Barbara Wade Rose's Open Salon Blog

Priest, the Witch & the Poltergeist - Part 4

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 09:09:31 -0400

In which the house begins to make itself heard.

A mile from the parsonage, Thorel Felix walked down a road on the outskirts of Cideville. He patted his shoulders and wondered which of his blankets would keep the wind out if he cut it to serve as a cloak.

He turned left towards a bridge near the site of the railway. Sweat-streaked men in brown coveralls walked along the trestles, gathering up their bottles and kerchiefs, then headed for the cluster of white canvas tents that were their temporary home.

Felix’s head ached. The privileged boys, the priest’s boys, they would recover. Would the priest Lariat listen? He shook his head, which made it ache a little more.

A hand-lettered sign saying DEVIATION pointed to a detour to the other side of the bridge. Water dripped from the roof as he passed through a tunnel, sounding plick plock, plick plock.

Michaud, Pouliotte and Campus were waiting on the other side.

“Spiritus immundos,” Felix greeted them. Then he withdrew a three-inch stiletto saw and a length of rope from under his cloak, which he handed to Michaud.

“These should work,” Felix said. “They come from the auction, so keep them hidden on your way to Yerville so they cannot be linked to Cideville.”

“Did you talk to the priest about releasing him?” Pouliotte asked.

“Little talk,” said Felix. “More demonstrating.”

“But he got the message?” Campus nodded eagerly.

“He will listen,” said Felix. “He must listen.”

They bid one another goodbye. Felix walked for another half-hour, climbed a fence, picked up a staff he had leaned against it on the other side and made his way through Emile Pain’s field to where a flock of sheep huddled against the wind. As he counted the sheep his head began to clear. He shepherded them into the barn, checked them for burrs and bites, poured water into a trough for them, and shut them in. Then he walked towards a small sod hut built into the hillside.

As he approached a dozen cranes awoke and watched Felix unlock his front door. They had been drawn to spend a night or two of their winter migration near the hut on Emile Pain’s farm ever since Thorel Felix moved in there some seven years ago.

He ate a raw turnip he found on the shelf and sipped from a water jug. The hillside was quiet as the birds settled back to sleep. Felix could hear the swallows of water as they coursed down his throat, the thud of the jug on the wooden table as he put it down, the squeak of his chair amplified by the silence around it as he took off his shoes. He lifted the window, relieved himself out into the pitch path around the side of his hut, and went to bed.

Back at the parsonage, Seigneur Robert de Saint Martin thumbed through Father Lariat’s parish accounts. There were stacks of books from his father’s times and before, when it was not yet a parsonage. From time to time he paused with his finger and then made a note in a small journal with his insignia on its cover. While Saint Martin’s clothes lacked braid or trimmings they had been fitted by an attentive and expensive tailor. His nails were pared and buffed, although the forefinger of his right hand was stained blue and yellow from chemical burns. From the pocket of Saint Martin’s grey velvet vest glinted the seeing eye of a small brass spyglass-telescope.

He drummed his fingers on the table top.

Not far away, fruitwood burned in the fireplace from the last of the season’s cuttings, casting the room with light and shadow. The mantel that enclosed the fire was painted with Biblical scenes: on the left, a young David held Goliath's head by its hair, the giant’s face stunned and florid; on the right, Judith carried Hollofernes’ grimacing head impaled upon her sword. Neither of the two Biblical heroes had any expression at all.

At the sound of the front door Saint Martin lifted his head and said, “Ah.”

“Good evening, Saint Martin,” Lariat removed his gloves. “I apologize for my delay; I had to go with Bunel to put the organ keyboard we purchased in the church closet for safekeeping. Say good evening, boys.” Gustave came down the stairs, slowly.

“Good evening, Seigneur.”

“Good heavens, Gustave, you seem downcast. Are you all right?”

“He is fine, aren’t you?” Lariat patted the boy’s shoulder. “One of the witches gave him a fright.”

“Really? Do you wish . . .”

“I will take care of it. Gustave, go get your supper in the kitchen. Bunel, you too.”

“I hope you don’t mind, but I looked at the books while I was waiting,” Saint Martin waited for Lariat to sit across from him. “You’re right. There is really nowhere else to cut.”

"I could take in more boys, I suppose," said Lariat. "Three more boys would pay off the debt." He smiled sadly. "Three more boys and I would be a schoolteacher.”

After Saint Martin signed the books and appended his named with “Intendant, Cideville canton,” the two men ate in the dining room. Lariat said grace and Madame Charvet spooned out braised dove in a wine sauce onto their plates. Saint Martin saw the housekeeper’s forearms had a dozen or so V-shaped welts.

"Good heavens, madame," he said. "What has happened to your arms?"

"It happened when I culled the doves," Madame Charvet said briskly as she added a clutch of small potatoes to his plate. "They were in a mood tonight. There must be a storm coming."

“Well, it would be about time, although I am sorry for their means of forecasting it,” Saint Martin told her. “Those wounds may fester,” he added. “I could send my maid over with antiseptic.”

“We have plenty of antiseptic here,” Lariat said.

"I washed them," Madame Charvet shrugged. “I’d cover them up if they bothered people but they need to air. I’ll leave the bowl and the spoon, sirs, if you wish to help yourselves. Will there be anything else, Father?”

“Yes,” said Lariat. “There is a sheepskin on the chair in my study which I would like cleaned and made into slippers.”

“Pardon, sir?”

“Not tonight, of course. As soon as you can find the time.”

After dinner Lariat told Saint Martin about the incident at the action.

“Was it blue light from his hands or purple?” Saint Martin asked.

“I can’t remember,” said Lariat. “It mostly happened before I arrived.”

“It could have been mercurial phosphorescence. Or static electricity,” said the seigneur. “A charge, merely, not sorcery. Although some people do have what is called vertue, or bodies with a particularly high voltage. I had heard that someone in the coven had this capability. It must be Thorel Felix.”

“That makes him dangerous,” Lariat countered. “The superstitious react strongly to a show.”

“The witches are only dangerous if you engage with them,” said Saint Martin. “You already did so when you had Gosselin jailed. And if you choose to do so again, after the trial, you would be agreeing with them that Gosselin’s conviction was not the end of the matter.”

“Not engage with them?” Lariat replied. “The Church defends the ways of God in the world. They worship Satan. How can I not engage with them?”

It was midnight when Lariat saw his guest to the front door, and the wine had warmed his heart. “Thank you for visiting, Saint Martin,” he shook the seigneur’s hand. “It is always stimulating for men of intellect to converse.”

“Thank Madame Charvet for dinner, if you will,” Saint Martin peered out at the night sky. “We are nearing the solstice,” he said. “Look at the stars.”

“You didn’t bring your carriage?” asked Lariat.

“I have my horse in your stable.”

“Ah. Good night.”

After Lariat locked the door he went to the foot of the stairs where a six-foot grandfather clock clicked ponderous time. It had been in his mother’s family. When he was given the parish at Cideville he had had brought it from Rouen as a reminder of his home. On top of the filigree face was one short hand that leaned to the left of midnight, meaning the time was eleven, one hour to midnight. Next year whenever he took the train from Cideville to visit Paris he would need to install a minute hand on the clock to help him catch the train on time.

In the kitchen, Bunel sat chewing on one of the split cold doves. He must have gone out again, Lariat reflected.

“Did you buy the axe as well?” Lariat asked him.

The boy nodded, his mouth full. “I gave it to Alex.”

“Any change?”

“I gave it to Madame Charvet.”

“All right. Clean up after yourself and go to bed.”

Upstairs in his room, Gustave lay on his bed and looked at the figures painted along the edges of his ceiling: mermaids danced with sea creatures and sailors cast lines for goggle-eyed fish. Gustave watched them by the guttering flame of his candle until he thought Father Lariat’s time limit for reading in bed had expired. Then he blew the candle out and lay back in the dark. The face of Thorel Felix immediately filled his mind. He thought of Latin, he though of sweets, but whenever he relaxed, the face loomed, and after a while Gustave began to whimper into a pillow.

There were three short thumps along his wall.

“Shut up, Gustave!” Bunel yelled as he passed by to his room further down the hall.

Gustave wiped his nose on his sleeve and tried to stay quiet. Half an hour later a movement made him look out his open door -- Father Lariat was approaching. The priest held a thorium lamp in his right hand, filled with heated salts that cast his face with a green glow the color of the sea. The Father’s left hand held something too.

"Here,” Father Lariat came into Gustave’s room. “Take it.”

He held out a small, carved wooden statue of the Virgin Mary. "Maybe she will help."

Gustave reached and took the figure. “Thank you, Father,” he whispered.

“Do not be afraid, Gustave,” the priest told him. “The Lord is your salvation and I am your protector. You have nothing to fear from witches. Good night.” Then he turned and left the room. The green light floated away down the hall and disappeared.

After putting away the parish books and writing letters for another hour Lariat looked in on Gustave. The boy was asleep, clutching the figure of the Virgin Mary in one hand and a twisted length of bedsheet in the other. Too tired to be frightened, Lariat thought with a smile.

He shut the boy’s door. He was turning to go upstairs to his own room when he heard a muffled drumming coming from Bunel’s room. Under the door was a faint light.

Lariat set his jaw. Just last week he had given Bunel vivid descriptions of the burning fires of hell when he caught him in the stables, grasping himself by the root. Now he would have to resort to the switch. Lariat took a deep breath and flung open Bunel’s bedroom door.

But Bunel was asleep. Calvados the dog lay on the floor beside the bed, alert, panting, its gaze fixed on the small table by the window. In addition to the usual youthful odors of sock and shirt, the room smelled of iron filings,. Lariat bent to look between the table and the window. He could see nothing move. But he could hear a thump, thump, as if the table were hitting the wall, over and over.

It is a stick of furniture, Lariat told himself. It is inert. He looked at Bunel, who was sleeping as deeply as a felled prizefighter, his mouth open and spittle trickling onto his pillow. His feet stuck out over the end of his bed.

A flutter of white curtains made Lariat realize the window above the table was open. He reached up to the wooden shutter with both hands and slammed the casement down into the sill. Bunel moaned in his sleep but did not wake up.

There, Lariat declared to himself. The noise came from outside.

Calvados the dog whimpered and Lariat motioned for it to follow him out of the room and down the corridor. On the walls as they passed, murals of wine harvests and peasant festivals flickered to life then faded to shadow. Lariat led the dog downstairs, shoved it out the front door, and climbed the stairs one last time to the third floor where he slept, each time he stepped, each step hissed to his imagination: Free. Gosselin. Free. Gosselin.

The Priest, the Witch & the Poltergeist-part 3

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:09:18 -0400

In which the witch curses the boys.

Just then Bunel walked in holding two glowing lamps. He handed one to Gustave.

"You all right?" Bunel whispered. “You look green.” He cackled.

"We’ll take this one," Gustave pointed to the keyboard. “Can you carry it? Let’s go.”

But Bunel did not reply. He had turned towards the interior doorway of the barn.

"Gustave!" he hissed. "Look!"

It was the tall witch. Thorel Felix. He stood quite still, his bearded face obscured by a hood, the rest of him covered in a grey-black cloak with a yellow sheepskin mantle, in the shadows at the entrance to the stalls.

“Holy Mother, pray for us,” Gustave clutched Bunel’s sleeve and buried his face in it. “Now and . . . “

“Stop touching me,” Bunel shook him off. Then he raised his voice. “I can smell you,” he said to the witch, whose eyes flickered.

“Thorel Felix, are you?” Bunel took a step forward. “Stop staring. What do you want?”

“Don’t ask him that!” Gustave gasped.

The witch said in a low thick voice, “You are the priest’s boys?”

“You know we are.”

Felix reached a hand up to the curling yellow nap of the sheepskin on his shoulders and stroked it, five times, six. They heard a crackle. Then he dropped his hand and began to walk across the barn towards them.

“Stop,” Bunel said unsteadily.

Felix stretched out his hands. "Animate, awake and stun your host with justice,” he said sonorously, his voice echoing in the barn. "Fear the closed doors and cloistered windows in which he suffocates, let his victim seek the open air. Anamis contro apta Malatrou Sabaoth misen. Fuge adolaripe ordina Gosselin, Uriel, Kirioni et Maxora."

“Gustave, what’s he saying?”

Gustave did not reply. As Felix’s outstretched finger moved closer to his shoulder, he croaked, “God save me!” A blue CRACK of electricity shot between the witch’s finger and Gustave’s shoulder. The boy shrieked and fell into the instruments, which crashed and clanged to the floor.

“Boys!” Father Lariat stood in the barn doorway. “What in heaven’s name is going on?”

The witch’s arm disappeared beneath his cloak. Lariat tried to take in the scene in front of him. It was the tall black-haired one, he realized. The one who at Gosselin’s sentencing had said to him something about enjoying a quiet life.

“He cursed us,” Bunel pointed at Felix. “He said, it was about stunning your host with justice, but he . . . “

“Father, he electrocuted me,” Gustave pulled at his lapel. “See? He rubbed that sheepskin and made a curse.”

Lariat turned from the boys to Felix, who had retreated to the stable doorway.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” he demanded.

“Free Gosselin,” Felix hissed.

“Free a charlatan, you say?” Lariat forced a laugh. “Gosselin is where he belongs.” He held out his hand. “Let me see your sheepskin, witch. Come now.”

Felix slowly slid the yellow mantle off his shoulders.

“It won’t take a moment.” Bunel, handling it as if it were hot, took the skin from the witch and gave it to Lariat.

“Thank you.” Lariat folded the skin and tucked it under his arm. “I will be keeping this, Thorel Felix,” he said.

“But I . . .” the witch began.

“You shouldn’t frighten children with it. Gustave, come with me to the cart. Good day, Thorel Felix.”

“Free Gosselin.”

“Bunel, bring the keyboard home. Here is the money you boys forgot. And get Alex a new axe blade; he needs one for chopping wood.”

“I’ll need more,” Bunel said, but Lariat ignored him.

“As for you, Thorel Felix, Gosselin will remain in jail where he belongs. Your weapon, such as it is, has been confiscated. From now on leave these boys alone.”

Thorel Felix said nothing. He turned and disappeared into the stalls. Lariat took Gustave by the arm and led him through the cacophonous machines down the path and out the gate.

Bunel watched the cart and its occupants trot away down the road. Then he wandered over to the food table, swiped one of the wedges of game pie and shoved it in his pocket. “He should have given me more money,” he muttered.

Thorel Felix was still in the mayor’s yard, standing by a trestle table next to the house. Bunel walked slowly towards him, pulling chunks of the pie out of his pocket and pushing them in his mouth.

When he arrived at the table, Bunel saw it was covered with measuring instruments: stiff rulers, tape measures, height sticks and barometers. As he came close he saw Thorel Felix wave his flat palm over a dozen compasses. All the needles under the witch’s hand, in one direction, veered off North.

The Priest, the Witch & the Poltergeist-part 2

Wed, 22 Sep 2010 16:09:27 -0400

In which the boys are brave against the witches' coven, walk through an auction of machinery, and enter a dark barn with a dark inhabitant.

Their faces were grey and sunken, their beards cut with scissors. Michaud, a former sailor, wore tattoos of snakes that coiled down his bare arms. There was a scar over one eyebrow had never been stitched properly and rendered him permanently sullen. Years of bending over styes had given Pouliotte, a pig farmer, a slight hunch. Albert Campus wore on his back a quiver made from a Moet & Chandon champagne canister punched with twine and filled with sharpened sticks for arrows. He had the habit of blowing a loose front tooth back and forth between his lips, like a swinging gate.

“Look,” Michaud jutted his chin at Bunel and Gustave as they came closer. “Gosselin’s jailors.”

“Be fair, Michaud,” said Pouliotte. “It is their Father who is Gosselin’s jailor.”

Campus stopped scratching his head with one of his arrows. “No, the priest is Gosselin’s prisoner.”

“How so, Campesino?”

“Because Gosselin gives him no rest!”

“Where is the tall witch with the black hair?” Bunel asked them. “The one with the sheepskin on his shoulders?”

“Who?”

“The one who spoke to us at Gosselin’s trial.”

“And what did he say?” asked Michaud.

“He bid Father Lariat to live a quiet life.”

The witches laughed with a heh, heh, heh.

“Thorel Felix!” Michaud said. “Know two things about Felix. He loved Gosselin like a soldier loves Napoleon. He has the body electric.” He suddenly pointed at Gustave. “And I hear he is looking for you.”

“You can’t be stupid enough to think we frighten that easily,” Bunel shoved the gate in the hedge open. Wide-eyed, Gustave pushed past him.

“Priest’s boys,” Pouliotte called out, but Bunel had shut the gate.

“Bunel, why did he say that?”

“Priest’s boys? From the way Father watches Sophie when she dusts the shelving, I don’t think you need to worry.”

“No, why did he say that about Thorel Felix?”

Bunel considered a moment. “The villagers say he has lightning in his hands,” he said. “There was one girl a long time ago he touched and she screamed. The sheepskin on his shoulders came from a ewe he picked up with two hands instead of one.” He shrugged. “So they say.”

The boys looked at hundreds of items spread over the mayor’s garden.

Cideville had never before hosted an auction the size of the one that was held at the mayor’s estate in the fall of 1850. Hundreds of pieces of machinery from gears to gauges to giant forged kettledrums with levered joints sat like nesting birds on the grass. They walked past a line of steam engines, each one smaller than the one before it, vertebrae that ended with a tailbone of phalanges small enough to power a milking churn.

Bunel walked among the trestle tables. "Look, a mosasaurus made of metal," he pointed.

"A what?" asked Gustave.

"That creature that looks like a dragon. Robert de Saint Martin showed me a drawing in the latest issue of his science journal. A Frenchman discovered it.”

Further up the path that led to the house were half a dozen weaving looms that hummed like cellos in the breeze. On a row of trestle tables lay hammers, coopers' tools, staves, shears, and pressure vacuums. Flowserve pumps sat next to glass vacuum globes, wrapped in blankets lest they topple and explode. The table in which Bunel was most interested was laden with platters of cold duck, marinated lentils, half a game pie, cold salads, plates, forks, polished wineglasses and a dozen open bottles of red wine. A sign on the table said ’50 sous.’

"These lots are being auctioned off tomorrow," said a booming voice behind them. The boys shrank before a waistcoated man with a top hat and badge that identified him as the auctioneer. He held a glass of wine in one hand. "What's your business here, boys?" he asked.

"Musical parts, sir," said Gustave. "Organ keyboards."

"Those are in the barn, with farm implements and smaller tools," the man said, waving a finger to Gustave's right. "On whose behalf?"

"Father Lariat's at the Cideville parsonage," said Bunel. “Gustave, we forgot the money.”

Lariat slipped the bag of money into his coat pocket and picked up his ring of keys.

“Madame Charvet!” he called. “Please let Robert de Saint Martin in when he calls.”

Lariat’s housekeeper came out from the kitchen entrance at the far side of the foyer. “You’re going out, Father?”

“The boys forgot the money. I’ll take the cart and find them.”

At the stables Alexander Git, the parsonage handyman, was hammering a bolt into a hinge. Upon Lariat’s request he stopped what he was doing and fitted the cart to an 8-year-old nag that had been sleeping in the barn. “Do you want me to take you, Father?” he asked. “I’m planning to stack wood.”

“No, it’s all right. Lariat took the reins. “I’ll be back momentarily.”

"A priest’s word should be good enough, if I check with the mayor," said the auctioneer. "Instruments you can buy for the prices listed. All in good working order -- follow the path."

Bunel and Gustave passed a group of five or six people staring a tub-shaped engine called "The Governor.” Two brass balls on chains wound around a central pillar like ribbons around a maypole. Another was stamped with a "Boulton &Watt" insignia that advertised it “capable of 300 hammer blows a minute."

"Straight from Bristol, most of these," the auctioneer called to the crowd.. "Allow me to demonstrate." He bent and moved aside a catch-lever. Pistons on the side of the chamber began to rotate, faster and faster, until after a minute an iron hammer struck a plate upon which sat a lump of soft metal. It kept hammering. Soon the crowd covered their ears. "Make it stop!" a small boy shouted to the auctioneer, who waited a minute as if he hadn’t heard. Then he switched the machine off and, wearing a thick glove, lifted up the flattened metal and held it up to the crowd.

At the top of the path next to the barn were a row of carriages powered by machines. Bunel stopped to examine a city cugnot called "Hancock's Autopsy" and a touring carriage called "The Era"—which advertised it could carry four people ten miles an hour for four hours or more.

"A cugnot doesn't need to rest and does exactly as you tell it. Horses shit and die on you." Bunel said. "Robert de Saint Martin has the Hancock's Autopsy."

"I've never seen him use it," Gustave said. The cugnots looked like dragons to him, with their bulbous eyes, long snouts, and haunches crouched to spring.

"He keeps it in his stables. He can only get it serviced in Paris.”

As he clicked and switched the horse to hurry Lariat looked out at the construction on the railway that would soon come to Cideville. Iron rails and trestles stretched along a graveled line north to the horizon. Southwards a dozen men pounded in spikes and winched rails into place. Then he turned and saw some of the witches who had jeered him at Gosselin’s trial. There was no one else on the road.

Lariat switched the nag into a trot. “Out of my way!” he shouted as the witches scattered across the road. Lariat kept up the pace until he reached the stables and turned in. He stepped down from the cart and handed the reins to a stable boy. Two thoughts occurred to him in quick succession.

If he had successfully jailed their leader, why were the witches still in his parish?

Who was their leader now?

The inside of the barn smelled of earth and hay. As his eyes adjusted Gustave saw the jointed outlines of instruments: tubas, an upright piano, two fiddles without strings, a couple of drums with ruptured skins, whole and in parts, leaning next to one another against the wall.

Bunel came up behind him. “Good working order,” he snorted. Gustave scanned the collection for organ keyboards and walked towards one lying on a straw-strewn blanket.

"We’ll need lamps," said Bunel. "I'll get some."

"Don't leave me here," Gustave pleaded.

Bunel gave him a withering look and headed out the door.

Gustave went to the room’s lone window and peered out. He could see the village surrounded by hills, on one of which was the parsonage, his home, a black ship on a sea of blue twilight. He could still hear off to his right the thump of the copper-punching machine, the periodic shrieks of steam and the shouts of the auctioneer.

Then he heard, from his left, from somewhere in the barn, a creak of floorboards one after the other.

The Priest, the Witch & the Poltergeist-part 1

Tue, 21 Sep 2010 09:09:13 -0400

I promised to do this months ago. Here we go.

Part One: In which we meet the priest, who needs money, and the boys, who set the story off.

November 18, 1850

Cideville, Normandy

Jean Lariat lifted his head from where he sat at the desk in his study and inhaled the rich aroma of dove breasts braising in lamb fat. He was glad Madame Charvet was making such a dish, despite his recent lecture on economizing. He inhaled again. The rich scent reminded Paris and his youth, both of which seemed a long time ago. He looked up at the painting he kept on the opposite wall, a portrait of seventeenth-century bishop Jean-Pierre Camus. “You never lived in Cideville,” Lariat said to the impassive face. He returned his gaze to the bay window that overlooked the fields at the back of the parsonage, beyond to his village with its two roads, a tavern, a school, his church, and then the blue foothills in the distance. All that once was green had dried to brown, not typical of a Normandy fall. Although storm clouds swelled and pressed once or twice a week they always seemed to disperse. There had not been rain in over a month.

Lariat stared at the sheet of paper which lay on the blotter in front of him. He dipped his fountain pen into the inkwell and pulled down a slender gold lever attached to its side and it sucked blue ink into a glass chamber. When the chamber was full Lariat let go of the lever and it snapped against the side of the pen. He tapped its nib against the mouth of the inkwell and then pressed it to the paper. He wrote:

To my colleagues at Notre Dame, I have received your letter of November second. From your response to my initial letter it is clear I have been a poor scribe describing conditions here in Cideville. We live, not in a pleasant country refuge, but upon a battleground where soldiers such as I wage daily war. Our enemies are sin, corruption, and witchcraft, which too many believe has been vanquished by the Church and the deceit of enlightenment. Our arsenal is a shrinking pittance from an impoverished flock, and inadequate means from our colleagues who live in Paris, many of whom I knew from our days together in the seminar, who now judge the needs of country priests all over France.

He crumpled the sheet of paper and pushed it aside. Then he wrote on a fresh sheet:

Most Holy Archbishop, I am your servant in Normandy, Jean Lariat, parish priest for the canton of Cideville. I am pleased to report I recently imprisoned the leader of the local witch coven: André Gosselin was head of a band of half a dozen men who called themselves witches and offered a slate of hexes to the local peasantry for a fee. He told one of my parishioners, Madame Jacotin, to drink an infusion of the wildflower elecampagne to shrink her cranial tumor. As Notre-Dame no doubt knows, there is in French courts an increasing tolerance of religious blasphemy and paganism. I countered this by charging Gosselin, successfully, with medical charlatanry. After Gosselin went to serve his sentence in the Yerville jail, Madame Jacotin was confessed and now prays among her family for a safe arrival in heaven, which Doctor Craverse, our parish doctor, assures me will occur within the next few weeks. In reply to my last letter Your Eminence directed me to continue under the dictates of my current stipend. While I follow my law of poverty in all obedience I have been forced to take in two pupils, Gustave Monier and Bunel Clement, to offset costs. Unfortunately I underestimated the amount by which their appetites exceed their parents’ fees.

He read what he had written. Then he crumpled the sheet of paper and pushed it aside as well. André Gosselin had shaped his coven of the despised, the dreary and the demented into treaters of the sick and tolerable practitioners of magic. They promised Cideville’s families a chanted cure for a rotten tooth or a hex to blight a neighbor’s crop. Warts and boils, one sous. A curse on a neighbor’s crop, two sous, four for colored smoke. Vengeful stares to rattle a passerby on the Cideville main street? One sous. Two for not telling the victim whom it was from. Gosselin had told Lariat the coven functioned as a collective, trying to deflect blame. But he was their leader. They adored him. Now he was in jail, it would be harder for them to drag his parishioners down into hell with them.

His mother used to bid him good night with parting words such as, “Go to sleep or the witch will come looking for you,” or “Boys who think bad thoughts awaken to a hag on their chests.” He had slept with closed windows until he was fourteen, when he left home to apprentice with a local priest who said he had promise. Then another pair of hands dragged him down to hell. Fat hands, ringed, with manicured nails, that grasped his hand and pushed it under the surplice. Reaching into a reedy pond to grasp and pull up a fish.

Lariat looked out his window. Gleaners gathered the last barley of his neighbor’s harvest in the slanted light of November. He pulled a sheet of parchment towards him and picked up the pen. Calfskin vellum cost 90 sous a page, twice the price of parchment. No more drafts.

He wrote: Most Holy Archbishop, Please --then stopped. He held the nib of his pen against the paper's lower right-hand corner as ink billowed up the paper like a stain. He lifted the dripping pen away and stoppered the bottle. Then he threw the soggy draft on the fire where it bubbled and curled.

“We’re going to the auction now, Father!” he heard Gustave’s voice call from the front door, a grunt from Bunel, then a slam. “Don’t forget the money!” Lariat called out, a moment too late. Five francs, his budget for a used organ keyboard, still sat in a leather sack on the dining room table. He checked out the window, but the boys were already gone. He would have to follow them in the cart.

Along the road leading through the village to the farms, the two boys Father Lariat called to dodged in and out of each other’s path by turns, like skaters on a river, casting black shadows across the fields. Gustave was 13, short and fair, with dark grey eyes and a sharp little chin Bunel, 15, was half a foot taller, thick-necked, with broad shoulders and fiery ginger hair.

"Father Lariat wants used parts for the organ keyboard, not new," Gustave said. "If I manage to find a bargain, we are to carry the keyboard back between us. Bunel, what does he mean by a bargain? Is it the one that costs the least?” "If you don’t know, I don’t know why he didn’t ask me to do it," Bunel picked up a wooden stick and cracked it in half. "But Bunel is unreliable, Bunel can’t be trusted. The Father sees me mostly as a beast of burden.”

“Bunel is not musical,” offered Gustave. “That’s why Father Lariat asked you to leave the choir. He said your voice is starting to sound more of earth than of heaven.” “It’ll happen to you soon,” Bunel thrashed the stick at a shrub “Could you ask for me? You look much older.” “No.” Bunel said shortly. “We have a half hour of free time, outside of lessons, outside the parsonage. I’m not going to spend it babysitting you.”

“Why does Robert de Saint Martin live over there, not at the parsonage?” Gustave asked as they turned the corner into the road that led to the mayor’s estate. “His father decided the parsonage was too small and gave it to the Church. That’s why Saint Martin acts like he still owns it.”

“Bunel?” asked Gustave. “Hmm?” “How long have you wanted to become a priest?” Bunel tapped the stick against his chin. ”When my father said he was signing me up for the French Army I discovered I had a holy calling.”

“Mama and Papa are so pleased Father Lariat accepted me to study. It’s my first time away from home. I want to become a great priest like Father Lariat and guide people and get rid of witches.” As soon as Gustave spoke, he regretted it. Bunel was good at making him think it was idiotic to want anything. Bunel wrapped his arm around Gustave’s shoulder and stopped them both abruptly. He pointed to a group in the distance, next to the auction gate. “Well, Father Gustave,” he whispered. “Here’s your chance.”

New game for Ipod owners

Wed, 8 Sep 2010 13:09:12 -0400

Top of my Playlist: celebrity song favorites of the dead and famous

Jane Austen: Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) by Beyonce

Karl Marx: Our Beds are Burning by Midnight Oil

Napoleon: Anything by Kanye West

Lord Byron: Anything by David Bowie

Gandhi: Disco Inferno . . . because I do like to boogie

Joan of Arc: the Twilight soundtrack. Definitely Camp Edward.

Mahmoud Adinijad: Icky Thump by the White Stripes

Wait. We’ve moved into living people. So let’s add:

Stephen Harper: What’s a playlist? (Canadians will get this.)

Silvio Berlusconi: Bad Boys by Inner Circle

and last but not least:

Barack Obama: Stuck in the Middle with You