Chapter XXXVIII
XXXVIII
Antoine was not introduced by the herald; I believe the Baron d’Ocerne knew what kind of reception he could expect from the villagers. He barely raised his eyes from the ground as his horse followed the bishop’s retinue through the square.
A small group of Mende’s soldiers brought up the rear of the procession and I began to breathe again. By grace and good fortune, neither the bishop nor Antoine had noticed me.
But I had forgotten, of course, Jacques’s strong predisposition toward ruining my life.
“Father!” he bellowed across the square. “What lunacy is this?”
Antoine turned immediately, his expression fierce. I was helpless to do anything but wait as his eyes found us above the crowd.
And then he saw me.
A feeling of warmth ballooned in my chest as he smiled, the shock on his face replaced instantly by the delight of recognition. I raised one hand from the reins in a tentative wave.
But no, I was quite mistaken. Antoine was not smiling; his mouth was drawn up in a grimace of dismay.
“Guardsmen!” he called. “Soldiers of Mende! To me!”
Jacques and I were surrounded in moments. Bishop Fontaine’s soldiers had us backed against the fountain, their muskets all aimed at me. Behind them, a hundred pairs of shiny peasant eyes were suddenly all fixed on us.
“This man—this man is a witch and he has bedeviled my son!” said Antoine, holding his place in the line of military men. Beside him, the Bishop of Mende stared at me with wide eyes, his charger fidgeting beneath him. “Jacques, get away from him!”
“I will not!” Jacques retorted. “And do not hide behind your accusations. You bring the Bishop of Mende back to Gévaudan? Have we not seen ruin enough? Is he here to buy out the little land that remains to us?”
“Be silent, Jacques!” shouted Antoine. “Monseigneur! This is—”
“I know him, sir,” said the bishop in his resonant baritone.
His round eyes narrowed. “Yes, Professor, I remember you. I see you are unwholesomely preserved—unchanged to my sight after these many years. I should have ended your life at the Bow and Brace, after your foul deeds, but Baron d’Ocerne persuaded me to let you live. I see now that was a mistake.”
I heard him only distantly; I cared nothing what I looked like to the bishop. It was Antoine’s eyes I wanted to see. His stone-gray eyes as I remembered them, half closed in laughter or pleasure.
Look, Antoine! I wanted to call to him from the center of the menacing circle of soldiers. Do you remember? Isn’t this just like the time we were surprised by the king’s hunters in the woods? When I was casting my silver shot and you burned your hair, and the hounds came to surround us?
But Antoine would not even look at me; this time he was on the side of the hounds and the hunters.
“We have come to find the source of Gévaudan’s troubles, and we have met with swift success, it seems,” the bishop went on.
“Be alert, men. This man is not only a witch but an abomination; I have seen his depravity with my own eyes.” He leveled a thick finger at me.
“You will submit to me now and come with us to Chateau d’Ocerne.
We will have the truth of your crimes from you, by the grace of God. ”
“Monseigneur, please—he will give us nothing but devilry! He can bewitch with a song, and raise a fire with nothing more than a word!” protested Antoine. “Please! He must be dealt with here and—”
“I have come at your request, Lord Ocerne,” interrupted the bishop, at volume.
He kept his eyes locked on my face. “I will seek the truth wherever it hides, and no matter what snares the Foul One sets around it. Service to the Lord Almighty demands courage; little wonder that Gévaudan finds itself so beset, when its lords shrink from the first test of faith. No! The witch will come with us to Chateau d’Ocerne, now. ”
I managed to find my voice again. “In fact, I have a chamber there already, Monseigneur. And your accusations are without basis. I have come once again to render aid to Gévaudan, and waited only for the return of—”
“Be silent! You will not speak unless commanded!” barked Fontaine, outraged. He turned to Jacques. “Young lord—you have suffered the devil to sleep beneath your roof?” he demanded.
“Professor Grave has already saved my life more than once, Monseigneur. Believe me, he is no enemy to Ocerne or its people. Even now he is on the trail of the Beast.”
“Jacques, he lies!” cried Antoine. “Do not listen to him! Please, my son, get away from him!”
“Lies? Shall we speak of lies, then, Father?”
I kept my silence, weighing up the situation in my mind as Jacques and Antoine engaged in a very public and most unedifying family argument.
There was a part of me that wanted to go with my captors, on the thin hope that they might allow me the opportunity to plead my case.
And yes, if I am honest, it was mostly because it would mean being close to Antoine again, that I might have a chance to speak to him. A chance to explain.
Do you . . . do you think he might forgive me? I asked Sarmodel.
For what, Sebastian? One day you must stop seeking forgiveness for solving people’s problems, he said. And it is time to stop making decisions from your breeches! We have things to do.
So we do.
I placated my Guest, but I was still so unsure. I knew I could convince Antoine to help us, if only I could speak to him alone.
But the decision was about to be made for me.
Sebastian! He is here! hissed Sarmodel.
There was no need to ask who he meant.
The Archangel’s radiance shimmered suddenly into being overhead and the warm, heady scent of roses momentarily filled the air. The Grand General’s glittering wings flexed wide, firming his claim and marking his chosen.
But it was not the Bishop of Mende who bore the Archangel’s flame in his heart.
It was Antoine.
My own heart shrank within me.
Sarmodel—how?
How could he?
Antoine—laughing, mad, drunken Antoine, who had “dared to know”—had bowed so deeply in service of the Church that the Archangel had found a perch on his back.
I remembered suddenly Jacques’s many idle comments about “prayer and scripture” and the stern, pious father who had raised him.
And I remembered the warning Michael had given me that very morning: I would spare you the pain of a confrontation.
Cry off, or you will know terrible remorse.
Antoine had been lost to me all along.
My plans for a reconciliation were revealed in that moment as hollow fantasies—Antoine was no longer the man I knew. And now the Archangel had claimed him.
I hate you, Michael, I sent, clenching my teeth against the shame and rage that battled within me. I know you can hear me. You are crueler and lower and more deceitful than any demon and I hate you.
Hear, hear! added Sarmodel.
“Gentlemen! Please!” I said aloud, interrupting a choice invective from Jacques. “I submit—I submit! I will come to the chateau and we will get to the truth, if so you wish.”
Jacques gaped at me. “Professor, you cannot be serious. You know they are not interested in the truth.”
“It is a little late for misgivings now, sir,” I replied sharply. “I am here at your behest, to honor the contract I signed so many years ago, which you hold unfulfilled. Or have you forgotten?”
Jacques’s grimace of shame was most gratifying to behold. “I have not.”
“Then prepare to leave, sir. I will assume your horse is fit to ride, for once,” I said, with a meaningful glance at his mount.
“He . . . he is, sir.” The young lord’s eyes widened and he gathered the reins more tightly in his hands.
“I am glad you have seen sense, vile thing that you are,” said the bishop, his peaceful smile returning. “Now it is time to see you tested in faith and in intention.”
“Monseigneur, I implore you, do not allow him to speak another word!” admonished Antoine. “Do not trust this show of compliance—he will kill us all before we are halfway to the chateau! Deal with him here if you must, or—or kill him and be done.”
Kill him and be done?
I stared at Antoine, truly unable to speak. He still refused to meet my gaze, and I dared to hope that he looked ashamed. Had he really just called for my death?
Ready? I asked Sarmodel.
Oh yes, he chuckled. Remember those triphthongs.
I took a deep breath, not only drawing air into my lungs but also gathering together all of the prodigious energy we had so recently absorbed from the hagstone.
I released it all with a Word.
I do not know what they heard. For a moment they all wore the same face—Antoine, the soldiers, the bishop and the colorless villagers were united in sick terror as the Tartaric syllables smacked into them like a line of breakers.
I had modified the Word only slightly since that day at the crossroads.
With some simple adjustments for magnitude (and with Sarmodel bearing down hard), the Tartaric compulsions that had so neatly unhorsed Jacques now ricocheted among the soldiers of Mende, spinning off and replicating countless times in the crowded square of Saint-Julien.
The hagstone’s energy, accumulated over millennia in Dayane’s sacred pool, was almost completely expended in the space of a second.
I could not have orchestrated a better outcome.
Closest to the epicenter were the soldiers who surrounded us.
They cried out in alarm as their muskets popped apart and clattered to the ground, smoking.
Then the air was suddenly full of wheeling arms and red-hot shrapnel as their bridles and tack shot their fastenings and fell away like shed skin.
Horseshoes spun across the cobblestones and saddles began to slide.
The golden chain of the bishop’s pectoral cross began to glow and flew apart in a spray of red-hot links.
Both he and Antoine joined the soldiers in cursing as their stirrups, too, dropped away and their gear fell apart around them.
But the real chaos started when their clothing began to unravel.
I was almost tempted to stay and watch. The laughter of the common folk was a joyous counterpart to the shouts of dismay from the soldiers of Mende.
It was a rare spectacle to see the bishop clutching armfuls of silk to his bosom like a matron surprised at her bath, screaming at his men as his jewels showered to the ground, all the while battling to stay seated on his frantic charger.
It was time to leave.
“Ride!”
Jacques and I forced our horses through the bedlam, half-naked bodies tumbling from destriers all around us. We fled Saint-Julien-by-the-Stream at a gallop, the laughter of the villagers fading behind us.
1. I suspect that the fashionable Lady Ninette d’Ocerne had a hand in dressing her husband.