Chapter 15
XV
I assumed we would return to Chateau d’Ocerne after the push, but Antoine took us in the opposite direction. We even avoided Saint-Julien-by-the-Stream and its alehouses, where the day’s events were no doubt already being recounted and embellished.
We did not speak much, but not, I think, because Antoine had nothing to say. He seemed consumed by his thoughts and there were moments he seemed on the verge of posing some important question, but then reconsidered.
The beautiful stone paving of Chateau d’Ocerne’s high road gave way to pebbles and then, eventually, to mud.
As the sun grew low, Antoine took us off the path completely, deeper into the forested foothills.
He crested a stony hillock and stopped, surveying the villages we were leaving behind, with their lazy columns of chimney smoke and fields of fat sheep.
In the distance, the chateau was still visible, watching over the lowlands from its forested perch.
Antoine finally began to talk, unbidden.
“In the beginning, it was the farms. Some sheep were found killed in the fields, and a few pigs in the stalls,” he said quietly.
“It was nothing unusual to lose some animals in spring, when wolves and foxes are feeding their young. But then there were rumors from the Upper Allier. A woman claimed she had been attacked by a beast—an animal such as she had never seen—in the pasturelands. Without her oxen to protect her, she said, the creature would surely have killed her. A wild tale.”
“You did not believe her.”
“Of course not. None of us did,” said Antoine.
“But the following month, there was a week when the fog did not lift—five blind-nights when even the owls did not fly. And when we finally saw the sun again, they began to find people. The d’Ilvé boy and his friends at the crossroads.
Travelers near the Bow and Brace. The charcoal burner and his wife on the gully road—not an hour from Chateau d’Ocerne.
We could ignore it no longer. Captain Duhamel and his soldiers emptied the villages of able-bodied men, beating the bracken from Fournois to Langogne with a force of thousands.
They saw the Beast many times—and injured it many times, to hear it told.
But still the attacks continued. We have lost nearly a hundred good people in little over two years.
All killed by this one Beast, most savagely. All brutalized—mutilated.”
“Mutilated?”
Antoine’s eyes were bright; I suspected he had refilled his wine flask more than once during the day.
“Yes. As you saw today, the Beast does not stop at killing. They were savaged. Gutted. He ate their faces. He took their hearts. And some of them had been . . . indecently dealt with, do you understand?”
“I believe so.”
Sarmodel was listening as intently as I was. This was a story familiar to us, from many centuries of hunting monsters. I ran quick calculations in my mind.
At least one victim a week, on average, I commented, and as many as five in a single day, as we have seen this afternoon.
Sebastian, it’s something big! His excitement was palpable, like a tiny trembling sun in my mind. And it’s almost certainly getting stronger.
“Then came the stories,” Antoine continued.
“The Beast is the size of a barn with eyes like cartwheels afire. It can be in three places at once. It has been shot, poisoned and stabbed, and still rises to kill again. It speaks and laughs like a man. Did you know the Normans even claim they saw the monster emerging from the wildwood in a pair of britches? Little wonder the king has sent Bauterne to replace them.” He laughed.
“And now the Bishop of Mende has arrived and we are to believe the Beast is the Devil himself, come as punishment for our transgressions.”
Oh, the Devil!1 Naturally! snorted Sarmodel.
I sat beside Antoine on my horse, watching the shadows of the clouds chase each other across the hilltops.
“And what do you believe, sir?” I asked him.
“You have seen what we face now, Professor. It humbled us today. It mocked us, killing in the stoops and byways while we toasted each other around the firepit. It is not the first time. What do I believe? I believe the Beast has grown bolder; it is no longer satisfied with lambs and piglets. And it has grown smarter as well, I am sure of it. But more than that, there is something wrong in Gévaudan. Fear has become a sort of sickness; the villages are filled with suspicion and the animals have become wild. You saw what happened at the banquet last night, and that dog handler was eaten by his own hounds today—these things were unthinkable only a few months ago. I fear it is only getting worse.” He didn’t look at me but his mouth twitched into a wry smile.
“I apologize. You must think me a lunatic.”
“I put more stock in ‘stories’ than you might believe and certainly I do not think you a lunatic. But I must question your wisdom in joining the hunt alone,” I said.
“Your father has given you no men or hounds, and you have not been invited to join the royal hunting party. If I may be blunt, it appears you are not being groomed for success.”
“Most astute, Professor!” Antoine laughed again.
I would learn that it was his most common reaction; that easy, open laughter.
He sobered quickly. “My father does not trust me, I fear. He expects me to play swashbuckler in the shadow of the chateau and return in time for dinner. He is giddy under the attention of the king and the Bishop of Mende and gives little thought to the greater questions.”
“And what are those?”
We turned our horses down the eastward trail, our shadows leaping along the path ahead of us as the sun fell.
“What is the Beast, really? Why has it come to Gévaudan? Where did it come from?” Antoine said, shaking his head.
“It seems to me we must answer these questions before we can hope to kill it, but the bishop and the king are not interested in a solution that is not a gun or a dog. So we need to have the courage to find the answers ourselves. Sapere aude.”
“‘Dare to know,’” I said. “A scholar’s maxim, though hardly a Christian one. I approve.”
“Wise words for wise men. Christian or otherwise,” he replied.
“You asked me this morning why I intervened on your behalf at the assignment ceremony. The truth is I don’t believe this Beast is a wild animal to be captured by conventional means.
There is something more happening in Gévaudan—and I want to know.
It is my hope that a scholar’s approach may succeed where the hounds and the hunters have failed. ”
“A scholar’s approach? That’s why you defied and embarrassed the Bishop of Mende and your own father?”
“Perhaps I also thought it would be fun.”
“Fun? Forgive me, but I feel you are either mocking me or giving me half the truth.”
He laughed again. “Perhaps I am. But truth begets truth, does it not, Sebastian Grave of Larnaca, slayer of the Gorgon of Crete?” Antoine said, again with that sardonic grin. “If I may say so, you are also a most unusual scholar.”
“How so?” I smiled despite myself; the young man’s humor was infectious.
“You are a long way from any university, for one. You are also very well armed. A couple of pistols and a sword—a very beautiful sword—are interesting accessories for a man of learning, no?”
“And why not? Perhaps I intend to defeat the Beast in a duel.” I played along, more than a little intrigued by the dashing young Lord Ocerne.
“It would be the only approach we have not yet tried. Why not, indeed?” he replied. “And if I may say so, you are terribly clumsy.”
“Clumsy?”
“I believe you spilled every drop of wine you were given last night,” he said.
That surprised me. I do not consume alcohol, for a number of reasons.
But I have become adept at pretending to drink in company, for the sake of either politeness or subterfuge.
During the banquet, I had indeed poured my wine out under the table whenever nobody was watching—or so I believed.
The young lord had clearly been watching me very closely.
I had no response, so I followed Antoine’s laughter into the darkening woods.
He is quite unusual, I remarked to Sarmodel. Not at all what I expected from the baron’s son.
“Now, Professor, one more very important question before we set camp,” Antoine called back to me. “Can you cook? I am getting hungry.”
Perhaps not so unusual after all.
1. I want to make this absolutely clear: the Spirit you know as Lucifer, Satan or the Devil hasn’t been seen for several thousand years, thanks to the Almighty and the Host. It is safe to assume he has been consumed.
While we are on the subject—the idea of Hell is both impractical and improbable. Please tell everyone you know.