The Witch-Woman Trilogy

  Herewith begins the history of that Odo, called Le Noir, who nevertheless, even as the morning star makes light the womb of a black cloud, shone with the bright beams of his life and teaching; who by his radiance led into the light them that shivered in the gray cloud of the shadow of death; and who, like unto the rainbow giving light in the white clouds, set forth in his righteous ending the seal of his fond Master’s covenant.

  His life, or legend, narrates at outset that Odo had tended the sheep of Guillaume Diaz for nearly a year before he went into the Druid wood which is called Bovion, with Pierre la Charonne. It was thus that, under an elm tree, young Odo, who was as yet a little stained with the dust of his worldly journeying, first saw the Lord of the Forest.

  That dark Master gave a wolf skin to each of the boys and a pot of ointment with which a man might anoint his body whensoever he was wearied of inhabiting it. The Master, also, after they had made a covenant with him and had tendered homage to both of his faces, baptized the boys, after the quaint formula of his very old religion, with the new and secret names of Prettyman and Princox.

  After that, the pair used to run coursing in the shape of wolves until, in the unfortunate manner tiffs come about so quickly out of the hot-headed play of youth, the two lads quarreled one night over a particularly fine heifer. They fought; and after Odo had feasted upon two delicacies instead of one, then Black Odo hunted alone.

  The best time for this joyous gaming, he found, was an hour or a half-hour before dawn when the moon was on the wane. The lustiness of his chosen overlord was then at prime; and those relatively parvenu gods and archangels, as yet precariously perched up in heaven, seemed not strong enough to deal with rebels. It was then that Odo used to snarl and yelp his praise of the kindly power which enabled him without any hindrance to enjoy the most profound and soul-stirring delights. He exulted, as a zealous Old Believer, thus to attest the strength and shrewdness of his dark Master, which could outwit so cunningly their celestial adversaries.

  At this season Odo le Noir went as an animal somewhat shorter and stouter than a real wolf, with a smaller head, a pronged tail, and a rather reddish pelt. He diverted himself with sheep and dogs and cattle of all kinds, but the young of his own race he found to be the daintiest hunting.

  There was no little gossip, and some serious complaint, about the wild beast which was ravaging the Val-Ardray district, because, with the habitual impetuosity of youth, Black Odo kept no measure in his recreations. The ill-nourished cattle and children of the lower classes were of no large value. But, at Nointel, Odo had entered the Lord of Basardra’s home, and, finding no one there except the Countess’ last baby, in its gilded and blue-veiled cradle, he had seized and carried off this really important sprig of nobility; and by-and-by, behind a hedge in the garden, he left the remainder of the ruined small body to be discovered, as it happened, by the Lord of Basardra himself. No nobleman could view without displeasure the untidiness of such freedoms with his offspring.

  Odo created even more scandal, however, when near Lisuarte he attacked the Castellan’s daughter, a charming and delightfully plump young lady of eleven. Her also he put out of living, by-and-by. But everyone knew there had been something irregular about the affair, because her white and red garments were not torn in quite the way that they would have been if wolves born of a wolf’s body had made the assault; and only the lower portions of her belly had been eaten.

  Thus for a while Odo le Noir lived very merrily and was obedient to no one save the Lord of the Forest. This loving master initiated the boy into old and elaborate diversions, and he promised an even finer future.

  “I design great things for you, my Prettyman,” the Master would assure Black Odo, “and I intend that you shall go far in the service to which we are both enlisted.”

2. OF HIS ARDENT LOVE AND APPROACH TO MARTYRDOM

  Now in these years Ettarre was living, in the appearance of a peasant girl, at the foot of the hills behind Perdigon, and she made her home in the thatched hut of an ancient couple who regarded and treated her as their own child. They loved their fosterling; they did not suspect that she had been fetched from the gray spaces behind the moon to live upon earth, in many bodies, as the eternal victim and the eternal derider of all human poets who for a stinted season have youth in their hearts; and, in fact, there was at this time no talk of any sort about Ettarre, except that here and there people said she was one of the witches of Amneran.