The Fifth Servant (37 page)

           
He looked into her moist and bloodshot eyes.

           
“I promise that you will leave this room unharmed if you just give me those names,” he said.

           
“But I don’t know them.”

           
“You expect us to believe that?” said Popel.

           
“Why are you answering badly? Why can’t you tell us the names?”

           
“Because knowledge of them is the domain of men alone.”

           
The bishop was struck by this admission. It certainly fit the evidence.

           
“Why do you insist on telling lies?” said Popel, who hadn’t made the connection.

           
One of the correctors leaned on the machine, clearly bored by the slow progress. “Of course she hasn’t told you the truth, we haven’t even put the frigging weights on her yet.”

           
But the bishop called Popel aside and explained that the girl’s mere knowledge of forbidden practices was not enough to proceed with prosecution in this matter. They had to have
proof
of actual witchcraft.

           
So they agreed to follow the standard procedure.

           
The bishop returned and made a show of entreating the correctors to release the girl.

           
The correctors shrugged and loosened the ropes just enough to allow her to lower her arms. The bishop had them offer her some more water, then he softened his voice and told her that she could save her mother and herself from beheading or (if the judges were being lenient) strangulation, and then being burnt at the stake, if she would simply confess the truth and tell him the names of the unbelievers who dared to use the name of God to conjure devils and perpetrate other acts of evil.

           
He saw the last bit of hope drain out of her, and the only thing that she confessed was that she couldn’t possibly comply with his request.

           
The bishop looked down at the girl’s tender little feet, and started slowly shaking his head, as if it deeply disturbed him to have to do this.

           
“Then you leave me no choice but to insist that you be examined in the usual way.”

           
The correctors perked up like a pair of Rottweilers picking up the scent of raw meat. They retightened the ropes, yanked the girl’s arms over her head, and proceeded to strip off her clothes.

           
She screamed, as they almost always did, then the bishop cringed from a sudden pain in his gut. So he let Popel take over the search.

           
They commenced shaving all the hair off her body, including the secret parts that must not be named, in search of the truth. Now, in the bishop’s native Germany, it was not considered delicate to shave the
pubes
, so he turned and looked the other way.

           
But it wasn’t long before Popel triumphantly ejaculated, “Here it is. The mark of the Devil.”

           
“That’s not the mark of the Devil,” the girl insisted. “That’s a birthmark I’ve had since I was a child.”

           
“That’s just the sort of perverse lie the Devil would make you say.”

           
The bishop examined the spot closely.

           
“Keep looking,” he said.

           
“Yes, my lord.”

           
The girl stiffened but gave little resistance as they continued to shave her down below, because the masked men approached the task with some measure of propriety. But their patience was wearing thin, and they were much rougher with the thick, dark hair on her head. And halfway through the process, their efforts were rewarded.

           
“My lord, come and look at this.”

           
The bishop bent close to look. The girl had a curved scar nearly two inches long behind her left ear that was much lighter than the surrounding skin, just like so many other scars he had seen that had been made as a result of carnal copulation with the Devil.

           
“Stick it with pins,” he commanded.

           
And when the girl felt no pain in that place, he knew that the mark could only have been made by the Devil’s claw. And that changed everything.

           
The girl insisted that she had gotten the scar years ago when a drunken Christian hit her in the head with a bottle and left a deep gash, and that ever since that day she had no feeling in the area, but he knew that they would soon get at the truth. And so he gave the order:

           
“Begin the
Inquisitionsprozess
.”

           
THEY PUT YOU THROUGH THE same paces every single time, thought Bishop Stempfel. First they denied all the charges, then you induced them to tell the truth, and you went back and forth with the same questions over and over until the easy ones broke and the stubborn ones dug in their heels, while the scribe mechanically copied it all down. Every question, every answer, pausing only to change quills or stifle a yawn.

           
Perhaps the court scribbler had seen it so many times before that he no longer appreciated how challenging it could be to bring a case like this to trial. There had to be sufficient grounds before they could proceed, and the ability to unearth such evidence (and justify the time and expense of a trial) varied widely depending on the skills of each Inquisitor. It wasn’t always easy to de-fine a particular example of witchcraft. You just had to be able to recognize it in what ever form it appeared.

           
The new team of correctors had arrived, bringing youthful energy and a fresh perspective to the proceedings. The bishop sat on the edge of the orange circle of light, keeping warm by the embers where the irons lay heating for use.

           
He watched the two priests closely. Zeman had a more nuanced approach, extracting critical information from the young witch about the Sabbat feast, where the food was apparently so bitter and foul that it made the participants vomit profusely (what foul lengths these witches go to satiate their perverse desires!) but he couldn’t get her to confess that the meal consisted of the flesh and blood of young children, to say nothing of the corpses scavenged from the graveyard or harvested from the gibbet.

           
Popel was clearly more effective, focusing on the crucial issue—namely, that we
know
that witches fornicate with devils. The question is,
How
do they do it?

           
“What is the Devil’s member like?”

           
“I don’t know.”

           
Here the interrogator administered some pain.

           
“What is it like? Is it hard or soft?”

           
“It’s hard. Hard as steel.”

           
“No, it isn’t.”
Pain
.

           
“My brother,” said Zeman, “some say that it is hard. Some even say that it is forked.”

           
“Is it forked?”

           
“I don’t know.”
Pain
. “Yes—!”

           
“
Yes?
”

           
“No—?”

           
“Which is it?”

           
“Yes! No! It’s both. It’s hard for some, soft for others.”

           
“You mean it
is
forked?”

           
“Yes. Please. My arms—”

           
“Is sex with the Devil pleasurable?”

           
“Yes.”
Pain
.

           
“Yes?”

           
“No! No, it isn’t.”

           
The Inquisitor was impressed with Popel’s technique. After a short apprenticeship, he was already learning how to jump between topics just to keep the vile race of sorcerers off balance.

           
“We are well aware of the fact that the pact with the Devil must be written in blood. But we would like to know what
kind
of blood it is.”

           
No answer.
Pain
.

           
“I don’t know.”

           
“What kind of blood? Jewish blood? Babies’ blood? Menstrual blood?”

           
But she stubbornly insisted that since she had never signed such a pact, she didn’t know how to answer, and the pain had to be applied again and again.

           
Bishop Stempfel watched as the correctors tilted the witch’s head back, jammed a funnel into her mouth, and told her they were going to pour molten lead down her throat. They used iron tongs to lift the steaming pot from the brazier, then they carried it over, and she shrieked before realizing that she was being drenched with ice water.

           
The correctors laughed. “What’s the matter? Did you think we were
really
going to pour molten lead down your throat?”

           
“What kind of men do you take us for?”

           
What an excellent deception!
The bishop smiled, knowing that he would be able to honestly report that the Inquisition was in good hands here in the heart of Protestant Bohemia.

           
Then he felt a tap on his shoulder, and received word that the doctor was waiting for him in the next room.

           
He reminded Popel to focus on getting the names of the other witches involved in this crime, be they Gentile or Jew, then he gathered up his robes and removed himself from the darkened chamber.

           
The light in the other room was so bright it hurt his eyes at first. The interrogation must have entered its tenth hour or so, since the sun had climbed midway up the meridian. He had lost all track of time.

           
The doctor was pleased to announce that he had secured a worthy maiden in order to administer the virgin amber treatment, which was the only proper cure for the bishop’s condition.

           
But the bishop was shocked by the brazenness of this alleged virgin, who showed no modesty whatsoever as she lifted up her skirt, squatted over a golden chamber pot, and began to relieve herself like an animal with no knowledge of morals or shame. What he saw reminded him of a horse.

           
He demanded an immediate halt to the activity.

           
“What is the matter, my lord?” asked the doctor.

           
“If I am to submit to this revulsionary procedure, I must confirm that she is indeed a virgin.”

           
The doctor’s assurances were useless, and the girl was made to lie down on a hard wooden table.

           
He could hear Popel in the next room, switching tactics again and demanding to know the name of the city where the secret society of rabbis had met this year in order to decide which community would kidnap and kill a Christian victim. Why did the
Kindermörderische Juden
pick Prague this year? To further divide the Christians? Speak!

           
The young virgin spread out before him was a truly devoted Catholic girl, willing and ready to make this sacrifice for a higher cause, and yet he couldn’t help being disgusted by the idea of any female who would actually submit to such a degrading procedure. Ugh! She hadn’t even washed herself first. Fortunately, he had been so preoccupied that he hadn’t washed his own hands since yesterday morning, so he had a nice layer of dirt to protect himself from the filthy juices defiling the area. He felt his own nethermost twinge as he pried her open and confirmed the presence of an intact piece of shiny film.

           
He straightened up and bestowed his approval, and a lackey fetched the golden chamber pot.

           
AT LEAST SOME PROGRESS was being made. When he was in Saxony three years earlier, they had burnt 133 witches in a single day. But it was nowhere near enough, since they were turning up
everywhere
—in Trier, in Arras, Trèves—the list went on and on.

           
The bishop spat on the floor to clear the taste from his mouth.

           
He had even heard of cases of men who took a woman home to bed only to discover that by some witchcraft, the woman had been transformed by the Devil into a man—that is, the Devil had used his cunning to make it
appear
so, since only God can actually effect such a transformation.