La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages Part 6

"Why call me demon, if I do deeds of justice, of goodness, of piety?

G.o.d cannot be everywhere--He cannot be always working. Sometimes He likes to rest, leaving us other spirits here to carry on the smaller husbandry, to remedy the ills which his providence pa.s.sed over, which his justice forgot to handle.

"Of this your husband is an example. Poor, deserving workman, he is killing himself and gaining nought in return. Heaven has had no time to look after him. But I, though rather jealous of him, still love my kind host. I pity him: his strength is going, he can bear up no longer. He will die, like your children, already dead of misery. This winter he was ill; what will become of him the next?"

Thereon, her face in her hands, she wept two, three hours, and even more. And when she had poured out all her tears--her bosom still throbbing hard--the other said, "I ask nothing: only, I pray, save him."

She had promised nothing, but from that hour she became his.

CHAPTER V.

POSSESSION.

A dreadful age was the age of gold; for thus do I call that hard time when gold first came into use. This was in the year 1300, during the reign of that Fair King[29] who never spake a word; the great king who seemed to have a dumb devil, but a devil with mighty arm, strong enough to burn the Temple, long enough to reach Rome, and with glove of iron to deal the first good blow at the Pope.

[29] Philip the Fair of France, who put down the Templar in Paris, and first secured the liberties of the Gallican Church.--TRANS.

Gold thereupon becomes a great pope, a mighty G.o.d, and not without cause. The movement began in Europe with the Crusades: the only wealth men cared for was that which having wings could lend itself to their enterprise; the wealth, namely, of swift exchanges. To strike blows afar off the king wants nothing but gold. An army of gold, a fiscal army, spreads over all the land. The lord, who has brought back with him his dreams of the East, is always longing for its wonders, for damascened armour, carpets, spices, valuable steeds. For all such things he needs gold. He pushes away with his foot the serf who brings him corn. "That is not all; I want gold!"

On that day the world was changed. Theretofore in the midst of much evil there had always been a harmless certainty about the tax.

According as the year was good or bad, the rent followed the course of nature and the measure of the harvest. If the lord said, "This is little," he was answered, "My lord, Heaven has granted us no more."

But the gold, alas! where shall we find it? We have no army to seize it in the towns of Flanders. Where shall we dig the ground to win him his treasure? Oh, that the spirit of hidden treasures would be our guide![30]

[30] The devils trouble the world all through the Middle Ages; but not before the thirteenth century does Satan put on a settled shape. "_Compacts_," says M. Maury, "are very rare before that epoch;" and I believe him. How could they treat with one who as yet had no real existence? Neither of the treating parties was yet ripe for the contract. Before the will could be reduced to the dreadful pa.s.s of selling itself for ever, it must be made thoroughly desperate. It is not the unhappy who falls into despair, but the truly wretched, who being quite conscious of his misery, and having yet more to suffer, can find no escape therefrom. The wretched in this way are the men of the fourteenth century, from whom they ask a thing so impossible as payments in gold. In this and the following chapter I have touched on the circ.u.mstances, the feelings, the growing despair, which brought about the enormity of _compacts_, and, worse still than these, the dreadful character of the _Witch_. If the name was freely used, the thing itself was then rare, being no less than a marriage and a kind of priesthood. For ease of ill.u.s.tration, I have joined together the details of so delicate a scrutiny by a thread of fiction. The outward body of it matters little. The essential point is to remember that such things were not caused, as they try to persuade us, by _human fickleness, by the inconstancy of our fallen nature, by the chance persuasions of desire_. There was needed the deadly pressure of an age of iron, of cruel needs: it was needful that h.e.l.l itself should seem a shelter, an asylum, by contrast with the h.e.l.l below.

While all are desperate, the woman with the goblin is already seated on her sacks of corn in the little neighbouring village. She is alone, the rest being still at their debate in the village.

She sells at her own price. But even when the rest come up, everything favours her, some strange magical allurement working on her side. No one bargains with her. Her husband, before his time, brings his rent in good sounding coin to the feudal elm. "Amazing!" they all say, "but the Devil is in her!"

They laugh, but she does not. She is sorrowful and afraid. In vain she tries to pray that night. Strange p.r.i.c.kings disturb her slumber.

Fantastic forms appear before her. The small gentle sprite seems to have grown imperious. He waxes bold. She is uneasy, indignant, eager to rise. In her sleep she groans, and feels herself dependent, saying, "No more do I belong to myself!"

"Here is a sensible countryman," says the lord; "he pays beforehand!

You charm me: do you know accounts?"--"A little."--"Well then, you shall reckon with these folk. Every Sat.u.r.day you shall sit under the elm and receive their money. On Sunday, before ma.s.s, you shall bring it up to the castle."

What a change in their condition! How the wife's heart beats when of a Sat.u.r.day she sees her poor workman, serf though he be, seated like a lordling under the baronial shades. At first he feels giddy, but in time accustoms himself to put on a grave air. It is no joking matter, indeed; for the lord commands them to show him due respect. When he has gone up to the castle, and the jealous ones look like laughing and designing to pay him off, "You see that battlement," says the lord, "the rope you don't see, but it is also ready. The first man who touches him shall be set up there high and quick."

This speech is repeated from one to another; until it has spread around these two as it were an atmosphere of terror. Everybody doffs his hat to them, bowing very low indeed. But when they pa.s.s by, folk stand aloof, and get out of the way. In order to shirk them they turn up cross roads, with backs bended, with eyes turned carefully down.

Such a change makes them first savage, but afterwards sorrowful. They walk alone through all the district. The wife's shrewdness marks the hostile scorn of the castle, the trembling hate of those below. She feels herself fearfully isolated between two perils. No one to defend her but her lord, or rather the money they pay him: but then to find that money, to spur on the peasant's slowness, and overcome his sluggish antagonism, to s.n.a.t.c.h somewhat even from him who has nothing, what hard pressure, what threats, what cruelty, must be employed! This was never in the goodman's line of business. The wife brings him to the mark by dint of much pushing: she says to him, "Be rough; at need be cruel. Strike hard. Otherwise you will fall short of your engagements; and then we are undone."

This suffering by day, however, is a trifle in comparison with the tortures of the night. She seems to have lost the power of sleeping.

She gets up, walks to and fro, and roams about the house. All is still; and yet how the house is altered; its old innocence, its sweet security all for ever gone! "Of what is that cat by the hearth a-thinking, as she pretends to sleep, and 'tweenwhiles opens her green eyes upon me? The she-goat with her long beard, looking so discreet and ominous, knows more about it than she can tell. And yon cow which the moon reveals by glimpses in her stall, why does she give me such a sidelong look? All this is surely unnatural!"

Shivering, she returns to her husband's side. "Happy man, how deep his slumber! Mine is over; I cannot sleep, I never shall sleep again." In time, however, she falls off. But oh, what suffering visits her then!

The importunate guest is beside her, demanding and giving his orders.

If one while she gets rid of him by praying or making the sign of the cross, anon he returns under another form. "Get back, devil! What durst thou? I am a Christian soul. No, thou shalt not touch me!"

In revenge he puts on a hundred hideous forms; twining as an adder about her bosom, dancing as a frog upon her stomach, anon like a bat, sharp-snouted, covering her scared mouth with dreadful kisses. What is it he wants? To drive her into a corner, so that conquered and crushed at last, she may yield and utter the word "Yes." Still she is resolute to say "No." Still she is bent on braving the cruel struggles of every night, the endless martyrdom of that wasting strife.

"How far can a spirit make himself withal a body? What reality can there be in his efforts and approaches? Would she be sinning in the flesh, if she allowed the intrusions of one who was always roaming about her? Would that be sheer adultery?" Such was the sly roundabout way in which sometimes he stayed and weakened her resistance. "If I am only a breath, a smoke, a thin air, as so many doctors call me, why are you afraid, poor fearful soul, and how does it concern your husband?"

It is the painful doom of the soul in these Middle Ages, that a number of questions which to us would seem idle, questions of pure scholastics, disturb, frighten, and torment it, taking the guise of visions, sometimes of devilish debatings, of cruel dialogues carried on within. The Devil, fierce as he shows himself in the demoniacs, remains always a spirit throughout the days of the Roman Empire, even in the time of St. Martin or the fifth century. With the Barbarian inroads he waxes barbarous, and takes to himself a body. So great a body does he become, that he amuses himself in breaking with stones the bell of the convent of St. Benedict. More and more fleshly is he made to appear, by way of frightening the plunderers of ecclesiastical goods. People are taught to believe that sinners will be tormented not in the spirit only, but even bodily in the flesh; that they will suffer material tortures, not those of ideal flames, but in very deed such exquisite pangs as burning coals, gridirons, and red-hot spits can awaken.

This conception of the torturing devils inflicting material agonies on the souls of the dead, was a mine of gold to the Church. The living, pierced with grief and pity, asked themselves "if it were possible to redeem these poor souls from one world to another; if to these, too, might be applied such forms of expiation, by atonement and compromise, as were practised upon earth?" This bridge between two worlds was found in Cluny, which from its very birth, about 900, became at once among the wealthiest of the monastic orders.

So long as G.o.d Himself dealt out his punishments, _making heavy his hand_, or striking _with the sword of the Angel_, according to the grand old phrase, there was much less of horror; if his hand was heavy as that of a judge, it was still the hand of a Father. The Angel who struck remained pure and clean as his own sword. Far otherwise is it when the execution is done by filthy demons, who resemble not the angel that burned up Sodom, but the angel that first went forth therefrom. In that place they stay, and their h.e.l.l is a kind of Sodom, wherein these spirits, fouler than the sinners yielded into their charge, extract a horrible joy from the tortures they are inflicting.

Such was the teaching to be found in the simple carvings hung out at the doors of churches. By these men learned the horrible lesson of the pleasures of pain. On pretence of punishing, the devils wreaked upon their victims the most outrageous whims. Truly an immoral and most shameful idea was this, of a sham justice that befriended the worse side, deepening its wickedness by the present of a plaything, and corrupting the Demon himself!

Cruel times indeed! Think how dark and low a heaven it was, how heavily it weighed on the head of man! Fancy the poor little children from their earliest years imbued with such awful ideas, and trembling within their cradles! Look at the pure innocent virgin believing herself d.a.m.ned for the pleasure infused in her by the spirit! And the wife in her marriage-bed tortured by his attacks, withstanding him, and yet again feeling him within her!--a fearful feeling known to those who have suffered from taenia. You feel in yourself a double life; you trace the monster's movements, now boisterous, anon soft and waving, and therein the more troublesome, as making you fancy yourself on the sea. Then you rush off in wild dismay, terrified at yourself, longing to escape, to die.

Even at such times as the demon was not raging against her, the woman into whom he had once forced his way would wander about as one burdened with gloom. For thenceforth she had no remedy. He had taken fast hold of her, like an impure steam. He is the Prince of the Air, of storms, and not least of the storms within. All this may be seen rudely but forcefully presented under the great doorway of Strasburg Cathedral. Heading the band of _Foolish Virgins_, the wicked woman who lures them on to destruction is filled, blown out by the Devil, who overflows ign.o.bly and pa.s.ses out from under her skirts in a dark stream of thick smoke.

This blowing-out is a painful feature in the _possession_; at once her punishment and her pride. This proud woman of Strasburg bears her belly well before her, while her head is thrown far back. She triumphs in her size, delights in being a monster.

To this, however, the woman we are following has not yet come. But already she is puffed up with him, and with her new and lofty lot.

The earth has ceased to bear her. Plump and comely in these better days, she goes down the street with head upright, and merciless in her scorn. She is feared, hated, admired.

In look and bearing our village lady says, "I ought to be the great lady herself. And what does she up yonder, the shameless sluggard, amidst all those men, in the absence of her lord?" And now the rivalry is set on foot. The village, while it loathes her, is proud thereat.

"If the lady of the castle is a baroness, our woman is a queen; and more than a queen,--we dare not say what." Her beauty is a dreadful, a fantastic beauty, killing in its pride and pain. The Demon himself is in her eyes.

He has her and yet has her not. She is still _herself_, and preserves _herself_. She belongs neither to the Demon nor to G.o.d. The Demon may certainly invade her, may encompa.s.s her like a fine atmosphere. And yet he has gained nothing at all; for he has no will thereto. She is _possessed_, _bedevilled_, and she does not belong to the Devil.

Sometimes he uses her with dreadful cruelty, and yet gains nothing thereby. He places a coal of fire on her breast, or within her bowels.

She jumps and writhes, but still says, "No, butcher, I will stay as I am."

"Take care! I will lash you with so cruel a scourge of vipers, I will smite you with such a blow, that you will afterwards go weeping and rending the air with your cries."

The next night he will not come. In the morning--it was Sunday--her husband went up to the castle. He came back all undone. The lord had said: "A brook that flows drop by drop cannot turn the mill. You bring me a halfpenny at a time, which is good for nought. I must set off in a fortnight. The king marches towards Flanders, and I have not even a war-horse, my own being lame ever since the tourney. Get ready for business: I am in want of a hundred pounds."

"But, my lord, where shall I find them?"

"You may sack the whole village, if you will; I am about to give you men enough. Tell your churls, if the money is not forthcoming they are lost men; yourself especially--you shall die. I have had enough of you: you have the heart of a woman; you are slack and sluggish. You shall die--you shall pay for your cowardice, your effeminacy. Stay; it makes but very small difference whether you go down now, or whether I keep you here. This is Sunday: right loudly would the folk yonder laugh to see you dangling your legs from my battlements."

All this the unhappy man tells again to his wife; and preparing hopelessly for death, commends his soul to G.o.d. She being just as frightened, can neither lie down nor sleep. What is to be done? How sorry she is now to have sent the spirit away! If he would but come back! In the morning, when her husband rises, she sinks crushed upon the bed. She has hardly done so, when she feels on her chest a heavy weight. Gasping for breath, she is like to choke. The weight falls lower till it presses on her stomach, and therewithal on her arms she feels the grasp as of two steel hands.

"You wanted me, and here I am. So, at last, stubborn one, I have your soul--at last!"