The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

Petyr often said that the order became his father and mother. No member was ever more devoted.

Aaron Lightner

the Talamasca, London, 1954

THE MAYFAIR WITCHES

PART 1 / TRANSCRIPT ONE

From the Writings of Petyr van Abel

for the Talamasca

1689

September 1689, Montcleve, France

Dear Stefan,

I have at last reached Montcleve on the very edge of the Cevennes mountains--to wit in the foothills of the region--and the grim little fortified town with its tiled roofs and dreary bastions is indeed in readiness for the burning of a great witch as I had been told.

It is early autumn here, and the air from the valley is fresh, perhaps even touched with the heat of the Mediterranean, and from the gates one has the most pleasing view of vineyards where the local wine, Blanquette de Limoux, is made.

As I have drunk more than my fill of it on this first evening, I can attest it is quite as good as these poor townsfolk insist.

But you know, Stefan, I have no love of this region, for these mountains echo still with the cries of the murdered Cathars who were burned in such great numbers all through this region centuries ago. How many centuries must pass before the blood of so many has soaked deep enough into the earth to be forgotten?

The Talamasca will always remember. We who live in a world of books and crumbling parchment, of flickering candles and eyes sore and squinting in the shadows, have always, our hands on history. It is now for us. And I can remember, aye, long before I ever heard the word Talamasca, how my father spoke of those murdered heretics, and of the lies that were promulgated against them. For he had read much of them as well.

Alas, what has this to do with the tragedy of the Comtesse de Montcleve, who is to die tomorrow on the pyre built beside the doors of the Cathedral of Saint-Michel? It is all stone, this old fortified town, but not the hearts of its inhabitants, though nothing can prevent this lady's execution as I mean to show.

My heart is aching, Stefan. I am more than helpless, for I am besieged by revelations and memories. And have the most surprising story to tell.

But I shall take things in order as best I can, attempting to confine myself as always--and failing--to those aspects of this sad adventure which are worthy of note.

Allow me to say first off that I cannot prevent this burning. For not only is the lady in question deemed to be an unrepentant and powerful witch, but she stands accused of killing her husband by poison, and the testimony against her is exceedingly grievous, as I shall go on to make plain.

It is the mother of her husband who had come forth to accuse her daughter-in-law of intercourse with Satan, and of murder; and the two small sons of the unfortunate Comtesse have joined with their grandmother in her accusations, while the only daughter of the accused witch, one Charlotte, aged twenty and exceedingly beautiful, has already fled to the West Indies with her young husband from Martinique and their infant son, seeking to avert a charge of witchcraft against herself.

But not all of this is as it seems. And I shall explain fully what I have discovered. Only bear with me as I shall begin at the very beginning and then plunge into the dim past. There is much here that is of interest to the Talamasca, but little that the Talamasca can hope to do. And I am in torment as I write, for I know this lady, and came here on the suspicion perhaps that I would know her, though I hoped and prayed that I would be wrong.

When last I wrote you, I was just leaving the German states, and weary to death of their awful persecutions, and of how little I was able to interfere. I had witnessed two mass burnings in Treves, of the most despicable suffering made all the worse by the Protestant clerics who are as fierce as the Catholics and in complete agreement with them that Satan is afoot in the land and waging his victories through the most unlikely of townsfolk--mere simpletons in some cases, though in most merely honest housewives, bakers, carpenters, beggars, and the like.

How curious it is that these religious people believe the devil to be so stupid that he should seek to corrupt only the poor and powerless--why not the king of France for once?--and the population at large to be so weak.

But we have pondered these things many times, you and I. I was drawn here, rather than home to Amsterdam for which I long with all my soul, because the circumstances of this trial were well-known far and wide, and are most peculiar in that it is a great Comtesse who is accused, and not the village midwife, a stammering fool wont to name every other poor soul as her accomplice and so forth and so on.

But I have found many of the same elements which are found elsewhere in that there is present here the popular inquisitor, Father Louvier, who has bragged for a decade that he had burned hundreds of witches, and will find witches here if they be here to be found. And there is present also a popular book on witchcraft and demonology by this very same man, much circulated throughout France, and read with extreme fascination by half-literate persons who pore over its lengthy descriptions of demons as if they were biblical Scripture, when in fact they are stupid filth.

And oh, I must not fail to make mention of the engravings in this fine text which is passed from hand to hand with such reverence, for they are the cause of much clamor, being skillfully done pictures of devils dancing by moonlight, and old hags feasting upon babies or flying about on brooms.

This book has held this town spellbound, and it will surprise no one of our order that it was the old Comtesse who produced it, the very accuser of her daughter-in-law, who has said straight out on the church steps that were it not for this worthy book she should not have known a witch was living in her very midst.

Ah, Stefan, give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed.

But again, I stray from my story.

I arrived here at four o'clock this evening, coming through the mountains and down south towards the valley, a slow and laborious journey on horseback indeed. And once in sight of the town, which hovered above me like a great fortress, for that is what it once was, I straightaway divested myself of all those documents which might prove me to be other than as I have presented myself--a Catholic priest and student of the witchcraft pestilence, making his way through the countryside to study convicted witches so that he might better weed them out of his own parish at home.

Placing all of my extraneous and incriminating possessions in the strongbox, I buried it safely in the woods. Then wearing my finest clerical garb and silver crucifix and other accoutrements to present me as a rich cleric, I rode up and towards the gates, and past the towers of the Chateau de Montcleve, the former home of the unfortunate Comtesse whom I knew only by the title of the Bride of Satan, or the Witch of Montcleve.

Straightaway, I began to question those I met as to why there was such a great pyre set in the very middle of the open place before the cathedral doors, and why the peddlers had set up their stands to sell their drinks and cakes when there was no fair to be seen, and what was the reason for the viewing stands having been built to the north of the church and beside it against the walls of the jail? And why are the four inn yards of the town overflowing with horses and coaches, and why are so many milling and talking and pointing to the high barred window of the jail above the viewing stand, and then to the loathsome pyre?

Was it to do with the Feast of St. Michael, which is tomorrow, the day that is called Michaelmas?

Not a person to whom I spoke hesitated to enlighten me that it had nought to do with the saint, though this is his cathedral, except that they had chosen his feast the better to please God and all his angels and saints, with the execution tomorrow of the beautiful Comtesse who is to be burnt alive, without benefit of being strangled beforehand, so as to set an example to all witches in the neighborhood of whom there were many, though the Comtesse had named absolutely none as her accomplices even under the most unspeakabl

e torture, so great was the devil's power over her, but the inquisitors would indeed find them out.