The Witch-Woman Trilogy

  Over this rather neat epigram, felt generally to be a credit to the bench, his confreres blinked and nodded like a roosting line of benevolent owls. But the condemned boy wept a little. Youth parts from its illusions with pain; and Odo saw that it was his dear Lord of the Forest who, in a long black gown and a curled mountain of blond hair, was pronouncing this sentence, so that Odo knew the Master was only the head of the coven of Amneran, a mere sorcerer, and not the glorious being whom Odo had thought him.

  So it was that the blessed Odo, as yet a little stained with the dust of his worldly journeying, lost faith in evil as a dependable ally.

  Now for what seemed to him a long while Black Odo was not happy in the Monastery of St Hoprig, but went about on all fours, eating only such food as he could find; upon the ground. He still craved the delights of his nocturnal hunting; he thought especially about small girls; and constantly he was hoping it would not be long before he had another taste of the food he desired. Yet by-and-by, a little by a little, he grew reconciled to the quiet and easy life of the monastery.

  He became interested in religious matters. He delighted in particular to have the good monks tell him about the suffering of the saints upon this wicked earth, and how these holy persons had been broiled and flayed and hacked into quivering mince-meat for their faith’s sake. When he listened to these stories he sat huddled, with his legs crossed very tightly. At times his shoulders twitched convulsively. Then the boy would growl, and he would wipe away the white foam which was dribbling thinly from the corners of his mouth.

  Young Odo, too, was never wearied of discussing with his religious instructors the cunning torments which the damned must suffer eternally: and of the more intimate details of these tortures he began to speak with a fervor which was truly devout. In fine, grace entered into his heart; he desired to become an officially accredited servant of Heaven; and the order of St. Hoprig gladly received this most notable brand from the burning.

  Sometimes, even after the novice had entered into his holy vocation, the Lord of the Forest would come to him in the night time, saying as of old,—

  “I design great things for you, my Prettyman.”

  But Brother Odo could not forget how basely this Gui de Puysange had deceived him, and how the dark and withered sorcerer had abused the faith of an innocent boy, by pretending to be the all-powerful Master of Evil. So Odo would make the sign of the cross, he would repeat the sacred Latin words, and he would thus force his tempter to depart.

  And old Gui de Puysange would say: “You treat me very cruelly, my Prettyman. Nevertheless, I love you, and because of that covenant which is between us my love shall yet cherish you vicariously.”

4. OF THE DIVINE CONDESCENSIONS SHOWN UNTO HIM

  Brother Odo increased in sanctity. He was blessed with religious fervors, such as the Devil so cunningly mimics with epilepsy, in which the inspired young devotee’s disregard of the flesh caused him to bite and claw at the bodies of all those who came to assist him from the pavement or the walkway where he was writhing in pious ecstasy. He was granted also the biliousness and the upset digestion needful to create an all-overbearing ardor against any compromise with the soft and wheedling ways of evil. A slight hiccough continually interrupted his talking, as his stomach was relieved of gas. He was accorded visions in which he was counselled and instructed by many saints.

  These came to confirm the holy man in his faith by showing him from what sins and perversities they themselves had been rescued by faith who now were saints in the higher courts of Paradise.

  “Such were the customs of my wicked way of living in Augsburg,” said St. Eutropia, “before the grace of Heaven visited me.”

  “It was in this way I paid the ferryman with my body’s beauty,” said St. Mary the Egyptian, “in order that I might get to Jerusalem and obtain salvation.”

  “Such was the form of loathsome and unnatural caress for which I was particularly notorious,” said St. Margaret of Cortona, “before I found repentance and true faith.”

  All these sacred events the blessed saints would rehearse, with Brother Odo’s aid, so that he might perceive with his own senses from how poisonously sweet and how affable iniquities the most vile of sinners might yet be rescued, and brought into eternal glory, by the true faith.

  Even better was to follow, in Heaven’s tender furtherance of the welfare of Heaven’s loving and vigorous servant. For in a while Ettarre, the reputed witch-woman whom Brother Odo had once so ardently desired, and whom communion with no saint had ever quite put out of his mind, now also came to him.