Éleusie de Beaufort listened calmly to the young Dominican who had been announced earlier. The Extern Sister, Jeanne d’Amblin, her usually beaming face wearing an ominous expression of solemnity, had brought him to her study.
In common with her, Jeanne d’Amblin, Yolande de Fleury, Annelette Beaupré, the apothecary nun, and, in particular, Hedwige du Thilay, the treasurer nun,41 whose uncle by marriage had perished in the slaughter at Carcassonne, were sufficiently intelligent women to be able to articulate, on occasion and in veiled terms, their disapproval of Rome’s chosen methods for defending the purity of the faith. Doubtless others shared their reservations – Adélaïde or even Blanche de Blinot during her moments of lucidity – but they were more reticent. Éleusie found herself regretting, however, that the majority of her girls did not.
Indeed, despite her unquestioning faith and her obedience, the alarming evolution of the Inquisition upset the Abbess. Saving the souls of those who have strayed so that they might rejoin God’s flock was of the utmost importance, and yet it remained inconceivable to her that friars should resort to torture and death in the name of Christ’s love and tolerance. Naturally, they had no blood on their hands since those condemned were surrendered to the secular authorities for them to carry out the death sentence; but this expedient hypocrisy did not reassure her, especially now that a certain number of Grand Inquisitors presided over the torture sessions.
She recalled the courageous, nearly century-old warning Hilaire de Poitiers had given upon meeting Auxence de Milan:
I ask you who would call yourselves bishops: how did the Apostles ensure the purity of the Gospels? What powers did they depend upon in order to spread Christ’s teachings? … Alas, today … the Church uses imprisonment and exile to force people to believe what once they believed in the face of imprisonment and exile.
Even so, these Dominicans and Franciscans had full powers and could exercise them over everybody, and that included her.
How handsome and radiant he was, this Brother Nicolas Florin. The ease with which he had requested that the convent extend him its hospitality for a month pointed to an order beneath the polite formalities. Strangely, no sooner had he entered her study than the Abbess had been seized by an almost uncontrollable feeling of revulsion. This had surprised her – she who was always so distrustful of instinctive responses. And yet there was something about this young man, although she could not put her finger on what it was, which alarmed her.
‘You are compiling information for an inquiry, you say?’
‘That is correct, Abbess. I would normally be accompanied by two brothers, but the urgency …’
‘I do not believe I can recall a single case of heresy in Perche, my son.’
‘And what of sorcery and demonic possession, for I assume you must have had your share of succubi and incubi?’
‘Who has not?’
He gave her an angelic smile, agreeing in a soft pained voice:
‘A sad but true admission. Doubtless you understand that I cannot reveal to you the identity of the person I am investigating. You also know that our methods are wholly compassionate and just. I will duly inform the person concerned of their month’s grace. If within this time they do not denounce themselves, their interrogation will commence. If, on the other hand, they confess to their sins, they will almost certainly be pardoned and their identity kept a secret in order to spare them the condemnation of their … neighbours.’
He clasped his beautiful long hands together and prayed that Agnès would maintain her innocence. If what he had heard about her was true, there was every chance that she would. And, if not, then he was prepared. He would simply claim that she had retracted her confession, relapsed heretics being considered the worst kind. None escaped the flames. Agnès de Souarcy’s word counted for nothing against that of a Grand Inquisitor. The feudal Baron who merely wished to terrorise and disgrace his half-sister was in for a nasty surprise. Nicolas felt drunk on his own duplicity. He was powerful enough now to challenge and overrule the orders of a baron.
‘It requires at least two witnesses to bring an accusation,’ Éleusie de Beaufort insisted.
‘Oh, I would not even be here if I did not have more than that. There again, as you know, our aim is above all to protect. And so our witnesses and their depositions remain a secret. We wish to spare them any possible reprisals.’
A dark-haired angel, his face tilted slightly towards his shoulder, his brow illuminated by an almost unearthly glow that reminded Éleusie of the light that shone through the mullioned windows in the abbey’s Notre-Dame church. The long eyelashes curling towards the brow veiled with a bluish transparency the bottomless gaze, the gaze of death.
*
A mask. Raw red beneath the pale skin eaten away by vermin. Festering flesh, strips of greenish skin, viscous foul-smelling fluids. Liquefied cheeks, hollowed eye-sockets, rotting gums. Reddish carapaces, a mass of legs, hungry mouths and tenacious claws burrowing into flesh. The stench of rotting carcasses. A piercing shriek lifted the empty thorax and the ribcage gnawed by unforgiving teeth. A rat scuttled out, its snout red with blood. The beast was upon them.
Éleusie de Beaufort gripped the edge of her great desk with both hands, suppressing the scream she felt rising in her throat. A voice spoke to her from far away:
‘Is anything the matter, Abbess?’
‘A dizzy spell, nothing more,’ she managed to reply before adding, ‘You are welcome, my son. Pray excuse me for a few moments. It must be the heat …’
He took his leave at once, and Éleusie remained standing alone in the middle of the vast study whose edges were beginning to recede.
They had come back. The infernal visions. There was nowhere she could seek protection from them now.