Читать книгу Inquisitor Dreams - Phyllis Ann Karr - Страница 14

Chapter 8

The Dream of the Death of Raymonde

He was Fra Hugon, a Dominican of older days, and he sat behind a shiny black table, polished to mirror finish, in a long black room, hidden away from sun and daylight, lit only by seven, or three, or nine beeswax tapers—he could not quite determine their number—in a silver candlestick.

On the other side of the table stood Raymonde, whiter than the candles. She, and they, and the silver in which they rested were the only white things in all that black chamber; the orange candle flames and Fra Hugon’s hands on the table the only spots of color. Though Dominican, his habit was entirely black.

They were alone, he and she. Some part of him was aware of the irregularity. Even when there was but one inquisitor, he should have other men present to validate the proceedings: scribe, advocate, consultor, Ordinary… Yet the larger part of him recognized the delicacy that had left him completely alone with her in this most sensitive of cases.

“You have claimed,” he began, “to be my progenitrix.”

She inclined her head. Part of it might have seemed grotesquely missing, so black was her hair. But a glowing aureole, much the same color and intensity as the candle flames, outlined it against her black surroundings.

“And the Pagan Rosemary—do you call her your descendant through me?”

Again Raymonde bowed her head in affirmation.

“Even knowing this to be impossible, sworn as I am to eternal celibacy?”

“Anna, Elizabeth, Sarah—had not each of them despaired of children? Had not Mary pledged herself to virginity?”

“Woman, do you not tremble to liken us to them?”

“We are what God has made us. What use to tremble before our Maker, Who knows each of us so well?”

“I am my ancestor, not you!”

“Great-great-grandson, we are both of us your ancestors.”

“Heretic!” cried Fra Hugon, rising to point one forefinger at her. To his annoyance, it trembled slightly. “Blasphemer and heretic! Albigensian—believer in Dualism and disbeliever in the actuality of Ihesu’s humanity, to the stake with you!”

Lifting her head, she looked him full in the face. “Yes,” she replied, still without raising her voice, “it is always our readiest answer, is it not?”

They stood at the stake, the two of them alone. It was cruciform, with a great mound of fagots heaped around its base. Ankle deep in splintery wood, he caught her nearest wrist and set out to clasp it into one of the shackles that swung from the crosspiece.

Neither resisting nor assisting, she went on quietly, “You call us ‘Cathar’ and ‘Albigensian’ as though you were naming unspeakable wickedness. We are many sects, with many beliefs, yet you make no distinction among them, as in a few years you will make no distinction among many other offshoots of Holy Church, but call them all ‘Lutheran,’ as if their creeds were identical. With fire and sword, you scrub us from the face of the Earth, and think you have cleansed it forever from the threat of our mere presence among you—as in a few more years, you will no longer be able to scrub away the ‘Lutherans,’ for your own sins will have made them far too many for even your fires.”

The rusted iron, not her wrist, gave him trouble; but at last he clamped it tight and reached, scrabbling, for her other wrist and the shackle on the far side of the crosspiece.

Her voice finally rose, sounding not of anger but of exultation. “And at last we are so many that it is impossible for any of us ever to destroy all those others who see the universe through different peepholes!”

He could not clamp the second iron. Giving up the attempt, he left her to dangle by one wrist, while he half tumbled down from the fagots and caught a blazing torch from the hand of someone who stood shadowy behind its light.

“For God is truly immense!” Raymonde sang from high atop her pyre. “Far too immense for any one creed ever to encompass! No, not though that one creed possessed all the souls in the world and all the ages of time!”

The wood was smeared thick with pitch and tallow. Fra Hugon thrust his torch deep in among the fagots, left it there, and stood back to watch the red flower blossom forth.

“And upon the Surface of this Great Immensity of God,” Raymonde cried in ecstasy and triumph, “we crawl, specks infinitely tiny, visible only to God and one another, and we must use many religions and creeds beyond counting if we would ever glimpse even the tiniest Atom of the Essence of God!”

Then the red flower blew around her. Her garment blazed up in livid brilliance. She shrieked. Peeling away in shards of glowing ash, the remains of clothing revealed her naked body, scorched and blackened beyond any touch of lecherousness, with widening red cracks like fresh wounds spurting more and more blood into the fire. Unquenched, the flames closed in again. A sound of hissing and stink of charred meat filled the air. Exhausted with pain, Raymonde fell limp against the stake, her arm stretched taut in the single wrist iron. In one shocked moment, he saw that she was not weeping: rather, her eyes were melting. The strained joint of her wrist gave way. She slumped into the red flower, her hand alone—little more than bones trailing strips of burning flesh—left balanced on the shackle, first finger pointing like a candle straight up to Heaven.

Aghast at what he had done, for he had never till now looked upon death at the stake, he turned to see who had handed him the torch. It was himself.