Michel de Notre Dame leaned forward over the railing to get a clear view of Jean Boin, monk of the Dominican Order and Inquisitor General of Besançon, as he entered the room from the side door. He was flanked by two other monks who were carrying large, impressive tomes of learning and law. Boin's face was hard and serious, his eyes quick and small,
his body thin and ascetic. He was a man who knew his duty to
God, the Church and the King, and had every intention of doing it to the best of his ability, even if Satan and all his demons were to oppose him. Boin mounted the short, narrow stairs which led to the seat behind the judicial bench and all voices in the room fell silent as he intoned,
"I open these proceedings in the name of God the Father, God
the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Bear witness to the truthfulness of Your servants, O Lord God, and grant to
Your judges the wisdom to do Your
will."
He looked out over the crowd and continued the ritualized words which served to
open an
Inquisitorial Court
. "Know ye, Christian subjects of our dread lord and sovereign King Charles IX, that I, Jean Claude Louis Marie Boin de Menier, serve as Inquisitor General for Besançon by the will of our lord the King and by edict of our Holy Father Pope Leo X, Successor of Saint Peter and Vicar of Christ. May the Lord God bless these proceedings and be with this court."
The invocation being thus completed, Boin seated himself
in the large wooden chair and said to a soldier who stood
near the side door, "Present the prisoners to this tribunal."
It was at that moment that young Michel first laid his eyes on the two people. Five prisoners were led into court that day, each chained heavily upon wrist and ankle, and it
was only later, after the sentences had been passed, after
the horror had begun, that he realized the significance of that first view of the young man and the young woman; and
years were to pass before he began to suspect that it had
been the hand of God and not the will of Monsignor d'Avignon that had led him that day to the court in Poligny.
Friar Boin crooked his finger at the prisoners, who then shuffled forward toward the bench. "We will first make certain that your names have been correctly recorded," he
said, and as he spoke one of his fellow monks spread a sheet
of clean white linen paper out onto the surface of the bench. As the second monk dipped his quill into a pot of
ink, Boin continued. "When I indicate to you that you are to
speak, you will state your name, your place of residence, and your age. Is that understood?" Three of the prisoners
nodded eager, cooperative affirmations. The other two, the
young man and the young woman, did not respond. No one
seemed to notice this fact, other than Michel de Notre Dame. It was from that moment onward that he paid a closer attention to those two than to the other three prisoners.
"You," Boin said, pointing to one of the prisoners.
"P-P-P-Pierre Bourgot," the prisoner replied. He was a
tall, husky peasant with a plain, simple, honest,
trusting face. "Pierre Bourgot," he repeated, apparently
determined not to stammer. "I live in Poligny, in this village. I am thirty years old."
Boin glanced to his left to make certain that the scribe
had copied it all down, and then nodded at the second
prisoner. "You," he barked.
"I am Michael Verdung, also called Michel Udon," the second man replied. "I am a native of Strassburg, currently living in this village. My age is twenty-nine." Unlike Bourgot, Verdung seemed quite calm, though his fat, work-hardened fingers twitched as he spoke and the thin moustache upon his sallow face was glistening with the drops of perspiration which it had captured as they dripped from his brow
.
"You."
"May it please you, I am Philibert Mentot of Poligny,
age nineteen." The young boy's eyes radiated a naive certainty that he would survive this entire terrible experience if only he would continue to be cooperative and polite. As he spoke he glanced at the spectators, many of whom were his friends and relatives. His smile faded when no
one smiled back at him.
"You."
No response.
"You," Boin repeated.
No response.
A soldier slammed the blunt end of his lance into the
prisoner's stomach and shouted, "Answer the Inquisitor
General when he addresses you!"
Michel de Notre Dame furrowed his young brow when he saw
that the prisoner's face seemed not to reflect any pain from
the blow. Instead he simply said in a soft, melancholy
voice. "I am called Janus Chaldian. I am not French. I do
not know my age."
Boin nodded as the information was copied down. It was not at all uncommon for a peasant not to know his age. "He
appears to be around twenty-five years old. Note that," he
said to the scribe. "And from whence do you come?"
Janus Chaldian shrugged. "I do not know who my people are
. "
The third monk leaned over and whispered into Boin's ear, and the Inquisitor General then said, "It is sufficient
for our purposes to know your last residence."
"I have been wandering," Chaldian said.
"Yes, yes, no doubt," Boin said with irritation. "Tell
us where you last lived for any length of time."
"I sailed five years ago to the southern coast of
France
from
Wallachia
."
Boin's eyes went wide. "You are a Turk?"
"No," Chaldian said, "I don't think so."
"Are you a Christian?" Chaldian shrugged and did not
reply. "Well, we'll see soon enough." Boin turned to the
woman and said, "You."
"I am called Claudia," the woman said, her large dark eyes and white skin burning themselves into the mind of Michel de Notre Dame. "I do not know my age. I have been with Chaldian for as long as I can remember."
"Perhaps we will be able to assist you and your friend
in improving your memories," Boin commented, making no effort to mask his annoyance. He sat back in his chair and said, "Pierre Bourgot. Step forward..."
The scribe took copious notes as the interrogation proceeded, but Michel did not need to commit any of his
impressions to paper. Monsignor d'Avignon was not interested
in receiving a verbatim report, but merely an evaluation of the validity of the proceedings. Michel formed his opinion early in the day, and nothing which was said during the following days served to alter his impressions, for he became quickly convinced that the zeal of the inquisitors, the feeblemindedness of the accused and the superstitious fears of the general populace had combined to produce a carnival of nonsense.
Pierre Bourgot testified that, after having lost his sheep, he was told by a specter that they would be returned to him if he would turn from God and worship the Devil, which of course he promptly did. Whether or not Bourgot ever recovered his flock was not made clear, but his newfound powers made that a largely unimportant point. According to Bourgot, his fellow prisoner Verdung, also a servant of the Devil, provided him with a salve which, when applied to the
entire surface of his body, turned him into a wolf. No
explanation was given as to how he resumed his human form, but the court reasoned that, inasmuch as he obviously
was
in human form, he must have resumed it. This made perfect sense to the people in the court room. The idiocy of the reasoning
astounded Michel de Notre Dame.
Bourgot further testified that he and Verdung had met
young Mentot at a witches' sabbat which was conducted
monthly in the woods, and which was supervised by Turks,
Jews and Englishmen. Verdung and Mentot corroborated
Bourgot's testimony and added some flourishes, making reference to the number of children they had eaten and the number of wild wolves with whom they had had sexual
relations. The spectators accepted all of this as voluntary
testimony. Very few of them paid attention to the crushed knuckles, disjointed knees, scars and burns with which the three men seemed to have been afflicted; but Michel de
Notre Dame recognized the result of torture when he saw it.
The testimony of Janus Chaldian and the woman Claudia
was of a different quality, however, though no one other
than young Michel seemed to notice the difference. Yes, they
were werewolves: no, they did worship the Devil; yes, they
murdered and devoured people when the change came upon them;
no, they had never heard of Bourgot's salve; no, they had never been to a witches' sabbat; no, they knew none of the other prisoners; no, to the best of their knowledge the
other prisoners were not werewolves.
But one statement made by the woman Claudia impressed Michel de Notre Dame more than anything else which was said
during the proceeding, a statement which threw the court
into turmoil and aroused the implacable wrath of Inquisitor General Jean Boin. She grew restless and irritable under the questioning until at last she said, "You ignorant asses! I am tired of answering your foolish questions. All I want to
do is to die, so if you can kill me, be about it. Otherwise,
stop pestering me with your idiocy!"
She and her companion were then, of course, handed over
to the secular arm for torture, and two days later they and
the three other accused peasants were condemned to death by burning; but Michel, after freely distributing some of Monsignor d'Avignon's gold to the attendant soldiers, heard some startling reports. The man Janus and the woman Claudia had been subjected to every torture known to the expert interrogators, the rack, the thumbscrew, the hot pincers, the ankle crusher, all of them; but not one drop of blood
had been spilled, not one bone had been broken, not one tear
had been shed. The soldiers crossed themselves as they told
young Michel that these two must be in league with the Devil
himself to be immune to the effects of torture. It was for this reason that Boin had decided to burn them separately from the others, privately and at night far from the town, so that if the judgment of the Inquisition were thwarted by the powers of hell, it would not be a public defeat which
might shake the faith of the people.
But Michel, armed as he was with a letter from Monsignor d'Avignon, was given permission to attend the
secret burning, the holy execution which Boin conducted just
after dusk in that cold December of 1521. He never forgot
the events which transpired out in the forest clearing where Boin and the secular arm attempted to execute the sentence
of the court. He dreamed about that night for the rest of his life, and his nightmares burned with the clarity of
precise and horrible memory.
Chaldian and the woman Claudia were tied to the stakes and the dried wood was piled high around their feet just as
the sun began to sink down below the horizon. Boin, his face
haggard and tense, nodded the order to begin, and the soldiers tossed burning torches onto the kindling. It took no more than a minute for the wood to begin to blaze brightly, and the flames danced up around the legs and chests and faces of the two condemned prisoners. Chaldian and the woman Claudia grimaced and twisted their bodies as the fire enveloped them, but they did not cry out, they did not plead or beg, they did not scream or weep. And though the flames consumed their clothing, they themselves
did not burn.
Boin saw that the flames were leaving them untouched, and he muttered, "
Retro me. Satanas!
" as the soldiers crossed themselves nervously and young Michel de Notre Dame came closer to the burning stakes so as to see more clearly the faces of the two prisoners. The young student shook his head in wonder as Janus Chaldian looked up at the full moon
which had just made it appearance in the absence of the sun,
and cried, "God, if a God there be, let us burn, let us die!"
"Blasphemer!" Boin shouted. "Do you doubt God's very existence on the threshold of death?!"
Chaldian paid him no heed. "God, Gott, Dieu, Bogu, Allah, by whatever name you acknowledge, I beg you, if you exist, let us die, let us die, let the flames devour us!"
"Janus..." the woman shouted over the roaring fire, "it comes, Janus...it comes..." And then she began to scream and writhe in agony, and her companion began to scream and writhe in agony, and for a moment Boin and Michel and the soldiers nourished a hope that the fire was consuming them. That hope died as Chaldian and Claudia began to change.
Michel de Notre Dame squinted his eyes, certain that the dark shadows of the flames and the unearthly glow of the moon were combining to confound and confuse his vision, for what he saw happening could not possibly have been true; and a few moments later, as the prisoners' screams were reduced to bestial howls and the claws began to tear at the ropes and the fanged jaws champed hungrily and the snarls and growls grew louder and more furious, the young man turned and ran wildly from the clearing. The werewolves ripped their bonds asunder and flew out from the inferno to
visit death upon their tormenters.