The War Hound and the World's Pain Page 4

  “Or witches? Have you executed witches?”

  “I am a soldier, not a priest.”

  “Many soldiers take on the responsibilities of priests, do they not? And many priests become soldiers.”

  “I am not of that ilk. I have seen poor lunatics and old women named for witches and dealt with accordingly, madam. But I have witnessed no magic performances, no incantations, no summonings of demons or ghouls.” I smiled. “Some of those crones were so familiar with Mephistopheles that they could almost pronounce the name when it was repeated to them …”

  “Then witchcraft does not frighten you?”

  “It does not. Or, I should say, what I have seen of witchcraft does not frighten me.”

  “You are a sane man, sir.”

  I supposed that she complimented me.

  “Sane by the standards of our world, madam. But not, I think, by my own.”

  She seemed pleased by this. “An excellent answer. You are self-demanding, then?”

  “I demand little of myself, save that I survive. I take what I need from the world.”

  “You are a thief, then?”

  “I am a thief, if you like. I hope that I am not a hypocrite.”

  “Self-deceiving, all the same.”

  “How so?”

  “You hide the largest part of yourself away in order to be the soldier you describe. And then you deny that that part exists.”

  “I do not follow you. I am what I am.”

  “And that is?”

  “What the world has made me.”

  “Not what God created? God created the world, did He not?” she said.

  “I have heard some theorize otherwise.”

  “Heretics?”

  “Ah, well, madam. Desperate souls like the rest of us.”

  “You have an unusually open mind.”

  “For a soldier?”

  “For anyone living at this time.”

  “I am not quite sure that my mind is open. It is probably careless, however. I do not give a fig for metaphysical debate, as I believe I have already indicated.”

  “You have no conscience, then?”

  “Too expensive to maintain nowadays, madam.”

  “So it is unkempt, but it exists?”

  “Is that what you would say I hide from myself? Have you a mind to convert me to whatever Faith it is you hold, my lady?”

  “My Faith is not too dissimilar to yours.”

  “So I thought.”

  “Soul? Conscience? These words mean little, I’m sure you’d agree, without specification.”

  “I do most readily agree.”

  We continued to debate this subject only for a short while and then the discussion broadened.

  She proved to be an educated woman with a fine range of experience and anecdote. The longer we were together, however, the more I desired her.

  The noon meal was forgotten as we continued to talk and to drink. She quoted the Greeks and the Romans, she quoted poetry in several tongues. She was far more fluent in the languages of modern Europe and the Orient than was I.

  It became obvious to me that Sabrina must be highly valued by her master and that she was probably something more than his mistress. A woman could travel the world with a little more danger but a little less suspicion than a male envoy. I formed the impression that she was familiar with a good many powerful Courts. Yet I wondered how her servants must be received if they accompanied her to such places.

  Evening came. She and I retired to the kitchen where, from the same ingredients, she prepared a far better meal than anything I had been able to make for myself. We drank more wine and then, without thought, took ourselves up to one of the main bedrooms and disrobed.

  Sheets, quilts, bed-curtains, were all creamy white in the late sunshine. Naked, Sabrina was perfect. Her pale body was flawless, her breasts small and firm. I had seen no woman like her, save in statues and certain paintings.

  I had not believed in perfection before that night, and although I retained a healthy suspicion of Sabrina’s motives I was determined to offer no resistance to her charms.

  We went quickly to bed. She became by turns tender, savage, passive and aggressive. I turned with her, whatever her mood, as she turned with mine. My senses, which had become almost as dead as those of Sabrina’s servants, had come to life again.

  I felt my imagination coming back to me, and with it a certain amount of hope, of the old optimism I had known as a youth in Bek.

  Our union, it seemed to me, was preordained, for there was no doubt that she relished me as thoroughly as I relished her. I absorbed her scents, the touch of her skin.

  Our passion seemed as endless as the tides; our lust conquered all weariness. If it had not been for that nagging memory that she was in some way pledged to another, I should have given myself up to her entirely. As it was, some small part of me held back. But it was a minuscule fraction. It need hardly have existed.

  Eventually we fell asleep and woke in the morning, before light, to make love again, A week or two went by. I was more and more entranced by her.

  Half-asleep as one grey dawn came, I murmured that I wanted her to come with me, to leave her ghastly servants behind, to find some other place which the War did not touch.

  “Is there another place?” she asked me, with a tender smile.

  “In the East, possibly. Or England. We could go to England. Or to the New World.”

  She became sad and she stroked my cheek. “That isn’t possible,” she said. “My master would not allow it.”

  I became fierce. “Your master would not find us.”

  “He would find me and take me from you, be assured of that.”

  “In the New World? Is he the Pope?”

  She seemed startled and I wondered if, with my rhetorical question, I had struck upon the truth.

  I continued: “I would fight him. I would raise an army against him if necessary.”

  “You would lose.”

  I asked her seriously: “Is he the Pope? Your master?”

  “Oh, no,” said she impulsively, “he is far greater than the Pope.”

  I frowned. “Perhaps in your eyes. But not the eyes of the world, surely?”

  She stirred in the bed and avoided looking directly at me, saying softly: “In the eyes of the whole world, and Heaven, too.”

  In spite of myself, I was disturbed by her reply. It took another week before I found the courage to make a further statement. I would rather not have pursued the subject:

  “You have promised to answer my questions,” I said to her, again in the morning. “Would it not be fair to tell me the name of your all-powerful lord? After all, I could be endangering myself by remaining here.”

  “You are in no particular danger.”

  “You must let me decide that. You must offer me the choice.”

  “I know …” Her voice died away. “Tomorrow.”

  “His name,” I insisted the next day. I saw terror reflected and compounded, hers and mine.

  Then from where she lay in bed she looked directly into my eyes. She shook her head.

  “Who is your lord?” I said.

  She moved her lips carefully. She raised her head as she spoke. Her mouth seemed dry, her expression strangely blank.

  “His name,” she said, “is Lucifer.”

  My self-control almost disappeared. She had shocked me in several ways at the same time, for I could not decide how to interpret this remark. I refused to let superstition attack my reason. I sat up in bed and forced myself to laugh.

  “And you are a witch, is that it?”

  “I have been called that,” she said.

  “A shape-changer!” I felt half-mad now. “You are in reality an ancient hag who has englamoured me!”

  “I am who you see me to be,” she said. “But, yes, I was a witch.”

  “And your powers come from your compact with the Prince of Darkness?”

  “They did not. I was called a witch by the
people who determined to kill me. But that was before I met Lucifer …”

  “You implied some time ago that you shared my opinions of witches!”

  “Aye—of those poor women so branded.”

  “Yet why call yourself one?”

  “You used the word. I agreed that I had been called that.”

  “You are not a witch?”

  “When I was young I had certain gifts which I put to the service of my town. I am not stupid. My advice was sought and used. I was well-educated by my father. I could read and write. I knew other women like myself. We met together, as much to enjoy each other’s intelligence as to discuss matters of alchemy, herbalism and the like.” She shrugged. “It was a small town. The people were small merchants, peasants, you know … Women are, by and large, denied the company of scholars, even if they resort to the nunnery. Christians do not permit Eve wisdom, do they? They can only suggest that she was influenced by a fallen angel.” She was sardonic. Then she sighed, leaning on one bare arm as she looked at me.

  “Scholarly men were suspect in my town. Women could not admit to scholarship at all. Men are afraid of two things in this world, it seems—women and knowledge. Both threaten their power, eh?”

  “If you like,” I said. “Were there not other women in the town afraid of such things?”

  “Of course. Even more afraid in some ways. It was women who betrayed us, in the end.”

  “It is in the way of events,” I said. “Many speak of freedom, of free thought, but few would want the responsibility of actually possessing them.”

  “Is that why you insist that you are a soldier?”

  “I suppose so. I have no great hankering after real freedom. Is that why you let me call you a witch?”

  Her smile was sad. “Possibly.”

  “And is that why you now tell me that Satan is your Master?”

  “Not exactly,” she replied. “Though I follow your reasoning.”

  “How did you come to be branded a witch in your town?”

  “Perhaps through Pride,” she said. “We began to see ourselves as a powerful force for good in the world. We practiced magic, of sorts, and experimented sometimes. But our magic was all White. I admit that we studied the other kind. We knew how it could be worked. Particularly by the weak, who sought spurious strength through evil.”

  “You came to believe that you were strong enough to resist human prejudice? You grew incautious?”

  “You could say so, yes.”

  “But how did you come, as you put it, to serve Satan?” Now I believed that she spoke metaphorically, or that at least she was exaggerating. I still could not believe that she was insane. Her confession, after all, was couched in the most rational terms.

  “Our coven was discovered, betrayed. We were imprisoned. We were tortured, of course, and tried, and found guilty. Many confessed to pacts with the Devil.” Her expression became bleak. “I could not, in those days, believe that so many evil people would pose as good while we, who had done no harm and had served our neighbours, were submitted to the most disgusting and brutal of attentions.”

  “But you escaped …”

  “I became disillusioned as I lay wounded and humiliated in that dungeon. Desperate. I determined that if I was to be branded an evil witch I might as well behave as one. I knew the invocations necessary to summon a servant of the Devil.”

  She moved carefully, looking full into my face before she spoke next:

  “In my cell one night, because I wished to save myself from death and further barbarism; because I had lost belief in the power of my sisters, upon which I had faithfully relied, I began the necessary ritual. It was at my moment of greatest weakness. And it is at that moment, you must know, when Lucifer’s servants come calling.”

  “You summoned a demon?”

  “And sold my soul.”

  “And were saved.”

  “After the pact was made, I appeared to contract the Plague and was thrown, living, into a pit on the outskirts of town. From that pit I escaped and the Plague went from me. Two days after that, as I lay in a barn, my Master appeared to me in person. He said that He had special need of me. He brought me here, where I was instructed in His service.”

  “You truly believe that it was Lucifer who brought you here? That this is Lucifer’s castle?” I reached out to touch her face.

  “I know that Lucifer is my Master. I know that this is His domain on Earth.” She could tell that I did not believe her.

  “But He is not in residence today?” I said.

  “He is here now,” she told me flatly.

  “I discovered no sign of Him.” I was insistent.

  “Could you recognize the sign of Lucifer?” she asked me. She spoke as if to a child.

  “I would expect at least a hint of brimstone,” I told her.

  She gestured about her. “This whole castle, the forest outside, is His sign. Could you not guess? Why do even the smallest insects avoid it? Why do whole armies fear it?”

  “Then why did I feel only a hint of trepidation when I came here? How can you live here?”

  Her expression approached pity.

  “Only the souls He owns can exist here,” she said.

  I shuddered and became cold. I was almost convinced by her. Happily, my reason once again began to function. My ordinary sense of self-preservation. I stepped from the bed and began pulling on my linen. “Then I’ll be leaving,” I said. “I have no wish to make a pact with Lucifer or anyone who calls himself Lucifer. And I would suggest, Sabrina, that you accompany me. Unless you wish to remain enslaved by your illusion.”

  She became wistful.

  “If only it were an illusion, and you truly could save me.”

  “I can. On the back of my very ordinary horse. Leave with me now.”

  “I cannot leave and neither can you. For that matter, because the horse has served you, neither can your horse,”

  I scoffed at this. “No man is wholly free and the same, madam, may be said for the beast he rides, but we are both free enough to go from here at once!”

  “You must stay and meet my Master,” she said.

  “I am not about to sell my soul.”

  “You must stay.” She reached a hand to me. It trembled. “For my sake.”

  “Madam, such pleas to my honour are pointless. I have no honour left. I thought that I had made that perfectly clear.”

  “I beg you,” she said.

  It was my desire, rather than my honour, which held me there. I hesitated. “You say that your Master is in the castle now?”

  “He waits for us.”

  “Alone? Where? I’ll take my sword and deal with your ‘Lucifer’, your enchanter, in my own habitual fashion. He has deceived you. Good, sharp steel will enlighten Him and prove to you that He is mortal. You’ll be free soon enough, I promise you.”

  “Bring your sword if you wish,” she said.

  She rose and began to dress herself in flowing white silk. I stood near her, watching impatiently as she took pains with her clothing. I even felt a pang of jealousy, as a cuckolded husband knows when he sees his wife dressing for her lover.

  It was odd, indeed, that such a beautiful and intelligent woman could believe herself in thrall to Satan Himself. Our times were such that human despair took many forms of madness.

  I buckled my sword-belt about my shirted waist, pulled on my boots and stood before her, trying to determine the depth of her illusion. Her stare was direct and there was pain in it, as well as a strange sort of determination.

  “If you are crazed,” I said, “it is the subtlest form of insanity I’ve ever witnessed.”

  “The human imagination confers lunacy on everyone,” she said, “dependent upon their condition. I am as sane as you, sir.”

  “Then you are, after all, only half-mad,” I told her. I offered her my arm as I opened the bedroom door for her. The passage beyond was cold. “Where does this Lucifer of yours hold Court?”

  “In Hel
l,” she said.

  We walked slowly along the passage and began to descend the broad stone steps towards the main hall.

  “And His castle is in Hell?” I asked, looking about me in a somewhat theatrical fashion. I could see the trees through the windows. Everything was exactly as it had been during my stay there.

  “It could be,” she said.

  I shook my head. It took much to threaten my rational view of the world, for my mind had been tempered in the fires of the War, by its terrors and its cruelties, and had survived the contemplation of considerable evil and delusion. “Then all the world is Hell? Do you propose that philosophy?”

  “Ah,” she said, almost gaily, “is that what we are left with, sir, when we have discarded every other hope?”

  “It is a sign of Hope, is it, to believe our own world Hell?”

  “Hell is better than nothing,” she answered, “to many, at least.”

  “I refuse to believe such nonsense,” I told her. “I have become grim and absolute, madam, in most of my opinions. We appear to be returning to the realm of speculation. I wish to see a concrete Devil and, if we are in Hell, concrete proof of that statement.”

  “You are overeconomical, sir, in the use of your intelligence.”

  “I think not. I am a soldier, as I’ve told you more than once. It is a soldier’s trait. Simple facts are his trade.”

  “We have already discussed your reasons for choosing to become a soldier, sir.”

  I was amused, once more, by the sharpness of her wit.

  We were walking down the steps, alternately through sunlight and shadow. The shift of light gave her features a variety of casts, which had become familiar to me.

  Such strength of mind or of body was not usually associated either with witchcraft or with Satan-worship. In my experience, as Sabrina had already hinted to me, those who sought the aid of demons were wretched, powerless creatures who had given up hope of all salvation, whether it be on Earth or in Heaven.

  We were crossing the main floor now, towards the huge doors of the library.

  “He is in there,” she said.

  I stopped, loosening my sword. I sniffed.

  “Still no brimstone,” I said. “Has He horns, your Master? A long tail? Cloven hooves? Does fire come from His nostrils? Or is His enchantment of a subtler sort?”