The Devil's Concubine Read online

  “It wasn’t long before I heard Deacon’s barks amplify and then his whimpers of pain. I imagined him tied up, defenseless, fighting to free himself. I had no doubt he also suffered because of his helplessness at not being able to save our lives and, at that moment, his own life. No one noticed as I breathlessly tiptoed the few feet that separated me from the door. When I reached the room, I saw Deacon barking ferociously. He was tied to one of the columns by the chimney. Foaming at the mouth, eyes gleaming and bearing his fangs, he uselessly tried to free himself. The man kept a careful distance and while laughing wholeheartedly, threatened Deacon with the fire poker. ‘Game over,’ he said. After throwing down the poker, he drew his sword and raised it over his head.

  “I looked around desperately for something to attack him with but couldn’t find anything. Not thinking, I extended my arms and threw myself at him pushing with all of my strength. He lost his balance, tripped over Deacon, and he and his sword both fell. Feeling Deacon’s snout between his legs, he stood up startled and quickly moved away frightened. He righted himself and stared at me with his vulgar eyes. The panic I felt before was gone. Anger, hate, and repugnance took its place.

  “ ‘Well look what we have here!’ he exclaimed. ‘Looks like I’m going to have a little private party!’ He managed to reach me before I could free Deacon, who at that moment barked incessantly and guarded the sword. He grabbed me, leaving me no possible way to move. I felt his repulsive beard against my neck and cheek. Awkward and excited, his fat hands tried to raise my long skirt and then I felt them on my thighs. I trapped his lower lip between my teeth and bit until he cursed and frantically threw me away from him by my hair.

  “I ran to Deacon, picked up the sword, and struck the chain he was tied to. What pleasure I felt seeing his sharp fangs sink into his enemy’s neck! My heart pounded as I said to myself, ‘Don’t let him go Deacon, don’t let him go.’ Already exhausted, the man fought uselessly to get away. The more he fought, the more his throat was torn and the more pain he felt. Then the fury I felt spoke through me and I begged ‘Kill him, kill him, kill him!’ I bared my teeth viciously as if they were also clenched to his throat. A crazed fervor took over as I encouraged Deacon to kill him, to destroy him, to twist his fangs even deeper into that repulsive flesh. I was so proud of him! He knew the exact location of the jugular and, ignoring the pain the man tried to inflict, seized it and didn’t let go until he knew that the defenseless body had lost all breath of life.

  “I saw the blood gushing from the man’s wound, how it soaked Deacon’s fur and became terrified all over again. I wanted to run away from that nightmare. I wanted to disappear. I wished the earth would swallow me whole before I was forced to confront the death of my loved ones, and then my own rape and death. Filled with panic, I ran toward the trapdoor where Geniez and I had played as children. I raised the tapestry which hid the small door, opened it, doubled over, and was about to go inside the narrow opening. However, I didn’t enter it and I didn’t ask myself why. I think deep down I was always brave. Yes, I’m sure I was. Or perhaps, at that moment, it was only anger that caused me to lose judgment. I picked the sword up off the floor. During those moments, I didn’t know what my intentions were and I ignored all thoughts that were running through my mind. What could I possibly do to help them? Maybe I wanted to die with them and not suffer the anguish of their death and the consciousness of my cowardice.

  “Supporting the enormous weight of the sword with both hands, I walked trembling and uncertain toward the door of the dining room, all the while begging God to save us. I hid behind a column and held Deacon by the chain that was still around his neck. I ordered him to be silent and observed the bloody scene.

  “My father and Monsieur de Saint-Ange were seated with their foreheads against the table. Men stood behind both of them with their swords raised, threatening to cut off their heads. I couldn’t see my mother. Geniez was standing close to the pig with the red beard. The others had left the room. ‘Scum!’ Geniez yelled. ‘Damned murderers! You’ll pay for this!’ The men mocked him as they drank from their constantly full wine goblets.

  “ ‘Murderous usurpers!’ he continued screaming. ‘You stole the sacred name of the crusaders! You wear their clothes and carry their banner but not their honor! You’re nothing but ordinary thieves, raptors hiding behind the name of Christ! He’ll make you pay for this!’

  “ ‘Let’s end this,’ said one of the men and approached Geniez. ‘Not yet,’ the leader calmly stated. His subordinate, obviously bothered and anxious, stopped and looked at him. Then the leader addressed Geniez, ‘Well youngster, do you want to see your father die? I’ll ask you one more time and, this time, I know you’ll answer. You know what I’m capable of, right?’

  “Then with his boot he turned over a body I had not noticed because it was half hidden from my view by the table. I saw my mother’s body and felt myself die. But the horror continued, leaving me not even a second to think or cry. My trembling hand fell lax and Deacon escaped my side, barking insanely with rage.

  “After that, everything happened quickly. Suddenly, Deacon flung himself at the man who was about to kill my father, making his sword fall to the ground.

  “ ‘Stop the dog! Stop the dog or I’ll kill him!’ screamed the man who was behind Monsieur de Saint-Ange.

  “The valiant Monsieur tried to turn around and confront him but the sword immediately fell and decapitated him. Meanwhile, Geniez, who had waited for an opportunity, grabbed a heavy silver candelabra and, taking advantage of the confusion, he hit the man with it over and over until Monsieur de Saint-Ange’s assassin fell dead to the floor.

  “In the meantime, my father had picked up the sword from the floor and was fighting the leader. Although strong and brave, he was no swordsman. He soon lost his sword and saw his enemy’s cruel smile as he swung his sword like a mortal pendulum. The sword met my father’s neck and severed his head. When his head fell into the chimney, the fire kindled and sizzled, blue and red flames burst forth like small fireworks. My father’s decapitated body stood for a few seconds. His arms lifted toward his neck as if amazed and wanting to be assured that his head was truly gone. The lion on the Saint-Ange coat of arms he wore on his chest, cried tears of blood.

  “Are you okay, Father?” the woman asked upon seeing the priest wiping his forehead with a handkerchief.

  “Yes, yes,” he weakly whispered. “It’s just that it’s hot in here, don’t you think?”

  “Actually it’s not that hot,” she answered with a thin sweet smile and sat down in front of him. “But don’t worry. We’re almost done. Soon we’ll leave the Saint-Ange castle forever. Hold on a few more seconds. Geniez let out a heart breaking scream,” she continues narrating. “You can imagine how I felt during those moments. Panic, anguish, pain, fury... I saw the man’s detestable face, his threatening and despicable smile, as he began following Geniez around the table with Geniez wielding a bloody candelabra as his only defense.

  “Finally, he managed to trap Geniez in the corner of the room and held his sword horizontally against his neck. One of the candles on the candelabra Geniez held was still lit and ignited the assassin’s red beard. His eyes saw the glow of the flame and he smelled the burning hair. Dropping the sword, he madly tried to extinguish the flames with his bare hands. Over and over, he struck at his beard with his burned hands as if in some sort of frenzied dance. Blinded by fear, he turned away from Geniez and that’s when his stomach met the sharp point of the sword I held in my hands. It’s edge slid firmly into his entrails.

  “During our escape, I stopped at the threshold to call Deacon who still grasped his victim by the neck. I saw the dismal way in which the assassin’s head had turned into a torch. It’s trembling and steaming flames illuminated the bodies of our loved ones. Suddenly, I felt Geniez grab my arm; he pulled and made me run. Men’s drunken voices were coming from the cellar.

  “ ‘The trapdoor,’ he whispered.

  “Unable to se
e nor rest, we painfully crawled through the passage for more than an hour, always worried the men were following us although we had covered the trapdoor behind us.

  “We reached the end of the tunnel and thanked God for the cold clarity of night. We ran, silent and shedding unending tears, until we reached the peak of one of the mountains in our valley. From there we looked upon Saint-Ange.

  “There were barely any stars out on that cold, full moon night. However, in the sky a brilliant purple glowed as if heaven had ignited a fire on earth to warm itself. All of Saint-Ange burned in flames. The sturdy, solid castle, the fragile wood houses, the vineyards that climbed the hills, the farm fields... everything. I don’t know if the fire in the castle had spread or if it was the work of those pigs. I don’t know.

  “We fell, exhausted, consumed by pain and fatigue. Two anguished orphans, watching, beneath a full moon, how everything we loved turned to ash. I remember thinking about the wraths of hell with which the preacher had threatened us. In no way did it seem worse than the torment we were living here on Earth. I remember the soothing smell of the rockroses, the yellow elders, and the thyme, wrapping us with their invisible cloak as they did on any other given night. Unable withstand any longer, I lost consciousness.

  “Geniez’s gentle caress against my cheek and the soft light of dawn awoke me. He told me we should leave Languedoc and go to Montpellier where his aunt and uncle lived. I listened to him in a haze, immersed in a slumber that I wished were eternal. In spite of it all, I should have thanked God. Thanked Him for not leaving me completely alone in the world, for having kept Geniez and Deacon at my side.

  “We took the road toward Montpellier in silence, immersed in our own thoughts. I was crying and reliving the vivid scenes from the previous night. With every second that they passed through my mind, they became more succinct, concentrated, and concise, as though they were bounded by some limit so as to occupy the minimum amount of space without omitting any detail of pain. I thought nothing could ever stop the agony.

  “After walking five or six hours, my body began to feel its persistent and untimely necessities. I was hungry, thirsty, physically and emotionally exhausted. At its peak, the sun shown, nonchalant and resplendent, and provoked a scorching heat that we had never felt before. Perhaps you know how pleasant the benign Mediterranean climate is. Even in the interior of the country where we were, summers, although dry, were usually mild and gentle, never suffering the abrupt changes like those in Paris. But that year the heat seemed to solidify itself around us. We breathed in a heavy mixture of gaseous fumes and dust from the road, which insufferably worsened our fatigue. Our veins seemed to be on fire. Our eyes, which were already swollen from crying, burned and became red, unable to bear the intensity of the sun.

  “We managed to reach a small town called La Fleche. The people there were moved to pity and gave us food and shelter. They told us about Stephen of Cloyes and the children’s crusade he had started.

  “Geniez’s eyes gleamed. He became excited and was anxious to learn more as he listened to the story of the new Moses. However, my heart began to race due to, as I found out later, a fatal premonition.”

  While she watched Father DiCaprio’s attentive expression, she stopped and said,

  “I’m sure you know the history of this crusade, Father.”

  “Yes, of course. I’ve read about it,” he answered.

  “Then you know how it ended and why my apparently irrational fears were justified.”

  “Yes, I know. I remember what happened. It was... dramatic, frightful.”

  “It was. A tragedy which history reduces to a couple of unimportant lines in a text. Nevertheless, I can’t skip it. My story must be told step by step although you can predict its end. On one hand, it soothes me to unburden my memories, to turn these memories into words that I have never shared with anyone else. And on the other hand... well, I won’t tell you. If I you found out ahead of time, my story would be less interesting, less exciting. You would stop looking at me with that astonished expression you’ve kept up to this point.”

  The woman gave him a little smile. Her smiles held a hint of magical ambiguity, a certain veil of ironic melancholy mixed with a halo of superiority.

  Father DiCaprio looked at her, bewildered and, in turn, sketching his own vague effort of a smile.

  “The life and miracles of Stephen of Cloyes was rippling through the lips of laborers,” she continued, seated and relaxed in front of the priest. “He was born in Cloyes, Orleans and was a humble pastor who was no more than twelve years-old. He professed that one day, as he was tending to his sheep in the mountains, Christ appeared before him and gave him divine instructions. ‘My child,’ Christ said. ‘You have been chosen for the greatest venture ever seen by men in the past and which will ever be seen by their successors. This is what I order you to do: Go to Paris and request to see King Philip Augustus and give him this letter. If he won’t listen to you, you will have to spread the word to every village in France until you form an army of children. You will all go to Marseille, without any weapons or possessions other than the words with which I instruct you. I tell you, just as the waters of the Red Sea parted to permit the passage of the chosen village, so will the waters of the Mediterranean part for you; so that you will reach the Scared Land, where a miracle will turn wolves into lambs and you render at your feat my Holy Sepulcher. By doing this, my beloved children will attain the innocence that which the weapons of warriors haven’t been able to.’

  “Envy surfaced in Geniez’s eyes as he heard the unending homage and words of praise the peasants bestowed on Stephen of Cloyes. When they stopped talking, I knew Geniez’s thoughts were elsewhere. In his mind he was already in Jerusalem, recovering from the journey and feverish at the foot of the Scared Tomb. Geniez, the hero of the crusade and his brother Paul’s rival. He couldn’t wait to leave for Marseille.

  “The prophet obeyed Christ’s orders. He travelled through all of France preaching his message in such a way that his popularity and story spread quickly which made it easy for him to speak with King Philip Augustus and give him the letter he had been entrusted. However, neither his words nor the divine message managed to convince the King. Stephen left the court undaunted, and continued preaching like Christ had ordered. He was determined to reach Vendome on the twenty-fifth of June. The twenty-fifth had passed five days before, and according to the latest information, he had managed to recruit no less than thirty thousand children. From Vendome they would travel through Tours and Lyon until they reached Marseille, the place the miracle would occur.

  “Geniez told me that very night, his eyes blazing with desire, ‘This gives us just enough time. Our stop in La Fleche was heaven sent. Don’t you see? If we leave right away, we’ll get there the same day they do. Maybe we’ll get there a little earlier,’ I protested with all my might and told him I would never go. I said, with no intention of carrying out my threat, that I would leave him and join a convent.

  “ ‘What do we have to lose?’ He insisted while hovering over me in an anxious and fierce manner that I found detestable. I imagined him as a grotesque caricature being carried away by a crazed religious frenzy.

  “ ‘If the waters part it will be a miracle and we won’t be in any danger. If they don’t part, nothing bad will happen and we’ll turn around and head toward Montpellier. Anyway, it will be nice to see how many boys and girls go to Marseille. It’s worth it just to see the environment. I’m sure it’s going to be a party. Don’t you understand? It’ll be a historic event! ‘

  “It wasn’t that he convinced me, it was impossible for me to convince him. I didn’t care if the waters parted or not. I thought it was a horrible idea and didn’t want to surround myself with the delirious bodies of thirty thousand religious fanatics with whom I had nothing in common, except, perhaps, a subconscious desire to find death. Yes, I wanted to die and as more time passed, the desire became greater, more genuine and tangible. I had been wrong to think I wasn
’t alone: of course, I was. If I only had one relative in the world, someone I could run to for comfort... Where did this madness for wanting to leave France come from? At least we weren’t destitute. I knew that my father’s and Monsieur de Saint-Ange’s lawyer lived in Montpellier. We had lost the castle and my house, but not our land. Even though the crops were ruined, the land would always be valuable. I was certain I wouldn’t have to rely on anyone for money and would suffer less for it. Geniez’s uncle in Montpellier, a good person I had met, had been named my guardian in case of my family’s death. Why should we travel ten more days under the torturous sun? I didn’t want to go anywhere. In fact, not even to Montpellier. All I wanted was to fall to the ground and die. And as I thought about all the problems, and as more time passed making my situation even more apparent, the more I wanted to die.

  “Nevertheless, we left two days later. I took the bag, which contained enough food for a week that our hosts had prepared for us and crying, hugged them goodbye for the last time. I was in so much misery, I felt as if I were dying. In a trance, I let myself be led. I let Geniez drag me toward our destination.

  “I can’t even begin to thoroughly describe how much we suffered during that trip. It was a summer heaven chose for tragedy. No one had ever experienced such heat. Maybe God was trying to discourage the young French children from their crazy adventure and thus avoid their fatal destiny. Only when we reached the coast did the heat become more bearable, or rather, less cruel. When we felt weak and couldn’t go on, we slept out in the open. When we were lucky and were able to reach a town or village, we asked for shelter from one of the residents.

  “Geniez kept bothering me with his dismal lectures. He was being stupid and demanding. I would have liked to get away from him. But where could a young girl with no money go? I couldn’t imagine myself alone, begging all the way to Montpellier. Therefore, I just walked beside him and without even knowing what he was talking about, I said something ever so often.