Françoise, mumbling: “Oh, mon Dieu, quel malheur, quel malheur!” busied herself fetching warm water and linen to wash the wound. Aymar undertook the latter task himself.
The wound was a deep hole, as if, that was Aymar's first thought, the lad had fallen on a pitchfork: “Have you been jumping from the hayloft in the barn?” he queried.
“Aïe!” said Bertrand, “that hurts. No, I wasn't jumping in the barn.”
There was a smaller wound on the other side of the calf, near the shin bone, and this only confirmed Aymar's first impression. For when he washed that area, he noticed that there was something hard just flush to the skin. “My heavens,” he said to himself, “there's a piece of the pitchfork imbedded in the flesh.” He pushed down on the skin with his thumbs to squeeze the object out. “Sure enough,” he said as a shiny point appeared out of the opening of the skin, “it's the point of a tine.” Despite Bertrand's howls he squeezed harder, until he found that his nails could get a purchase on the metal and drag it out.
At the moment, fortunately, Françoise happened to be out. She had gone to fetch more water and linen rags. This was indeed fortunate, for Aymar would not have known what to say had she been there, when he took out what he thought was the point from the tine of a pitchfork and discovered that it was a bullet, Bramond's silver bullet of which the whole village had been informed.
To Bertrand, who was still moaning out loud and had not been watching him, he said nothing. He put the bullet in a pocket of his waistcoat and waited for the doctor. The latter, when he came, found the wound clean and the prognosis for a rapid recovery good. “The pitchfork,” he said, “fortunately only penetrated the heavy muscle of the calf, and didn't touch the bones. He'll be quits with a week in bed, provided no further trouble sets in, which I think unlikely.”
When the doctor had gone, Aymar sent Josephine and Françoise out of the room and questioned Bertrand severely.
“You must tell me everything, Bertrand. Don't conceal a thing. Where were you last night?”
“Why, here in bed.”
“Then how did you get hurt?”
“I don't know, Uncle Aymar.”
“Come, come, Bertrand. You don't get wounds like this lying in bed.”
“But if I tell you, uncle⦔
“Bertrand,” said Aymar, “look me in the eyes. Look.” And so saying he caught hold of the lad's hand, to reassure him. “I shan't punish you, I only want to know the truth.”
He had felt that hand before, and it had meant little to him. But now he was thrilled to the bottom of his spine. There was a distinct growth of fine hair on the palm. He recalled suddenly, it was ten years ago, how his aunt, Mme Didier, had spoken to him, with awe in her voice, of the hair on the baby's palm. For a moment he could still hear in his ears that terrible baying the night Mme Didier had died.
It was many years ago and in the meantime so much had happened. He had gone to Langres to study for the priesthood. At the last moment, he had had doubts as to the strength of his vocation and had not taken orders. Meanwhile Bertrand had grown up and with never a sign of the horrible fate that was to strike him, according to Mme Didier.
Now, across ten years, was that fate about to overtake the lad?
“Look in my eyes and tell me that you were in bed all night.”
“Uncle,” said Bertrand, “why should I have gotten out of bed? I slept here all night. I know because I woke up once during the night and I had had a very bad dream and I was covered with sweat. And I felt very ill and I wanted to call Mamma, but then I fell asleep again.”
“What did you dream of?”
“I don't recall very well, but it was like every other night. I have had dreams almost every night now.”
“I know, your mother has told me. Look, Bertrand, Tell me. You do not like to have nightmares, do you? Of course not. Now maybe I can help you, but you will have to be very honest with me. Since when have you been having these dreams?”
“I can tell you that, because I know very well what started it. I went hunting with Old Bramond last summer and he showed me how to shoot. And then he pointed out a squirrel to me and said: âSee if you can get him.' And I pulled the trigger and the squirrel squeaked and dropped. And Bramond said: âWell, if you haven't got beginner's luck. How did you do that? But I was so sick at heart at the thought of having killed the little thing that I picked it up and wept. And then I kissed it and begged it to forgive me. I hadn't wanted to kill it. It was so pretty and fluffy and warm that it broke my heart. And as I kissed it again, and again, I tasted something warm flowing from it. And it burned my tongue like pepper, only it wasn't bitter but sweet, only not sweet like sugar. I can't tell you how it tasted, but I liked it so much that I kissed it once more and some more, only it was not because I wanted to kiss it but because I wanted to taste its blood and I didn't want Bramond to know what I was doing. And I am telling you everything just as it happened, because I know that I did wrong.”
“Well?”
“Yes. Well, and ever since then I dream at night that I am drinking blood and it scares me to death. And sometimes I think I am a wolf like in the picture book, and I am killing a partridge or a lamb as it shows there. And sometimes I dream that I am the wolf Bramond is looking for. I can see him shooting at me to kill me, and I can't speak to him and tell him that I am not a wolf. Oh, it is awful when you want to talk and can't!”
“It is your imagination that is overwrought,” said Aymar gently and patted that hairy palm. “Where do you find these lambs and partridges? Do you think of that in your dreams?”
“Yes, it seems to me that I am like a dog or a wolf and I leap out of the window and I run on my four legs and I can run very fast, very fast. And then I jump over hedges and I find a bird or a lambâ¦It all seems so real, just as if I actually did it.”
“Yes, dreams are often very realistic. But they aren't true for all that. But if there were bars to that window, do you think you could still dream that you were jumping out of it? Now look, supposing we put bars on the window and locked your door at night, and see what happens. Maybe then you won't be bothered by bad dreams. Shall we try it?”
“Yes, uncle. Please do that. I am so afraid to go to bed. Yes, I think that if I knew that the window and door were locked, I wouldn't be able to dream of escaping from my room.”
That very day then, after giving Josephine and Françoise a satisfactory explanation, without, however, revealing to them the full nature of the suffering of the child, he proceeded to put bars across the window and to oil the lock of the door.
The next morning he went eagerly to inquire of Bertrand how he had slept and was pleased to discover that the lad had not been troubled by any dreams. Thereafter it was his nightly custom to lock up Bertrand before he himself went to bed. Josephine alone was not quite satisfied with the remedy. “If there should be a fire,” she suggested, “and Bertrand locked in his room and unable to escape? We would have to run and find you to get the key.”
“We'll hang the key right here on this nail by his door, and if there should be a fire then someone, anyone, who is nearest can let him out.”
And Josephine was somewhat contented. “Of course,” she admitted, “his appetite has returned since he is no longer bothered with nightmares, still it's inviting disaster.” Thereafter she rose frequently at night, wondering if by chance someone had not neglected a candle or a lamp, or if the wood-fire in the stove or fireplace had been properly extinguished.
Aymar too rose at night in order to listen at the door of Bertrand's room. There were queer sounds to be heard there at times. When the house was very quietâthat complete quietness that a house has only when the hour is late and every inmate is asleep, that complete quiet during which one can hear the beams in the walls lazily stretching themselves as if tired from long days of work, that dense quiet in which the furniture comes to life and begins to crack, speaking, in its way, of the years it has sat patiently in its cornerâin such complete quietness then he could hear Bertrand breathing. Drawing one slow breath after another, as a child does in its peaceful sleep. But then the breathing would become hurried. Faster, faster, until it was no longer a breathing but a panting. Sometimes, then, but more rarely, there would follow the sharp and unmistakable noise of claws striking against the wood of the floor. Then there would be a sniffling and a snorting at the crack under the door and the claws would strike across once or twice. Silence would follow, broken perhaps by a low whine or another snort. And gradually the panting would cease. Bertrand's slow regular breathing was audible again.
“There can be no doubt of it now,” Aymar muttered, and sighing heavily, quitted his eavesdropping. But this assurance never lasted. At once he would begin to have doubts again. “If only I could actually see him,” he thought, but it was hard enough to hear him. Infinite precautions must be taken to get within three feet of the door. “He smells me,” thought Aymar.
Occasionally he would try running up to the door and entering hastily. Sometimes even as his hand caught the knob, there would be the sound of a commotion inside, and when the door swung open there was Bertrand rolling in bed and moaning as if in the throes of a nightmare.
He complained to his mother, and Josephine in turn to Aymar: “You must stop waking him up that way, so suddenly,” Josephine insisted. “He tells me you give him bad dreams. Why do you do it?” He excused himself awkwardly: “I just want to make sure of things before I retire.”
Downstairs in his study, Aymar had gathered together what material he could find on werewolves. Strange malady, that of lycanthropy. All over the world, wherever man has dwelt, people have believed in it. From Ceylon to Iceland and from Iceland to Ceylon, all the old races have tales to tell of it. From the berserkir (bearskins) of Scandinavia, the hyena-men of Africa, the were-bison of North American Indians, the cat-women of Constantinople (who eat rice with a hairpin, knowing that they will fill their bellies at the banquet of ghouls in the cemetery) to the tiger-men of India, the dread superstition is known and credited as truth.
Aymar read of the terrible outbreaks of werewolfism in France during the year 1598, when the disease seemed to become epidemic and whole families were stricken. In the house of a tailor at Châlons, barrels of human bones were found. His trial before the Parliament was so gruesome that the documents and records were ordered burnt at the stake with the criminal. That same year, however, another man tried on the same charge had his sentence of death commuted to imprisonment in the hospital Saint-Germain-des-Prés, ou on a accoustume de mettre les fols.
*
That very year, too, the whole Gandillon family was convicted and executed.
By the hundreds are the cases counted in France, England and Germany, to mention only three countries. An old pamphlet bears the title:
A moste true discourse, declaringe the damnable lyfe and death of one Stube Peeter, a high Jermayne ( German), borne a Sorcerer, who in the likeness of a wolf, committed many murders, 25 years together; and for the same was executed in the cyttye of Bedbur near Coleyn (Cologne) the 31 of Marche, 1590. Published at London by Edward Venge
.
In all these dreadful cases the criminals, aware of their misdeeds, were willing to confess how they changed into wolves and ran through the forest and fields, seeking prey of all kind.
When late at night Aymar would turn away from his reading, his head buzzing, he would find himself saying: “Impossible. Ridiculous.” Then he would take out of a secret little drawer in his desk the silver bullet and contemplate it. Then he would review in his mind all the strange events that he had witnessed since the thunderstorm that sent poor Josephine into the arms of Father Pitamont. And still unconvinced, he would go upstairs and listen at Bertrand's door. If he heard nothing but Bertrand's regular breathing, he would retire to his bed in a skeptical frame of mind. If, however, he heard a strange low whining and the striking of claws on the floor, he would cross himself rapidly and hurry downstairs again, unable to find sleep that night.
Could it be that these gory tales of medieval days were not mere delusions? Were there phenomena in the realm of nature, phenomena that perished like animals that became extinct? Could it be that a curious concatenation of causes, a rare and strange plexus of events, to be encountered only once in centuries, might produce a monstrous exception to the ordinary course of nature?
In the Galliez script, Aymar writes: “There are elemental spirits all about us, the souls of beasts that have died, or of more horrible beasts that have never lived. When the body of a man weakens, the soul of that man begins to detach itself from the tentacles of flesh and prepares itself to fly off the instant the body dies. And around a dying man a circle of beastly souls peer and wait. They would like to have that beautiful body for a house, that body of man which is the highest creation ever to have come from God's sculpturing hands. Man, the body with the erect spine, before which the horizontal spines of the animal world must grovel.
“It is to guard against the invasion of roaming souls that bodies stiffen in rigor mortis at once after death. Then the souls that enter man's husk find only a stiff shell left. Nevertheless it happens occasionally that the soul of a beast gains entrance into a man's body while he yet lives. Then the two souls war with each other. The soul of this man may depart completely and leave only that of the beast behind. And that explains how there are men in this world who are only monsters in disguise, playing for a moment at being men, the kings of creation. Just as a servant plays with his master's clothes.
“Of werewolves,” Galliez continues, “there are two kinds. There are first those that have two bodies and only one soul. These two bodies exist independently, the one in the forest, the other in the home. And they share one soul. The man then only dreams of his wolf-life. Lying abed, he thinks himself abroad, roaming great pine-woods in a distant country, slinking by on soft padded paws, or yelling in a pack at the flying hoofs of three horses dragging a sleigh in a gallop across a snowy plain. And in the same manner, the wolf, satiated with his kill and drowsing in his den, dreams a strange dream. He is a man, clad in garments, and is walking about, busy in the affairs of the city.