“Then we’ll go it alone.”
That effectively ended their attempt to enlist others. Church, town, and castle had refused to aid them. In high spirits they made their plans.
That Friday was overcast. Mandeville buckled on his sword. Alain, though he wore a sword, too, strapped four daggers on at convenient places. Things you can’t reach with a sword, you can with a well-aimed dagger. They set out shortly before sunset.
They reached the copse, a tangled mass of low bushes and half-grown trees. It looked dark and impenetrable. As they rode around it, however, they found several places where secret paths entered. The openings had been covered with branches in a clumsy effort to disguise them.
“There are several ways in,” Alain said.
“And ways out,” Mandeville added significantly. “But we can’t ride our horses in. If we leave them out here, we might scare the witches away.”
“And we’d find the horses killed, too.”
A small stream which flowed from the spring and eventually reached the Meuse River had wild bits of green growing along its banks. From place to place there would be large clusters of bushes and an occasional very old tree. About half a mile downstream there was a large clump of ancient yews which could hide the animals. They tethered them among the yews and returned to the copse.
Entering one of the paths and covering it behind them, they worked their way toward the center. It took them no more than ten minutes to find the spring.
In a small clearing beside it they found a rude pulpit built. A human skull and a short sword lay on the ground inside the pulpit. Two feet in front of the pulpit was a pile of flat stones arranged to form a sort of altar. Beside the altar was a large basket.
Other than that the cleared area was bare, but there was a rustling in the rue bushes behind the pulpit. Tied there and grazing quite peacefully was a two-month-old lamb.
Mandeville looked worried. “I don’t like this at all,” he said. “The farmers were right. Something has been going on here and it looks as if these aren’t just silly people gathering together for immoral thrills. There is organization of a sort here, someone planning and setting the scene beforehand.”
“That’s an ugly weapon,” Alain said.
“It’s an ancient short sword,” Mandeville replied, “one carried by nobles into battle during the Crusades of St. Louis. It looks sharp. I could guess which noble owns it.”
Alain didn’t wish to hear the name, yet no power on earth could have kept him from asking, “Which?”
“Count de Broux.”
Alain winced. He remembered too well Mandeville’s saying that old women and very young girls were particularly susceptible to the lure of Satanism. He tried to focus his mind on the innocent beauty of Louise de Broux, but a tough strain of honesty made him admit that there was something other than innocence in the way her smile had changed, the way her whole attitude had changed when he had blurted out, “How lucky for me.” There was no wantonness, he would swear, but there was nothing childlike in her eyes. Even in the present macabre circumstances, the memory of that brief encounter sent blood pounding in his ears.
Their first meeting had been brief but more intimate than his recent tour of the castle’s bailey. The presence of a couple of dozen of the count’s retainers had sounded a convivial but not a personal note on the latter occasion.
He looked with loathing at the short sword. It cast a pall over him.
“Not having second thoughts, are you?” Mandeville asked.
“No! This thing has got to be stopped.”
There was nothing more to be found in the clearing. The setting sun cast formless shadows and the place grew dim. The stone altar took on the appearance of a coffin. The rude pulpit seemed to change shapes in the enfolding dark. One moment it was a poorly built screen thrown up to hide the sword and the skull. The next it was a monstrous cage which might hold feral creatures steeped in forbidden craft of human and unhuman lore. And the next it would disappear altogether, a blank space merged with the surrounding blackness.
Mandeville motioned to some thick bushes at the edge of the clearing. “We can hide there,” he said. “If we crouch down, no one will see us even if there are lights; and I’m sure there will be lights.”
They beat their way into the brush, cutting down small plants which might trip them if they needed to leave their hiding place quickly. Soon they had a safe, if not altogether comfortable, blind from which to watch the clearing.
They had less than an hour to wait. They heard snappings and rustlings, then the sound of people walking over dead leaves and brittle sticks. Then they saw the flickering of small lights. The sounds and glimmers came closer.
Three naked figures entered the clearing from the side opposite the watchers. Two men and a woman approached and touched the altar. They had a single torch which they fixed in the ground at one corner. Then they lay face down in front of the altar.
A few minutes later others came by threes. When four torches had been set at the altar, there were six men and six women prostrate in the clearing. One more and the coven would be complete.
He appeared with a suddenness that surprised Alain. A man with a horned mask rose behind the pulpit and shouted in a high falsetto voice. The coven shouted reply.
All the witches wore masks, crude caps of cloth or poorly woven straw or leaves and twigs tied together covering half their faces. Mostly the effect was bizarre rather than awesome. But the leader’s mask, a leather hood with eye holes and three horns, was grotesque enough to appall. Around the face it had obscene shapes which danced and dangled when he moved.
The leader, speaking as Satan himself, led the coven in a litany of blasphemy. The crowd swayed and stamped.
The men were ill-nourished specimens past middle age. Five women were ancient crones with shriveled breasts and sagging flesh which flopped loosely on their bones. The sixth was a young girl. She it was who walked up to the altar and lay down on it. The Satan figure, carrying the human skull, left his pulpit and approached the altar. He placed the skull on the young girl’s navel and she held it in place. Then he disappeared into the darkness and reappeared with the lamb and a sword.
Four men came forward, two on each side of the altar. They each took one leg of the animal and held it over the skull. The leader seized the lamb’s head, pulled it back, and cut its throat. Blood gushed forth, filling the skull, and pouring out over the young girl’s body. The Satan figure took the lamb and skinned it quickly and expertly. He cut its skin into thirteen parts and called the coven forward.
He took the skull from the girl and, beginning with her, made each to taste of it. Then they all took a part of the lamb’s skin and rubbed the blood and grease all over their bodies. They kept up a monotonous chant.
As they were doing this, the leader cut off the left back leg of the slaughtered animal and waved it about, dancing frenetically and beating the altar with the lamb’s leg. He continued in a mad passion even after the coven had finished anointing themselves.
When the chanting ended, he signaled for two men to hold the girl. He put on a pair of heavy gauntlets and reached behind the pulpit, drawing forth a huge ferocious rat. He held it up, shouting, “This is Judas and this shall be the Judas kiss.” The rat bit viciously at the gauntlets as the man approached the girl.
When she realized that he meant for her to kiss the rat, the girl screamed and tried to break free, but the men tightened their grip on her arms and held her head so she couldn’t move it.
Mandeville said, “The rat will bite off her nose.” He seized his sword and started to rise. But Alain had moved sooner. He was already standing clear of the bushes with a dagger in each hand. The rat was still two feet from the girl when it died.