irony, was imprinted on the face of
this latter creature. He stared at it with fearful and agonizing
fascination, while impotent rage, abhorrence, and repentance deeper.ÿ
than that of the damned arose within him in a smothering flood. He
was hardly aware that he had raised the iron hammer and had struck
wildly at the satyr's horned profile, till he heard the sullen, angry clang
of impact, and found that he was tottering on the edge of the roof to
retain his balance.
The furious blow had merely chipped the features of the gargoyle,
and had not wiped away the malignant lust and exultation. Again
Reynard raised the heavy hammer.
It fell on empty air; for, even as he struck, the stone-carver felt
himself lifted and drawn backward by something that sank into his flesh
like many separate knives. He staggered helplessly, his feet slipped, and
then he was lying on the granite verge, with his head and shoulders
over the dark, deserted street.
Half swooning, and sick with pain, he saw above him the other
gargoyle, the claws of whose right foreleg were firmly embedded in his
shoulder. They tore deeper, as if with a dreadful clenching. The
monster seemed to tower like some fabulous beast above its prey; and
he felt himself slipping dizzily across the cathedral gutter, with the
gargoyle twisting and turning as if to resume its normal position over
the gulf. Its slow, inexorable movement seemed to be part of his
vertigo. The very tower was tilting and revolving beneath him in some
unnatural nightmare fashion.
Dimly, in a daze of fear and agony, Reynard saw the remorseless
tiger-face bending toward him with its horrid teeth laid bare in an
eternal rictus of diabolic hate. Somehow, he had retained the hammer.
With an instinctive impulse to defend himself, he struck at the gargoyle,
whose cruel features seemed to approach him like something seen in
the ultimate madness and distortion of delirium.
Even as he struck, the vertiginous turning movement continued,
and he felt the talons dragging him outward on empty air. In his
cramped, recumbent position, the blow fell short of the hateful face and
came down with a dull clangor on the foreleg whose curving talons
were fixed in his shoulder like meat-hooks. The clangor ended in a
sharp cracking sound; and the leaning gargoyle vanished from
Reynard's vision as he fell. He saw nothing more, except the dark mass
of the cathedral tower, that seemed to soar away from him and to rush
upward unbelievably in the livid, starless heavens to which the belated
sun had not yet risen.
It was the archbishop Ambrosius, on his way to early Mass, who
found the shattered body of Reynard lying face downward in the
square. Ambrosius crossed himself in startled horror at the sight; and. _½
the, when he saw the object that was still clinging to Reynard's
shoulder, he repeated the gesture with a more than pious promptness.
He bent down to examine the thing. With the infallible memory of a
true art-lover, he recognized it at once. Then, through the same
clearness of recollection, he saw that the stone foreleg, whose claws
were so deeply buried in Reynard's flesh, had somehow undergone a
most unnatural alteration. The paw, as he remembered it, should have
been slightly bent and relaxed; but now it was stiffly outthrust and
elongated, as if, like the paw of a living limb, it had reached for
something, or had dragged a heavy burden with its ferine talons.
[1932]. ¢_
The Holiness of
Azédarac
I
'BY THE RAM with a Thousand Ewes! By the Tail of Dagon and the
Horns of Derceto!' said Azédarac, as he fingered the tiny, pot-bellied
vial of vermilion liquid on the table before him. 'Something will have to
be done with this pestilential Brother Ambrose. I have now learned that
he was sent to Ximes by the Archbishop of Averoigne for no other
purpose than to gather proof of my subterraneous connection with
Azazel and the Old Ones. He has spied upon my evocations in the
vaults, he has heard the hidden formulae, and beheld the veritable
manifestation of Lilit, and even of Iog-Sotôt and Sodagui, those
demons who are more ancient than the world; and this very morning,
an hour agone, he has mounted his white ass for the return journey to
Vyones. There are two ways Š or, in a sense, there is one way Š in
which I can avoid the bother and inconvenience of a trial for sorcery:
the contents of this vial must be administered to Ambrose before he has
reached his journey's end Š or, failing this, I myself shall be compelled
to make use of a similar medicament.'
Jehan Mauvaissoir looked at the vial and then at Azé- darac. He was
not at all horrified, nor even surprised, by the non-episcopal oaths and
the somewhat uncanonical statements which he had just heard from the
Bishop of Ximes. He had known the Bishop too long and too
intimately, and had rendered him too many services of an
unconventional nature, to be surprised at anything. In fact, he had
known Azédarac long before the sorcerer had ever dreamt of becoming
a prelate, in a phase of his existence that was wholly unsuspected by the
people of Ximes; and Azédarac had not troubled to keep many secrets
from Jehan at any time.. ¢_
'I understand,' said Jehan. 'You can depend upon it that the contents
of the vial will be administered. Brother Ambrose will hardly travel
post-haste on that ambling white ass; and he will not reach Vyones
before tomorrow noon. There is abundant time to overtake him. Of
course, he knows me Š at least, he knows Jehan Mauvaissoir.... But
that can be easily remedied.'
Azédarac smiled confidently. 'I leave the affair Š and the vial Š in
your hands, Jehan. Of course, no matter what the eventuation, with all
the Satanic and pre-Satanic facilities at my disposal, I should be in no
great danger from these addlepated bigots. However, I am very
comfortably situated here in Ximes; and the lot of a Christian Bishop
who lives in the odor of incense and piety, and maintains in a
meanwhile a private understanding with the Adversary, is certainly
preferable to the mischancy life of a hedgesorcerer. I do not care to be
annoyed or disturbed, or ousted from my sinecure, if such can be
avoided.
'May Moloch devour that sanctimonious little milksop of an
Ambrose,' he went on. 'I must be growing old and dull, not to have
suspected him before this. It was the horrorstricken and averted look he
has been wearing lately that made me think he had peered through the
keyhole on the subterranean rites. Then, when I heard he was leaving, I
wisely thought to review my library; and I have found that the Book of
Eibon, which contains the oldest incantations, and the secret, man-
forgotten lore of Iog-Sotôt and Sodagui, is now missing. As you know,
I had replaced the former binding of aboriginal, sub-human skin with
the sheep-leather of a Christian missal, and had surrounded the volume
with rows of legitimate prayer-books. Ambrose is carrying it away
under his robe as proof conclusive that I am addicted to the Black Arts.
No one in Averoigne will be able ta read the immemorial Hyperborean
script; but the dragon's-blood illuminations and drawings will be
enough to damn me.'
Master and servant regarded each other for an interval of significant
silence. Jehan eyed with profound respect the haughty stature, the
grimly lined lineaments, the grizzled tonsure, the odd, ruddy, crescent
scar on the pallid brow of Azédarac, and the sultry points of orange-
yellow fire that seemed to burn deep down in the chill and liquid ebon
of his eyes. Azédarac, in his turn, considered with confidence the
vulpine features and discreet, inexpressive air of Jehan, who might have
been Š and could be, if necessary Š anything from a mercer to a
cleric.
'It is regrettable,' resumed Azédarac, 'that any question of my
holiness and devotional probity should have been raised among the. ¢_
clergy of Averoigne. But I suppose it was inevitable sooner or later Š
even though the chief difference between myself and many other
ecclesiastics is, that I serve the Devil wittingly and of my own free will,
while they do the same in sanctimonious blindness.... However, we
must do what we can to delay the evil hour of public scandal, and
eviction from our neatly feathered nest. Ambrose alone could prove
anything to my detriment at present; and you, Jehan, will remove
Ambrose to a realm wherein his monkish tattlings will be of small
consequence. After that, I shall be doubly vigilant. The next emissary
from Vyones, I assure you, will find nothing to report but saintliness
and bead-telling.'
II
The thoughts of Brother Ambrose were sorely troubled, and at
variance with the tranquil beauty of the sylvan scene, as he rode
onward through the forest of Averoigne between Ximes and Vyones.
Horror was nesting in his heart like a knot of malignant vipers; and the
evil Book of Eibon, that primordial manual of sorcery, seemed to burn
beneath his robe like a huge, hot, Satanic sigil pressed against his
bosom. Not for the first time, there occurred to him the wish that
Clément, the Archbishop, had delegated someone else to investigate the
Erebean turpitude of Azé- darac. Sojourning for a month in the
Bishop's household, Ambrose had learned too much for the peace of
mind of any pious cleric, and had seen things that were like a secret
blot of shame and terror on the white page of his memory. To find that
a Christian prelate could serve the powers of nethermost perdition,
could entertain in privity the foulnesses that are older than Asmodai,
was abysmally disturbing to his devout soul; and ever since then he had
seemed to smell corruption everywhere, and had felt on every side the
serpentine encroachment of the dark Adversary.
As he rode on among the somber pines and verdant beeches, he
wished also that he were mounted on something swifter than the gentle,
milk-white ass appointed for his use by the Archbishop. He was dogged
by the shadowy intimation of leering gargoyle faces, of invisible cloven
feet, that followed him behind the thronging trees and along the
umbrageous meanderings of the road. In the oblique rays, the
elongated webs of shadow wrought by the dying afternoon, the forest
seemed to attend with bated breath the noisome and furtive passing of. ¢_
innominable things. Nevertheless, Ambrose had met no one for miles;
and he had seen neither bird nor beast nor viper in the summer woods.
His thoughts returned with fearful insistence to Azédarac, who
appeared to him as a tall, prodigious Antichrist, uprearing his sable
vans and giant figure from out the flaming mire of Abaddon, Again he
saw the vaults beneath the Bishop's mansion, wherein he had peered
one night on a scene of infernal terror and loathliness, had beheld the
Bishop swathed in the gorgeous, coiling fumes of unholy censers, that
mingled in midair with the sulfurous and bituminous vapors of the Pit;
and through the vapors had seen the lasciviously swaying limbs, the
bellying and dissolving features of foul enormous entities.... Recalling
them, again he trembled at the pre-Adamite lubriciousness of Lilit,
again he shuddered at the trans-galactic horror of the demon Sodagui,
and the ultra-dimensional hideousness of that being known as Iog-
Sotôt to the sorcerers of Averoigne.
How balefully potent and subversive, he thought, were these
immemorial devils, who had placed their servant Azédarac in the very
bosom of the Church, in a position of high and holy trust. For nine
years the evil prelate had held an unchallenged and unsuspected tenure,
had befouled the bishopric of Ximes with infidelities that were worse
than those of the Paynims. Then, somehow, through anonymous
channels, a rumour had reached Clément Š a warning whis- per that
not even the Archbishop had dared to voice aloud; and Ambrose, a
young Benedictine monk, the nephew of Clément, had been dispatched
to examine privily the fester- ing foulness that threatened the integrity
of the Church. Only at that time did anyone recall how little was
actually known regarding the antecedents of Azédarac; how tenu- ous
were his claims to ecclesiastical preferment, or even to mere priestship;
how veiled and doubtful were the steps by which he had attained his
office. It was then realized that a formidable wizardry had been at work.
Uneasily, Ambrose wondered if Azédarac had already discovered
the removal of the Book of Eibon from among the missals
contaminated by its blasphemous presence. Even more uneasily, he
wondered what Azédarac would do in that event, and how long it
would take him to connect the absence of the volume with his visitor's
departure.
At this point, the meditations of Ambrose were inter- rupted by the
hard clatter of galloping hoofs that ap- proached from behind. The
emergence of a centaur from the oldest wood of paganism could
scarcely have startled him to a keener panic; and he peered
apprehensively over his shoulder at the nearing horseman. This person,
moun- ted on a fine black steed with opulent trappings, was a bushy-. ¢_
bearded of obvious consequence; for his gay garments were those of a
noble or a courtier. He overtook Ambrose and passed on with a polite
nod, seeming to be wholly intent on his own affairs. The monk was
immensely reassured, though vaguely troubled for some moments by a
feeling that he had seen elsewhere, under circumstances which he was
unable to recall, the narrow eyes and sharp profile that contrasted so
oddly with the bluff beard of the horseman. However, he was
comfortably sure that he had never seen the man in Ximes. The rider
soon vanished beyond a leafy turn of the arboreal highway. Ambrose
re- turned to the pious horror and apprehensiveness of his former
soliloquy.
As he went on, it seemed to him that the sun had gone down with
untimely and appalling swiftness. Though the heavens above were
innocent of cloud, and the low-lying air was free from vapors, the
woods were embrowned by an inexplicable gloom that gathered visibly
on all sides. In this gloom, the trunks of the trees were strangely
distorted, and the low masses of foliage assumed unnatural and
disquieting forms. It appeared to Ambrose that the silence around him
was a fragile film through which the raucous rumble and mutter of
diabolic voices might break at any moment, even as the foul and
sunken driftage that rises anon above the surface of a smoothly flowing
river.
With much relief, he remembered that he was not far from a
wayside tavern, known as the Inn of Bonne Jouissance. Here, since his
journey to Vyones was little more than half completed, he resolved to
tarry for the night.
A minute more, and he saw the lights of the inn. Before their benign
and golden radiance, the equivocal forest shadows that attended him
seemed to halt and retire and he gained the haven of the tavern
courtyard with the feeling of one who has barely escaped from an army
of goblin perils.
Committing his mount to the care of a stable-servant, Ambrose
entered the main room of the inn. Here he was greeted with the
deference due to his cloth by the stout and unctuous taverner; and,
being assured that the best accommodations of the place were at his
disposal, he seated himself at one of several tables where other guests
had already gathered to await the evening meal.
Among them, Ambrose recognized the bluff-bearded horseman
who had overtaken him in the woods an hour agone. This person was
sitting alone, and a little apart. The other guests, a couple of travelling
mercers, a notary, and two soldiers, acknowledged the presence of the
monk with all due civility; but the horseman arose from his table, and. ¢¢
coming over to Ambrose, began immediately to make overtures that
were more than those of common courtesy.
'Will you not dine mth me, sir monk?' he invited, in a gruff but
ingratiating voice that was perplexingly familiar to Ambrose, and yet,
like the wolfish profile, was irrecognizable at the time.
'I am the Sieur des Émaux, from Touraine, at your service,' the man
went on. 'It would seem that we are traveliag the same road Š possibly
to the same destination. Mine is the cathedral city of Vyones. And
yours?'
Though he was vaguely perturbed, and even a little suspicious,
Ambrose found himself unable to decline the invitation. In reply to the
last question, he admitted that he also was on his way to Vyones. He
did not altogether like the Sieur des Émaux, whose slitted eyes gave
back the candle-light of the inn with a covert glitter, and whose manner
was somewhat effusive, not to say fulsome. But there seemed to be no
ostensible reason for refusing a courtesy that was doubtless well-meant
and genuine. He accompanied his host to their separate table.
'You belong to the Benedictine order, I observe,' said the Sieur des
Émaux, eyeing the monk with an odd smile that was tinged with furtive
irony. 'It is an order that I have always admired greatly Š a most noble
and worthy brotherhood. May I not inquire your name?'
Ambrose gave the requested information with a curious reluctance.
'Well, then, Brother Ambrose,' said the Sieur des Émaux, 'I suggest
that we drink to your health and the prosperity of your order in the red
wine of Averoigne while we are waiting for supper to be served. Wine is
always welcome following a long journey, and is no less beneficial
before a good meal than after.'
Ambrose mumbled an unwilling assent. He could not have told
why, but the personality of the man was more and more distasteful to
him. He seemed to detect a sinister undertone in the purring voice, to
surprise an evil meaning in the low-lidded glance. And all the while his
brain was tantalized by intimations of a forgotten memory. Had he seen
his interlocutor in Ximes? Was the self-styled Sieur des Émaux a
henchman of Azédarac in disguise?
Wine was now ordered by his host, who left the table to confer with
the innkeeper for this purpose, and even insisted on paying a visit to
the cellar, that he might select a suitable viatage in person. Noting the
obeisance paid to the man by the people of the tavern, who addressed
him by name, Anbrose felt a certain measure of reassurance. When the
taverner, followed by the Sieur des Émaux, returned with two earthen
pitchers of wine, he had well-nigh succeeded in dismissing his vague
doubts and vaguer fears. Two large goblets were now placed on the. ¢¡
table, and the Sieur des Émaux filled them immediately from one of the
pitchers. It seemed to Ambrose that the first of the goblets already
contained a small amount of some sanguine fluid, before the wine was
poured into it; but he could not have sworn to this in the dim light, and
thaught that he must have been mistaken.
'Here are two matchless vintages,' said the Sieur des Émaux,
indicating the pitchers. 'Both are so excellent that I was unable to
choose between them; but you, Brother Ambrose, are perhaps capable
of deciding their merits with a finer palate than mine.'
He pushed one of the filled goblets toward Ambrose. 'This is the
wine of La Frenaie,' he said. 'Drink, it will verily transyort you from the
world by virtue of the mighty fire that slumbers in its heart.'
Ambrose took the profFered goblet, and raised it to his lips. The
Sieur des Émaux was bending forward above his own wine to inhale its
bouquet; and something in his posture was terrifyingly familiar to
Ambrose. In a chill flash of horror, his memory told him that the thin,
pointed features behind the square beard were dubiously similar to
those of Jehan Mauvaissoir, whom he had often seen in the household
of Azédarac, and who, as he had reason to believe, was implicated in
the Bishop's sorceries. He wondered why he had not placed the
resemblance before, and what wizardry had drugged his powers of
recollection. Even now he was not sure; but the mere suspicion terrified
him as if some deadly serpent had reared its head across the table.
'Drink, Brother Ambrose,' urged the Sieur des Émaux, draining his
own goblet. 'To your welfare and that of all good Benedictines.'
Ambrose hesitated. The cold, hypnotic eyes of his interlocutor were
upon him, and he was powerless to refuse, in spite of all his
apprehensions. Shuddering slightly, with the sense of some irresistible
compulsion, and feeling that he might drop dead from the virulent
working of a sudden poison, he emptied his goblet.
An instant more, and he felt that his worst fears had been justified.
The wine burned like the liquid flames of Phlegeton in his throat and
on his lips; it seemed to fill his veins with a hot, infernal quicksilver.
Then, all at once, an unbearable cold had inundated his being; an icy
whirlwind wrapped him round with coils of roaring air, the chair
melted beneath him, and he was falling through endless glacial gulfs.
The walls of the inn had flown like receding vapors; the lights went out
like stars in the black mist of a marish; and the face of the Sieur des
Émaux faded with them on the swirling shadows, even as a bubble that
breaks on the milling of midnight waters.. ¢^
III
It was with some difficulty that Ambrose assured himself that he
was not dead. He had seemed to fall eternally, through a gray night that
was peopled with ever-changing forms, with blurred unstable masses
that dissolved to other masses before they could assume definitude. For
a moment, he thought there were walls about him once more; and then
he was plunging fron terrace to terrace of a world of phantom trees. At
whiles, he thought also that there were human faces; but all was
doubtful and evanescent, all was drifting smoke and surging shadow.
Abruptly, with no sense of transition or impact, he found that he
was no longer falling. The vague fantasmagoria around him had
returned to an actual scene Š but a scene in which there was no trace
of the Inn of Bonne Jouissance, or the Sieur des Émaux.
Ambrose peered about with incredulous eyes on a situation that was
truly unbelievable. He was sitting in broad daylight on a large square
block of roughly hewn granite. Around him, at a little distance, beyond
the open space of a grassy glade, were the lofty pines and spreading
beeches of an elder forest, whose boughs were already touched by the
gold of the declining sun. Immediately before him, several men were
standing.
These men appeared to regard Ambrose with a profound and
almost religious amazement. They were bearded and savage of aspect,
with white robes of a fashion he had never before seen. Their hair was
long and matted, like tangles of black snakes; and their eyes burned
with a frenetic fire. Each of them bore in his right hand a rude knife of
sharply chiselled stone.
Ambrose wondered if he had died after all, and if these beings were
the strange devils of some unlisted hell. In the face of what had
happened, and the light of Ambrose's own beliefs, it was a far from
unreasanable conjecture. He peered with fearful trepidation at the
supposed demons, and began to mumble a prayer to the God who had
aban- doned him so inexplicably to his spiritual foes. Then he
remembered the necromantic powers of Azédarac, and conceived
another surmise Š that he had been spirited bodily away from the Inn
of Bonne Jouissance, and delivered into the hands of those pre-Sataaic
entities that served the sorcerous Bishop. Becoming convinced of his
own physical solidity and integrity, and reflecting that such was
scarcely the appropriate condition of a disincarnate soul, and also that
the sylvan scene about him was hardly characteristic of the infernal
regions, he accepted this as the true explanation. He was still alive, and. ¢ÿ
still on earth, though the circumstances of his situation were more than
mysterious, and were fraught with dire, unknowable danger.
The strange beings had maintained an utter silence, as if they were
too dumbfounded for speech. Hearing the prayerful nurmurs of
Ambrose, they seemed to recover from their surprise, and became not
only articulate but vociferous. Ambrose could make nothing of their
harsh vocables, in which sibilants and aspirates and gutturals were
often combined in a manner difficult for the normal human tongue to
imitate. However, he caught the word 'taranit', several times repeated,
and wondered if it were the name of an especially malevolent demon.
The speech of the weird beings began to assume a sort of rude
rhythm, like the intonations of some primordial chant. Two of them
stepped forward and seized Ambrose, while the voices of their
companions rose in a shrill, triumphant litany.
Scarcely knowing what had happened, and still less what was to
follow, Ambrose was flung supine on the granite block, and was held
down by one of his captors, while the other raised aloft the keen blade
of chiselled flint which he carried. The blade was poised in the air
above Ambrose's heart, and the monk realized in sudden terror that it
would fall with dire velocity and pierce him through before the lapse of
another moment.
Then, above the demoniac chanting, which had risen to a mad,
malignant frenzy, he heard the sweet and imperious cry of a woman's
voice. In the wild confusion of his terror, the words were strange and
meaningless to him; but plainly they were understood by his captors,
and were taken as an undeniable command. The stone knife was
lowered sullenly, and Ambrose was permitted to resume a sitting
posture on the flat slab.
His rescuer was standing on the edge of the open glade, in the wide-
flung umbrage of an ancient pine. She came forward now; and the
white-garmented beings fell back with evident respect before her. She
was very tall, with a fearless and regal demeanor, and was gowned in a
dark shimmering blue, like the star-laden blue of nocturnal summer
skies. Her hair was knotted in a long golden-brown braid, heavy as the
glistening coils of some eastern serpcnt. Her eyes were a strange amber,
her lips a vermilion touched with the coolness of woodland shadow,
and her skin was of alabastrine fairness. Ambrose saw that she was
beautiful; but she inspired him with the same awe that he would have
felt before a queen, together with something of the fear and
consternation which a virtuous young monk would conceive in the
perilous presence of an alluring succubus.. ¢½
'Come with me,' she said to Ambrose, in a tongue that his monastic
studies enabled him to recognize as an obsolete variant of the French of
Averoigne Š a tongue that no man had supposedly spoken for many
hundred years. Obediently and in great wonder, he arose and followed
her, with no hindrance from his glowering and reluctant captors.
The woman led him to a narrow path that wound sinuously away
through the deep forest. In a few moments, the glade, the granite block,
and the cluster of white-robed men were lost to sight behind the heavy
foliage.
'Who are you?' asked the lady, turning to Ambrose. 'You look like
one of those crazy missionaries who are beginning to enter Averoigne
nowadays. I believe that people call them Christians. The Druids have
sacrificed so many of them to Taranit, that I marvel at your temerity in
coming here.'
Ambrose found it difficult to comprehend the archaic phrasing; and
the import of her words was so utterly strange and baffling that he felt
sure he must have misunderstood her.
'I am Brother Ambrose,' he replied, expressing himself slowly and
awkwardly in the long-disused dialect. 'Of course, I am a Christian; but
I confess that I fail to understand you. I have heard of the pagan
Druids; but surely they were all driven from Averoigne many centuries
ago.'
The woman stared at Ambrose, with open amazement and pity.
Her brownish-yellow eyes were bright and clear as a mellowed wine.
'Poor little one,' she said. 'I fear that your dreadful experiences have
served to unsettle you. It was fortunate that I came aIong when I did,
and decided to intervene. I seldom interfere with the Druids aud their
sacrifices; but I saw you sitting on their altar a little while agone, and
was struck by your youth and comeliness.'
Ambrose felt more and more that he had been made the victim of a
most peculiar sorcery; but, even yet, he was far from suspecting the
true magnitude of this sorcery. Amid his bemusement and
consternation, however, he realized that he owed his life to the singular
and lovely woman beside him, and began to stammer out his gratitude.
'You need not thank me,' said the lady, with a dulcet smile. 'I am
Moriamis, the enchantress, and the Druids fear my magic, which is
more sovereign and more excellent than theirs, though I use it only for
the welfare of men and not for their bale or bane.' The monk was
dismayed to learn that his fair rescuer was a sorceress, even though her
powers were professedly benignant. The knowledge added to his alarm;
but he felt that it would be politic to conceal his emotions in this
regard.. ¡_
'Indeed, I am grateful to you,' he protested. 'And now, if you can tell
me the way to the Inn of Bonne Jouissance, which I left not long ago, I
shall owe you a further debt.' Moriamis knitted her light brows. 'I have
never heard of the Inn of Bonne Jouissance. There is no such place in
this region.'
'But this is the forest of Averoigne, is it not?' inquired the puzzled
Ambrose. 'And surely we are not far from the road that runs between
the town of Ximes and the city of Vyones?'
'I have never heard of Ximes, or Vyones, either,' said Moriamis.
'Truly, the land is known as Averoigne, and this forest is the great wood
of Averoigne, which men have called by that name from primeval
years. But there are no towns such as the ones whereof you speak,
Brother Ambrose. I fear that you still wander a little in your mind.'
Ambrose was aware of a maddening perplexity. 'I have been most
damnably beguiled,' he said, half to himself. 'It is all the doing of that
abominable sorcerer, Azédarac, I am sure.
The woman started as if she had been stung by a wild bee. There
was something both eager and severe in the searching gaze that she
turned upon Ambrose.
'Azédarac?' she queried. 'What do you know of Azé- darac? I was
once acquainted with someone by that name; and I wonder if it could
be the same person. Is he tall and a little gray, with hot, dark eyes, and
a proud, half-angry air, and a crescent scar on the brow?'
Greatly mystified, and more troubled than ever, Ambrose admitted
the veracity of her description. Realizing that in same unknown way he
had stumbled upon the hidden antecedents of the sorcerer, he confided
the story of his adventures to Moriamis, hoping that she would
reciprocate with further information concerning Azédarac.
The woman listened with the air of one who is much interested but
not at all surprised.
'I understand now,' she observed, when he had finished. Anon I
shall explain everything that mystifies and troubles you. I think I know
this Jehan Mauvaissoir, also; he has long been the man-servant of
Azédarac, though his name was Melchire in other days. These two
have always been the underlings of evil, and have served the Old Ones
in ways forgotten or never known by the Druids.'
'Indeed, I hope you can explain what has happened,' said Ambrose.
'It is a fearsome and strange and ungodly thing, to drink a draft of wine
in a tavern at eventide, and then find one's self in the heart of the forest
by afternoon daylight, among demons such as those from whom you
succored me.'. ¡_
'Yea,' countered Moriamis 'it is even stranger than you dream. Tell
me, Brother Ambrose, what was the year in which you entered the Inn
of Bonne Jouissance?'
'Why, it is the year of our Lord, 1175, of course. What other year
could it be?'
'The Druids use a different chronology,' replied Moriamis, 'and
their notation would mean nothing to you. But, according to that which
the Christian missionaries would now introduce in Averoigne, the
present year is A.D. 475. You have been sent back no less than seven
hundred years into what the people of your era would regard as the
past. The Druid altar an which I found you lying is probably located on
the future site of the Inn of Bonne Jouissance.'
Ambrose was more than dumbfounded. His mind was unable to
grasp the entire import of Moriamis' words.
'But how can such things be'?' he cried. 'How can a man go
backward in time, among years and people that have long turned to
dust?'
'That, mayhap, is a mystery for Azédarac to unriddle. However, the
past and the future co-exist with what we call the present, and are
merely the two segments of the circle of time. We see them and name
them according to our own position in the circle.'
Ambrose felt that he had fallen among necromancies of a most
unhallowed and unexampled sort, and had been made the victim of
diableries unknown to the Christian catalogues.
Tongue-tied by a consciousness that all comment, all protest or
even prayer would prove inadequate to the situation, he saw that a
stone tower with small lozenge-shaped windows was now visible above
the turrets of pine along the path which he and Moriamis were
following.
'This is my home,' said Moriamis, as they came forth from beneath
the thinning trees at the foot of a little knoll on which the tower was
situated. 'Brother Ambrose, you must be my guest.'
Ambrose was unable to decline the proffered hospitality, in spite of
his feeling that Moriamis was hardly the most suitable of chatelaines for
a chaste and God-fearing monk. However, the pious misgivings with
which she inspired him were not unmingled with fascination. Also, like
a lost child, he clung to the only available protection in a land of fearful
perils and astounding mysteries.
The interior of the tower was neat and clean and homelike, though
with furniture of a ruder sort than that to which Ambrose was
accustomed, and rich but roughly woven arrases. A serving-woman, tall
as Moriamis herself, but darker, brought to him a huge bowl of milk. ¡_
and wheaten bread, and the monk was now able to assuage the hunger
that had gone unsatisfied in the Inn of Bonne Jouissance.
As he seated himself before the simple fare, he realized that the
Book of Eibon was still heavy in the bosom of his gown. He removed
the volume, and gave it gingerly to Moriamis. Her eyes widened, but
she made no comment until he had finished his meal. Then she said:
'This volume is indeed the property of Azédarac, who was formerly
a neighbor of mine. I knew the scoundrel quite well Š in fact, I knew
him all too well.' Her bosom heaved with an obscure emotion as she
paused for a moment. 'He was the wisest and the mightiest of sorcerers,
and the most secret withal; for no one knew the time and the manner of
his coming into Averoigne, or the fashion in which he had procured the
immemorial Book of Eibon, whose runic writings were beyond the lore
of all other wizards. He was master of all enchantments and all demons,
and likewise a compounder of mighty potions. Among these were
certain philtres, blended with potent spells and possessed of unique
virtue, that would send the drinker backward or forward in time. One
of them, I believe, was administered to you by Melchire, or Jehan
Mauvaissoir; and Azédarac himself, together with this man-servant,
made use of another Š perhaps not for the first time Š when they
went onward from the presemt age of the Druids into that age of
Christian authority to which you belong. There was a blood-red vial for
the past, and a green for the future. Behold! I possess one of each Š
though Azédarac was unaware that I knew of their existence.'
She opened a little cupboard, in which were the various charms and
medicaments, the sun-dried herbs and mooncompounded essences that
a sorceress would employ. From among them she brought out the two
vials, one of which contained a sanguine-colored liquid, and the other a
fluid of emerald brightness.
'I stole them one day, out of womanly curiosity, from his hidden
store of philtres and elixirs and nagistrals,' continued Moriamis. 'I could
have followed the rascal when he disappeared into the future, if I had
chosen to do so. But I am well enough content with ny own age; and
moreover, I am not the sort of woman who pursues a wearied and
reluctant lover....'
'Then,' said Ambrose, more bewildered than ever, but hopeful, 'if I
were to drink the contents of the green vial, I should return to my own
epoch.'
'Precisely. And I am sure, from what you have told me, that your
return would be a source of much annoyance to Azédarac. It is like the
fellow, to have established himself in a fat prelacy. He was ever the
master of circumstance, with an eye to his own accommodation and. ¡_
comfort. It would hardly please him, I am sure, if you were to reach the
Archbishop.... I am not revengeful by nature ... but on the other hand
Š '
'It is hard to understand how anyone could have wearied of you,'
said Ambrose, gallantly, as he began to comprehend the situation.
Moriamis smiled. 'That is prettily said. And you are really a
charming youth, in spite of that dismal-looking robe. I am glad that I
rescued you from the Druids, who would have torn your heart out and
offered it to their demon, Taranit.'
'And now you will send me back7'
Moriamis frowned a little, and then assumed her most seductive air.
'Are you in such a hurry to leave your hostess? Now that you are
living in another century than your own, a day, a week, or a month will
make no difference in the date of your return. I have also retained the
formulas of Azédarac; and I know how to graduate the potion, if
necessary. The usual period of transportation in time is exactly seven
huadred years; but the philtre can be strengthened or weakened a little.'
The sun had fallen beyond the pines, and a soft twilight was
beginning to invade the tower. The maid-servant had left the room.
Moriamis cane over and seated herself beside Ambrose on the rough
bench he was occupying. Still smiling, she fixed her amber eyes uyon
him, with a languid flame in their depths Š a flame that seemed to
brighten as the dusk grew stronger. Without speaking, she began slowly
to unbraid her heavy hair, from which there emanated a perfume that
was subtle and delicious as the perfume of grape-flowers.
Ambrose was embarrassed by this delightful proximity. 'I am not
sure that it would be right for me to remain, after all. What would the
Archbishop think?'
'My dear child. the Archbishop will not even be born for at least six
hundred and fifty years. And it will be still longer before you are born.
And when you return, anything that you have done during your stay
with me will have happened no less than seven centuries ago ... which
should be long enough to procure the remission of any sin, no matter
how often repeated.'
Like a man who has been taken in the toils of some fantastic drean,
and finds that the dream is not altogether disagreeable, Ambrose
yielded to this feminine and irrefutable reasoning. He hardly knew what
was to happen; but, under the exceptional circumstances indicated by
Moriamis, the rigors of monastic discipline might well be relaxed to
almost any conceivable degree, without entailing spiritual perdition or
even a serious breach of vows.. ¡_
IV
A month Iater, Moriamis and Ambrose were standing beside the
Druid altar. It was late in the evening; and a slightly gibbous moon had
risen upon the deserted glade and was fringing the tree-tops with
wefted silver. The warm breath of the summer night was gentle as the
sighing of a woman in slumber.
'Must you go, after all?' said Moriamis, in a pleading and regretful
voice.
'It is my duty. I must return to Clément with the Book of Eibon and
the other evidence I have collected against Azédarac.' The words
sounded a little unreal to Ambrose as he uttered them; and he tried
very hard, but vainly, to convince himself of the cogency and validity of
his arguments. The idyll of his stay with Moriamis, to which he was
oddly unable to attach any true conviction of sin, had given to all that
preceded it a certain dismal insubstantiality. Free of all responsibility or
restraint, in the sheer obliviousness of dreams, he had lived like a happy
pagan; and now he must go back to the drear existence of a nediaeval
monk, beneath the prompting of an obscure sense of duty.
'I shall not try to hold you,' Moriamis sighed. 'But I shall miss you,
and remenber you as a worthy lover and a pleasant playmate. Here is
the philtre.' The green essence was cold and almost hueless in the
moonlight, as Moriamis poured it into a little cup and gave it to
Ambrose.
'Are you sure of its precise efficacy?' the monk inquired. 'Are you
sure that I shaH return to the Inn of Bonne Jouissance, at a time not far
subsequent to that of my departure therefrom?'
'Yea,' said Moriamis, 'for the potion is infallible. But stay, I have also
brought along the other vial Š the vial of the past. Take it with you Š
for who knows, you may sometime wish to return and visit me again.'
Ambrose accepted the red vial and placed it in his robe beside the
ancient manual of Hyperborean sorcery. Then, after an appropriate
farewell to Moriamis, he drained with sudden resolution the contents of
the cup.
The moonlit glade, the gray altar, and Moriamis, all vanished in a
swirl of flame and shadow. It seemed to Ambrose that he was soaring
endlessly through fantasmagoric gulfs, amid the ceaseless shifting and
melting of unstable things, the transient forming and fading of
irresoluble worlds. At the end, he found himself sitting once more in
the Inn of Bonne Jouissance. at what he assumed to be the very same
table before which he had sat with the Sieur des Émaux. It was
daylight, and the room was full of people, among whom he looked in. ¡¢
vain for the rubicund face of the innkeeper, or the servants and fellow-
guests he had previously seen. All were unfamiliar to him; and the
furniture was strangely worn, and was grimier than he remembered it.
Perceiving the presence of Ambrose, the people began to eye him
with open curiosity and wonderment. A tall man with dolorous eyes
and lantern jaws came hastily forward and bowed before him with an
air that was half servile but full of a prying impertinence.
'What do you wish?' he asked.
'Is this the Inn of Bonne Jouissance?'
The innkeeper stared at Ambrose. 'Nay, it is the Inn of Haute
Esperance, of which I have been the taverner these thirty years. Could
you not read the sign? It was called the Inn of Bonne Jouissance in my
father's time, but the name was changed after his death.'
Ambrose was filled with consternation. 'But the inn was differently
named, and was kept by another man when I visited it not long ago,' he
cried in bewilderment. 'The owner was a stout, jovial man, not in the
least like you.'
'That would answer the description of my father,' said the taverner,
eyeing Ambrose more dubiously than ever. 'He has been dead for the
full thirty years of which I speak; and surely you were not even born at
the time of his decease.'
Ambrose began to realize what had happened. The emerald potion,
by some error or excess of potcncy, had taken him many years beyond
his own time into the future!
'I must resume my journey to Vyones,' he said in a bewildered voice,
without fully comprehending the implications of his situation. 'I have a
message for the Archbishop Clément Š and must not delay longer in
delivering it.'
'But Clément has been dead even longer than my father,' exclaimed
the inn-keeper. 'From whence do you come, that you are ignorant of
this?' It was plain from his manner that he had begun to doubt the
sanity of Ambrose. Others, overhearing the strange discussion, had
begun to crowd about, and were plying the monk with jocular and
sometimes ribald questions.
'And what of Azédarac, the Bishop of Ximes? Is he dead, too?'
inquired Ambrose, desperately. 'You mean St. Azédarac, no doubt. He
outlived Clément, but nevertheless he has been dead and duly
canonized for thirty-two years. Some say that he did not die, but was
transported to heaven alive, and that his body was never buried in the
great mausoleum reared for him at Ximes. But that is probably a mere
legend.'. ¡¡
Ambrose was overwhelmed with unspeakable desolation and
confusion. In the meanwhile, the crowd about him had increased, and
in spite of his robe, he was being made the subject of rude remarks and
jeers.
'The good Brother has lost his wits,' cried some. 'The wines of
Averoigne are too strong for him,' said others. 'What year is this?'
demanded Ambrose, in his desperation.
'The year of our Lord, 1230,' replied the taverner, breaking into a
derisive laugh. 'And what year did you think it was?'
'It was the year 1175 when I last visited the Inn of Bonne
Jouissance,' admitted Ambrose.
His declaration was greeted with fresh jeers and laughter. 'Hola,
young sir, you were not even conceived at that time,' the taverner said.
Then, seeming to remember something, he went on in a more
thoughtful tone: 'When I was a child, my father told me of a young
monk, about your age, who came to the Inn of Bonne Jouissance one
evening in the summer of 1175, and vanished inexplicably after
drinking a draft of red wine. I believe his name was Ambrose. Perhaps
you are Ambrose, and have only just returned from a visit to nowhere.'
He gave a derisory wink, and the new jest was taken up and bandied
from mouth to mouth among the frequenters af the tavern.
Ambrose was trying to realize the full import of his predicament.
His mission was now useless, through the death or disappearance of
Azédarac; and no one would remain in all Averoigne to recognize him
or believe his story. He felt the hopelessness of his alienation among
unknown years and people.
Suddenly he remembered the red vial given him at parting by
Moriamis. The potion, like the green philtre, might prove uncertain in
its effect; but he was seized by an allconsuming desire to escape from
the weird embarrassment and wilderment of his present position. Also,
he longed for Moriamis like a lost child for its mother; and the charm
of his sojourn in the past was upon him with an irresistible spell.
Ignoring the ribald faces and voices about him, he drew the vial from
his bosom, uncorked it, and swallowed the contents....
V
He was back in the forest glade, by the gigantic altar. Moriamis was
beside him again, lovely and warm and breathing; and the moon was
still rising above the pinetops. It seemed that no more than a few. ¡^
moments could have elapsed since he had said farewell to the beloved
enchantress. 'I thought you might return,' said Moriamis. 'And I waited
a little while.'
Ambrose told her of the singular mishap that had attended his
journey in time.
Moriamis nodded gravely. 'The green philtre was more potent than
I had supposed,' she remarked. 'It is fortunate, though, that the red
philtre was equivalently strong, and could bring you back to me
through all those added years. You will have to remain with me now,
for I possessed only the two vials. I hope you are not sorry.'
Ambrose proceeded to prove, in a somewhat unmonastic manner,
that her hope was fully justified.
Neither then nor at any other time did Moriamis tell him that she
herself had strengthened slightly and equally the two philtres by means
of the private formula which she had also stolen from Azédarac.
[1933]. ¡ÿ
The Colossus of
Ylourgne
1. THE FLIGHT OF THE NECROMANCER
THE THRICE-INFAMOUS NATHAIRE, alchemist, astrologer and
necromancer, with his ten devil-given pupils, had departed very
suddenIy and under circumstances of strict secrecy from the town of
Vyones. It was widely thought, among the people of that vicinage, that
his departure had been prompted by a salutary fear of ecclesiastical
thumbscrews and faggots. Other wizards, less notorious than he, had
already gone to the stake during a year of unusual inquisitory zeal; and
it was well-known that Nathaire had incurred the reprobation of the
Church. Few, therefore, considered the reason of his going a mystery;
but the means of transit which he had employed, as well as the
destination of the sorcerer and his pupils, were regarded as more than
problematic.
A thousand dark and superstitious rumours were abroad; and
passers made the sign of the Cross when they neared the tall, gloomy
house which Nathaire had built in blasphemous proximity to the great
cathedral and had filled with a furniture of Satanic luxury and
strangeness. Two daring thieves, who had entered the mansion when
the fact of its desertion became well established, reported that much of
this furniture, as well as the books and other paraphernalia of Nathaire,
had seemingly departed with its owner, doubtless to the same fiery
bourn. This served to augment the unholy mystery: for it was patently
impossible that Nathaire and his ten apprentices, with several cart-
loads of household belongings, could have passed the everguarded city
gates in any legitimate manner without the knowledge of the
custodians.. ¡½
It was said by the more devout and religious moiety that the
Archfiend, with a legion of bat-winged assistants, had borne them away
bodily at moonless midnight. There were clerics, and also reputable
burghers, who professed to have seen the flight of man-like shapes
upon the blotted stars together with others that were not men, and to
have heard the wailing cries of the hell-bound crew as they passed in an
evil cloud over the roofs and city walls.
Others believed that the sorcerers had transported themselves from
Vyones through their own diabolic arts, and had withdrawn to some
unfrequented fastness where Nathaire, who had long been in feeble
health, could hope to die in such peace and serenity as might be
enjoyed by one who stood between the flames of the auto-da-fe and
those of Abaddon. It was thought that he had lately cast his own
horoscope, for the first time in his fifty- odd years, and had read therein
an impending conjunction of disastrous planets, signifying early death,
Others still, among whom were certain rival astrologers and
enchanters, said that Nathaire had retired from the public view merely
that he might commune without interruption with various coadjutive
demons; and thus might weave, unmolested, the black spells of a
supreme and lycanthropic malice. These spells, they hinted, would in
due time be visited upon Vyones and perhaps upon the entire region of
Averoigne; and would no doubt take the form of a fearsome pestilence,
or a wholesale invultuation, or a realm-wide incursion of succubi and
incubi.
Amid the seething of strange rumours, many half-forgotten tales
were recalled, and new legends were created overnight Much was made
of the obscure nativity of Nathaire and his dubitable wanderings before
he had settled, six years previous, in Vyones. People said that he was
fiend-begotten, like the fabled Merlin: his father being no less a
personage than Alastor, demon of revenge; and his mother a deformed
and dwarfish sorceress. From the former, he had taken his spitefulness
and malignity; from the latter, his squat, puny physique,
He had travelled in Orient lands, and had learned from Egyptian or
Saracenic masters the unhallowed art of necromancy, in whose practice
he was unrivalled. There were black whispers anent the use he had
made of long-dead bodies, of fleshless bones, and the service he had
wrung from buried men that the angel of doom alone could lawfully
raise up. He had never been popular, though many had sought his
advice and assistance in the furthering of their own more or less
dubious affairs. Once, in the third year after his coming to Vyones, he
had been stoned in public because of his bruited necromancies, and
had been permanently lamed by a well-directed cobble. This injury, it. ˆ_
was thought, he had never forgiven; and he was said to return the
antagonism of the clergy with the hellish hatred of an Antichrist.
Apart from the sorcerous evils and abuses. of which he was
commonly suspected, he had long been looked upon as a corrupter of
youth. Despite his minikin stature, his deformity and ugliness, he
possessed a remarkable power, a mesmeric persuasion; and his pupils,
whom he was said to have plunged into bottomless and ghoulish
iniquities, were young men of the most brilliant promise. On the whole,
his vanishment was regarded as a quite providential riddance.
Among the people of the city there was one man who took no part
in the sombre gossip and lurid speculation. This man was Gaspard du
Nord, himself a student of the proscribed sciences, who had been
numbered for a year among the pupils of Nathaire but had chosen to
withdraw quietly from the master's household after learning the
enormities that would attend his further initiation. He had, however,
taken with him much rare and peculiar knowledge, together with a
certain insight into the baleful powers and night-dark motives of the
necromancer.
Because of this knowledge and insight, Gaspard preferred to remain
silent when he heard of Nathaire's departure. Also, he did not think it
well to revive the memory of his own past pupilage, Alone with his
books, in a sparsely furnished attic, he frowned above a small, oblong
mirror, framed with an arabesque of golden vipers, that had once been
the property of Nathaire.
It was not the relection of his own comely and youthful though
subtly lined face that caused him to frown. Indeed, the mirror was of
another kind than that which reflects the features of the gazer. In its
depths, for a few instants, he had beheld a strange and ominous-
looking scene, whose participants were known to him but whose
location he could not recognize or orientate. Before he could study it
closely, the mirror had clouded as if with the rising of alchemic fumes,
and he had seen no more.
This clouding, he reflected, could mean only one thing: Nathaire
had known himself watched and had put forth a counterspell that
rendered the clairvoyant mirror useless. It was the realization of this
fact, together with the brief, sinister glimpse of Nathaire's present
activities, that troubled Gaspard and caused a chill horror to mount
slowly in his mind: a horror that had not yet found a palpable form or a
name.. ˆ_
2. THE GATHERING OF THE DEAD
The departure of Nathaire and his pupils occurred in the late spring
of 1281, during the interlunar dark. Afterwards a new moon waxed
above the flowery fields and bright-leafed woods and waned in ghostly
silver. With its waning, people began to talk of other magicians and
fresher mysteries.
Then, in the moon-deserted nights of early summer, there came a
series of disappearances far more unnatural and inexplicable than that
of the dwarfish, malignant sorcerer.
It was found one day, by grave-diggers who had gone early to their
toil in a cemetery outside the walls of Vyones, that no less than six
newly occupied graves had been opened, and the bodies, which were
those of reputable citizens, removed. On closer examination, it became
all too evident that this removal had not been effected by robbers. The
coffins, which lay aslant or stood protruding upright from the mould,
offered all the appearance of having been shattered from within as if by
the use of extrahuman strength; and the fresh earth itself was
upheaved, as if the dead men, in some awful, untimely resurrection,
had actually dug their way to the surface.
The corpses had vanished utterly, as if hell had swallowed them;
and, as far as could be learned, there were no eyewitnesses of their fate.
In those devil-ridden times, only one explanation of the happening
seemed credible: demons had entered the graves and had taken bodily
possession of the dead, compelling them to arise and go forth.
To the dismay and horror of all Averoigne, the strange vanishment
was foIlowed with appalling promptness by many others of a like sort.
It seemed as if an occult, resistless summons had been laid upon the
dead. Nightly, for a period of two weeks, the cemeteries of Vyones and
also those of other towns, of villages and hamlets, gave up a ghastly
quota of their tenants. From brazen bolted tombs, from common
charnels, from shallow, unconsecrated trenches, from the marble lidded
vaults of churches and cathedrals, the weird exodus went on without
cessation,
Worse than this, if possible, there were newly ceremented corpses
that leapt from their biers or catafalques, and disregarding the horrified
watchers, ran with great bounds of automatic frenzy into the night,
never to be seen again by those who lamented them.
In every case, the missing bodies were those of young stalwart men
who had died but recently and had met their death through violence or
accident rather than wasting illness. Some were criminals who had paid
the penalty of their misdeeds; others were men-at-arms or constables,. ˆ_
slain in the execution of their duty. Knights who had died in tourney or
personal combat were numbered among them; and many were the
victims of the robber bands who infested Averoigne at that time. There
were monks, merchants, nobles, yeomen, pages, priests; but none, in
any case, who had passed the prime of life. The old and infirm, it
seemed, were safe from the animating demons.
The situation was looked upon by the more superstitious as a
veritable omening of the world's end. Satan was making war with his
cohorts and was carrying the bodies of the holy dead into hellish
captivity. The consternation increased a hundredfold when it became
plain, that even the most liberal sprinkling of holy water, the
performance of the most awful and cogent exorcisms, failed utterly to
give protection against this diabolic ravishment. The Church owned
itself powerless to cope with the strange evil; and the forces of secular
law could do nothing to arraign or punish the intangible agency.
Because of the universal fear that prevailed, no effort was made to
follow the missing cadavers. Ghastly tales, however, were told by late
wayfarers who had met certain of these liches, striding alone or in
companies along the roads of Averoigne. They gave the appearance of
being deaf, dumb, totally insensate, and of hurrying with horrible speed
and sureness towards a remote, predestined goal. The general direction
of
their flight, it seemed, was eastward; but only with the cessation of
the exodus, which had numbered several hundred people, did any one
begin to suspect the actual destination of the dead.
This destination, it somehow became rumoured, was the ruinous
castle of Ylourgne, beyond the werewolf-haunted forest, in the
outlying, semi-mountainous hills of Averoigne.
Ylourgne, a great, craggy pile that had been built by a line of evil
and marauding barons now extinct, was a place that even the goatherds
preferred to shun. The wrathful spectres of its bloody lords were said
to move turbulently in its crumbling halls; and its chatelaines were the
Undead. No one cared to dwell in the shadow of its cliff-founded walls;
and the nearest abode of living men was a small Cistercian monastery,
more than a mile away on the opposite slope of the valley.
The monks of this austere brotherhood held little commerce with
the world beyond the hills; and few were the visitors whosought
admission at their high-perched portals. But, during that dreadful
summer, following the disappearances of the dead, a weird and
disquieting tale went forth from the monastery throughout Averoigne.
Beginning with late spring, the Cistercian monks were compelled to
take cognizance of sundry old phenomena in the old, long-deserted. ˆ_
ruins of Ylourgne, which were visible from their windows, They had
beheld flaring lights, where lights should not have been: flames of
uncanny blue and crimson that shuddered behind the broken, weed-
grown embrasures or rose starwards above the jagged crenelations.
Hideous noises had issued from the ruin by night together with the
flames; and the monks had heard a clangour as of hellish anvils and
hanmers, a ringing of gigantic armour and maces, and had deemed that
Ylourgne was become a mustering-ground of devils. Mephitic odours
as of brimstone and burning flesh had floated across the valley; and
even by day, when the noises were silent and the lights no longer flared,
a thin haze of hell-blue vapour hung upon the battlements. It was plain,
the monks thought, that the place had been occupied from beneath by
subterrestrial beings; for no one was seen to approach it by way of the
bare, open slopes and crags. Observing these signs of the Archfoe's
activity in their neighbourhood, they crossed themselves with new
fervour and frequency, and said their Paters and Aves more
interminably than before. Their toil and austerities, also, they
redoubled. Otherwise, since the old castle was a place abandoned by
men, they took no heed of the supposed occupation, deeming it well to
mind their own affairs unless in case of overt Satanic hostility.
They kept a careful watch; but for several weeks they saw no one
who actually entered Ylourgne or emerged therefrom. Except for the
nocturnal lights and noises, and the hovering vapour by day, there was
no proof of tenantry either human or diabolic. Then, one morning, in
the valley below the terraced gardens of the monastery, two brothers,
hoeing weeds in a carrot-patch, beheld the passing of a singular train of
people who came from the direction of the great forest of Averoigne
and went upwards climbing the steep, chasmy slope towards Ylourgne.
These people, the monks averred; were striding along in great haste,
with stiff but flying steps; and all were strangely pale of feature and
were habited in the garnents of the grave. The shrouds of some were
torn and ragged; and all were dusty with travel or grimed with the
mould of interment. The people numbered a dozen or more; and after
them, at intervals, there came several stragglers, attired like the rest.
With marvellous agility and speed, they mounted the hill and
disappeared at length amid the lowering walls of Ylourgne.
At this time, no rumour of the ravished graves and biers had
reached the Cistercians. The tale was brought to them later, after they
had beheld, on many successive mornings, the passing of small or great
companies of the dead towards the devil-taken castle. Hundreds of
these liches, they swore, had filed by beneath the monastery; and
doubtless many others had gone past unnoted in the dark. None,. ˆ_
however, were seen to come forth from Ylourgne, which had swallowed
them up like the undisgorging Pit.
Though direly frightened and sorely scandalized, the brothers still
thought it well to refrain from action. Some, the hardiest, irked by all
these flagrant signs of evil, had desired to visit the ruins with holy water
and lifted crucifixes, But their abbot, in his wisdom, enjoined them to
wait. In the meanwhile, the nocturnal flames grew brighter, the noises
louder.
Also, in the course of this waiting, while incessant prayers went up
from the little monastery, a frightful thing occurred. One of the
brothers, a stout fellow named Theophile, in violation of the rigorous
discipline, had made over-frequent visits to the wine-casks. No doubt
he had tried to drown his pious horror at these untoward happenings,
At any rate, after his potations, he had the ill-luck to wander out among
the precipices and break his neck.
Sorrowing for his death and dereliction, the brothers laid Theophile
in the chapel and chanted their masses for his soul. These masses, in
the dark hours before morning, were interrupted by the untimely
resurrection of the dead monk, who, with his head lolling horribly on
his broken neck, rushed as if fiend-ridden from the chapel and ran
down the hill towards the demon flames and clamours of Ylourgne.
3. THE TESTIMONY OF THE MONKS
Following the above-related occurrence, two of the brothers who
had previously desired to visit the haunted castle again applied to the
abbot for this permission, saying that God would surely aid them in
avenging the abduction of Theophile's body as well as the taking of
many others from consecrated ground. Marvelling at the hardihood of
these lusty monks, who preposed to beard the Arch-enemy in his lair,
the abbot permitted them to go forth, furnished with aspergilluses and
flasks of holy water, and bearing great crosses of hornbeam, such as
would have served for maces with which to brain an armoured knight.
The monks, whose names were Bernard and Stephane, went boldly
up at middle forenoon to assail the evil stronghold. It was an arduous
climb, among overhanging boulders and along slippery scarps; but both
were stout and agile, and, moreover, well accustomed to such climbing.
Since the day was sultry and airless, their white robes were soon stained
with sweat; but pausing only for brief prayer, they pressed on; and in. ˆ.
good season they neared the castle, upon whose grey, time-eroded
ramparts they could still descry no evidence of occupation or activity.
The deep moat that had once surrounded the place was now dry,
and had been partly filled by crumbling earth and detritus from the
walls. The drawbridge had rotted away; but the blocks of the barbican,
collapsing into the moat, had made a sort of rough causey on which it
was possible to cross. Not without trepidation, and lifting their
crucifixes as warriors lift their weapons in the escalade of an armed
fortress, the brothers climbed over the ruin of the barbican into the
courtyard.
This too, like the battlements, was seemingly deserted. Overgrown
nettles, rank grasses and sapling trees were rotted between its paving-
stones. The high, massive donjon, the chapel, and that portion of the
castellated structure containing the great hall, had preserved their main
outlines after centuries of dilapidation. To the left of the broad bailey, a
doorway yawned like the mouth of a dark cavern in the cliffy mass of
the hall-building; and from this doorway there issued a thin, bluish
vapour, writhing in phantom coils towards the unclouded heavens.
Approaching the doorway, the brothers beheld a gleaming of red
fires within, like the eyes of dragons blinking through infernal murk.
They felt sure that the place was an outpost of Erebus, an ante-
chamber of the Pit; but nevertheless, they entered bravely, chanting
loud exorcisms and brandishing their mighty crosses of hornbeam.
Passing through the cavernous doorway, they could see but
indistinctly in the gloom, being somewhat blinded by the summer
sunlight they had left. Then, with the gradual clearing of their vision, a
monstrous scene was limned before them, with evergrowing details of
crowding horror and grotesquery. Some of the details were obscure
and mysteriously terrifying; others, all too plain, were branded as if
with sudden, ineffaceable hell-fire on the minds of the monks.
They stood on the threshold of a colossal chamber, which seemed
to have been made by the tearing down of upper floors and inner
partitions adjacent to the castle hall, itself a room of huge extent. The
chamber seemed to recede thmugh interminable shadow, shafted with
sunlight falling through the rents of ruin: sunlight that was powerless to
dissipate the infernal gloom and mystery.
The monks averred later that they saw many people moving about
the place, together with sundry demons, some of whom were shadowy
and gigantic, and others barely to be distinguished from the men.
These people, as well as their familiars, were occupied with the tending
of reverberatory furnaces and immense pear-shaped and gourd-shaped
vessels such as were used in alchemy. Some, also, were stooping above. ˆ.
great fuming cauldrons, like sorcerers, busy with the brewing of terrible
drugs. Against the oppposite wall, there were two enormous vats, built
of stone and mortar, whose circular sides rose higher than a man's
head, so that Bernard and Stephane were unable to determine their
con- tents. One of the vats gave forth a whitish glimmering; the other, a
ruddy luminosity.
Near the vats, and somewhat between them, there stood a sort of
low couch or litter, made of luxurious, weirdly figured fabrics such as
the Saracens weave. On this the monks discerned a dwarfish being,
pale and wizened, with eyes of chill flame that shone like evil beryls
through the dusk. The dwarf, who had all the air of a feeble moribund,
was supervising the toils of the men and their familiars.
The dazed eyes of the brothers began to comprehend other details.
They saw that several corpses, among which they recognized that of
Theophile, were lying on the middle floor, together with a heap of
human bones that had been wrenched asunder at the joints, and great
lumps of flesh piled like the carvings of butchers. One of the men was
lifting the bones and dropping them into a cauldron beneath which
there glowed a rubycoloured fire; and another was flinging the lumps of
flesh into a tub filled with some hueless liquid that gave forth an evil
hissing as of a thousand serpents.
Others had stripped the grave-clothes from one of the cadavers, and
were starting to assail it with long knives. Others still were mounting
rude flights of stone stairs along the walls of the immense vats, carrying
vessels filled with semi-liquescent matters which they emptied over the
high rims,
Appalled at this vision of human and Satanic turpitude, and feeling
a more than righteous indignation, the monks resumed their chanting
of sonorous exorcisms and rushed forward. Their entrance, it
appeared, was not perceived by the heinously occupied crew of
sorcerers and devils,
Bernard and Stephane, filled with an ardour of godly wrath, were
about to fling themselves upon the butchers who had started to assail
the dead body, This corpse they recognized as being that of a notorious
outlaw, named Jacques Le Loupgarou, who had been slain a few days
previous in combat with the officers of the state. Le Loupgarou, noted
for his brawn, his cunning and his ferocity, had long terrorized the
woods and highways of Averoigne. His great body had been half
eviscerated by the swords of the constabulary; and his beard was stiff
and purple with the dried blood of a ghastly wound that had cloven his
face from temple to mouth. He had died unshriven, but nevertheless,. ˆˆ
the monks were unwilling to see his helpless cadaver put to some
unhallowed use beyond the surmise of Christians,
The pale, malignant-looking dwarf had now perceived the brothers.
They heard him cry out in a shrill, imperatory tone that rose above the
ominous hiss of the cauldrons and the hoarse mutter of men and
demons.
They knew not his words, which were those of some outlandish
tongue and sounded like an incantation. Instantly, as if in response to
an order, two of the men turned from their unholy chemistry, and
lifting copper basins filled with an unknown, fetid liquor, hurled the
contents of these vessels in the faces of Bernard and Stephane.
The brothers were blinded by the stinging fluid, which bit their flesh
as with many serpents' teeth; and they were overcome by the noxious
fumes, so that their great crosses dropped from their hands and they
both fell unconscious on the castle floor.
Recovering anon their sight and their other senses; they found that
their hands had been tied with heavy thongs of gut, so that they were
now helpless and could no longer wield their crucifixes or the sprinklers
of holy water which they carried.
In this ignominious condition, they heard the voice of the evil dwarf,
commanding them to arise. They obeyed, though clumsily and with
difficulty, being denied the assistance of their hands. Bernard, who was
still sick with the poisonous vapour he had inhaled, fell twice before he
succeeded in standing erect; and his discomfiture was greeted with a
cachinnation of foul, obscene laughter from the assembled sorcerers.
Now, standing, the monks were taunted by the dwarf, who mocked
and reviled them, with appalling blasphemies such as could be uttered
only by a bond-servant of Satan. At last, according to their sworn
testimony, he said to them:
'Return to your kennel, ye whelps of Ialdabaoth, and take with you
this message: They that came here as many shall go forth as one.'
Then, in obedience to a dreadful formula spoken by the dwarf, two
of the familiars, who had the shape of enormous and shadowy beasts,
approached the body of Le Loupgarou and that of Brother Theophile.
One of the foul demons, like a vapour that sinks into a marsh, entered
the bloody nostrils of Le Loupgarou, disappearing inch by inch, till its
horned and bestial head was withdrawn from sight. The other, in like
manner, went in through the nostrils of Brother Theophile, whose head
lay weird athwart his shoulder on the broken neck,
Then, when the demons had completed their possession, the bodies,
in a fashion horrible to behold, were raised up from the castle floor, the
one with ravelled entrails hanging from its wide wounds, the other with. ˆ.
a head that dropped forward loosely on its bosom. Then, animated by
their devils, the cadavers took up the crosses of hornbeam that had
been dropped by Stephane and Bernard; and using the crosses for
bludgeons, they drove the monks in ignominous flight from the castle,
amid a loud, tempestuous howling of infernal laughter from the dwarf
and his necromantic crew. And the nude corpse of Le Loupgarou and
the robed cadaver of Theophile followed them far on the chasmriven
slopes below Ylourgne, striking great blows with the crosses, so that the
backs of the two Cistercians were become a mass of bloody bruises.
After a defeat so signal and crushing, no more of the monks were
emboldened to go up against Ylourgne. The whole monastery,
thereafter, devoted itself to triple austerities, to quadrupled prayers; and
awaiting the unknown will of God, and the equally obscure
machinations of the Devil, maintained a pious faith that was somewhat
tempered with trepidation.
In time, through goatherds who visited the monks, the tale of
Stephane and Bernard went forth throughout Averoigne, adding to the
grievous alarm that had been caused by the wholesale disappearance of
the dead. No one knew what was really going on in the haunted castle
or what disposition had been made of the hundreds of migratory
corpses; for the light thrown on their fate by the monks' story, though
lurid and frightful, was all too inconclusive; and the message sent by
the dwarf was somevhat cabalistic.
Everyone felt, however, that some gigantic menace, some black,
infernal enchantment, was being brewed within the ruinous walls. The
malign, moribund dwarf was all too readily identified with the missing
sorcerer, Nathaire; and his underlings, it was plain, were Nathaire's
pupils.
4. THE GOING-FORTH OF GASPARD DU NORD
Alone in his attic chamber, Gaspard du Nord, student of alchemy
and sorcery and quondam pupil of Nathaire, sought repeatedly, but
always in vain, to consult the viper-circled mirror. The glass remained
obscure and cloudy, as with the risen fumes of Satanical alembics or
baleful necromantic braziers. Haggard and weary with long nights of
watching, Gaspard knew that Nathaire was even more vigilant than he.
Reading with anxious care the general configuration of the stars, he
found the foretokening of a great evil that was to come upon
Averoigne. But the nature of the evil was not clearly shown.. ˆ.
In the meanwhile the hideous resurrection and migration of the
dead was taking place. All Averoigne shuddered at the manifold
enormity. Like the timeless night of a Memphian plague, terror settled
everywhere; and people spoke of each new atrocity in bated whispers,
without daring to voice the execrable tale aloud. To Gaspard, as to
everyone, the whispers came; and likewise, after the horror had
apparently ceased in early midsummer, there came the appalling story
of the Cistercian monks.
Now, at last, the long-baffled watcher found an inkling of that
which he sought. The hiding-place of the fugitive necromancer and his
apprentices, at least, had been uncovered; and the disappearing dead
were clearly traced to their bourn. But still, even for the percipient
Gaspard, there remained an undeclared enigma: the exact nature of the
abominable brew, the hell-dark sorcery, that Nathaire was concocting
in his remote den. Gaspard felt sure of one thing only: the dying,
splenetic dwarf, knowing that his allotted time was short, and hating the
people of Averoigne with a bottomless rancour, would prepare an
enormous and maleficent magic without parallel.
Even with his knowledge of Nathaire's proclivities, and his
awareness of the well-nigh inexhaustible arcanic science, the reserves of
pit-deep wizardry possessed by the dwarf, he could form only vague,
terrifical conjectures anent the incubated evil. But, as time went on, he
felt an ever-deepening oppression, the adumbration of a monstrous
menace crawling from the dark rim of the world. He could not shake
off his disquietude; and finally he resolved despite the obvious perils of
such an excursion, to pay a secret visit to the neightborhood of
Ylourgne.
Gaspard, though he came of a well-to-do family, was at that tine in
straitened circumstances; for his devotion to a somewhat doubtful
science had been disapproved by his father. His sole income was a
small pittance, purveyed secretly to the youth by his mother and sister.
This sufficed for his meagre food, the rent of his room, and a few
books and instruments and chemicals; but it would not permit the
purchase of a horse or even a humble mule for the proposed journey of
more than forty miles.
Undaunted, he set forth on foot, carrying only a dagger and a wallet
of food. He timed his wanderings so that he would reach Ylourgne at
nightfall in the rising of a full moon. Much of his journey lay through
the great, lowering forest, which approached the very walls of Vyones
on the eastern side and ran in a sombre arc through Averoigne to the
mouth of the rocky valley below Ylourgne. After a few miles, he
emerged from the mighty wood of pines and oaks and larches; and. ÿ_
thenceforward, for the first day, followed the river Isoile thiough an
open, well-peopled plain. He spent the warm summer night beneath a
beech-tree, in the vicinity of a small village, not caring to sleep in the
lonely woods where robbers and wolves Š and creatures of a more
baleful repute Š were commonly supposed to dwell.
At evening of the second day, after passing through the wildest and
oldest portion of the immemorial wood, he came to the steep, stony
valley that led to his destination. This valley was the fountain-head of
the Isoile, which had dwindled to a mere rivulet. In the brown twilight,
between sunset and moonrise, he saw the lights of the Cistercian
monastery; and opposite, on the piled, forbidding scarps, the grim and
rugged mass of the ruinous stronghold of Ylourgne, with wan and
wizard fires flickering behind its high embrasures. Apart from these
fires, there was no sign of occupation; and he did not hear at any time
the dismal noises reported by the monks.
Gaspard waited till the round moon, yellow as the eye of some
immense nocturnal bird, had begun to peer above the darkling valley.
Then, very cautiously, since the neighbourhood was strange to him, he
started to make his way towards the sombre, brooding castle.
Even for one well-used to such climbing, the escalade would have
offered enough diffculty and danger by moonlight. Several times,
finding himself at the bottom of a sheer cliff, he was compelled to
retrace his hard-won progress; and often he was saved from falling only
by stunted shrubs and briars that had taken root in the niggard soil.
Breathless, with torn raiment, and scored and bleeding hands, he
gained at length the shoulder of the craggy height, below the walls.
Here he paused to recover breath and recuperate his flagging
strength. He could see from his vantage the pale reflection as of hidden
flames, that beat upwards on the inner walls of the high- built donjon.
He heard a low hum of confused noises, whose distance and direction
were alike baffling. Sometimes they seemed to float downwards from
the black battlements, sometimes to issue from subterranean depths far
in the hill.
Apart from this remote, ambiguous hum, the night was locked in a
mortal stillness. The very winds appeared to shun the vicinity of the
dread castle. An unseen, clammy cloud of paralyzing evil hung
removeless upon all things; and the pale, swollen moon, the patroness
of witches and sorcerers, distilled her green poison above the crumbling
towers in a silence older than time.
Gaspard felt the obscenely clinging weight of a more burdenous
thing than his own fatigue when he resumed his progress towards the
barbican. Invisible webs of the waiting, ever-gathering evil seemed to. ÿ_
impede him. The slow, noisome flapping of intangible wings was heavy
in his face. He seemed to breathe a surging wind from unfathomable
vaults and caverns of corruption. Inaudible howlings, derisive or
miniatory, thronged in his ears, and foul hands appeared to thrust him
back. But, bowing his head as if against a blowing gale, he went on and
climbed the mounded ruin of the barbican, into the weedy courtyard.
The place was deserted, to all seeming; and much of it was still deep
in the shadows of the walls and turrets. Near by, in the black, silver-
crenellated pile, Gaspard saw the open, cavernous doorway described
by the monks. It was lit from within by a lurid glare, wannish and eerie
as marsh-fires. The humming noise, now audible as a muttering of
voices, issued from the doorway; and Gaspard thought that he could
see dark, sooty figures moving rapidly in the lit interior.
Keeping in the farther shadows, he stole along the courtyard,
making a sort of circuit amid the ruins. He did not dare to approach the
open entrance for fear of being seen; though, as far as he could tell, the
place was unguarded.
He came to the donjon, on whose upper wall the wan light flickered
obliquely through a sort of rift in the long building adjacent. This
opening was at some distance from the ground; and Gaspard saw that
it had been formerly the door to a stony balcony. A flight of broken
steps led upwards along the wall to the half-crumbled remnant of this
balcony; and it occurred to the youth that he might climb the steps and
peer unobserved into the interior of Ylourgne.
Some of the stairs were missing; and all were in heavy shadow.
Gaspard found his way precariously to the balcony, pausing once in
considerable alarm when a fragment of the worn stone, loosened by his
footfall, dropped with a loud clattering on the courtyard flags below.
Apparently it was unheard by the occupants of the castle; and after a
little he resumed his climbing.
Cautiously he neared the large, ragged opening through which the
light poured upwards. Crouching on a narrow ledge, which was all that
remained of the balcony, he peered in on a most astounding and terrific
spectacle, whose details were so bewildering that he could barely
comprehend their import till after many minutes.
It was plain that the story told by the monks Š allowing for their
religious bias Š had been far from extravagant. Almost the whole
interior of the half-ruined pile had been torn down and dismantled to
afford room for the activities of Nathaire. This demolition in itself was
a superhuman task for whose execution the sorcerer must have
employed a legion of familiars as well as his ten pupils.. ÿ_
The vast chamber was fitfully illumed by the glare of athanors and
braziers; and, above all, by the weird glimmering from the huge stone
vats. Even from his high vantage, the watcher could not see the
contents of these vats; but a white luminosity poured, upwards from
the rim of one of them, and a flesh-tinted phosphorescence from the
other.
Gaspard had seen certain of the experiments and evocations of
Nathaire, and was all too familiar with the appurtenances of the dark
arts. Within certain limits, he was nat squeamish; nor was it likely that
he would have been terrified overmuch by the shadowy, uncouth
shapes of demons who toiled in the pit below him side by side with the
blackclad pupils of the sorcerer. But a cold horror clutched his heart
when he saw the incredible, enormous thing that occupied the central
floor: the colossal human skeleton a hundred feet in length, stretching
for more than the extent of the old castle hall; the skeleton whose bony
right foot the group of men and devils, to all appearance, were busily
clothing with human flesh!
The prodigious and macabre framework, complete in every part,
with ribs like arches of some Satanic nave, shone as if it were still
heated by the fires of an infernal welding. It seemed to shimmer and
burn with unnatural life, to quiver with malign disquietude in the
flickering glare and gloom. The great fingerbones, curving claw-like on
the floor, appeared as if they were about to close upon some helpless
prey. The trempndous teeth were set in an everlasting grin of sardonic
cruelty and malice. The hollow eye-sockets, deep as Tartarean wells,
appeared to seethe with myriad, mocking lights, like the eyes of
elementals swimming upwards in obscene shadow.
Gaspard was stunned by the shocking and stupendous fan-
tasmagoria that yawned before him like a peopled hell. After- wards he
was never wholly sure of certain things, and could remember very little
of the actual manner in which the work of the men and their assistants
was being carried on. Dim, dubious, bat-like creatures seemed to be
flitting to and fro between one of the stone vats and the group that
toiled like sculptors, clothing the bony foot with a reddish plasm which
they applied and moulded like so much clay. Gaspard thought, but was
not certain later, that this plasm, which gleamed as if with mingled
blood and fire, was being brought from the rosy-litten vat in vessels
borne by the claws of the shadowy flying creatures. None of them,
however, approached the other vat, whose wannish light was momently
enfeebled, as if it were dying down.
He looked for the minikin figure of Nathaire, whom he could not
distinguish in the crowded scene. The sick necromancer Š if he had. ÿ_
not already succumbed to the little-known disease that had long wasted
him like an inward flame Š was no doubt hidden from view by the
colossal skeleton and was perhaps directing the labours of the men and
demons from his couch.
Spellbound on that precarious ledge, the watcher failed to hear the
furtive, cat-like feet that were climbing behind him on the ruinous
stairs. Too late, he heard the clink of a loose fragment close upon his
heels; and turning in startlement, he toppled into sheer oblivion
beneath the impact of a cudgel-like blow, and did not even know that
the beginning fall of his body towards the courtyard had been arrested
by his assailant's arms.
5. THE HORROR OF YLOURGNE
Gaspard, returning from his dark plunge into Lethean emptiness,
found himself gazing into the eyes of Nathaire: those eyes of liquid
night and ebony, in which swam the chill, malignant fires of stars that
had gone down to irremeable perdition. For some time, in the
confusion of his senses, he could see nothing but the eyes, which
seemed to have drawn him forth like baleful magnets from his swoon.
Apparently disembodied, or set in a face too vast for human
cognizance, they burned before him in chaotic murk; Then, by degrees,
he saw the other features of the sorcerer, and the details of a lurid
scene; and became aware of his own situation.
Trying to lift his hands to his aching head, he found that they were
bound tightly, together at the wrists. He was half lying, half leaning
against an object with hard planes and edges that irked his back. This
object he discovered to be a sort of alchemic furnace, or athanor, part
of a litter of disused apparatus that stood or lay on the castle floor.
Cupels, aludels, cucurbits, like enormous gourds and globes, were
mingled in strange confusion with the piled, iron-clasped books and the
sooty cauldrons and braziers of a darker science.
Nathaire, propped among Saracenic cushions with arabesques of
sullen gold and fulgurant scarlet, was peering upon him from a kind of
improvised-couch, made with bales of Orient rugs and arrases, to
whose luxury the rude walls of the castle, stained with mould and
mottled with dead fungi, offered a grotesquc foil. Dim lights and evilly
swooping shadows flickered across the scene; and Gaspard could hear
a guttural hum of voices behind him. Twisting his head a little, he saw. ÿ_
one of the stone vats, whose rosy luminosity was blurred and blotted by
vampire wings that went to and fro.
'Welcome,' said Nathaire, after an interval in which the student
began to perceive the fatal progress of illness in the painpinched
features before him. 'So Gaspard du Nord has come to see his former
master!' The harsh, imperatory voice, with demoniac volume, issued
appallingly from the wizened frame.
'I have come,' said Gaspard, in laconic echo. 'Tell me, what devil's
work is this in which I find you engaged? And what have you done with
the dead bodies that were stolen by your accursed familiars?'
The frail, dying body of Nathaire, as if possessed by some sardonic.
fiend, rocked to and fro on the luxurious couch in a long, violent gust
of laughter, without other reply.
'If your looks bear creditable witness,' said Gaspard, when the
baleful laughter had ceased, 'you are mortally ill, and the time is short
in which you can hope to atone for your deeds of malice and make
your peace with God Š if indeed it still be possible for you to make
peace. What foul and monstrous brew are you preparing, to ensure the
ultimate perdition of your soul?'
The dwarf was again seized by a spasm of diabolic mirth.
'Nay, nay, my good Gaspard,' he said finally. 'I have made another
bond than the one with which puling cowards try to purchase the good
will and forgiveness of the heavenly Tyrant. Hell may take me in the
end, if it will; but Hell has paid, and will still pay, an ample and goodly
price. I must die soon, it is true, for my doom is written in the stars: but
in death, by the grace of Satan, I live again, and shall go forth endowed
with the mighty thews of the Anakim, to visit vengeance on the people
of Averoigne, who have long hated me for my necromantic wisdom
and have held me in derision for my dwarf stature.'
'What madness is this whereof you dream?' asked the youth,
appalled by the more than human frenzy and malignity that seemed to
dilate the shrunken frame of Nathaire and stream in Tartarean lustre
from his eyes.
'It is no madness, but a veritable thing: a miracle, mayhap, as life
itself is a miracle.... From the fresh bodies of the dead, which otherwise
would have rotted away in charnel foulness, my pupils and familiars are
making for me, beneath my instruction, the giant form whose skeleton
you have beheld. My soul, at the death of its present body, will pass
into this colossal tenement through the working of certain spells of
transmigration in which my faithful assistants have also been carefully
instructed.. ÿ¢
'If you had remained with me, Gaspard, and had not drawn back in
your petty, pious squeamishness from the marvels and profundities that
I should have unveiled for you, it would now be your privilege to share
in the creation of this prodigy.... And if you had come to Ylourgne a
little sooner in your presumptuous prying, I might have made a certain
use of your stout bones and muscles... the same use I have made of
other young men, who died through accident or violence. But it is too
late even for this, since the building of the bones has been completed,
and it remains only to invest them with human flesh. My good
Gaspard, there is nothing whatever to be done with you Š except to
put you safely out of the way. Providentially, for this purpose, there is
an oubliette beneath the castle: a somewhat dismal lodging-place, no
doubt, but one that was made strong and deep by the grim lords of
Ylourgne,
Gaspard was unable to frame any reply to this sinister and
extraordinary speech. Searching his horror-frozen brain for words, he
felt himself seized from behind by the hands of unseen beings who had
come, no doubt, in answer to some gesture of Nathaire: a gesture
which the captive had not perceived. He was blindfolded with some
heavy fabric, mouldy and musty as a gravecloth, and was led stumbling
through the litter of strange apparatus, and down a winding flight of
ruinous, narrow stairs from which the noisome breath of stagnating
water, mingled with the oily muskiness of serpents, arose to meet him.
He appeared to descend for a distance that would admit of no
return. Slowly the stench grew stronger, more insupportable; the stairs
ended; a door clanged sullenly on rusty hinges; and Gaspard was thrust
forward on a damp, uneven floor that seemed to have been worn away
by myriad feet.
He heard the grating of a ponderous slab of stone. His wrists were
untied, the bandage was removed from his eyes, and he saw by the light
of flickering torches a round hole that yawned in the oozing floor at his
feet. Beside it was the lifted slab that had formed its lid. Before he
could turn to see the faces of his captors, to learn if they were men or
devils, he was seized rudely and thrust into the gaping hole, He fell
through Erebus-like darkness, for what seemed an immense distance,
before he struck bottom. Lying half stunned in a shallow, fetid pool, he
heard the funereal thud of the heavy slab as it slid back into place far
above him.. ÿ¡
6. THE VAULTS OF YLOURGNE
Gaspard was revived, after a while, by the chillness of the water in
which he lay. His garments were half soaked; and the slimy mephitic
pool, as he discovered by his first movement, was within an inch of his
mouth. He could hear a steady, monotonous dripping somewhere in
the rayless night of his dungeon. He staggered to his feet, finding that
his bones were still intact, and began a cautious exploration, Foul drops
fell upon his hair and lifted face as he moved; his feet slipped and
splashed in the rotten water; there were angry, vehement hissings, and
serpentine coils slithered coldly across his ankles.
He soon came to a rough wall of stone, and following the wall with
his finger-tips, he tried to determine the extent of the oubliette. The
place was more or less circular, without corners, and he failed to form
any just idea of its circuit. Somewhere in his wanderings, he found a
shelving pile of rubble that rose above the water against the wall; and
here, for the sake of comparative dryness and comfort, he ensconced
himself, after dispossessimg a number of outraged reptiles. These
creatures, it seemed, were inoffensive, and probably belonged to some
species of watersnake; but he shivered at the touch of their clammy
scales.
Sitting on the rubble-heap, Gaspard reviewed in his mind the
various horrors of a situation that was infinitely dismal and desperate.
He had learned the incredible, soul-shaking secret of Ylourgne, the
unimaginably monstrous and blasphenous project of Nathaire; but
now, immured in this noisome hole as in a subterranean tomb, in
depths beneath the devil-haunted pile, he could not even warn the
world of imminent menace.
The wallet of food, now more than half empty, with which he had
started from Vyones, was still hanging at his back; and he assured
himself by investigation that his captors had not troubled to deprive
him of his dagger. Gnawing a crust of stale bread in the darkness, and
caressing with his hand the hilt of the precious weapon, he sought for
some rift in the all-environing despair.
He had no means of measuring the black hours that went over him
with the slowness of a slime-clogged river, crawling in blind silence to a
subterrene sea. The ceaaeless drip of water, probably from sunken hill-
springs that had supplied the castle in former years alone broke the
stillness; but the sound became in time an equivocal monotone that
suggested to his half-delirious mind the mirthless and perpetual
chuckling of unseen imps. At last, from sheer bodily exhaustion, he fell
into troubled nightmare-ridden chamber.. ÿ^
He could not tell if it were night or noon in the world without when
he awakened; for the same stagnant darkness, unrelieved by ray or
glimmer, brimmed the oubliette. Shivering, he became aware of a
steady draught that blew upon him: a dank, unwholesome air, like the
breath of unsunned vaults that had wakened into cryptic Iife and
activity during his sleep. He had not noticed the draught heretofore;
and his numb brain was startled into sudden hope by the intimation
which it conveyed. Obviously there was some underground rift or
channel through which the air entered; and this rift might somehow
prove to be a place of egress from the oubliette.
Getting to his feet, he groped uncertainly forward in the direction of
the draught. He stumbled over something that cracked and broke
beneath his heels, and narrowly checked himself from falling on his
face in tbe slimy, serpent-haunted pool. Before he could investigate the
obstruction or resume his blind groping, he heard a harsh, grating noise
above, and a wavering shaft of yellow light came down through the
oubliette's opened mouth. Dazzled, he looked up, and saw the round
hole ten or twelve feet overhead, through which a dark hand had
reached down with a flaring torch. A small basket, containing a loaf of
coarse bread and a bottle of wine, was being lowered at the end of a
cord.
Gaspard took the bread and wine, and the basket was drawn up.
Before the withdrawal of the torch and the re-depositing of the slab, he
contrived to make a hasty survey of his dungeon. The place was
roughly circular, as he had surmised, and was perhaps fifteen feet in
diameter. The thing over which he had stumbled was a human
skeleton, lying half on the rubble- heap, half in the filthy water. It was
brown and rotten with age, and its garments had long melted away in
patches of liquid mould.
The walls were guttered and runnelled by centuries of ooze and
their very stone, it seemed, was rotting slowly to decay. In the opposite
side, at the bottom, he saw the opening he had, suspected: a low
mouth, not much bigger than a foxes' hole, into which the sluggish
water fiowed. His heart sank at the sight; for, even if the water were
deeper than it seemed, the hole was far too strait for the passage of a
man's body. In a state of hopelessness that was like a veritable
suffocation, he found his way back to the rubble-pile when the light
had been withdrawn.
The loaf of bread and the bottle of wine were still in his hands
Mechanically, with dull, sodden hunger, he munched and drank.
Afterwards he felt stronger; and the sour, common wine served to. ÿÿ
warm him and perhaps helped to inspire him with the idea which he
presently conceived,
Finishing the bottle, he found his way across the dungeon to the
low, burrow-like hole. The entering air current had strengthened, and
this he took for a good omen, Drawing his dagger, he started to pick
with the point at the half-rotten, decomposing wall, in an effort to
enlarge the opening. He was forced to kneel in noisome silt; and the
writhing coils of water-snakes, hissing frightfully, crawled across his
legs as he worked. Evidently the hole was their means of ingress and
egress, to and from the oubliette.
The stone crumbled readily beneath his dagger, and Gaspard forgot
the horror and ghastliness of his situation in the hope of escape. He had
no means of knowing the thickness of the wall; or the nature and extent
of the subterrenes that lay beyond; but he felt sure that there was some
channel of connection with the outer air.
For hours or days, it seemed, he toiled with his dagger, digging
blindly at the soft wall and removing the débris that splashed in the
water beside him. After a while, prone on his belly, he crept into the
hole he had enlarged; and burrowing like some laborious mole, he
made his way onwards inch by inch.
At last, to his prodigious relief, the dagger-point went through into
empty space. He broke away with his hands the thin shell of
obstructing stone that remained; then, crawling on in the darkness, he
found that he could stand upright on a sort of shelving floor.
Straightening his cramped limbs, he moved on very cautiously. He
was in a narrow vault or tunnel, whose sides he could touch
simultaneously with his outstretched finger-tips. The floor was a
downwards incline; and the water deepened, rising to his knees and
then to his waist, Probably the place had once been used as an
underground exit from the castle; and the roof, falling in, had dammed
the water.
More than a little dismayed, Gaspard began to wonder if he had
exchanged the foul, skeleton-haunted oubliette for something even
worse. The night around and before him was still untouched by any
ray, and the air-current, though strong, was laden with dankness and
mouldiness as of interminable vaults.
Touching the tunnel-sides at intervals as he plunged hesitantly into
the deepening water, he found a sharp angle, giving upon free space at
his right. The space proved to be the mouth of an intersecting passage,
whose flooded bottom was at least level and went no deeper into the
stagnant foulness, Exploring it, he stumbled over the beginning of a. ÿ½
flight of upward steps. Mounting these through the shoaling water, he
soon found himself on dry stone.
The stairs, narrow, broken, irregular, without landings, appeared to
wind in some eternal spiral that was coiled lightlessly about the bowels
of Ylourgne. They were close and stifling as a tomb, and plainly they
were not the source of the air-current which Gaspard had started to
follow. Whither they would lead he knew not; nor could he tell if they
were the same stairs by which he had been conducted to his dungeon.
But he climbed steadily, pausing only at long intervals to regain his
breath as best he could in the dead, mephitis-burdened air.
At length, in the solid darkness, far above, he began to hear a
mysterious, muffled sound: a dull but recurrent crash as of mighty
blocks and masses of falling stone. The sound was unspeakably
ominous; and dismal, and it seemed to shake the unfathomable walls
around Gaspard, and to thrill with a sinister vibration in tbe steps on
which he trod,
He climbed now with redoubled caution and alertness, stopping
ever and anon to listen. The recurrent crashing noise grew louder,
more ominous, as if it were immediately above; and the listener
crouched on the dark stairs for a time that might have been many
minutes, without daring to go farther. At last, with disconcerting
suddenness, the sound came to an end, leaving a strained and fearful
stillness.
With many baleful conjectures, not knowing what fresh enormity he
should find, Gaspard ventured to resume his climbing. Again, in the
blank and solid stillness, he was met by a sound: the dim, reverberant
chanting of voices, as in some Satanic mass or liturgy with dirge-like
cadences that turned to intolerably soaring paeans of evil triumph.
Long before he could recognize the words, he shivered at the strong,
malefic throbbing of the measured rhythm, whose fall and rise
appeared somehow to correspond to the heartbeats of some colossal
demon.
The stairs turned, for the hundredth time in their tortuous spiral;
and coming forth from that long midnight, Gaspard blinked in the wan
glimmering that streamed towards him from above. The choral voices
met him in a more sonorous burst of infernal sound, and he knew the
words for those of a rare and potent incantation, used by sorcerers for a
supremely foul, supremely maleficent purpose. Affrightedly, as he
climbed the last steps, he knew the thing that was taking place amid the
ruins of Ylourgne.
Lifting his head warily above the castle floor, he saw that the stairs
ended in a far corner of the vast room in which he had beheld. ½_
Nathaire's unthinkable creation. The whole extent of the internally
dismantled building lay before him, filled with a weird glare in which
the beams of the slightly gibbous moon were mingled with the ruddy
flames of dying anthanors and the coiling, multi-coloured tongues that
rose from necromantic braziers.
Gaspard, for an instant, was puzzled by the flood of full moonlight
amid the ruins. Then he saw that almost the whole inner wall of the
castle, giving on the courtyard, had been re- moved. It was the tearing-
down of the prodigious blocks, no doubt through an extrahuman
labour levied by sorcery, that he had heard during his ascent from the
subterrene vaults. His blood curdled, he felt an actual horripilation, as
he realized the purpose for which the wall had been demolished.
It was evident that a whole day and part of another night had gone
by since his immurement; for the moon rode high in the pale sapphire
welkin. Bathed in its chilly glare, the huge vats no longer emitted their
eerie and electric phosphorescence. The couch of Saracen fabrics, on
which Gaspard had beheld the dying dwarf, was now half hidden from
view by the mounting fumes of braziers and thuribles, amid which the
sorcerer's ten pupils, clad in sable and scarlet, were performing their
hideous and repugnant rite, with its malefically measured litany.
Fearfully, as one who confronts an apparition reared up from nether
hell, Gaspard beheld the colossus that lay inert as if in Cyclopean sleep
on the castle flags. The thing was no longer a skeleton: the limbs were
rounded into bossed, enormous thews, like the limbs of Biblical giants;
the flanks were like an insuperable wall; the deltoids of the mighty chest
were broad as platform; the hands could have crushed the bodies of
men like milstones.... But the face of the stupendous monster, seen in
profile athwart the pouring moon, was the face of the Satanic dwarf,
Nathaire Š re-magnified a hundred times, but the same in its
implacable madness and malevolence!
The vast bosom seemed to rise and fall; and during a pause of the
necromantic ritual, Gaspard heard the unmistakable sound of a mighty
respiration, The eye in the profile was closed; but its lid appeared to
tremble like a great curtain, as if the monster were about to wake; and
the outflung hand, with fingers pale and bluish as a row of corpses,
twitched unquietly on the castle flags.
An insupportable terror seized the watcher; but even this terror
could not induce him to return to the noisome vaults he had left. With
infinite hesitation and trepidation, he stole forth from the corner,
keeping in a zone of ebon shadow that flanked the castle wall.
As he went, he saw for a moment, through bellying folds of vapour,
the couch on which the shrunken form of Nathaire was lying pallid and. ½_
motionless. It seemed that the dwarf was dead, or had fallen into a
stupor preceding death. Then the choral voices, crying their dreadful
incantation, rose higher in Satanic triumph; the vapours eddied like a
hell-born cloud, coiling about the sorcerers in python-shaped volumes,
and hiding again the Orient couch and its corpse-like occupant.
A thraldom of measureless evil oppressed the air. Gaspard felt that
the awful transmigration, evoked and implored with everswelling,
liturgic blasphemies, was about to take place - had perhaps already
occurred. He thought that the breathing giant stirred, like one who
tosses in light slumber.
Soon the towering, massively recumbent hulk was interposed
between Gaspard and the chanting necromancers. They had not seen
him; and he now dared to run swiftly, and gained the courtyard
unpursued and unchallenged. Thence, without looking back, he fled
like a devil-hunted thing upon the steep and chasmriven slopes below
Ylourgne.
7. THE COMING OF THE COLOSSUS
After the cessation of the exodus of liches, a universal terror still
prevailed; a wide-flung shadow of apprehension, infernal and funereal,
lay stagnantly on Averoigne. There were strange and disastrous
portents in the aspect of the skies: flame-bearded meteors had been
seen to fall beyond the eastern hills; a comet far in the south, had swept
the stars with its luminous bosom for a few nights, and had then faded,
leaving among men the prophecy of bale and pestilence to come. By
day the air was oppressed and sultry, and the blue heavens were heated
as if by whitish fires. Clouds of thunder, darkling and withdrawn,
shook their fulgurant lances on the far horizons, like some beleaguering
Titan army. A murrain, such as would come from the working of
wizard spells, was abroad among the cattle, All these signs and
prodigies were an added heaviness on the burdened spirits of men, who
went to and fro in daily fear of the hidden preparations and
machinations of hell.
But, until the actual breaking-forth of the incubated menace, there
was no one, save Gaspard du Nord, who had knowledge of its veritable
form. And Gaspard, fleeing headlong beneath the gibbous moon
towards Vyones, and fearing to hear the tread of a colossal pursuer at
any moment, had thought it more than useless to give warning in such
towns and villages as lay upon his line of sight. Where, indeed Š even. ½_
if warned Š could men hope to hide themselves from the awful thing,
begotten by Hell on the ravished charnel, that would walk forth like the
Anakim to visit its roaring wrath on a trampled world?
So, all that night, and throughout the day that followed, Gaspard du
Nord, with the dried slime of the oubliette on his briar shredded
raiment, plunged like a madman through the towering woods that were
haunted by robbers and were-wolves. The westward-falling moon
flickered in his eyes betwixt the gnarled sombre boles as he ran; and the
dawn overtook him with the pale shafts of its searching arrows. The
noon poured over him its white sultriness, like furnace-heated metal
sublimed into light; and the clotted filth that clung to his tatters was
again turned into slime by his own sweat, But still he pursued his
nightmare-harried way, while a vague, seemingly hopeless plan took
form in his mind.
In the interim, several monks of the Cistercian brotherhood,
watching the grey wall of Ylourgne at early dawn with their habitual
vigilance, were the first, after Gaspard, to behold the monstrous horror
created by the necromancers. Their account may have been somewhat
tinged by a pious exaggeration; but they swore that the giant rose
abruptly, standing more than waist-high above the ruins of the
barbican, amid a sudden leap- ing of long-tongued fires and a swirling
of pitchy fumes erupted from Malbolge. The giant's head was level
with the high top of the donjon, and his right arm, out-thrust, lay like a
bar of stormy cloud athwart the new-risen sun.
The monks fell grovelling to their knees, thinking that the Archfoe
himself had come forth, using Ylourgne for his gateway from the Pit.
Then, across the mile-wide valley, they heard a thunderous peal of
demoniac laughter; and the giant, climbing over the mounded barbican
at a single step, began to descend the scarped and craggy hill.
When he drew nearer, bounding from slope to slope, his features
were manifestly those of some great devil animated with ire and malice
towards the sons of Adam. His hair, in matted locks, streamed behind
him like a mass of black pythons; his naked skin was livid and pale and
cadaverous, with the skin of the dead; but beneath it, the stupendous
thews of a Titan swelled and rippled. The eyes, wide and glaring
flamed like lidless cauldrons heated by the fires of the unplumbed Pit.
The rumour of his coming passed like a gale of terror through the
Monastery. Many of the Brothers, deeming discretion the better part of
religious fervour, hid themselves in the stone-hewn cellars and vaults.
Others crouched in their cells, mumbling and shrieking incoherent
pleas to all the Saints. Still others, the most courageous, repaired in a. ½_
body to the chapel and knelt in solemn prayer before the wooden
Christ on the great crucifix.
Bernard and Stephane, now somewhat recovered from their
grievous beating, alone dared to watch the advance of the giant. Their
horror was inexpressibly increased when they began to recognize in the
colossal features a magnified likeness to the lineaments of that evil
dwarf who had presided over the dark, unhallowed activities of
Ylourgne; and the laughter of the colossus, as he came down the valley,
was like a tempest-borne echo of the damnable cachinnation that had
followed their ignominous flight from the haunted stronghold. To
Bernard and Stephane, however, it seemed merely that the dwarf, who
was no doubt an actual demon, had chosen to appear in his natural
form.
Pausing in the valley-bottom, the giant stood opposite the
monastery with his flame-filled eyes on a level with the window from
which Bemard and Stephane were peering. He laughed again Š an
awful laugh, like a subterranean rurnbling Š and then, stooping, he
picked up a handful of boulders as if they had been pebbles, and
proceeded to pelt the monastery. The boulders crashed against the
walls, as if hurled from great catapults or mangonels of war; but the
stout building held, though shaken grievously.
Then, with both hands, the colossus tore loose an immense rock
that was deeply embedded in the hillside; and lifting this rock, he flung
it at the stubborn walls. The tremendous mass broke in an entire side of
the chapel; and those who had gathered therein were found later,
crushed into bloody pulp amid the splinters of their carven Christ.
After that, as if disdaining to palter any further with a prey so
insignificant, the colossus turned his back on the little monastery, and
like some fiend-born Goliath, went roaring down the valley into
Averoigne.
As he departed, Bernard and Stephane, still watching from their
window, saw a thing they had not perceived heretofore: a huge basket
made of planking, that hung suspended by ropes between the giant's
shoulders. In the basket, ten men Š the pupils and assistants of
Nathaire - were being carried like so many dolls or puppets in a
peddler's pack.
Of the subsequent wanderings and depredations of the colossus, a
hundred legends were long current throughout Averoigne: tales of an
unexampled ghastliness, a wanton diabolism without parallel in all the
histories of that demon-pestered land.
The goatherds of the hills below Ylourgne saw him coming, and
fled with their nimble-footed flocks to the highest ridges. To these he. ½_
paid little heed, merely trampling them down like beetles when they
could not escape from his path. Following the hillstream that was the
source of the river Isoile, he came to the verge of the great forest; and
here, it is related, he tore up a towering ancient pine by the roots, and
snapping off the mighty boughs with his hands, shaped it into a cudgel
which he carried henceforward.
With this cudgel, heavier than a battering-ram, he pounded into
shapeless ruin a wayside shrine in the outer woods. A hamlet fell in his
way, and he strode through it, beating in the roofs, toppling the walls,
and crushing the inhabitants beneath his feet.
To and fro in a mad frenzy of destruction, like a deathdrunken
Cyclops, he wandered all that day. Even the fierce beasts of the
woodland ran from him in fear. The wolves, in mid-hunt, abandoned
their quarry and retired, howling dismally with terror, to their rocky
dens. The black, savage hunting-dogs of the forest barons would not
face him, and hid whimpering in their kennels.
Men heard his mighty laughter, his stormy bellowing; they saw his
approach from a distance of many leagues, and fled or concealed
themselves as best they could. The lords of moated castles called in
their men-at-arms, drew up their drawbridges and prepared as if for
the siege of an army. The peasants hid themselves in caverns, in cellars,
in old wells, and even beneath hay-mounds, hoping that he would pass
them by unnoticed. The churches were crammed with refugees who
sought protection of the Cross, deeming that Satan himself, or one of
his chief lieutenants, had risen to harry and lay waste the land.
In a voice like summer thunder, mad maledictions, unthinkable
obscenities and blasphemies were uttered ceaselessly by the giant as he
went to and fro. Men heard him address the litter of black-clad figures
that he carried on his back, in tones of admonishment or demonstration
such as a master would use to his pupils. People who had known
Nathaire recognized the incredible likeness of the huge features, the
similarity of the swollen voice to his. A rumour went abroad that the
dwarf sorcerer, through his loathly bond with the Adversary, had been
permitted to transfer his hateful soul into this Titanic form; and,
bearing his pupils with him, had returned to vent an insatiable ire, a
bottomless rancour, on the world that had mocked him for his puny
physique and reviled him for his sorcery. The charnel genesis of the
monstrous avatar was also rumoured; and, indeed it was said that the
colossus had openly proclaimed his identity.
It would be tedious to make explicit mention of all the enormities,
all the atrocities, that were ascribed to the marauding giant.... There
were people Š mostly priests and wamen, it is told Š whom he picked. ½¢
up as they fled, and pulled limb from limb as a child might quarter an
insect.... And there were worse things, not to be named in this record....
Many eye-witnesses told how he hunted Pierre, the Lord of La
Frênaie, who had gone forth with his dogs and men to chase a noble
stag in the nearby forest Overtaking horse and rider, he caught them
with one hand, and bearing them aloft as he strode over the tree-tops,
he hurled them later against the granite walls of the Chateau of La
Frênaie in passing. Then, catching the red stag that Pierre had hunted,
he flung it after them; and the huge bloody blotches made by the
impact of the bashed bodies remained long on the castle stone, and
were never wholly washed away by the autumn rains and the winter
snows,
Countless tales were told, also, of the deeds of obscene sacrilege and
profanation committed by the colossus: of the wooden Virgin that he
flung into the Isoile above Ximes, lashed with human gut to the rotting,
mail-clad body of an infamous outlaw; of the wormy corpses that he
dug with his hands from unconsecrated graves and hurled into the
courtyard of the Benedictine abbey of Perigon; of the Church of Ste.
Zenobie, which he buried with its priests and congregation beneath a
mountain of ordure made by the gathering of all the dungheaps from
neighbouring farms.
8. THE LAYING OF THE COLOSSUS
Back and forth, in an irregular, drunken, zigzag course, from end to
end and side to side of the harried realm, the giant strode without
pause, like an energumen possessed by some implacable fiend of
mischief and murder, leaving behind him, as a reaper leaves his swath,
an ever-lengthening zone of havoc, of rapine and carange, And when
the sun, blackened by the smoke of burning villages, had set luridly
beyond the forest, men still saw him moving in the dusk, and heard still
the portentous rumbling of his mad, stormy cachinnation.
Nearing the gates of Vyones at sunset, Gaspard du Nord saw
behind him, through gaps in the ancient wood, the far-off head and
shoulders of the terrible colossus, who moved along the Isoile, stooping
from sight at intervals in some horrid deed.
Though numb with weariness and exhaustion, Gaspard quickened
his flight. He did not believe, however, that the monster would try to
invade Vyones, the especial object of Nathaire's hatred and malice,
before the following day. The evil soul of the sorcerous dwarf, exulting. ½¡
in its almost infinite capacity for harm and destruction, would defer the
crowaing act of vengeance, and would continue to terrorize, during the
night, the outlying viland rural districts.
In spite of his rags and filth, which rendered him practically
unrecognizable and gave him a most disreputable air, Gaspard was
admitted withaut question by the guards at the city gate. Vyones was
already thronged with people who had fled to the sanctuary of its stout
walls from the adjacent countryside; and no one, not even of the most
dubious character, was denied admittance. The walls were lined with
archers and pike-bearers, gathered in readiness to dispute the entrance
of the giant. Crossbowmen were stationed above the gates, and
mangonels were mounted at short intervals along the entire circuit of
the ramparts. The city seethed and hummed like an agitated hive.
Hysteria and pandemonium prevailed in the streets. Pale, panic-
stricken faces milled everywhere in an. aimless stream. Hurrying
torches flared dolorously in the twilight that deepened as if with the
shadow of impending wings arisen from Erebus. The gloom was
clogged with intangible fear, with webs of stifling oppression. Through
all this rout of wild disorder and frenzy, Gaspard, like a spent but
indomitable swimmer breasting some tide of eternal, viscid nightmare,
made his way slowly to his attic lodgings.
Afterwards, he could scarcely remember eating and drinking.
Overworn beyond the limit of bodily and spiritual endurance, he threw
himself down on his pallet without removing his oozestiffened tatters,
and slept soddenly till an hour half-way between midnight and dawn.
He awoke with the death-pale beams of the gibbous moon shining
upon him through his window; and rising, spent the balance of the
night in making certain occult preparations which, he felt, offered the
only possibility of coping with the fiendish monster that had been
created and animated by Nathaire.
Working feverishly by the light of the westering moon and a single
dim taper, Gaspard assembled various ingredients of familiar alchemic
use which he possessed, and compounded from these, through a long
and somewhat cabalistic process, a darkgrey powder which he had seen
employed by Nathaire on numerous occasions. He had reasoned that
the colossus, being formed from the bones and flesh of dead men
unlawfully raised up, and energized only by the soul of a dead sorcerer,
would be subject to the influence of this powder, which Nathaire had
used for the laying of resurrected liches. The powder, if cast in the
nostrils of such cadavers, would cause them to, return peacefully to
their tombs and lie down in a renewed slumber of death.. ½^
Gaspard made a considerable quantity of the mixture, arguing that
no mere finger-pinch would suffice for the lulling of the gigantic
charnel monstrosity. His guttering yellow candle was dimmed by the
white dawn as he ended the Latin formula of fearsome verbal
invocation from which the compound would derive much of its
efficacy. The formula, which called for the cooperation of Alastor and
other evil spirits, he used with unwillingness. But he knew that there
was no alternative: sorcery could be fought only with sorcery.
Morning came with new terrors to Vyones. Gaspard had felt,
through a sort of intuition, that the vengeful colossus, who was said to
have wandered with unhuman tirelessness and diabolic energy all night
through Averoigne, would approach the hated city early in the day. His
intuition was confirmed; for scarcely had he finished his occult labours
when he heard a mounting hubbub in the streets, and above the shrill,
dismal clamour of frightened voices, the far-off roaring of the giant.
Gaspard knew that he must lose no time, if he were to post himself
in a place of vantage from which he could throw his powder into the
nostrils of the hundred-foot colossus. The city walls and even most of
the church spires, were not lofty enough for this purpose; and a brief
reflection told him that the great cathedral, standing at the core of
Vyones, was the one place from whose roof he could front the invader
with success. He felt sure that the men-at-arms on the walls could do
little to prevent the monster from entering and wreaking his malevolent
will. No earthly weapon could injure a being of such bulk and nature;
for even a cadaver of normal size, reared up in this fashion, could be
shot full of arrows or transfixed by a dozen pikes without retarding its
progress.
Hastily he filled a huge leathern pouch with the powder; and
carrying the pouch at his belt, he joined the agitated press of pople in
the street. Many were fleeing towards the cathedral, to seek the shelter
of its august sanctity; and he had only to let himself be borne along by
the frenzy-driven stream.
The cathedral nave was packed with worshippers, and solemn
masses were being said by priests whose voices faltered at times with
inward panic. Unheeded by the wan, despairing throng, Gaspard found
a flight of coiling stairs that led tortuously to the gargoyle-warded roof
of the high tower.
Here he posted himself, crouching behind the stone figure of a cat-
headed griffin. From his vantage he could see, beyond the crowded
spires and gables, the approaching giant, whose head and torso loomed
above the city walls. A cloud of arrows, visible even at that distance,
rose to meet the monster, who apparently did not even pause to pluck. ½ÿ
them from his hide. Great boulders hurled from mangonels were no
more to him than a pelting of gravel; the heavy bolts of arbalests,
embedded in his flesh, were mere slivers.
Nothing could stay his advance. The tiny figures of a company of
pikemen, who opposed him with out-thrust weapons, swept from the
wall above the eastern gate by a single sidelong blow of the seventy-foot
pine that he bore for a cudgel. Then, having cleared the wall, the
colossus climbed over it into Vyones.
Roaring, chuckling, laughing like a maniacal Cyclops, he strode
along the narrow streets between houses that rose only to his waist,
trampling without mercy everyone who could not escape in time, and
smashing in the roofs with stupendous blows of his bludgeon. With a
push of his left hand he broke off the protruding gables, and
overturned the church steeples with their bells clanging in dolorous
alarm as they went down. A woeful shrieking and wailing of hysteria-
laden voices accompanied his passing.
Straight towards the cathedral he came, as Gaspard had calculated,
feeling that the high edifice would be made the special butt of his
malevolence.
The streets were now emptied of people; but, as if to hunt them out
and crush them in their hiding-places, the giant thrust his cudgel like a
battering-ram through walls and windows and roofs as he went by. The
ruin and havoc that he left was indescribable.
Soon he loomed opposite the cathedral tower on which Gaspard
waited behind the gargoyle. His head was level with the tower, and his
eyes flamed like wells of burning brimstone as he drew near. His lips
were parted over stalactitic fangs in a hateful snarl; and he cried out in
a voice like the rumbling of articulate thunder:
'Ho! Ye puling priests and devotees of a powerless God! Come forth
and bow to Nathaire the master, before he sweeps you into limbo!'
It was then that Gaspard, with a hardihood beyond comparison,
rose from his hiding-place and stood in full view of the raging colossus.
'Draw nearer, Nathaire, if indeed it be you, foul robber of tombs
and charnels,' he taunted. 'Come close, for I would hold speech with
you.'
A monstrous look of astonishment dimmed the diabolic rage on the
colossal features. Peering at Gaspard as if in doubt or incredulity, the
giant lowered his lifted cudgel and stepped close to the tower, till his
face was only a few feet from the intrepid student. Then, when he had
apparently convinced himself of Gaspard's identity, the look of
maniacal wrath returned, flooding his eyes with Tartarean fire and
twisting his lineaments into a mask of Apollyon-like malignity. His left. ½½
arm came up in a prodigious arc, with twitching fingers that poised
horribly above the head of the youth, casting upon him a vulture-black
shadow in the full-risen sun. Gaspard saw the white, startled faces of
the necromancer's pupils, peering over his shoulder from their plank-
built basket.
'Is it you, Gaspard, my recreant pupil?' the colossus roared stormily.
'I thought you were rotting in the oubliette beneath Ylourgne Š and
now I find you perched atop of this accursed cathedral which I am
about to demolish! ... You had been far wiser to remain where I left
you, my good Gaspard.'
His breath, as he spoke, blew like a charnel-polluted gale on the
student. His vast fingers, with blackened nails like shovelblades,
hovered in ogreish menace. Gaspard had furtively loosened his leathern
pouch that hung at his belt, and had untied its mouth. Now, as the
twitching fingers descended towards him, he emptied the contents of
the pouch in the giant's face, and the fine powder, mounting in a dark-
grey cloud, obscured the snarling lips and palpitating nostrils from his
view.
Anxiously he watched the effect, fearing that the powder might be
useless after all, against the superior arts and Satanical resources of
Nathaire. But miraculously, as it seemed, the evil lambence died in the
pit-deep eyes, as the monster inhaled the flying cloud. His lifted hand,
narrowly missing the crouching youth in its sweep, fell lifelessly at his
side. The anger was erased from the-mighty, contorted mask, as if from
the face of a dead man; the great cudgel fell with a crash to the empty
street; and with drowsy, lurching steps, and listless, hanging arms, the
giant turned his back to the cathedral and retraced his way through the
devastated city.
He muttered dreamily to himself as he went; and people who heard
him swore that the voice was no longer the awful, thunderswollen voice
of Nathaire, but the tones and accents of a multitude of men, amid
which the voices of certain of the ravished dead were recognizable. And
the voice of Nathaire himself, no louder now than in life, was heard at
intervals through the manifold mutterings, as if protesting angrily.
Climbing the eastern wall as it had come, the colossus went to and
fro for many hours, no longer wreaking a hellish wrath and rancour,
but searching, as people thought, for the various tombs and graves
from which the hundreds of bodies that composed it had been so foully
reft. From charnel to charnel, from cemetery to cemetery it went,
through all the land; but there was no grave anywhere in which the
dead colossus could lie down..__
Then, towards evening, men saw it from afar on the red rim of the
sky, digging with its hands in the soft, loamy plain beside the river
Isoile. There, in a monstrous and self-made grave, the colossus laid
itself down, and did not rise again. The ten pupils of Nathaire, it was
believed, unable to descend from their basket, were crushed beneath
the mighty body; for none of them was ever seen thereafter.
For many days no one dared to approach the place where the
corpse lay uncovered in its self-dug grave. And so the thing rotted
prodigiously beneath the summer sun, breeding a mighty stench that
wrought pestilence in that portion of Averoigne. And they who
ventured to go near in the following autumn, when the stench had
lessened greatly, swore that the voice of Nathaire, still protesting
angrily, was heard by them to issue from the enormous, rook-haunted
bulk.
Of Gaspard du Nord, who had been the saviour of tbe province, it
was related that he lived in much honour to a ripe age, being the one
sorcerer of that region who at no time incurred the disapprobation of
the Church.
[1933]. ___
The Mandrakes
GILLES GRENIER THE SORCERER and his wife Sabine, coming into
lower Averoigne from parts unknown or at least unverified, had
selected the location of their hut with a careful forethought.
The hut was close to those marshes through which the slackening
waters of the river Isoile, after leaving the great fosest, had overflowed
in sluggish, reed-clogged channels and sedge-hidden pools mantled
with scum like witches' oils. It stood among osiers and alders on a low,
mound-shaped elevation; and in front, toward the marshes, there was a
loamy meadow-bottom where the short fat stems and tufted leaves of
the mandrake grew in lush abundance, being more plentiful and of
greater size than elsewhere through all that sorcery-ridden province.
The fleshly, bifurcated roots of this plant, held by many to resemble the
human body, were used by Gilles and Sabine in the brewing of love-
philtres. Their potions, being compounded with much care and
cunning, soon acquired a marvelous renown among the peasants and
villagers, and were even in request among people of a loftier station,
who came privily to the wizard's hut. They would rouse, people said, a
kindly warmth in the coldest and most prudent bosom, would melt the
armor of the most obdurate virtue. As a result, the demand for these
sovereign magistrals became enormous.
The couple dealt also in other drugs and simples, in charms and
divination; and Gilles, according to common belief, could read
infallibly the dictates of the stars. Oddly enough, considering the
temper of the Fifteenth Century, when magic and witchcraft were still
so widely reprobated, he and his wife enjoyed a repute by no means ill
or unsavory. No charges of malefice were brought against them; and
because of the number of honest marriages promoted by the philtres,
the local clergy were content to disregard the many illicit amours that
had come to a successful issue through the same agency.
It is true, there were those who looked askance at Gilles in the
beginning, and who whispered fearfully that he had been driven out of
Blois, where all persons bearing the name Grenier were popularly
believed to be werewolves. They called attention to the excessive
hairiness of the wizard, whose hands were black with bristles and whose.__
beard grew almost to his eyes. Such insinuations, however, were
generally considered as lacking proof, insomuch as no other signs or
marks of lycanthropy were ever displayed by Gilles. And in time, for
reasons that have been sufficiently indicated, the few detractors of
Gilles were wholly overborne by a secret but widespread sentiment of
public favor.
Even by their patrons, very little was known regarding the strange
couple, who maintained the reserve proper to those who dealt in
mystery and enchantment. Sabine, a comely women with blue-gray
eyes and wheat-colored hair, and no trace of the traditional witch in her
appearance, was obviously much younger than Gilles, whose sable
mane and beard were already touched with the white warp of time. It
was rumored by visitors that she had oftentimes been overheard in
sharp dispute with her husband; and people soon made a jest of this,
remarking that the philtres might well be put to a domestic use by those
who purveyed them. But aside from such rumors and ribaldries, little
was thought of the matter. The connubial infelicities of Gilles and his
wife, whether grave or trivial, in no wise impaired the renown of their
love-potions.
Also, little was thought of Sabine's presence, when, five years after
the coming of the pair into Averoigne, it became remarked by
neighbors and customers that Gilles was alone. In reply to queries, the
sorcerer merely said that his spouse had departed on a long journey, to
visit relatives in a remote province. The explanation was accepted
without debate, and it did not occur to any one that there had been no
eye-witnesses of Sabine's departure.
It was then mid-autumn; and Gilles told the inquirers, in a
somewhat vague and indirect fashion, that his wife would not return
before spring. Winter came early that year and tarried late, with deeply
crusted snows in the forest and on the uplands, and a heavy armor of
fretted ice on the marshes. It was a winter of much hardship and
privation. When the tardy spring had broken the silver buds of the
willows and covered the alders with a foliage of chrysolite, few thought
to ask Gilles regarding Sabine's return. And later, when the purple bells
of the mandrake were succeeded by small orange-colored apples, her
prolonged absence was taken for granted.
Gilles, living tranquilly with his books and cauldrons, and gathering
the roots and herbs for his magical medicaments, was well enough
pleased to have it taken for granted. He did not believe that Sabine
would ever return; and his unbelief, it would seem, was far from
irrational. He had killed her one even in autumn, during a dispute of
unbearable acrimony, slitting her soft, pale throat in self-defense with a. ___
knife which he had wrested from her fingers when she lifted it against
him. Afterward he had buried her by the late rays of a gibbous moon
beneath the mandrakes in the meadow-bottom, replacing the leafy sods
with much care, so that there was no evidence of their having been
disturbed other than by the digging of a few roots in the way of daily
business.
After the melting of the long snows from the meadow, he himself
could scarcely have been altogether sure of the spot in which he had
interred her body. He noticed, however, as the season drew on, that
there was a place where the mandrakes grew with even more than their
wonted exuberance; and this place, he believed, was the very site of her
grave. Visiting it often, he smiled with a secret irony, and was pleased
rather than troubled by the thought of that charnel nourishment which
might have contributed to the lushness of the dark, glossy leaves. In
fact, it may well have been a similar irony that had led him to choose
the mandrake meadow as a place of burial for the murdered witch-wife.
Gilles Grenier was not sorry that he had killed Sabine. They had
been ill-mated from the beginning, and the woman had shown toward
him in their quotidian quarrels the venomous spitefulness of a very
hell-cat. He had not loved the vixen; and it was far pleasanter to be
alone, with his somewhat somber temper unruffled by her acrid
speeches, and his sallow face and grizzling beard untorn by her sharp
finger-nails.
With the renewal of spring, as the sorcerer had expected, there was
much demand for his love-philtres among the smitten swains and lasses
of the neighborhood. There came to him, also, the gallants who sought
to overcome a stubborn chastity, and the wives who wished to recall a
wandering fancy or allure the forbidden desires of young men. Anon, it
became necessary for Gilles to replenish his stock of mandrake potions;
and with this purpose in mind, he went forth at midnight beneath the
full May moon, to dig the newly grown roots from which he would
brew his amatory enchantments.
Smiling darkly beneath his beard, he began to cull the great, moon-
pale plants which flourished on Sabine's grave, digging out the
homunculus-like taproots very carefully with a curious trowel made
from the femur of a witch.
Though he was well used to the weird and often vaguely human
forms assumed by the mandrake, Gilles was somewhat surprized by the
appearance of the first root. It seemed inordinately large, unnaturally
white; and, eyeing it more closely, he saw that it bore the exact likeness
of a woman's body and lower limbs, being cloven to the middle and.__
clearly formed even to the ten toes! These were no arms, however, and
the bosom ended in the large tuft of ovate leaves.
Gilles was more than startled by the fashion in which the root
seemed to turn and writhe when he lifted it from the ground. He
dropped it hastily, and the minikin limbs lay quivering on the grass.
But, after a little reflection, he took the prodigy as a possible mark of
Satanic favor, and continued his digging. To his amazement, the next
root was formed in much the same manner as the first. A half-dozen
more, which he proceeded to dig, were shaped in miniature mockery of
a woman fsom breasts to heels; and amid the superstituous awe and
wonder with which he regasded them, he became aware of their
singularly intimate resemblance to Sabine.
At this discovery, Gilles was deeply perturbed, for the thing was
beyond his compsehension. The miracle, whether divine or demoniac,
began to assume a sinister and doubtful aspect. It was as if the slain
women herself had returned, or had somehow wrought her unholy
simulacrum in the mandrakes.
His hand trembled as he started to dig up another plant; and
working with less than his usual care, he failed to remove the whole of
the bifurcated root, cutting into it clumsily with the trowel of sharp
bone.
He saw that he had severed one of the tiny ankles. At the same
instant, a shrill, reproachful cry, like the voice of Sabine herself in
mingled pain and anger, seemed to pierce his ears with intolerable
acuity, though the volume was strangely lessened, as if the voice had
come from a distance. The cry ceased, and was not repeated. Gilles,
sorely terrified, found himself staring at the trowel, on which there was
a dark, blood-like stain. Trembling, he pulled out the severed root, and
saw that it was dripping with a sanguine fiuid.
At first, in his dark fear and half-guilty apprehension he thought of
burying the soots which lay palely before him with their eldritch and
obscene similitude to the dead sorceress. He would hide them deeply
from his own sight and the ken of others, lest the murder he had done
should somehow be suspected.
Presently, however, his alarm began to lessen. It occurred to him
that, even if seen by others, the roots would be looked upon merely as a
freak of nature and would in no manner serve to betray his crime, since
their actual resemblance to the person of Sabine was a thing which
none but he could rightfully know.
Also, he thought, the roots might well possess an extraordinary
virtue, and from them, perhaps, he would brew philtres of never-
equalled power and efficacy. Overcoming entirely his initial dread and. __¢
repulsion, he filled a small osier basket with the quivering, leaf-headed
figurines. Then he went back to his hut, seeing in the bizarre
phenomenon merely the curious advantage to which it might be turned,
and wholly oblivious to any darker meaning, such as might have been
read by others in his place.
In his callous hardihood, he was not disquieted overmuch by the
profuse bleeding of a sanguine matter from the mandrakes when he
came to prepare them for his cauldron. The ungodly, furious hissing,
the mad foaming and boiling of the brew, like a devil's broth, he
ascribed to the unique potency of its ingredients. He even dared to
choose the most shapely and perfect of the woman-like plants, and
hung it up in his hut amid other roots and dried herbs and simples,
intending to consult it as an oracle in future, according to the custom of
wizards.
The new philtres which he had concocted were bought by eager
customers, and Gilles ventured to recommend them for their
surpassing virtue, which would kindle amorous warmth in a bosom of
marble or enflame the very dead.
Now, in the old legend of Averoigne which I recount herewith, it is
told that the impious and audacious wizard, fearing neither God nor
devil nor witch-woman, dared to dig again in the earth of Sabine's
grave, removing many more of the white, female-shapen roots, which
cried aloud in shrill complaint to the waning moon or turned like living
limbs at his violence. And all those which he dug were formed alike, in
the miniature image of the dead Sabine from breasts to toes. And from
them, it is said, he compounded other philtres, which he meant to sell
in time when such should be requested.
As it happened, however, these latter potions were never dispensed;
and only a few of the first were sold, owing to the frightful and
calamitous consequences that followed their use. For those to whom
the potions had been administered privily, whether men or women,
were not moved by the genial fusy of desire, as was the wonted resuIt,
but were driven by a darker rage, by a woful and Satanic madness,
irresistibly impelling them to harm or even slay the persons who had
sought to attract their love.
Husbands were turned against wives, lasses against their lovers, with
speeches of bitter hate and scatheful deeds. A certain young gallant
who had gone to the promised rendezvous was met by a vengeful
madwoman, who tore his face into bleeding shreds with her nails. A
mistress who had thought to win back her recreant knight was
mistreated foully and done to death by him who had hitherto been
impeccably gentle, even if faithless.._¡
The scandal of these untoward happenings was such as would
attend an invasion of demons. The crazed men and women, it was
thought at first, were veritably possessed by devils. But when the use of
the potions became rumored, and their provenance was clearly
established, the burden of the blame fell upon Gilles Grenier, who, by
the law of both church and state, was now charged with sorcery.
The constables who went to arrest Gilles found him at evening in
his hut of raddled osiers, stooping and muttering above a cauldron that
foamed and hissed and boiled as if it had been filled with the spate of
Phlegethon. They entered and took him unaware. He submitted
calmly, but expressed surprize when told of the lamentable effect of the
love-philtres; and he neither affirmed nor denied the charge of
wizardry.
As they were about to leave with their prisoner, the officers heard a
shrill, tiny, shrewish voice that cried from the shadows of the hut,
where bunches of dried simples and other sorcerous ingredients were
hanging. It appeared to issue from a strange, half-withered root, cloven
in the very likeness of a woman's body and legs Š a root that was
partly pale, and partly black with cauldron-smoke. One of the
constables thought that he recognized the voice as being that of Sabine,
the soscerer's wife. All swore that they heasd the voice clearly, and were
able to distinguish these words:
"Dig deeply in the meadow, where the mandrakes grow the
thickliest."
The officers were sorely frightened, both by this uncanny voice and
the obscene likeness of the root, which they regarded as a work of
Satan. Also, these was much doubt anent the wisdom of obeying the
oracular injunction. Gilles, who was questioned narrowly as to its
meaning, refused to offer any interpretation; but certain marks of
perturbation in his manner finally led the officers to examine the
mandrake meadow below the hut.
Digging by lantern-light in the specified spot, they found many
more of the roots, which seemed to crowd the ground; and beneath,
they came to the rotting corpse of a woman, which was still
recognizable as that of Sabine. As a result of this discovery, Gilles
Grenier was arraigned not only for sorcery but also for the murder of
his wife. He was readily convicted of both crimes, though he denied
stoutly the imputation of intentional malefice, and claimed to the very
last that he had killed Sabine only in defense of his own life against her
termagant fury. He was hanged on the gibbet in company with other
murderers, and his dead body was then burned at the stake.
[1933]. __ˆ
The Beast of Averoigne
OLD AGE, LIKE a moth in some fading arras, will gnaw my memories
oversoon, as it gnaws the memories of all men. Therefore I, Luc le
Chaudronnier, sometime known as astrologer and sorcerer, write this
account of the true origin and slaying of the Beast of Averoigne. And
when I have ended, the writing shall be sealed in a brazen box, and the
box be set in a secret chamber of my house at Ximes, so that no man
shall learn the verity of this matter till many years and decades have
gone by. Indeed, it were not well for such evil prodigies to be divulged
while any who took part in them are still on the earthward side of
Purgatory. And at present the truth is known only to me and to certain
others who are sworn to maintain secrecy.
As all men know, the advent of the Beast was coeval with the
coming of that red comet which rose behind the Dragon in the early
summer of 1369. Like Satan's rutilant hair, trailing on the wind of
Gehenna as he hastens worldward, the comet streamed nightly above
Averoigne, bringing the fear of bale and pestilence in its train. And
soon the rumor of a strange evil, a foulness unheard of in any legend,
passed among the people.
To Brother Gerome of the Benedictine Abbey of Perigon it was
given to behold this evil ere the horror thereof became manifest to
others. Returning late to the monastery from an errand in Ste. Zenobie,
Gerome was overtaken by darkness. No moon arose to lantern his way
through the forest; but, between the gnarled boughs of antic oaks, he
saw the vengefully streaming fire of the comet, which seemed to pursue
him as-he went. And Gerome felt an eery fear of the pit-deep shadows,
and he made haste toward the abbey postern.
Passing among the ancient trees that towered thickly behind
Perigon, he thought that he discerned a light from the windows, and
was much cheered thereby. But, going on, he saw that the light was
near at hand, beneath a lowering bough. It moved as with the flitting of
a fen-fire, and was of changeable color, being pale as a corposant. or
ruddy as new-spilled blood, or green as the poisonous distillation that
surrounds the moon.._ÿ
Then, with terror ineffable, Gerome beheld the thing to which the
light clung like a hellish nimbus, moving as it moved, and revealing
dimly the black abomination of head and limbs that were not those of
any creature wrought by God. The horror stood erect, rising to more
than the height of a tall man; and it swayed like a great serpent, and its
members undulated, bending like heated wax. The flat black head was
thrust forward on a snakish neck. The eyes, small and lidless, glowing
like coals from a wizard's brazier, were set low and near together in a
noseless face above the serrate gleaming of such teeth as might belong
to a giant bat.
This much, and no more, Gerome saw, ere the thing went past him
with its nimbus flaring from venomous green to a wrathful red. Of its
actual shape, and the number of its limbs, he could form no just notion.
Running and slithering rapidly, it disappeared among the antique oaks,
and he saw the hellish light no more.
Nigh dead with fear, Gerome reached the abbey postern and sought
admittance. And the porter, hearing the tale of that which he had met
in the moonless wood, forbore to chide him for his tardiness.
Before nones, on the morrow, a dead stag was found in the forest
behind Perigon. It had been slain in some ungodly fashion, not by wolf
or poacher or hunter. It was unmarked by any wound, other than a
wide gash that had laid open the spine from neck to tail. The spine
itself had been shattered and the white marrow sucked therefrom; but
no other portion had been devoured. None could surmise the nature of
the beast that slew and ravened in such fashion. But the good Brothers,
heedful of the story told by Gerome, believed that some creature from
the Pit was abroad in Averoigne. And Gerome marveled at the mercy
of God, which had permitted him to escape the doom of the stag.
Now, night by night, the comet greatened, burning like an evil mist
of blood and fire, while the stars blenched before it. And day by day,
from peasants, priests, woodcutters and others who came to the abbey,
the Benedictines heard tales of fearsome and mysterious depredations.
Dead wolves were found with their chines laid open and the white
marrow gone; and an ox and a horse were treated in like fashion. Then,
it seemed, the unknown beast grew bolder -or else it wearied of such
humble prey as the creatures of farm and forest.
At first, it did not strike at living men, but assailed the dead like
some foul eater of carrion. Two freshly buried corpses were found
lying in the cemetery at Ste. Zenobie, where the thing had dug them
from their graves and had bared their vertebrae. In each case, only a
little of the marrow had been eaten; but, as if in rage or
disappointment, the cadavers had been torn asunder, and tatters of. __½
their flesh were mixed with the rags of their cerements. From this, it
would seem that only the spinal marrow of creatures newly killed was
pleasing to the monster.
Thereafterward, the dead were not again molested. But on the night
following the desecration of the graves, two charcoal-burners who plied
their trade in the forest not far from Perigon, were slain in their hut.
Other charcoal-burners, dwelling near by, heard the shrill screams that
fell to sudden silence; and peering fearfully through the chinks of their
bolted doors, they saw anon in the starlight the departure of a black,
obscenely glowing shape that issued from the hut. Not till dawn did
they dare to verify the fate of their fellows, who had been served in the
same manner as the stags, the wolves, and the corpses.
Theophile, the abbot of Perigon, was much exercised over this evil
that had chosen to manifest itself in the neighborhood and whose
depredations were all committed within a few hours' journey of the
abbey. Pale from overstrict austerities and vigils, he called the monks
before him in assembly; and a martial ardor against the minions of
Asmodai blazed in his hollowed eyes as he spoke.
'Truly,' he said, 'there is a great devil among us. that has risen with
the comet from Malebolge. We, the Brothers of Perigon, must go forth
with cross and holy water to hunt the devil in its hidden lair, which lies
haply at our very portals.'
So, on the forenoon of that same day, Theophile, together with
Gerome and six others chosen for their hardihood, sallied forth and
made search of the forest for miles around. They entered with ht
torches and lifted crosses the deep caves to which they came, but found
no fiercer thing than wolf or badger. Also, they searched the crumbling
vaults of the deserted castle of Faussesflammes, which was said to be
haunted by vampires. But nowhere could they trace the monster or find
any sign of its lairing.
With nightly deeds of terror, beneath the comet's blasting, the
middle summer went by. Men, women, children, to the number of
more than forty, were done to death by the Beast, which, though
seeming to haunt mainly the environs of the abbey, ranged afield at
times even to the shores of the river Isoile and the gates of La Frenâie
and Ximes. There were those who beheld it by night, a black and
slithering foulness clad in changeable luminescence; but no man saw it
by day. And always the thing was silent, uttering no sound: and was
swifter in its motion than the weaving viper.
Once, it was seen by moonlight in the abbey garden, as it glided
toward the forest between rows of peas and turnips. Then, coming in
darkness, it struck within the walls. Without waking the others, on.__
whom it must have cast a Lethean spell, it took Brother Gerome,
slumbering on his pallet at the end of the row, in the dormitory. And
the fell deed was not discovered till daybreak, when the monk who slept
nearest to Gerome awakened and saw his body, which lay face
downward with the back of the robe and the flesh beneath in bloody
tatters.
A week later, it came and dealt likewise with Brother Augustin. And
in spite of exorcisms and the sprinkling of holy water at all doors and
windows, it was seen afterward gliding along the monastery halls; and it
left an unspeakably blasphemous sign of its presence in the chapel.
Many believed that it menaced the abbot himself; for Brother
Constantin the cellarer, returning late from a visit to Vyones, saw it by
starlight as it climbed the outer wall toward that window of Theophile's
cell which faced the great forest. And seeing Constantin, the thing
dropped to the ground like a huge ape and vanished among the trees.
Great was the scandal of these happenings, and the consternation of
the monks. Sorely, it was said, the matter preyed on the abbot, who
kept his cell in unremitting prayer and vigil. Pale and meager as a dying
saint he grew, mortifying the flesh till he tottered with weakness; and a
feverish illness devoured him visibly.
More and more, apart from this haunting of the monastery, the
horror fared afield, even invading walled towns. Toward the middle of
August, when the comet was beginning to decline a little, there
occurred the grievous death of Sister Therese, the young and beloved
niece of Theophile, killed by the hellish Beast in her cell at the
Benedictine convent of Ximes. On this occasion the monster was met
by late passers in the streets, and others watched it climb the city
ramparts, running like some enormous beetle or spider on the sheer
stone as it fled from Ximes to regain its hidden lair.
In her dead hands, it was told, the pious Therese held tightly
clasped a letter from Theophile in which he had spoken at some length
of the dire happening at the monastery, and had confessed his grief and
despair at being unible to cope with the Satanic horror.
All this, in the course of the summer, came to me in my house at
Ximes. From the beginning, because of my commerce with occult
things and the powers of darkness, the unknown Beast was the subject
of my concern. I knew that it was no creature of earth or of the terrene
hells; but regarding its actual character and genesis I could learn no
more at first than any other. Vainly I consulted the stars and made use
of geomancy and necromancy; and the familiars whom I interrogated
professed themselves ignorant, saying that the Beast was altogether
alien and beyond the ken of sublunar spirits.. ___
Then I bethought me of that strange, oracular ring which I had
inherited from my fathers, who were also wizards. The ring had come
down from ancient Hyperborea, and had once been the property of the
sorcerer Eibon. It was made of a redder gold than any that the Earth
had yielded in latter cycles, and was set with a large purple gem,
somber and smoldering, whose like is no longer to be found. In the gem
an antique demon was held captive, a spirit from prehuman worlds,
which would answer the interrogation of sorcerers.
So, from a rarely opened casket, I brought out the ring and made
such preparations as were needful for the questioning. And when the
purple stone was held inverted above a small brazier filled with hotly
burning amber, the demon made answer, speaking in a shrill voice that
was like the singing of fire. It told me the origin of the Beast, which had
come from the red comet, and belonged to a race of stellar devils that
had not visited the Earth since the foundering of Atlantis; and it told
me the attributes of the Beast, which, in its own proper form, was
invisible and intangible to men, and could manifest itself only in a
fashion supremely abominable. Moreover, it informed me of the one
method by which the Beast could be vanquished, if overtaken in a
tangible shape. Even to me, the student of darkness, these revelations
were a source of horror and surprise. And for many reasons, I deemed
the mode of exorcism a doubtful and perilous thing. But the demon
had sworn that there was no other way.
Musing on that which I had learned, I waited among my books and
alembics; for the stars had warned me that my intervention would be
required in good time.
To me, following the death of Sister Therese, there came privily the
marshal of Ximes, together with the abbot Theophile, in whose worn
features and bowed form I descried the ravages of mortal sorrow and
horror and humilation. And the two, albeit with palpable hesitancy,
asked my advice and assistance in the laying of the beast.
'You, Messire le Chaudronnier,' said the marshal, 'are reputed to
know the arcanic arts of sorcery, and the spells which summon and
dismiss demons. Therefore, in dealing with this devil, it may be that
you shall succeed where all others have failed. Not willingly do we
employ you in the matter, since it is not seemly for the church and the
law to ally themselves with wizardry. But the need is desperate, lest the
demon should take other victims. In return for your aid we can promise
you a goodly reward of gold and a guarantee of lifelong immunity from
all inquisition which your doings might otherwise invite. The Bishop of
Ximes, and the Archbishop of Vyones, are privy to this offer, which
must be kept secret.'.__
'I ask no reward,' I replied, 'if it be in my power to rid Averoigne of
this scourge. But you have set me a difficult task, and one that is haply
attended by strange perils.'
'All assistance that can be given you shall be yours to command.'
said the marshal. 'Men-at-arms shall attend you, if need be.'
Then Theophile, speaking in a low, broken voice, assured me that
all doors, including those of the abbey of Perigon, would be opened at
my request, and that everything possible would be done to further the
laying of the fiend.
I reflected briefly, and said:
'Go now, but send to me, an hour before sunset, two men-at-arms,
mounted, and with a third steed. And let the men be chosen for their
valor and discretion: for this very night I shall visit Perigon, where the
horror seems to center.'
Remembering the advice of the gem-imprisoned demon, I made no
preparation for the journey, except to place upon my index finger the
ring of Eibon, and to arm myself with a small hammer, which I placed
at my girdle in lieu of a sword. Then I awaited the set hour, when the
men and the horses came to my house, as had been stipulated.
The men were stout and tested warriors, clad in chainmail, and
carrying swords and halberds. I mounted the third horse, a black and
spirited mare, and we rode forth from Ximes toward Perigon, taking a
direct and little-used way which ran through the werewolf-haunted
forest.
My companions were taciturn, speaking only in answer to some
question, and then briefly. This pleased me; for I knew they would
maintain a discreet silence regarding that which might occur before
dawn. Swiftly we rode, while the sun sank in a redness as of welling
blood among the tall trees; and soon the darkness wove its thickening
webs from bough to bough, closing upon us like some inexorable net of
evil. Deeper we went, into the brooding woods; and even I, the master
of sorceries, trembled a little at the knowledge of all that was abroad in
the darkness.
Undelayed and unmolested, however, we came to the abbey at late
moonrise, when all the monks, except the aged porter, had retired to
their dormitory. The abbot returning at sunset from Ximes, had given
word to the porter of our coming, and he would have admitted us; but
this, as it happened, was no part of my plan. Saying I had reason to
believe the Beast would re-enter the abbey that very night, I told the
porter of my intention of waiting outside the walls to intercept it, and
merely asked him to accompany us in a tour of the building's exterior,
so that he could point out the various rooms. This he did, and during. ___
the tour, he indicated a certain window in the second story as being
that of Theophile's cell. The window faced the forest, and I remarked
on the abbot's rashness in leaving it open. This, the porter told me, was
his invariable custom, in spite of the oftrepeated demoniac invasions of
the monastery. Behind the window we saw the glimmering of a taper,
as if the abbot were keeping late vigil.
We had committed our horses to the porter's care. After he had
conducted us around the building and had left us, we returned to the
space before The ophile's window and began our long watch.
Pale and hollow as the face of a corpse, the moon rose higher,
swimming above the somber oaks, and pouring a spectral silver on the
grap stone of the abbey walls. In the west the comet flamed among the
lusterless signs, veiling the lifted sting of the Scorpion as it sank.
We waited hour by hour in the shortening shadow of a tall oak,
where none could see us from the windows. When the moon had
passed over, sloping westward, the shadow began to lengthen toward
the wall. All was mortally still, and we saw no movement, apart from
the slow shifting of the light and shade. Half-way between midnight
and dawn the taper went out in Theophile's cell, as if it had burned to
the socket; and thereafter the room remained dark.
Unquestioning, with ready weapons, the men-at-arms companioned
me in that vigil. Well they knew the demonian terror which they might
face before dawn; but there was no trepidation in their bearing. And
knowing much that they could not know, I drew the ring of Eibon from
my finger, and made ready for that which the demon had directed me
to do.
The men stood nearer than I to the forest, facing it perpetually
according to a strict order that I had given. But nothing stirred in the
fretted gloom; and the slow night ebbed; and the skies grew paler, as if
with morning twilight. Then, an hour before sunrise, when the shadow
of the great oak had reached the wall and was climbing toward
Theophile's window, there came the thing I had anticipated. Very
suddenly it came, and without forewarning of its nearness, a horror of
hellish red light, swift as a kindling, wind-blown flame, that leapt from
the forest gloom and sprang upon us where we stood, still and weary
from our night-long vigil.
One of the men-at-arms was borne to the ground, and I saw above
him, in a floating redness as of ghostly blood, the black and semi-
serpentine form of the Beast. A flat and snakish head, without ears or
nose, was tearing at the man's armor with sharp, serrate teeth, and I
heard the teeth clash and grate on the linked iron. Swiftly I laid the ring.__
of Eibon on a stone I had placed in readiness, and broke the dark jewel
with a blow of the hammer that I carried.
From the pieces of the lightly shattered gem, the disemprisoned
demon rose in the form of a smoky fire, small as a candle-flame at first,
and greatening like the conflagration of piled fagots. And, hissing softly
with the voice of fire, and brightening to a wrathful, terrible gold, the
demon leapt forward to do battle with the Beast, even as it had
promised me, in return for its freedom after cycles of captivity.
It closed upon the Beast with a vengeful flaring, tall as the flame of
an auto-da-fé, and the Beast relinquished the man-at-arms on the
ground beneath it, and writhed back like a burnt serpent. The body and
members of the Beast were loathfully convulsed, and they seemed to
melt in the manner of wax and to change dimly and horribly beneath
the flame, undergoing an incredible metamorphosis. Moment by
moment, like a werewolf that returns from its beasthood, the thing took
on the wavering similitude of man. The unclean blackness flowed and
swirled, assuming the weft of cloth amid its changes, and becoming the
folds of a dark robe and cowl such as are worn by the Benedictines.
Then, from the cowl, a face began to peer, and the face, though
shadowy and distorted, was that of the abbot Theophile.
This prodigy I beheld for an instant; and the men also beheld it. But
still the fire-shaped demon assailed the abhorrently transfigured thing,
and the face melted again into waxy blackness, and a great column of
sooty smoke arose, followed by an odor as of burning flesh commingled
with some might foulness. And out of the volumed smoke, above the
hissing of the demon, there came a single cry in the voice of Theophile.
But the smoke thickened, hiding both the assailant and that which it
assailed; and there was no sound, other than the singing of fed fire.
At last, the sable fumes began to lift, ascending and disappearing
amid the boughs, and a dancing golden light; in the shape of a will-o'-
the-wisp, went soaring over the dark trees toward the stars. And I knew
that the demon of the ring had fulfilled its promise, and had now gone
back to those remote and ultramundane deeps from which the sorcerer
Eibon had drawn it down in Hyperborea to become the captive of the
purple gem.
The stench of burning passed from the air, together with the mighty
foulness; and of that which had been the Beast there was no longer any
trace. So I knew that the horror born of the red comet had been driven
away by the fiery demon, The fallen man-at-arms had risen, unharmed
beneath his mail, and he and his fellow stood beside me, saying naught.
But I knew that they had seen the changes of the Beast, and had
divined something of the truth. So, while the moon grew gray with the. __¢
nearness of dawn, I made them swear an awful oath of secrecy, and
enjoined them to bear witness to the statement I must make before the
monks of Perigon.
Then, having settled this matter, so that the good renown of the
holy Theophile should suffer no calumny, we aroused the porter. We
averred that the Beast had come upon us unaware, and had gained the
abbot's cell before we could prevent it, and had come forth again,
carrying Theophile with its snakish nembers as if to bear him away to
the sunken comet, I had exorcised the unclean devil, which had
vanished in a cloud of sulfurous fire and vapor; and, most unluckily,
the abbot had been consumed by the fire.
His death, I said, was a true martyrdom, and would not be in vain:
the Beast would no longer plague the country or bedevil Perigon, since
the exorcism I had used was infallible.
This tale was accepted without question by the Brothers, who
grieved mightily for their good abbot. Indeed, the tale was true enough,
for Theophile had been innocent, and was wholly ignorant of the foul
change that came upon him nightly in his cell, and the deeds that were
done by the Beast through his loathfully transfigured body. Each night
the thing had come down from the passing comet to assuage its hellish
hunger; and being otherwise impalpable and powerless, it had used the
abbot for its energumen, molding his flesh to the image of some
obscene monster from beyond the stars.
It had slain a peasant girl in Ste. Zenobie on that night while we
waited behind the abbey. But thereafter the Beast was seen no more in
Averoigne; and its murderous deeds were not repeated.
In time the comet passed to other heavens, fading slowly; and the
black terror it had wrought became a varying legend, even as all other
bygone things. The abbot Theophile was canonized for his strange
martyrdom; and they who read this record in future ages will believe it
not, saying that no demon or malign spirit could have prevailed thus
upon true holiness. Indeed, it were well that none should believe the
story: for thin is the veil betwixt man and the godless deep. The skies
are haunted by that which it were madness to know; and strange
abominations pass evermore between earth and moon and athwart the
galaxies. Unnamable things have come to us in alien horror and will
come again. And the evil of the stars is not as the evil of Earth.
[1933]._¡
The Disinterment of
Venus
PRIOR TO CERTAIN highly deplorable and scandalous events in the year
1550, the vegetable garden of Perigon was situated on the southeast
side of the abbey. After these events, it was removed to the northwest
side, where it has remained ever since; and the former garden-site was
given to weeds and briars which, by strict order of the successive
abbots, no one has ever tried to eradicate or curb.
The happenings which compelled this removal of the Benedictine's
turnip and carrot patches became a popular tale in Averoigne. It is hard
to say how much or how little of the legend is apocryphal.
One April morning, three monks were spading lustily in the garden.
Their names were Paul, Pierre and Hughes. The first was a man of ripe
years, hale and robust; the second was in his early prime; the third was
little more than a boy, and had but recently taken his final vows.
Being moved with an especial ardour, in which the vernal stirring of
youthful sap may have played its part, Hughes proceeded to dig the
loamy soil even more diligently than his comrades. The ground was
almost free of stones, owing to the careful tillage of many generations
of monks; but anon, through the muscular zeal with which it was
wielded, the spade of Hughes encountered a hard and well-buried
object of indeterminate size.
Hughes felt that this obstruction, which in all likelihood was a small
boulder, should be removed for the honour of the monastery and the
glory of God. Bending busily, he shovelled away the moist, blackish
loam in an effort to uncover it. The task was more arduous than he had
expected; and the supposed boulder began to reveal an amazing length
and a quite singular formation as he bared it by degrees. Leaving their
own toil, Pierre and Paul came to his assistance. Soon, through the
zealous endeavours of the three, the nature of the buried object became
all too manifest.
In the large pit they had now dug, the monks beheld the grimy head
and torso of what was plainly a marble woman or goddess from antique. __ˆ
years. The pale stone of shoulders and arms, tinged faintly as if with a
living rose, had been scraped clean in places by their shovels; but the
face and breasts were still black with heavily caked loam.
The figure stood erect, as if on a hidden pedestal. One arm was
raised, caressing with a shapely hand the ripe contour of shoulder and
bosom; the other, hanging idly, was still plunged in the earth. Digging
deeper, the monks uncovered the full hips and rounded thighs; and
finally, taking turns in the pit, whose rim was now higher than their
heads, they came to the sunken pedestal, which stood on a pavement of
granite.
During the course of their excavations, the Brothers had felt a
strange, powerful excitement whose cause they could hardly have
explained, but which seemed to arise, like some obscure contagion,
from the long-buried arms and bosom of the image. Mingled with a
pious horror due to the infamous paganry and nudity of the statue,
there was an unacknowledged pleasure which the three would have
rebuked in themselves as vile and shameful if they had recognized it.
Fearful of chipping or scratching the marble, they wielded their
spades with much chariness; and when the digging was completed and
the comely feet were uncovered on their pedestal, Paul, the oldest,
standing beside the image in the pit, began to wipe away with a handful
of weeds and grass the maculations of dark loam that still clung to its
lovely body. This task he per- formed with great thoroughness; and he
ended by polishing the marble with the hem and sleeves of his black
robe.
He and his fellows, who were not without classic learning, now saw
that the figure was evidently a statue of Venus, dating no doubt from
the Roman occupation of Averoigne, when certain altars to this divinity
had been established by the invaders.
The vicissitudes of half-legendary time, the long dark years of
inhumation, had harmed the Venus little if at all. The slight mutilation
of an ear-tip half hidden by rippling curls, and the partial fracture of a
shapely middle toe, merely served to add, if possible, a keener
seduction to her languorous beauty.
She was exquisite as the succubi of youthful dreams, but her
perfection was touched with inenarrable evil. The lines of the mature
figure were fraught with a maddening luxuriousness; the lips of the full,
Circean face were half pouting, half smiling with ambiguous allure. It
was the masterpiece of an unknown, decadent sculptor; not the noble
maternal Venus of heroic times, but the sly and cruelly voluptuous
Cytherean of dark orgies, ready for her descent into the Hollow Hill.._ÿ
A forbidden enchantment, an unhallowed thralldom, seemed to flow
from the flesh-pale marble and to weave itself like invisible hair about
the hearts of the Brothers. With a sudden, mutual feeling of shame,
they recalled their monkhood, and began to debate what should be
done with the Venus, which, in a monastery garden, was somewhat
misplaced. After brief discussion, Hughes went to report their find to
the abbot and await his decision regarding its disposal. In the
meanwhile, Paul and Pierre resumed their garden labours, stealing
perhaps, occasional covert glances at the pagan goddess.
Augustin the abbot came presently into the garden, accompanied by
those monks who were not, at that hour, engaged in some special task.
With a severe mien, in silence, he proceeded to inspect the statue; and
those with him waited reverently, not venturing to speak before their
abbot had spoken.
Even the saintly Augustin, however, in spite of his age and rigorous
temper, was somewhat discomfited by the peculiar witchery which
seemed to emanate-from the marble. Of this he gave no sign, and the
natural austerity of his demeanour deepened. Curtly he ordered the
bringing of ropes, and directed the raising of the Venus from her loamy
bed to a standing position on the garden ground beside the hole. In this
task, Paul, Pierre and Hughes were assisted by two others.
Many of the monks now pressed forward to examine the figure
closely; and several were even prompted to touch it, till rebuked for this
unseemly action by their superior. Certain of the elder and more
austere Benedictines urged its immediate destruction, arguing that the
image was a heathen abomination that defiled the abbey garden by its
presence. Others, the most practical, pointed out that the Venus, being
a rare and beautiful example of Roman sculpture, might well be sold at
a goodly price to some rich and impious art-lover.
Augustin, though he felt that the Venus should be destroyed as an
impure pagan idol, was filled with a queer and peculiar hesitation
which led him to defer the necessary orders for her demolishment. It
was as if the subtly wanton loveliness of the marble were pleading for
clemency like a living form, with a voice half human, half divine.
Averting his eyes from the white bosom, he spoke harshly, bidding the
Brothers to return to their labours and devotions, and saying that the
Venus could remain in the garden till arrangements were made for her
ultimate disposition and removal, Pending this, he instructed one of the
Brothers to bring sackcloth and drape therewith the unseemly nudity of
the goddess.
The disinterment of this antique image became a source of much
discussion and some perturbation and dissension amid the quiet. __½
Brotherhood at Perigon. Because of the curiosity shown by many
monks, the abbot issued an injunction that no one should approach the
statue, other than those whose labours might compel an involuntary
proximity. He himself, at that time, was criticized by some of the deans
for his laxness in not destroying the Venus immediately. During the
few years that remained to him, he was to regret bitterly the remissness
he had shown in this matter.
No one, however, dreamt of the grave scandals that were to ensue
shortly. But, on the day following the discovery of the statue, it became
manifest that some evil and disturbing influence was abroad.
Heretofore, breaches of discipline had been rare among the Brothers;
and cardinal offences were quite unknown; but now it seemed that a
spirit of unruliness, impiety, ribaldry and wrongdoing had entered
Perigon.
Paul, Pierre and Hughes were the first to undergo penance for their
peccancies. A shocked dean had overheard them discussmg with
impure levity, certain matters that were more suitable for the
conversation of worldly gallants than of monks. By way of extenuation,
the three Brothers pleaded that they had been obsessed with carnal
thoughts, and images ever since their exhumation of the Venus; and for
this they blamed the statue, saying that a pagan witchcraft had come
upon them from its flesh-white marble.
On that same day, others of the monks were charged with similar
offences; and still others made confession of lubric desires and visions
such as had tormented Anthony during his desert vigil. Those, too,
were prone to blame the Venus. Before evensong, many infractions of
monastic rule were reported; and some of them were of such nature as
to call for the severest rebuke and penance. Brothers whose conduct
had heretofore been exemplary in all ways were found guilty of
transgressions such as could be accounted for only by the direct
influence of Satan or some powerful demon.
Worst of all, on that very night, it was found that Hughes and Paul
were absent from their beds in the dormitory; and no one could say
whither they had gone. They did not return on the day following,
Inquiries were made by the abbot's order in the neighboring village of
Sainte Zenobie, and it was learned that Paul and Hughes had spent the
night at a tavern of unsavoury repute, drinking and wenching; and they
had taken the road to Vyones, chief city of the province, at early dawn.
Later, they were apprehended and brought back to the monastery,
protesting that their downfall was wholly due to some evil contagion
which they had incurred by touching the statue..__
In view of the unexampled demoralization which prevailed at
Perigon, no one doubted that a diabolic pagan charm was at work The
source of the charm was all too obvious, Moreover, queer tales were
told by monks who had laboured in the garden or had passed within
sight of the image. They swore that the Venus was no mere sculptured
idol but a living woman or shedevil who had changed her position
repeatedly and had re- arranged the folds of the sackcloth in such
manner as to lay bare one shapely shoulder and a part of her bosom.
Others avowed that the Venus walked in the garden by night; and some
even affirmed that she had entered the monastery and appeared before
thema like a succubus.
Much fright and horror was created by these tales, and no one
dared to approach the image closely. Though the situation was
supremely scandalous, the abbot still forbore to issue orders for the
statue's demolition, fearing that any monk who touched it, even with a
motive so pious, would court the baleful sorcery that had brought
Hughes and Paul to disaster and disgrace, and had led others into
impurity of speech or actual impiety.
It was suggested, however, that some layman should be hired to
shatter the idol and remove and bury its fragments. This, no doubt
would have been accomplished in good time, if it had not been for the
hasty and fanatic zeal of Brother Louis.
This Brother, a youth of good family, was conspicuous among the
Benedictines both for his comely face and his austere piety. Handsome
as Adonis, he was given to ascetic vigils and prolonged devotions,
outdoing in this regard the abbot and the deans.
At the hour of the statue's disinterment, he was busily engaged in
copying a Latin testament; and neither then nor at any later time had
he cared to inspect a find which he considered more than dubious. He
had expressed disapprobation on hearing from his fellows the details of
the discovery; and feeling that the abbey garden was polluted by the
presence of an obscene image, he had purposely avoided all windows
through which the marble might have been visible to his chaste eyes.
When the influence of heathen evil and corruption became manifest
amid the Brothers, he had shown great indignation deeming it a most
insufferable thing that virtuous, God-fearing monks should be brought
to shame through the operation of some hellish pagan spell. He had
reprobated openly the hesitation of Augustin and his delay in
destroying the maleficent idol. More mischief, he said, would ensue if it
were left intact.
In view of all this, extreme surprise and alarm were felt at Perigon
when, on the fourth day after the exhumation of the statue, Brother. ___
Louis was discovered missing, His bed had not been occupied on the
previous night; but it seemed impossible that he could have fled the
monastery, yielding to such desires and impulsions, as had caused the
ruin of Paul and Hughes.
The monks were strictly interrogated by their abbot, and it was
revealed that Brother Louis, when last seen, had been loitering about
the abbey workshop. Since, formerly, he had shown small interest in
tools or manual labour, this was deemed a peculiar thing. Forthwith a
visit was made to the workshop; and the monk in charge of the smithy
soon found that one of his heaviest hammers had been removed.
The conclusion was obvious to all: Louis, impelled by virtuous
ardour and holy wrath, had gone forth during the night to demolish
the, baleful image of Venus.
Augustin and the Brothers who were with him repaired immediately
to the garden. There they were met by the gardeners who, noticing
from afar that the image no longer occupied its position beside the pit,
were hurrying to report this matter to the abbot. They had not dared to
investigate the mystery of its disappearance, believing firmly that the
statue had come to life and was lurking somewhere about the garden.
Made bold by their number and by the leadership of Augustin, the
assembled monks approached the pit. Beside its rim they beheld the
missing hammer, lying on the clodded loam as if Louis had cast it
aside. Near by was the sacking that had clothed the image; but there
were no fragments of broken marble such as they had thought to see.
The footprints of Louis were clearly imprinted upon the pit's margin,
and were discernible in strangely close proximity to the mark left by the
pedestal of the statue.
All this was very peculiar, and the monks felt that the mystery had
begun to assume a more than sinister tinge. Then, peering into the hole
itself, they beheld a thing that was explicable only through the
machinations of Satan Š or one of Satan's most pernicious and
seductive she-demons.
Somehow, the Venus had been overturned and had fallen back into
the broad deep pit. The body of Brother Louis, with a shattered skull
and lips bruised to a sanguine pulp, was lying crushed beneath her
marble breasts. His arms were clasped about her in a desperate,
loverlike embrace, to which death had now added its own rigidity. Even
more horrible and inexplicable, however, was the fact that the stone
arms of the Venus had changed their posture and were now folded
closely about the dead monk as if she had been sculptured in the
attitude of an amorous enlacement!.__
The horror and consternation felt by the Benedictines were
inexpressible. Some would have fled from the spot in panic, after
viewing this frightful and most abominable prodigy; but Augustin
restrained them, his features stern with the religious ire of one who
beholds the fresh handiwork of the Adversary. He commanded the
bringing of a cross, an aspergillus and holy water, together with a
ladder for use in descending into the pit; saying that the body of Louis
must be redeemed from the baleful and dolorous plight into which it
had fallen. The iron hammer, lying beside the hole, was proof of the
righteous intention with which Louis had gone forth; but it was all too
plain that he had succumbed to the hellish charms of the statue.
Nevertheless, the Church could not abandon its erring servant to the
powers of evil.
When the ladder was brought, Augustin himself led the descent,
followed by three of the stoutest and most courageous Brothers, who
were willing to risk their own spiritual safety for the redemption of
Louis. Regarding that which ensued, the legends vary slightly. Some
say that the aspersions of holy water, made by Augustin on the statue
and its victim, were without palpable effect; while others relate that the
drops turned to infernal steam when they struck the recumbent Venus,
and blackened the flesh of Louis like that of a month-old cadaver, thus
proving him wholly claimed by perdition. But the tales agree in this,
that the strength of the three stout Brothers, labouring in unison at their
abbot's direction, was impotent to loosen the marble clasp of the
goddess from about her prey.
So, by the order of Augustin, the pit was filled hastily to its rim with
earth and stones; and the very spot where it had been, being left
without mound or other mark, was quickly overgrown by grass and
weeds along with the rest of the abandoned garden.
[1934]. ___
Mother of Toads
"WHY MUST YOU always hurry away, my little one?
The voice of Mere Antoinette, the witch, was an amorous croaking.
She ogled Pierre, the apothecary's young apprentice, with eyes full-
orbed and unblinking as those of a toad. The folds beneath her chin
swelled like the throat of some great batrachian. Her huge breasts, pale
as frog-bellies, bulged from her torn gown as she leaned toward him.
He gave no answer; and she came closer, till he saw in the hollow of
those breasts a moisture glistening like the dew of marshes... like the
slime of some amphibian... a moisture that seemed always to linger
there.
Her voice, raucously coaxing, persisted. "Stay awhile tonight, my
pretty orphan. No one will miss you in the village. And your master will
not mind." She pressed against him with shuddering folds of fat. With
her short flat fingers, which gave almost the appearance of being
webbed, she seized his hand and drew it to her bosom.
Pierre wrenched the hand away and drew back discreetly. Repelled,
rather than abashed, he averted his eyes. The witch was more than
twice his age, and her charms were too uncouth and unsavory to tempt
him for an instant. Also, her repute was such as to have nullified the
attractions of a younger and fairer sorceress. Her witchcraft had made
her feared among the peasantry of that remote province, where belief in
spells and philters was still common. The people of Averoigne called
her La Mere des Crapauds, Mother of Toads, a name given for more
than one reason. Toads swarmed innumerably about her hut; they were
said to be her familiars, and dark tales were told concerning their
relationship to the sorceress, and the duties they performed at her
bidding. Such tales were all the more readily believed because of those
batrachian features that had always been remarked in her aspect.
The youth disliked her, even as he disliked the sluggish, abnormally
large toads on which he had sometimes trodden in the dusk, upon the
path between her hut and the village of Les Hiboux. He could hear
some of these creatures croaking now; and it seemed, weirdly, that they
uttered half-articulate echoes of the witch's words..__
It would be dark soon, he reflected. The path along the marshes was
not pleasant by night, and he felt doubly anxious to depart. Still
without replying to Mere Antionette's invitation, he reached for the
black triangular vial she had set before him on her greasy table. The
vial contained a philter of curious potency which his master, Alain le
Dindon, had sent him to procure. Le Dindon,the village apothecary,
was wont to deal surreptitiously in certain dubious medicaments
supplied by the witch; and Pierre had often gone on such errands to her
osier-hidden hut.
The old apothecary, whose humor was rough and ribald, had
sometimes rallied Pierre concerning Mere Antoinette's preference for
him. "Some night, my lad, you will remain with her," he had said. "Be
careful, or the big toad will crush you." Remembering this gibe, the boy
flushed angrily as he turned to go.
"Stay," insisted Mere Antoinette. "The fog is cold on the marshes;
and it thickens apace. I knew that you were coming, and I have mulled
for you a goodly measure of the red wine of Ximes."
She removed the lid from an earthen pitcher and poured its
steaming contents into a large cup. The purplish-red wine creamed
delectably, and an odor of hot, delicious spices filled the hut,
overpowering the less agreeable odors from the simmering cauldron,
the half-dried newts, vipers, bat-wings and evil, nauseous herbs
hanging on the walls, and the reek of the black candles of pitch and
corpse-tallow that burned always, by noon or night, in that murky
interior.
"I'll drink it," said Pierre, a little grudgingly. "That is, if it contains
nothing of your own concoction."
"'Tis naught but sound wine, four seasons old, with spices of
Arabia," the sorceress croaked ingratiatingly. "'Twill warm your
stomach... and..." She added something inaudible as Pierre accepted
the cup.
Before drinking, he inhaled the fumes of the beverage with some
caution but was reassured by its pleasant smell. Surely it was innocent
of any drug, any philter brewed by the witch: for, to his knowledge, her
preparations were all evil-smelling.
Still, as if warned by some premonition, he hesitated. Then he
remembered that the sunset air was indeed chill; that mists had
gathered furtively behind him as he came to Mere Antoinette's
dwelling. The wine would fortify him for the dismal return walk to Les
Hiboux. He quaffed it quickly and. set down the cup. "Truly, it is good
wine," he declared. "But I must go now.". __¢
Even as he spoke, he felt in his stomach and veins the spreading
warmth of the alcohol, of the spices... of something more ardent than
these. It seemed that his voice was unreal and strange, falling as if from
a height above him. the warmth grew, mounting within him like a
golden flame fed by magic oils. His blood, a seething torrent,poured
tumultuously and more tumultuously through his members.
There was a deep soft thundering in his ears, a rosy dazzlement in
his eyes. Somehow the hut appeared to expand, to change luminously
about him. He hardly recognized its squalid furnishings, its litter of
baleful oddments, on which a torrid splendor was shed by the black
candles, tipped with ruddy fire, that towered and swelled gigantically
into the softgloom His blood burned as with the throbbing flame of the
candles.
It came to him, for an instant, that all this was a questionable
enchantment, a glamor wrought by the witch's wine. Fear was upon
him and he wished to flee. Then, close beside him, he saw Mere
Antoinette.
Briefly he marvelled at the change that had befallen her. Then fear
and wonder were alike forgotten, together with his old repulsion. He
knew why the magic warmth mounted ever higher and hotter within
him; why his flesh glowed like the ruddy tapers.
The soiled skirt she had worn lay at her feet, and she stood naked as
Lilith, the first witch. The lumpish limbs and body had grown
voluptuous; the pale, thick-lipped mouth enticed him with a promise of
ampler kisses than other mouths couldyield. The pits of her short
round arms, the concave of her ponderously drooping breasts, the
heavy creases and swollen rondures of flanks and thighs, all were
fraught with luxurious allurement.
"Do you like me now, my little one?" she questioned.
This time he did not draw away but met her with hot, questing
hands when she pressed heavily against him. Her limbs were cool and
moist; her breasts yielded like the turf-mounds above a bog. Her body
was white and wholly hairless; but here and there he found curious
roughnesses... like those on the skin of a toad... that somehow
sharpened his desire instead of repelling it.
She was so huge that his fingers barely joined behind her, His two
hands, together, were equal only to the cupping of a single breast. But
the wine had filled his blood with a philterous ardor.
She led him to her couch beside the hearth where a great cauldron
boiled mysteriously, sending up its fumes in strange-twining coils that
suggested vague and obscene figures. The couch was rude and bare.
But the flesh of the sorceress was like deep, luxurious cushions...._¡
Pierre awoke in the ashy dawn, when the tall black tapers had
dwindled down and had melted limply in their sockets. Sick and
confused, he sought vainly to remember where he was or what he had
done. Then, turning a little, he saw beside him on the couch a thing
that was like some impossible monster of ill dreams; a toadlike form,
large as a fat woman. Its limbs were somehow like a woman's arms and
legs. Its pale, warty body pressed and bulged against him, and he felt
the rounded softness of something that resembled a breast.
Nausea rose within him as memory of that delirious night returned;
Most foully he had been beguiled by the witch, and had succumbed to
her evil enchantments.
It seemed that an incubus smothered him, weighing upon all his
limbs and body. He shut his eyes, that he might no longer behold the
loathsome thing that was Mere Antoinette in her true semblance.
Slowly, with prodigious effort, he drew himself away from the crushing
nightmare shape. It did not stir or appear to waken; and he slid quickly
from the couch.
Again, compelled by a noisome fascination, he peered at the thing
on the couch Š and saw only the gross form of Mere Antoinette.
Perhaps his impression of a great toad beside him had been but an
illusion, a half-dream that lingered after slumber. He lost something of
his nightmarish horror; but his gorge still rose in a sick disgust,
remembering the lewdness to which he had yielded.
Fearing that the witch might awaken at any moment and seek to
detain him, he stole noiselessly from the hut. It was broad daylight, but
a cold, hueless mist lay everywhere, shrouding the reedy marshes, and
hanging like a ghostly curtain on the path he must follow to Les
Hiboux. Moving and seething always, the mist seemed to reach toward
him with intercepting fingers as he started homeward. He shivered at
its touch, he bowed his head and drew his cloak closer around him.
Thicker and thicker the mist swirled, coiling, writhing endlessly, as
if to bar Pierre's progress. He could discern the twisting, narrow path
for only a few paces in advance. It was hard to find the familiar
landmarks, hard to recognize the osiers and willows that loomed
suddenly before him like grey phantoms and faded again into the white
nothingness as he went onward. Never had he seen such fog: it was like
the blinding, stifling fumes of a thousand witch-stirred cauldrons.
Though he was not altogether sure of his surroundings, Pierre
thought that he had covered half the distance to the village. Then, all at
once, he began to meet the toads. They were hidden by the mist till he
came close upon them. Misshapen, unnaturally big and bloated, they. __ˆ
squatted in his way on the little footpath or hopped sluggishly before
him from the pallid gloom on either hand.
Several struck against his feet with a horrible and heavy flopping.
He stepped unaware upon one of them, and slipped in the squashy
noisomeness it had made, barely saving himself from a headlong fall on
the bog's rim. Black, miry water gloomed close beside him as he
staggered there.
Turning to regain his path, he crushed others of the toads to an
abhorrent pulp under his feet. The marshy soil was alive with them.
They flopped against him from the mist, striking his legs, his bosom,
his very face with their clammy bodies. They rose up by scores like a
devil-driven legion. It seemed that there was a malignance, an evil
purpose in their movements, in the buffeting of their violent impact.
He could make no progress on the swarming path, but lurched to and
fro, slipping blindly, and shielding his face with lifted hands. He felt an
eery consternation, an eldrich horror. It was as if the nightmare of his
awakening in the witch's hut had somehow returned upon him.
The toads came always from the direction of Les Hiboux, as if to
drive him back toward Mere Antoinette's dwelling. They bounded
against him like a monstrous hail, like missiles flung by unseen demons.
The ground was covered by them, the air was filled with their hurtling
bodies. Once, he nearly went down beneath them.
Their number seemed to increase, they pelted him in a noxious
storm. He gave way before them, his courage broke, and he started to
run at random, without knowing that he had left the safe path.
Losing.all thought of direction, in his frantic desire to escape from
those impossible myriads, he plunged on amid the dim reeds and
sedges, over ground that quivered gelatinously beneath him. Always at
his heels he heard the soft, heavy flopping of the toads; and sometimes
they rose up like a sudden wall to bar his way and turn him aside. More
than once, they drove him back from the verge of hidden quagmires
into which he would otherwise have gallen. It was as if they were
herding him deliberately and concertedly to a destined goal.
Now, like the lifting of a dense curtain, the mist rolled away, and
Pierre saw before him in a golden dazzle of morning sunshine the
green, thick-growing osiers that surrounded Mere Antoinette's hut. The
toads had all disappeared, though he could have sworn that hundreds
of them were hopping close about him an instant previously. With a
feeling of helpless fright and panic, he knew that he was still within the
witch's toils; that the toads were indeed her familiars, as so many people
believed them to be. They had prevented his escape, and had._ÿ
broughthimback to the foul creature... whether woman, batrachian, or
both... who was known as The Mother of Toads.
Pierre's sensations were those of one who sinks momently deeper
into some black and bottomless quicksand. He saw the witch emerge
from the hut and come toward him. Her thick fingers, with pale folds
of skin between them like the beginnings of a web, were stretched and
flattened on the steaming cup that she carried. A sudden gust of wind
arose as if from nowhere, lifting the scanty skirts of Mere Antoinette
about her fat thighs, and bearing to Pierre's nostrils the hot, familiar
spices of the drugged wine.
"Why did you leave so hastily, my little one~" There was an
amorous wheedling in the very tone of the witch's question. "I should
not have let you go without another cup of the good red wine, mulled
and spiced for the warming of your stomach... See, I have prepared it
for you... knowing that you would return."
She came very close to him as she spoke, leering and sidling, and
held the cup toward his lips. Pierre grew dizzy with the strange fumes
and turned his head away. It seemed that a paralyzing spell had seized
his muscles, for the simple movement required an immense effort.
His mind, however, was still clear, and the sick revulsion of that
nightmare dawn returned upon him. He saw again the great toad that
had lain at his side when he awakened.
"I will not drink your wine," he said firmly. "You are a foul witch,
and I loathe you. Let me go.
"Why do you loathe me?" croaked Mere Antoinette. "You loved me
yesternight. I can give you all that other women give ... and more."
"You are not a woman," said Pierre. "You are a big toad. I saw you
in your true shape this morning. I'd rather drown in the marsh-waters
than sleep with you again."
An indescribable change came upon the sorceress before Pierre had
finished speaking. The leer slid from her thick and pallid features,
leaving them blankly inhuman for an instant. Then her eyes bulged and
goggled horribly, and her whole body appeared to swell as if inflated
with venom.
"Go, then!" she spat with a guttural virulence. "But you will soon
wish that you had stayed..."
The queer paralysis had lifted from Pierre's muscles. It was as if the
injunction of the angry witch had served to revoke an insidious, half-
woven spell. With no parting glance or word, Pierre turned from her
and fled with long, hasty steps, almost running, on the path to Les
Hiboux.. __½
He had gone little more than a hundred paces when the fog began
to return. It coiled shoreward in vast volumes from the marshes, it
poured like smoke from the very ground at his feet. Almost instantly,
the sun dimmed to a wan silver disk and disappeared. The blue
heavens were lost in the pale and seething voidness overhead. The path
before Pierre was blotted out till he seemed to walk on the sheer rim of
a white abyss, that moved with him as he went.
Like the clammy arms of specters, with death-chill fingers that
clutched and caressed, the weird mists drew closer still about Pierre.
They thickened in his nostrils and throat, they dripped in a heavy dew
from his garments. They choked him with the fetor of rank waters and
putrescent ooze ... and a stench as of liquefying corpses that had risen
somewhere to the surface amid the fen.
Then, from the blank whiteness, the toads assailed Pierre in a
surging, solid wave that towered above his head and swept him from
the dim path with the force of falling seas as it descended. He went
down, splashing and floundering, into water that swarmed with the
numberless batrachians. Thick slime was in his mouth and nose as he
struggled to regain his footing. The water, however, was only knee-
deep, and the bottom, though slippery and oozy, supported him with
little yielding when he stood erect.
He discerned indistinctly through the mist the nearby margin from
which he had fallen. But his steps were weirdly and horribly hampered
by the toad-seething waters when he strove to reach it. Inch by inch,
with a hopeless panic deepening upon him, he fought toward the solid
shore. The toads leaped and tumbled about him with a dizzying
eddylike motion. They swirled like a viscid undertow around his feet
and shins. They swept and swelled in great loathsome undulations
against his retarded knees.
However, he made slow and painful progress, till his outstretched
fingers could almost grasp the wiry sedges that trailed from the low
bank lhen, from that mist-bound shore, there fell and broke upon him a
second deluge of those demoniac toads; and Pierre was bome helplessly
backward into the filthy waters.
Held down by the piling and crawling masses, and drowning in
nauseous darkness at the thick-oozed bottom, he clawed feebly at his
assailants. For a moment, ere oblivion came, his fingers found among
them the outlines of a monstrous form that was somehow toadlike... but
large and heavy as a fat woman. At the last, it seemed to him that two
enormous breasts were crushed closely down upon his face.
[1934].__
The Enchantress of
Sylaire
'WHY, YOU BIG NINNY! I could never marry you,' declared the
demoiselle Dorothée, only daughter of the Sieur des Flèches. Her lips
pouted at Anselme like two ripe berries. Her voice was honey Š but
honey filled with bee-stings.
'You are not so ill-looking. And your manners are fair. But I wish I
had a mirror that could show you to yourself for the fool that you really
are.'
'Why?' queried Anselme, hurt and puzzled.
'Because you are just an addle-headed dreamer, pouring over books
like a monk. You care for nothing but silly old romances and legends.
People say that you even write verses. It is lucky that you are at least
the second son of the Comte du Framboisier Š for you will never be
anything more than that.'
'But you loved me a little yesterday,' said Anselme, bitterly. A
woman finds nothing good in the man she has ceased to love.
'Dolt! Donkey!' cried Dorothée, tossing her blonde ringlets in pettish
arrogance. 'If you were not all that I have said, you would never remind
me of yesterday. Go, idiot Š and do not return.'
Anselme, the hermit, had slept little, tossing distractedly on his
hard, narrow pallet. His blood, it seemed, had been fevered by the
sultriness of the summer night.
Then, too, the natural heat of youth had contributed to his unease.
He had not wanted to think of women Š a certain woman in
particular. But, after thirteen months of solitude, in the heart of the
wild woodland of Averoigne, he was still far from forgetting. Crueller
even than her taunts was the remembered beauty of Dorothée des
Flèches: the full-ripened mouth, the round arms and slender waist, the
breast and hips that had not yet acquired their amplest curves.
Dreams had thronged the few short intervals of slumber, bringing
other visitants, fair but nameless, about his couch.. ___
He rose at sundawn, weary but restless. Perhaps he would find
refreshment by bathing, as he had often done, in a pool fed from the
river Isoile and hidden among alder and willow thickets. The water,
deliciously cool at that hour, would assuage his feverishness.
His eyes burned and smarted in the morning's gold glare when he
emerged from the hut of wattled osier withes. His thoughts wandered,
still full of the night's disorder. Had he been wise, after all, to quit the
world, to leave his friends and family, and seclude himself because of a
girl's unkindness? He could not deceive himself into thinking that he
had become a hermit through any aspiration toward sainthood, such as
had sustained the old anchorites. By dwelling so much. alone, was he
not merely aggravating the malady he had sought to cure?
Perhaps, it occurred to him belatedly, he was proving himself the
ineffectual dreamer, the idle fool that Dorothee had accused him of
being. It was weakness to let himself be soured by a disappointment.
Walking with downcast eyes, he came unaware to the thickets that
fringed the pool. He parted the young willows without lifting his gaze,
and was about to cast off his garments. But at that instant the nearby
sound of splashing water startled him from his abstraction.
With some dismay, Anselme realized that the pool was already
occupied. To his further consternation, the occupant was a woman.
Standing near to the center, where the pool deepened, she stirred the
water with her hands till it rose and rippled against the base of her
bosom. Her pale wet skin glistened like white rose-petals dipped in
dew.
Anselme's dismay turned to curiosity and then to unwilling delight.
He told himself that he wanted to withdraw but feared to frighten the
bather by a sudden movement. Stooping with her clear profile and her
shapely left shoulder toward him, she had not perceived his presence.
A woman, young and beautiful, was the last sight he had wished to
see. Nevertheless, he could not turn his eyes away. The woman was a
stranger to him, and he felt that she was no girl of the village or
countryside. She was lovely as any chatelaine of the great castles of
Averoigne. And yet surely no hdy or demoiselle would bathe
unattended in a forest pool.
Thick-curling chestnut hair, bound by a light silver fillet, billowed
over her shoulders and burned to red, living gold where the sun-rays
searched it out through the foliage. Hung about her neck, a light golden
chain seemed to reflect the lusters of her hair, dancing between her
breasts as she played with the ripples..__
The hermit stood watching her like a man caught in webs of sudden
sorcery. His youth mounted within him, in response to her beauty's
evocation.
Seeming to tire of her play, she turned her back and began to move
toward the opposite shore, where, as Anselme now noticed, a pile of
feminine garments lay in charming disorder on the grass. Step by step
she rose from the shoaling water, revealing hips and thighs like those of
an antique Venus.
Then, beyond her, he saw that a huge wolf, appearing furtively as a
shadow from the thicket, had stationed itself beside the heap of
clothing. Aoselme had never seen such a wolf before. He remembered
the tales of werewolves, that were believed to infest that ancient wood,
and his alarm was touched instantly with the fear which only
preternatural things can arouse. The beast was strangely colored, its fur
being a glossy bluish-black. It was far larger than the common gray
wolves of the forest. Crouching inscrutably, half hidden in the sedges, it
seemed to await the woman as she waded shoreward.
Another moment, thought Anselme, and she would perceive her
danger, would scream and turn in terror. But still she went on, her head
bent forward as if in serene meditation. 'Beware the wolf!' he shouted,
his voice strangely loud and seeming to break a magic stillness. Even as
the words left his lips, the wolf trotted away and disappeared behind
the thickets toward the great elder forest of oaks and beeches. The
woman smiled over her shoulder at Anselme, turning a short oval face
with slightly slanted eyes and lips red as pomegranate flowers.
Apparently she was neither frightened by the wolf nor embarrassed by
Anselme's presence.
'There is nothing to fear,' she said, in a voice like the pouring of
warm honey. 'One wolf, or two, will hardly attack me.'
'But perhaps there are others lurking about,' persisted Anselme.
'And there are worse dangers than wolves for one who wanders alone
and unattended through the forest of Averoigne. When you have
dressed, with your permission I shall attend you safely to your home,
whether it be near or far.'
'My home lies near enough in one sense, and far enough in another,'
returned the lady, cryptically. 'But you may accompany me there if you
wish.'
She turned to the pile of garments, and Anselme went a few paces
away among the alders and busied himself by cutting a stout cudgel for
weapon against wild beasts or other adversaries. A strange but
delightful agitation possessed him, and he nearly nicked his fingers
several times with the knife. The misogyny that had driven him to a. ___
woodland hermitage began to appear slightly immature, even juvenile.
He had let himself be wounded too deeply and too long by the injustice
of a pert child.
By the time Anselme finished cutting his cudgel, the lady had
completed her toilet. She came to meet him, swaying like a lamia. A
bodice of vernal green velvet, baring the upper slopes of her breasts,
clung tightly about her as a lover's embrace. A purple velvet gown,
flowered with pale azure and crimson, moulded itself to the sinuous
outlines of her hips and legs. Her slender feet were enclosed in fine soft
leather buskins, scarlet-dyed, with tips curling pertly upward. The
fashion of her garments, though oddly antique, confirmed Anselme in
his belief that she was a person of no common rank.
Her raiment revealed, rather than concealed, the attributes of her
femininity. Her manner yielded Š but it also withheld.
Anselme bowed before her with a courtly grace that belied his rough
country garb.
'Ah! I can see that you have not always been a hermit,' she said, with
soft mockery in her voice.
'You know me, then,' said Anselme.
'I know many things. I am Sephora, the enchantress. It is unlikely
that you have heard of me, for I dwell apart, in a place that none can
find Š unless I permit them to find it.'
'I know little of enchantment,' admitted Anselme. 'But I can believe
that you are an enchantress.'
For some minutes they had followed a little used path that
serpentined through the antique wood. It was a path the hermit had
never come upon before in all his wanderings. Lithe saplings and low-
grown boughs of huge beeches pressed closely upon it. Anselme,
holding them aside for his companion, came often in thrilling contact
with her shoulder and arm. Often she swayed against him, as if losing
her balance on the rough ground. Her weight was a delightful burden,
too soon relinquished. His pulses coursed tumultuously and would not
quiet themselves again.
Anselme had quite forgotten his eremitic resolves. His blood and his
curiosity, were excited more and more. He ventured various gallantries,
to which Sephora gave provocative replies. His questions, however, she
answered with elusive vagueness. He could learn nothing, could decide
nothing, about her. Even her age puzzled him: at one moment he
thought her a young girl, the next, a mature woman.
Several times, as they went on, he caught glimpses of black fur
beneath the low, shadow foliage. He felt sure that the strange black wolf
he had seen by the pool was accompanying them with a furtive.__
surveillance. But somehow his sense of alarm was dulled by the
enchantment that had fallen upon him.
Now the path steepened, climbing a densely wooded hill. The trees
thinned to straggly, stunted pines, encircling a brown, open moorland
as the tonsure encircles a monk's crown. The moor was studded with
Druidic monoliths, dating from ages prior to the Roman occupation of
Averoigne. Almost at its center, there towered a massive cromlech,
consisting of two upright slabs that supported a third like the lintel of a
door. The path ran straight to the cromlech.
'This is the portal of my domain,' said Sephora, as they neared it. 'I
grow faint with fatigue. You must take me in your arms and carry me
through the ancient doorway.'
Anselme obeyed very willingly. Her cheeks paled, her eyelids
fluttered and fell as he lifted her. For a moment he thought that she had
fainted; but her arms crept warm and clinging around his neck.
Dizzy with the sudden vehemence of his emotion, he carried her
through the cromlech. As he went, his lips wandered across her eyelids
and passed deliriously to the soft red flame of her lips and the rose
pallor of her throat. Once more she seemed to faint, beneath his fervor.
His limbs melted and a fiery blindness filled his eyes. The earth
seemed to yield beneath them like an elastic couch as he and Sephora
sank down.
Lifting his head, Anselme looked about him with swiftly growing
bewilderment. He had carried Sephora only a few paces Š and yet the
grass on which they lay was not the sparse and sun-dried grass of the
moor, but was deep, verdant and filled with tiny vernal blossoms! Oaks
and beeches, huger even than those of the familiar forest, loomed
umbrageously on every hand with masses of new, golden-green leafage,
where he had thought to see the open upland. Looking back, he saw
that the gray, lichened slabs of the cromlech itself alone rernained of
that former landscape.
Even the sun had changed its position. It had hung at Anselme's
left, still fairly low in the east, when he and Sephora had reached the
moorland. But now, shining with amber rays through a rift in the
forest, it had almost touched the horizon on his right.
He recalled that Sephora had told him she was an enchantress.
Here, indeed, was proof of sorcery! He eyed her with curious doubts
and misgivings,
'Be not alarmed,' said Sephora, with a honeyed smile of reassurance.
'I told you that the cromlech was the doorway to my domain. We are
now in a land lying outside of time and space as you have hitherto
known them. The very seasons are different here. But there is no. __¢
sorcery involved, except that of the great ancient Druids, who knew the
secret of this hidden realm and reared those mighty slabs for a portal
between the worlds. If you should weary of me, you can pass back at
any time through the doormay. Š But I hope that you have not tired of
me so soon Š'
Anselme, though still bewildered, was relieved by this information.
He proceeded to prove that the hope expressed by Sephora was well-
founded. Indeed, he proved it so lengthily and in such detail that the
sun had fallen below the horizon before Sephora could draw a full
breath and speak again.
'The air grows chill,' she said, pressing against him and shivering
lightly. 'But my home is close at hand.'
They came in the twilight to a high round tower among trees and
grass-grown mounds.
'Ages ago,' announced Sephora, 'there was a great castle here. Now
the tower alone remains, and I am its chatelaine, the last of my family.
The tower and the lands about it are named Sylaire.'
Tall dim tapers lit the interior, which was hung with rich arrases,
vaguely and strangely pictured. Aged, corpse-pale servants in antique
garb went to and fro with the furtiveness of specters, setting wines and
foods before the enchantress and her guest in a broad hall. The wines
were of rare flavor and immense age, the foods were curiously spiced.
Anselme ate and drank copiously. It was like some fantastic dream, and
he accepted his surroundings as a dreamer does, untroubled by their
strangeness.
The wines were potent, drugging his senses into warm oblivion.
Even stronger was the inebriation of Sephora's nearness.
However, Ansehne was a little startled when the huge black wolf he
had seen that morning entered the hall and fawned like a dog at the feet
of his hostess.
'You see, he is quite tame," she said, tossing the wolf bits of meat
from her plate. 'Often I let him come and go in the tower; and
sometimes he attends me when I go forth from Sylaire.'
'He is a fierce-looking beast,' Anselme observed doubtfully. It
seemed that the wolf understood the words, for he bared his teeth at
Anselme, with a hoarse, preternaturally deep growl. Spots of red fire
glowed in his somber eyes, like coals fanned by devils in dark pits.
'Go away, Malachie,' commanded the enchantress, sharply. The
wolf obeyed her, slinking from the hall with a malign backward glance
at Anselme.
'He does not like you,' said Sephora. 'That, however, is perhaps not
surprising.'._¡
Anselme, bemused with wine and love, forgot to inquire the
meaning of her last words.
Morning came too soon, with upward-slanting beams that fired the
tree-tops around the tower.
'You must leave me for awhile,' said Sephora, after they had
breakfasted. 'I have neglected my magic of late Š and there are matters
into which I should inquire.'
Bending prettily, she kissed the palms of his hands. Then, with
backward glances and smiles, she retired to a room at the tower's top
beside her bed-chamber. Here, she had told Anselme, her grimoires
and potions and other appurtenances of magic were kept.
During her absence, Aoselme decided to go out and explore the
woodland about the tower. Mindful of the black wolf, whose tameness
he did not trust despite Sephora's reassurances, he took with him the
cudgel he had cut that previous day in the thickets near the Isoile.
There were paths everywhere, all leading to fresh loveliness. Truly,
Sylaire was a region of enchantment. Drawn by the dreamy golden
light, and the breeze laden with the freshness of spring flowers,
Anselme wandered on from glade to glade.
He came to a grassy hollow, where a tiny spring bubbled from
beneath mossed boulders. He seated himself on one of the boulders,
musing on the strange happiness that had entered his life so
unexpectedly. It was like one of the old romances, the tales of glamor
and fantasy, that he had loved to read. Smiling, he remembered the
gibes with which Dorothée des Flèches had expressed her disapproval
of his taste for such reading-matter. What, he wondered, would
Dorothée think now? At any rate, she would hardly care -
His reflections were interrupted. There was a rustling of leaves, and
the black wolf emerged from the boscage in front of him, whining as if
to attract his attention. The beast had somehow lost his appearance of
fierceness.
Curious, and a little alarmed, Anselme watched in wonder while the
wolf began to uproot with his paws certain plants that somewhat
resembled wild garlic. These he devoured with palpable eagerness.
Anselme's mouth gaped at the thing which ensued. One moment
the wolf was before him. Then, where the wolf had been, there rose up
the figure of a man, lean, powerful, with blue-black hair and beard, and
darkly flaming eyes. The hair grew almost to his brows, the beard
nearly to his lower eye-lashes. His arms, legs, shoulders and chest were
matted with bristles.
'Be assured that I mean you no harm,' said the man. 'I am Malachie
du Marais, a sorcerer, and the one-time lover of Sephora. Tiring of me,. __ˆ
and fearing my wizardry, she turned me into a werewolf by giving me
secretly the waters of a certain pool that lies amid this enchanted
domain of Sylaire. The pool is cursed from old time with the infection
of lycanthropy Š and Sephora has added her spells to its power. I can
throw off the wolf shape for a little while during the dark of the moon.
At other times I can regain my human form, though only for a few
minutes, by eating the root that you saw me dig and devour, The root
is very scarce.'
Anselme felt that the sorceries of Sylaire were more complicated
than he had hitherto imagined. But amid his bewilderment he was
unable to trust the weird being before him. He had heard many tales of
werewolves, who were reputedly common in medieval France. Their
ferocity, people said, was that of demons rather than of mere brutes.
'Allow me to warn you of the grave danger in which you stand,'
continued Malachie du Marais. 'You were rash to let yourself be
enticed by Sephora. If you are wise, you will leave the purlieus of
Sylaire with all possible dispatch. The land is old in evil and sorcery,
and all who dwell within it are ancient as the land, and are equally
accursed. The servants of Sephora, who waited upon you yestereve, are
vampires that sleep by day in the tower vaults and come forth by night.
They go out through the Druid portal, to prey on the people of
Averoigne.'
He paused as if to emphasize the words that followed. His eyes
glittered balefully, and his deep voice assumed a hissing undertone.
'Sephora herself is an ancient lamia, well-nigh immortal, who feeds on
the vital forces of young men. She has had many lovers throughout the
ages Š and I must deplore, even though I cannot specify, their ultimate
fate. The youth and beauty that she retains are illusions. If you could
see Sephora as she really is, you would recoil in revulsion, cured of
your perilous love; You would see her Š unthinkably old, and hideous
with infamies.'
'But how can such things be?' queried Anselme. 'Truly, I cannot
believe you.'
Malachie shrugged his hairy shoulders. 'At least I have warned you.
But the wolf-change approaches, and I must go. If you will eome to me
later, in my abode which lies a mile to the westward of Sephora's tower,
perhaps I can convince you that my statements are the truth. In the
meanwhile, ask yourself if you have seen any mirrors, such as a
beautiful young woman would use, in Sephora's chamber. Vampires
and lamias are afraid of mirrors Š for a good reason.'
Anselme went back to the tower with a troubled mind. What
Malachie had told him was incredible. Yet there was the matter of._ÿ
Sephora's servants. He had hardly noticed their absence that morning
Š and yet he had not seen them since the previous eve Š And he
could not remember any mirrors among Sephora's various feminine
belongings.
He found Sephora awaiting him in the tower's lower hall. One
glance at the utter sweetness of her womanhood, and he felt ashamed
of the doubts with which Maiachie had inspired him.
Sephora's blue-gray eyes questioned him, deep and tender as those
of some pagan goddess of love. Reserving no detail, he told her of his
meeting with the werewolf.
'Ah! I did well to trust my intuitions,' she said. 'Last night, when the
black wolf growled and glowered at you, it occurred to me that he was
perhaps becoming more dangerous than I had realized; This morning,
in my chamber of magic, I made use of my clairvoyant powers and I
learned much. Indeed, I have been careless. Malachie has become a
menace to my security. Also, he hates you, and would destroy our
happiness.'
'Is it true, then,' questioned Anselme, 'that he was your lover, and
that you turned him into a werewolf?'
'He was my lover Š long, long ago. But the werewolf form was his
own choice, assumed out of evil curiosity by drinking kom the pool of
which he told you. He has regretted it since, for the wolf shape, while
giving him certain powers of harm, in reality limits his actions and his
sorceries. He wishes to return to human shape, and if he succeeds, will
become doubly dangerous to us both.
'I should have watched him well Š for I now find that he has stolen
from me the recipe of antidote to the werewolf waters. My clairvoyance
tells me that he has already brewed the antidote, in the brief intervals of
humanity regained by chewing a certain root. When he drinks the
potina, as I think that he means to do before long, he will regain human
form -permanently. He waits only for the dark of the moon, when the
werewolf spell is at its weakest.'
'But why should Malachie hate me?' asked Anselme. 'And how can I
help you against him?'
'That first question is slightly stupid, my dear. Of course, he is
jealous of you. As for helping me Š well, I thought of a good trick to
play on Malachie.'
She produced a small purple glass vial, triangular in shape, from the
folds of her bodice.
'This vial,' she told him, 'is filled with the water of the werewolf
pool. Through my clairvoyant vision, I learned that Malachie keeps his
newly brewed potion in a vial of similar size, shape and color. If you. __½
can go to his den and substitute one vial for the other without
detection, I believe that the results will be quite amusing.'
'Indeed, I will go,' Ansehne assured her.
'The present should be a favorable time,' said Sephora. 'It is now
within an hour of noon; and Malachie often hunts at this time. If you
should find him in his den, or he should return while you are there, you
can say that you came in response to his invitation.'
She gave Anselme careful instructions that would enable to find the
werewolf's den without delay. Also, she gave him a sword, saying that
the blade had been tempered to the chanting of magic spells that made
it effective against such beings as Malachie. 'The wolf's temper has
grown uncertain,' she warned. 'If he should attack you, your alder stick
would ' prove a poor weapon.'
It was easy to locate the den, for well-used paths ran toward it with
little deviation. The place was the mounded remnant of a tower that
had crumbled down into grassy earth and mossy blocks. The entrance
had once been a lofty doorway: now it was only a hole, such as a large
animal would make in leaving and returning to its burrow.
Anselme hesitated before the hole. 'Are you there, Malachie du
Marais?' he shouted. There was no answer, no sound of movement
from within. Anselme shouted once more. At last, stooping on hands
and knees, he entered the den.
Light poured through several apertures, latticed with wandering
tree-roots, where the mound had fallen in from above. The place was a
cavern rather than a room. It stank with carrion remnants into whose
nature Anselme did not inquire too closely. The ground was littered
with bones, broken stems and leaves of plants, and shattered or rusted
vessels of alchemic use. A verdigris-eaten kettle hung from a tripod
above ashes and ends of charred faggots. Rain-sodden grimoires lay
mouldering in rusty metal covers. The three legged ruin of a table was
propped against the wall. It was covered with a medley of oddments,
among which Anselme discerned a purple vial resembling the one given
him by Sephora.
In one corner was a litter of dead grass. The strong, rank odor of a
wild beast mingled with the carrion stench.
Anselme looked about and listened cautiously. Then, without delay,
he substituted Sephora's vial for the one on Malachie's table. The stolen
vial he placed under his jerkin.
There was a padding of feet at the cavern's entrance. Anselme
turned Š to confront the black wolf. The beast came toward him,
crouching tensely as if about to spring, with eyes glaring like crimson.__
coals of Avernus. Anselme's fingers dropped to the hilt of the
enchanted sword that Sephora had given him.
The wolf's eyes followed his fingers, It seemed that he recognized
the sword. He turned from Anselme, and began to chew some roots of
the garlic-like plant, which he had doubtless collected to make possible
those operations which he could hardly have carried on in wolfish
form.
This time, the transformation was not complete. The head, and
body of Malachie du Marais rose up again before Ansehne; but the legs
were the hind legs of a monstrous wolf. He was like some bestial hybrid
of antique legend.
'Your visit honors me,' he said, half snarling, with suspicion in his
eyes, and voice. 'Few have cared to enter my poor abode, and I am
grateful to you. In recognition of your kindness, I shall make you a
present.'
With the padding movements of a wolf, he went over to the ruinous
table and groped amid the confused oddments with which it was
covered. He drew out an oblong silver mirror, brightly burnished, with
jeweled handle, such as a great lady or damsel might own. This he
offered to Anselme.
'I give you the mirror of Reality,' he announced. 'In it, all things are
reflected according to their true nature. The illusions of enchantment
cannot deceive it. You disbelieved me, when I warned you against
Sephora. But if you hold this mirror to her face and observe the
reflection, you will see that her beauty, like everything else in Sylaire, is
a hollow lie Š the mask of ancient horror and corruption. If you doubt
me, hold the mirror to my face Š now: for I, too, am part of the land's
immemorial evil.'
Anselme took the silver oblong and obeyed Malachie's injunction. A
moment, and his nerveless fingers almost dropped the mirror. He had
seen reflected within it a face that the sepulcher should have hidden
long ago -
The horror of that sight had shaken him so deeply that he could not
afterwards recall the circumstances of his departure from the werewolf's
lair. He had kept the werewolf's gift; but more than once he had been
prompted to throw it away. He tried to tell himself that what he had
seen was merely the result of sorne wizard trick. He refused to believe
that any mirror would reveal Sephora as anything but the young and
lovely sweetheart whose kisses were still warm on his lips.
All such matters, however, were driven from Anselme's mind by the
situation that he found when he re-entered the tower hall. Three
visitors had arrived during his absence. They stood fronting Sephoia,. ___
who, with a tranquil smile on her lips, was apparently trying to explain
something to them. Anselme recognized the visitors with much
amzement, not untouched with consternation.
One of them was Dorothée des Flèches, clad in a trim traveling
habit. The others were two serving men of her father, armed with
longbows, quivers of arrows, broadswords and daggers. In spite of this
array of weapons, they did not look any too comfortable or at home.
But Dorothée seemed to have retained her usual matter-of-fact
assurance.
'What are you doing in this queer place, Anselme?' she cried. 'And
who is this woman, this chatelaine of Sylaire, as she calls herself?'
Anselme felt that she would hardly understand any answer that he
could give to either query. He looked at Sephora, then back at
Dorothée. Sephora was the essence of all the beauty and romance that
he had ever craved. How could he have fancied himself in love with
Dorothée, how could he have spent thirteen months in a hermitage
because of her coldness and changeability? She was pretty enough, with
the common bodily charms of youth. But she was stupid, wanting in
imagination Š prosy already in the flush of her girlhood as a middle-
aged housewife. Small wonder that she had failed to understand him.
What brings you here?' he countered. 'I had not thought to see you
again.'
'I missed you, Anselme,' she sighed. 'People said that you had left
the world because of your love for me, and had become a hermit. At
last I came to seek you. But you had disappeared. Some hunters had
seen you pass yesterday with a strange woman, across the moor of
Druid stones. They said you had both vanished beyond the cromlech,
fading as if in air. Today I followed you with my father's serving men.
We found ourselves in this strange region, of which no one has ever
heard. And now this woman Š '
The sentence was interrupted by a mad howling that filled the room
with eldritch echoes. The black wolf, with jaws foaming and slavering,
broke in through the door that had been opened to admit Sephora's
visitors. Dorothée des Fleches began to scream as he dashed straight
toward her, seeming to single her out for the first victim of his rabid
fury.
Something, it was plain, had maddened him. Perhaps the water of
the werewolf pool, substituted for the antidote, had served to redouble
the original curse of lycanthropy.
The two serving men, bristling with their arsenal of weapons, stood
like effigies. Anselme drew the sword given him by the enchantress,
and leaped forward between Dorothée and the wolf. He raised his.__
weapon, which was straightbladed, and suitable for stabbing. The mad
werewolf sprang as if hurled from a catapult, and his red, open gorge
was spitted on the out-thrust point. Anselme's hand was jarred on the
sword-hilt, and the shock drove him backward. The wolf fell thrashing
at Anselme's feet. His jaws had clenched on the blade. The point
protruded beyond the stiff bristles of his neck.
Anselme tugged vainly at the sword. Then the black-furred body
ceased to thrash Š and the blade came easily. It had been withdrawn
from the sagging mouth of the dead ancient sorcerer, Malachie du
Marais, which lay before Anselme on the flagstones. The sorcerer's face
was now the face that Anselme had seen in the mirror, when he held it
up at Malachie's injunction.
'You have saved me! How wonderfu!' cried Dorothée.
Anselme saw that she had started toward him with out-thrust arms.
A moment more, and the situation would become embarrassing.
He recalled the mirror, which he had kept under his jerkin, together
with the vial stolen from Malachie du Marais. What, he wondered,
would Dorothée see in its burnished depths?
He drew the mirror forth swiftly and held it to her face as she
advanced upon him. What she beheld in the mirror he never knew but
the effect was startling. Dorothée gasped, and her eyes dilated in
manifest horror. Then, covering her eyes with her hands, as if to shut
out some ghastly vision, she ran shrieking from the hall. The serving
men followed her. The celerity of their movements made it plain that
they were not sorry to leave this dubious lair of wizards and witches.
Sephora began to laugh sofdy. Anselme found himself chuckling.
For awhile they abandoned themselves to uproarious mirth. Then
Sephora sobered.
'I know why Malachie gave you the mirror,' she said. 'Do you not
wish to see my reflection in it?'
Anselme realized that he still held the mirror in his hand. Without
answering Sephora, he went over to the nearest window, which looked
down on a deep pit lined with bushes, that had been part of an ancient,
half-filled moat. He hurled the silver oblong into the pit.
'I am content with what my eyes tell me, without the aid of any
mirror,' he declared. 'Now let us pass to other matters which have been
interrupted too long.'
Again the clinging deliciousness of Sephora was in his arms, and her
fruit-soft mouth was crushed beneath his hungry lips.
The strongest of all enchantments held them in its golden circle.
[1941]. ___
The Oracle of Sadoqua
HORATIUS, A ROMAN OFFICER stationed in the recently-conquered
province of Averonia, searches vainly for his missing comrade, Galbius,
of whom there is apparently neither trace nor rumor among the natives.
Horatius, in desperation, finally seeks an oracle of the pagan Druids-
the ((fearsome)) baleful oracle of the dread god Sadoqua, who is
believed to slumber eternally underground in a cavern amid the deep
forests of Averonia. He finds the place, accompanied by several
soldiers, and is ((bidden)) taken by the dark, repulsive Druids to
((enter)) the cave of the oracle ((alone)). In a grotto rifted from above
and beneath, where The outer light falls dismally into half[?] dissipated
shadows, he finds a strange, hairy, swarthy, half-human being, chained
beside ((the fetid, reeking)) a chasm whence dire, fetid vapours reek.
this being ((replies)) speaks in half-articulate Latin ,and gives a cryptic
answer to his queries concerning the fate of Galbius. Horatius is
strangely disturbed by something in the voice; and as the half-sifted
sunlight falls briefly on the weird oracle, he fancies in this being a far-
off. distorted, impossible resemblance to the lost Galbius. The creature,
however, denies that it is Galbius; and Horatius departs with his men,
more sorely perplexed and baffled than before. Leaving, he encounters
a lovely pagan girl, who dwells in the vicinity of the cavern. There is an
instant attraction between the two; and Horatius returns later, alone, to
resume her acquaintance. Love grows between them and the girl tells
him, reluctantly, something of the true secrets of. The oracle's cavern,
and admits that the ((oracl)) present oracle is indeed the lost Galbius,
who was abducted by the Druids and chained beside the chasm. The
vapors rising from the chasm had speedily caused him to forget all his
normal memories and had brought about a degradation into subhuman
forna. In this connection, he had become a proper medium for the
inspiration of the slumbering god Sadoqua, who knows all things; and
could give such answers to queries as The god dictated. Many others
had been the oracles of the god. The chasmemitted vapors were
believed to be his actual breath; and their effect was so terrible that few
mortals could endure them long without dying or at least becoming so
embruted that they were no longer capable of human speech and were.__
useless as intermediates. Learning this, ((Galbius)) Horatius in his
wrath again enters the secret cave, and finds Galbius has turned to an
almost formless mass of dark, hairy plasm, which utters wordless
sounds. In his horror, he tries to slay the thing. The Druids enter and
seize him as he plunges his sword into the transformed Galbius. He is
knocked unconscious. Later reviving, he finds himself chained beside
the baleful chasm, inhaling the fumes that cause him to forget his
human past in a mad, primordial delirium.. __¢
The Doom of Azederac
AZEDERAC, SORCERER-BISHOP of Ximes, supposedly- dying in the
odour of sanctity, in reality transports himself to an other-dimensional
world which represents an alternative development of the Earth sphere
from the same primal causes and origins. In this world. Many peculiar
laws and conditions prevail, together with certain distorted
resemblances to the Earth. Azederac finds himself in a curiously topsy-
turvy Averoigne, ((where human beings occupy the position of lower
animals,)) whose people are only vaguely human. He meets a being
who is the otherworld alternative of himself, and a weird due ensues
between the two, each using all his resources of wizardry and
necromancy. In the end Azederac, being out of his normal element,
loses, and is absorbed like a shadow by the other.
[In the fourth word of the title, the fifth letter "a" is written over an "e"]
Additional fragments of the Averoigne cycle:
The Sorceress of Averoigne/The Tower of Istarelle,
Queen of the Sabbat,
The Werewolf of Averoigne.