In an obscure corner of Gascony, there once lived a certain nobleman, the Baron de Tailhou. In his youth, the Baron had been a noted champion of the lists, a formidable man-at-arms in tournaments, a keen hunter of deer and wild boar; proud, lusty and ever eager for acclaim; tempestuous in temprament, jealous of his status, yet lacking in the tact, discipline and ambition needed to secure a place among the highest ranks of the French court. Instead, his days were given over to the pursuit of his various appetites: small things easily attained by a man of his standing. As he advanced in age, his vigour gradually diminished, continually surrendered to self-indulgence. Sensing his decline, he resented it bitterly. He found no joy or even consolation in the burgeoning manhood of his sons, seeing only in them reflections of his own faded youth.
***
One evening it happened that the Baron found himself playing host to a cleric from out of Avignon, sent by the Pope to investigate rumours of a resurgence of the Cathar heresy in the region. The meal had been a dreary one for the Baron: he had no aptitude for scholarship and no taste for discussion of ideas, whether heretical or orthodox. Theology held no interest for him and he had long been accustomed to keeping his religious observances - like all other duties - to a perfunctory minimum. However irked by the interminable prayers preceding supper, he was not such a fool though as to voice complaint to a man tasked with sniffing out religious irregularities.
With the candles burning low and the wine decanter nearing empty, the Baron was jerked from a reverie by the droning priest's increasing stridency.
"The Cathars pretend to secret knowledge," said the cleric, "but it is a twisted perversion of the True Scripture - a snare set by Satan himself to trap the unwary in blasphemous heresy and devil worship!"
This gave the Baron pause. He hadn't been listening properly, but talk of devils had piqued his interest and prompted an array of questions he was uncertain how to frame without making himself sound like a heretic in the making.
"This is a grave matter indeed!" nodded the Baron thoughtfully as an idea began to form in his mind. "But surely this devil worship can only be a delusion? There can be no real power in it unless God assents to it?"
"Satan is real and so is his power!" the cleric rejoined sharply. "God's ways are inscrutable. That His is the greater power is inarguable, but what purpose is served by His allowing Satan a free hand, we can only guess. Perhaps it is a test of faith. Men are so easily led astray: that is the cost of God's gift of free will. A man must have the potential to do evil for virtue to have any meaning. And surely there is virtue in us trying to prevent our brethren from falling into darkness and error, if God wills it."
"Surely so," the Baron replied placatingly, "and I would gladly give what aid I can in eradicating this evil. But I am a simple layman. How should I recognise these snares if they are fit to fool even learned men? Is it enough just to make doctrinal errors to be bound to Satan? That is a terrifying thought, that mere ignorance might have such dire consequences!"
"No," the cleric replied. "Heresy is merely the thin end of the wedge. A man, through the sin of pride perhaps, might dispute the truth of the Church's teachings, but that is not enough for him to be eternally lost. A heretic might recant and return to the bosom of the Lord. But heresy does open him up to infernal dangers. A man who rejects holy doctrine is just a small step away from rejecting God and the possibility of salvation, and that is the true evil we must resist! Once one man falls into this unforgiveable sin, Satan, through him, might persuade still others to follow his example. And that is the scheme of the heretics: to lead men through artfully constructed arguments into rejecting God and joining in foul and blasphemous communion with Satan... There is a book, a secret book - I believe it is Moorish in origin, but translated into Latin - which is known only by the innermost circle of the heretics. It contains instruction on Satanic communion. It is De Liber Diabolis. That is the key to everything. The treatises and sermons that they preach are nothing but strands of the web; but if we can locate and follow these strands, we will surely find the webspinner!"
And with these words, the notion then forming in the Baron's mind took a clear shape, and he knew he must obtain that book.
***
In this manner the Baron became the zealous and terrible right-hand of the Papal inquisition. With an energy and passion he had not known for many years, he set about discovering the whereabouts of the sectaries. He scattered silver among the commons to recruit a network of informants. He swooped to arrest and question wandering preachers. And while he diligently passed on his findings to the Church, he always made sure to do so only after he had already secretly explored every lead, so that his own private search for De Liber Diabolis remained two steps ahead of the Church's.
The investigation lasted for more than two years, and as it progressed, a thickening cloud of black smoke hung over the region as the purging fires roared, popping and spitting burning human fat. The ferocious hunt for heresy spread a great terror among the population. Fear and suspicion were rife. Much misery resulted from the informants: spying, lying, threats and blackmail; accusations, murders and suicides. But the Baron, who had never troubled himself with the concerns of the common people, was indifferent to it all. The search for this damnable book consumed him to a degree far beyond any of his youthful pusuits. Here was the key to everything, and he burned to possess it.
***
So it happened that one day in autumn, his investigations led him to the Château de Morileau, which was held by a second-cousin of the Baron. By now, the Baron had gained a notorious reputation for his apparent vendetta against the Cathars, and news of his coming sent ripples of fear throughout the countryside, even despite his efforts to move inconspicuously, with only a manservant. On arriving at the château, he greeted his cousin warmly and made a show of demonstrating to all that the purpose of his visit was purely familial, concerned with a possible marriage between his youngest son and one of his cousin's daughters. Reassured by this friendly display by the Baron, the Chevalier de Morileau ordered a fine banquet be prepared for his cousin, and meanwhile took him to inspect his new horses and prized gyrfalcon. As they walked the grounds of the château, they were everywhere watched by the anxious eyes of the servants, who knew fine-well their master's predilections for unorthodox theology. Hissed conversations circled around them, like rats scurrying behind skirting-boards: speculations and half-formed contingencies quietly swept throughout the halls and passages. Yet in the midst of all this, the two cousins presented a spectacle of ease and concord. Supper was a fine affair, with a troubador singing chansons and a fool recounting ribald jokes. Wine and laughter flowed in equal measure as they reminisced over their glory days on the tournament fields, and gradually the tension among the servants eased.
***
It was late into the night, with the servants already dismissed, that the Baron broached the true purpose of his visit.
"Look, cousin - hush! I must tell you something. Your time is short. We know all about you..."
The Chevalier's laugh petered out as he stared glassy-eyed at his cousin, his grin melting into a grimace.
"What - what are you talking about?"
The Baron leaned forward onto the table, hands clasped and raised, eyes suddenly sober and intent.
"We know you have been funding the spread of heresy. We have accounts and testimony from the scribes you paid. We have confessions from the preachers you hired. We have your letters of instruction to your fellow sectaries. The inquisition is closing in on you. Even as we speak, Rochefort and Rielle are being arrested. With their confessions - and they will confess - we will close the net on Henri Le Clerc, and his confession will lead directly to you."
The Chevalier stared, open-mouthed, slumped back in his chair.
"Fortunately for you," continued the Baron, "I am ahead of the official investigation and found out about you before they have. You've been a damn fool, but still, you're my kin, and I won't see you tried if I can possibly help it."
The Chevalier tried to speak, but managed only a faint whimper.
"There is a chance we can pull you out of this mess, but I will need your full co-operation." At this, the Chevalier nodded, wide-eyed and mute. "Le Clerc is as good as a dead man. He's an ass anyway. A jumped-up little bourgeois. If we move now, we can pin everything on him. I need all your papers, documents, manuscripts - everything. I will comb through it all to remove anything that might incriminate you, and the rest I can arrange to be found in Le Clerc's possession."
"But - but won't he still accuse me?"
"Possibly, but there will be no evidence outside of my grasp. Assuming you offer to give full assistance to the inquisition, and don't say anything stupid, it will be the word of a commoner against the word of a noble, and your free and frank co-operation will be proof of your innocence. But for now, I need all your papers - especially, if you have it, De Liber Diabolis."
At the mention of the book, the Chevalier gave a quick, suspicious glance at the Baron, who noticed it and continued in explanation:
"The inquisition is well aware of the book's existence and knows it is restricted to the highest rank. If Le Clerc is found to have a copy, it will seal the case against him and help convince the Pope that the inquisition has run its course."
The Chevalier stared into the fire for a moment and then spoke: "Come with me."
They rose from their seats and, pausing to light a small oil-lamp, headed for the sleeping quarters. In the Chevalier's rooms, they entered a small, chilly side-room opposite the bedroom. Again giving a sidelong glance at his cousin, the Chevalier pulled aside a cabinet with a grunt, knelt down on the tiled floor and set to work removing a part of the wooden pannelling that encircled the room. Behind the panel was a recess containing a heavy wooden casket, about the size of a baby. The Baron moved to take it from his cousin's arms, but he twisted away slightly and tightened his grasp on the box.
"Look, why don't we just burn all of it?" asked the Chevalier.
The Baron sighed impatiently. "Because then there won't be enough evidence to convince anyone that the trail ends with Le Clerc. Give it to me. Is this everything?"
"Yes."
"The book as well?"
The Chevalier nodded mutely and with scarcely concealed excitement, the Baron silently exulted.
"Then leave it with me, cousin. You have done the right thing!"
As it turned out, that proved to be a lie.
***
Sleepless with excitement as he was, the Baron could scarcely wait til dawn before setting out for home. There, he locked himself away with the book, eager to learn its secrets, and undertaking preparations until, on mid-winter's day, he was ready.
Hidden away in his rooms in the depths of the longest night, he began the ritual, laying out a tar-black pentagram, making the proper incantations and anointing himself with the blood of an infant - one of his own bastards perhaps, snatched from a kitchen maid's crib while they both slept. In the dim candle-light of his room, the pentagram began to glow in orange outline, becoming incandescent as the stench of sulphur began to overwhelm the burning incense. Suddenly the white-hot pentagram flared and faded; the candles guttered and blew out and from the pitch-darkness, a voice spoke:
"You summoned me... master?"
The Baron shivered. It was not an unpleasant voice: rich and resonant, even mellifluous. But there was something mocking and scornful in the undertone, and in this darkness, it made his hair stand on end.
"I- I did," replied the Baron, startled at the sound of slow footsteps behind him - except they didn't sound like human footsteps: more like the clatter of a horse's hooves in a cobbled courtyard. The steps halted in front of him and there was a sudden flash of fire as somehow, without flint or tinder, a candle was lit. The candle was raised to reveal a handsome, surprisingly youthful face, pale with a clear complexion, black tousseled hair and a small, pointed beard on his chin. But the eyes! The irises were yellow like amber, and the pupils narrow, horizontal slits. They examined the Baron, one brow raised in a faintly ironic expression.
"And how may I serve you?"
The Baron hesitated for a moment before apprehensively clearing his throat: "I have a boon to ask of you. I- I wish to be immortal, in the full strength of my youth."
"Is that all?" The figure seemed amused. The Baron said nothing. "And what might you offer me in return?"
"My soul!" the Baron blurted. The figure laughed, a rich musical peel.
"Is that all! You will forgive me, but that doesn't seem a very fair price to me. I would require something more..."
The Baron bridled at this, his great pride pierced, and barely restrained himself from returning the insult.
"Such as?" he snapped.
"Blood. Human blood. Once a month, every month. The entire vessel."
"Is that all?" the Baron rejoined contemptuously.
Satan smiled.
"That will be all."
"Then we have an agreement."
"Very good. I have the contract already prepared, if you'd care to sign..." he gestured to the lectern where De Liber Diabolis rested and the Baron followed him over to it. The Lord of Lies handed him a quill, and after the briefest hesitation, the Baron took it and signed his name.
"Very good, and to seal it, we will need blood. Your blood."
The Baron gave a violent start and stared angrily at the figure, who smiled once more.
"Fear not: a mere thumb-print will suffice..." And with that the Devil seized the Baron's right hand in an iron grip, and with a razor-like talon, made a thin diagonal slice across his thumb. The Baron cried out at the sharp pain. The Devil released his grip and gestured to the contract. The Baron stared at him in shock, his own hand clasped round his stinging thumb. He examined it. The cut was deep, but clean and for a moment, bloodless. Then the blood began to well up from the wound, crimson gleaming in the candle-light. He wondered if it was too late to change his mind, if it were the blood that mattered rather than the signature.
Satan, sensing his hesitation, raised a quizzical eyebrow.
"You have doubts now? After all the blood you have spilled in pursuit of your desire, you hesitate over this one last drop? Do you really imagine a man so embroiled in sin as you might somehow be redeemed? Deal or no, your soul was destined to be mine, so you may as well get all you can for it." He gestured once more to the contract. Slowly, the Baron reached forth and pressed his bloody thumb-print to the paper.
"Very good!" he almost purred, taking up the contract and blowing gently on the bloody print while eyeing the Baron with malign pleasure. "We have an agreement then," he said, quickly rolling up the contract and backing away, scroll clutched to his breast and frame lowered in a mocking bow. Within three steps, he vanished and the solitary candle flickered out, plunging the Baron into a darkness deeper and more dreadful than any he could conceive.
***
At the Château de Morileau, the preceding weeks had been a waking nightmare for the Chevalier. News of the arrests of Rielle and Rochefort had arrived two days after the Baron de Tailhou's visit, followed less than a week later by the arrest of Le Clerc. This whole time, the Chevalier was in a rising agony of anxiety, unable to do anything, and indeed, compelled to pretend he had no concerns at all. To intensify his misery, he felt a growing sense of guilt for his willingness to betray his subordinate when it was becoming clear that Le Clerc, for his part, was stubbornly holding out under horrific tortures. Indeed, he only gave up the Chevalier's name after weeks of torture, enduring the rack, the whip, castration, his finger nails being torn out, his legs broken and his feet being completely burnt off to the ankle before he broke down. So distraught was de Morileau by his imaginings of Le Clerc's torments that his thoughts turned to suicide, convinced that even if he did escape conviction by the inquisition, he'd never escape the damning judgement of his own conscience. His arrest, when it came, was therefore a great relief to the Chevalier, who had resolved to meet a martyr's death: a resolution not weakened by the realisation that his cousin had lied to him and not tampered with the evidence or pinned anything on Le Clerc. Indeed, all of his papers - including the book - were "found" in their secret recess where the Chevalier knew they weren't. The knowledge that his cousin had merely wanted the book for himself, and as it was among the other papers, had clearly already used it, was a bitter satisfaction of sorts. That fool de Tailhou would pay for his treachery a thousandfold, and so the Chevalier saw no reason to implicate him at his trial.
The Baron, for his part, was quickly discovering the drawbacks of his deal. He had not magically gotten younger in appearance. Certainly he felt stronger and more energetic, but this was largely redundant as all of his drives and desires were gone. Nothing gave any pleasure or satisfaction, or seemed worthwhile or even necessary. His betrayal of his cousin was a mere loose-end resolved by an order to a servant. There was no malice in it; merely a habit of self-preservation that he hadn't yet grown out of. While he skipped the trial, he did attend the execution incognito, largely to learn the full extent of his inner emptiness. He watched his cousin go to the stake, trembling but resolute; heard his confession and defiant refusal to recant, and he watched him burn alive; saw the sackcloth smoulder and smoke; his skin crack and shrivel and blacken; his agonised screams as tongues of flame erupted from his flesh and his fat bubbled and burned. And all through this, the Baron's only thought was that his cousin was a fool who suffered needlessly for his own pride; that if he had recanted - mere words - his neck would have been swiftly and painlessly broken before the kindling was lit. How far a man will go to feel he is right, and how little it matters!
***
In the months that followed, he was also quickly discovering how onerous a task it was to commit a murder monthly. Firstly, it was clear to him that he could not work from home: there were too many servants about at all hours and nowhere suitably private where victims could be brought in and out undetected. It was also clear that his victims would have to be strangers: merchants and travelling tradesmen and the like, who might plausibly disappear on the road without much fuss, perhaps the victims of bandits. To this end, he set about finding a suitable cave in the foothills of the Pyrenees, not too far from the roads, where he might set up the altar. Such caves, however, also tended to attract bandits, for much the same reasons. Eventually he found one, hidden amongst undergrowth, that could be accessed by crawling fifteen feet or so through a tunnel before opening up into a small chamber. The approach to the cave entrance itself had no real path so the Baron was obliged to cut one himself, sweating and cursing all the while. He reflected bitterly that he had no manservant he could trust as an accomplice to murder. Indeed, his own manservant was proving to be a hellish nuisance, accustomed as he was to accompanying his master everywhere. It just wasn't done to leave a noble alone and unattended, which meant the Baron had the devil's own time shaking him off. Naturally, the Baron's sudden change of habits, disregard for proper etiquette and general slyness and frequent unexplained abscences were noticed by all his servants and caused much speculation.
His first victim was a tinker. The Baron had selected a straight stretch of open road, situated on a rise, calculating that travellers would be less on their guard there and that he'd be able to see anyone else approaching for some distance in both directions. The Baron hid behind a solitary tree by the edge of the road, listening to the rhythmic clatter of pots and pans and the tinker singing quietly to himself; he darted out as he passed, fetching him a solid blow to the back of the head with a cudgel. The tinker collapsed with an alarmingly loud racket, and after a moment's hesitation, the Baron set to work tying his hands and feet with ropes. This was no simple task in itself as the tinker had fallen with both hands under him and with some tangling of his cloak and bulky bags of wares, and the Baron, inexperienced in this business and besides numbed by the wintry chill, kept fumbling with the ropes while constantly trying to watch the road. He was just finishing with the ropes when the tinker regained consciousness and began crying loudly in alarm. It was then the Baron realised he had no gag.
"Shut up!" he hissed furiously, cursing his oversight. The tinker began struggling against the ropes and screaming for help, and didn't stop even after receiving a savage kick in the ribs. A wave of panic swept over the Baron: it was all going wrong. But the long years of training for battle came to the fore and he regained his composure. Moving quickly now, he took his knife and cut a long strip from the tinker's cloak and stuffed one end of it into his mouth before wrapping it round his head and tying it. Now he began the difficult business of dragging the still-struggling tinker the forty or so yards back to the trees where the Baron had hidden his horse. He got no more than a third of the way there, cursing the tinker's baggage as it snagged on bushes, when he finally settled the tinker's resistance by clubbing him several times back into unconsciousness. Despite the bitter cold, the Baron was sweating and breathless by the time he had dragged the body to his horse. Once there, he set about untangling his victim from his luggage. He was at a loss for what to do with the bags of tools and pots and pans. Clearly robbers would have taken them, but he had no use for any of it. He decided he'd have to take it all and dispose of it later. Having separated the tinker from his bags, it was a simple thing to lift him onto the horse: he was a tall but scrawny man. What was more difficult was leading the horse through some four miles of trackless woods in the gathering gloom of a late afternoon in winter. The constant need for detours around dense undergrowth meant the Baron quickly got lost, for all his experience tracking and hunting game in the forests of Gascony. It was night before he stumbled, more by chance than intent, on the freshly cleared path that lead to the cave. Fortunately the tinker was still out cold and didn't begin to come round until the Baron dragged him off the horse at the cave's entrance. The tinker fell heavily to the ground in a groaning heap while the exhausted Baron set down his lantern and began clearing the brushwood that hid the entrance. That done, he took a third length of rope and tied it around the tinker's feet. Then he took up the lantern once more and crawled into the tunnel, dragging the now struggling tinker behind him. It proved impossible to crawl, carry a lantern and drag a man wriggling furiously like a fish on a hook, so the Baron dropped the rope and took the lantern down the tunnel to the cave. There he set it down and returned to the tunnel, feeling for the rope and on finding it, began laboriously heaving the tinker to his doom.
Inside the cave, the Baron had laid out the pentagram and candles, which he now lit from the lantern. In the middle of the pentagram he had placed an iron cauldron - one of the many mundane items he had had petty difficulties procuring. Once again, he reflected on how dependent he had been on servants and how having to forgo their aid made everything so difficult and complex. With these bitter thoughts, he began the incantations, too tired and resentful to feel any more apprehension. Wearily, he dragged the petrified tinker into the centre of the glowing pentagram and wrestled him into position face down over the cauldron before cutting his throat with his knife. The blood splashed into the iron hollow. The Baron gripped the tinker's hair and pulled his head back a little to allow the blood to pour more freely. The tinker's struggles quickly slackened and petered out as his lifeblood filled the cauldron. As the tinker's life drained away, figures began to emerge from the shadows: monstrous figures with fur and scales and slavering jaws and mad, frenzied eyes. Among them, the Baron saw his master - for now the Baron had no doubts that he was the servant. The blood slowed to a trickle and the Baron hoisted the now lifeless body into a slightly inverted position so that the remainder might run out more quickly. Eventually, it slowed to a drip and the Baron cast the corpse aside.
The Prince of Darkness stepped forward on his goat-legs, smiling, a golden bejewelled chalice grasped in his right claw. He dipped the cup into the cauldron, raised it in an ironic toast to the host and drained it with evident relish. He nodded to the assembled demons, gesturing to the cauldron, and they all eagerly crowded forward brandishing their own cups. The Baron staggered back into the wall of the cave and slumped to the floor. He watched in horror at this gabbling madness of awful, misshapen creatures, squawking and bellowing and guzzling blood. Unable to bear it anymore, he buried his face in the crook of his arm and, remarkably, fell asleep.
***
Time passed. Months turned to years, and the years accumulated like drifts of snow. Dark rumours eddied and swirled around the towns and villages. First they told tales of robbers and outlaws in the foothills of the Pyrenees. But in time, it wasn't just lone travellers who disappeared, but on occasion, it was locals: here it was a farmer, there a chandler's apprentice... sometimes it was even infants spirited from their cots. Rumour turned from robbers to witches, even vampires. No bodies were ever found. Sometimes rumour reported a monstrous figure in a black cloak and cowl; sometimes strange noises in the rafters or solitary screams in the night. Sometimes it was more than just rumour.
At the Château de Tailhou, the rumours were especially thick and fearful as speculation mounted about the increasingly odd and secretive behaviour of the Baron. It was noted how often reports of disappearances coincided with his own mysterious absences, which generally occurred once or twice a month, each for some days at a time. Each time he left before dawn, unaccompanied, on horseback with some small baggage, riding towards the mountains. Once, a huntsmen's son resolved to follow him. He hid himself in a hedgerow at the edge of a field close to the crossroads. After the Baron passed, he followed, being careful to stay some way behind, keeping low behind hedges and in ditches, once jumping a fence and crossing the road to melt into the woods there, shadowing his quarry all the while. By late morning, they were in the foothills and the Baron pulled off the road and into the forest. After some hesitation, the huntsmen's son carefully followed, staying well back and losing sight of the Baron, but having no difficulty in following the trail of hoof-prints in the forest-floor. They led to a secluded campsite, where the boy found the Baron sat staring at the remains of a dead fire, his horse tethered to a tree and his baggage unrolled into a bed and tent. After a time, the Baron looked up from the ashes and around the small clearing, gaze sweeping listlessly all around until it reached the place where the spy was hiding, where it paused for a long moment. The boy's heart leapt into his mouth: he felt sure the Baron was staring right at him, yet he made no move. Then his gaze passed on and he set to rooting in his pack for a waterskin. Slowly, the boy began to extricate himself from his hiding place and withdraw. The Baron was now on his feet, untying his horse and leading it away through the far side of the clearing. The boy briefly considered following him further, but had lost his nerve, so instead he returned home with his story.
The huntsman's son's tale did nothing to allay the fears and suspicions at the château They were only inflamed further when it was established that the Baron's campsite was in the vicinity of the road which many of the missing travellers were known to have taken. This was heightened still further when the Baron's own manservant remarked that the Baron's strange and secretive behaviour had begun about the time of the first known disappearances. The manservant, despite forty years of personal service to the Baron, had no love for his master, and indeed he was affronted by the Baron's increasingly bad-tempered treatment and irritable dismissals, and so he was frequently the fountainhead of much of the speculation surrounding the Baron. As the chronology was worked out, the pieces all seemed to fall into place. But could he really be the murderer? The consensus among the servants who had known him the longest and, in a sense, most intimately, was yes, they could entirely believe it. He had always had a violent streak, and his queer and uncharacteristically zealous involvement with the inquisition hinted at a lust for cruelty and torture. Since the inquisition was closed down, might he not have turned to waylaying strangers so he might continue to indulge his twisted desires? After all, the end of one and the advent of the other seemed to coincide. Thus, speculation became certainty in the minds of the servants at Château de Tailhou. The Baron had gone bad, perhaps mad, but certainly dangerous. Over the weeks and months that followed, the servants began to quietly slip away from the château, abandoning their posts and their allegiances. The manservant didn't dally for long before he too fled, leaving the Baron all but deserted in his château.
Not that the Baron cared about being abandoned. If anything, it simplified his life a great deal: now he had the château to himself, he no longer needed the cave in the mountains. He no longer needed to keep up the pretense of eating; his desire for food had long-since left him and he found he had no need of it anyway. Contrariwise, while he had no need of sleep either, he had a great desire for it, or at any rate, for the brief oblivion it sometimes brought. Freed from any need to uphold convention, the Baron quite went to seed, neither bathing nor shaving nor keeping regular hours. He came and went as he saw fit, bringing victims back to his den with little concern for being seen. Indeed, the local villagers did sometimes see the Baron returning with what appeared to be a body slung across his saddle, and they began taking stern precautions to secure their homes at night against his depredations. They feared to go near the château to deliver their taxes and dues, and yet, no-one came to collect them or make any demands for the customary payments. Further afield from the château, the villagers were more lax with their security, not knowing the evil in their midst until one of their number joined the ever increasing ranks of the disappeared. Terror spread, and here and there, some of the serfs also began to flee, abandoning the fields and taking with them what livestock they could before crossing the Pyrenees to Spain. With some farms and even entire villages becoming deserted, and no feudal dues being levied from those that remained, and the once regular fairs and markets falling into abeyance as merchants feared to travel to attend, the economy of that corner of Gascony began spiralling into chaos.
Seeing the baronial estate collapsing about them, the Baron's sons pleaded with their father to take some action to halt the slide into ruin, or else for him to delegate his powers to them so they might take over the day to day running of the barony. He refused. In a rage, the first two sons stormed out and left Gascony; the eldest went to Italy and sought service with the Visconti's of Milan, being killed there in one of the interminable civil wars; the second fell-in with adventurers and other desperate, penniless sons of the nobility and involved himself in a treasonous plot that brought him to a bad end. The remaining son withdrew to an outlying estate and busied himself with trying to manage it as best he could.
***
Twenty years passed in this grim condition before the youngest son once more sought an audience with his father. He had been assured by local peasants that the Baron was still alive and regularly seen on horseback, despite his advanced age. On seeing the condition of the old château though, he was inclined to doubt it. The place looked like a tomb: dust and cobwebs everywhere, empty sconces and decaying tapestries hung on the walls. Yet sure enough, among the dirt and debris of rodents on the floors, there were scuffed track marks visible in the passages. He followed them with some apprehension to the Baron's chambers.
He opened the door without knocking. The air was stale and musty, the room dim with only a faint nimbus of sunlight edging around the shuttered windows.
"Father?" he quavered.
"What is it?" came a hoarse, dusty reply from a dark corner. As his eyes adjusted to the poor light, he could make out a figure hunched in a high-backed chair. Little could be seen of the face behind the long and unkempt hair and beard.
"Father! I- I trust you are well?"
The Baron gave no response, yet somehow the silence was menacing. The son continued:
"Father, I have a request to make of you. Your lands are desolate. Your estates are mostly in ruin from neglect. The people drift away. My brothers - your sons - are dead. Yet I too have a son - your grandson - and I ask myself, what shall be his inheritance? He is a young man now. Strong and vigorous and full of ambitions. But all I can offer him is a small manorial estate; the life of a farmer. He is a nobleman! He is your heir! Father, I ask that you abdicate your title so that your grandson might inherit and restore the family's fortune and honour."
For a long moment, the Baron sat in silence, contemplating his youngest, his last-remaining son. Then he pulled himself from his seat and stepped towards him. His face was dark with dirt-crusted wrinkles and his stench over-powering. He stood before his son and raised his left hand to caress his cheek; long, talon-like nails scraped lightly into his face. Then with lightning speed, he swung his right fist at his son's jaw, striking a terrific blow that knocked him off his feet and left him in a stunned heap in the middle of a pentagram.
When he started to recover his wits, he found the room lit with candles and his father chanting some weird prayer in Latin. Still dazed and speechless, he watched, barely able to lift his head from the floor, where strange lines glowed. The musty odour of the room was now masked by a growing stench of sulphur. What was happening? He tried to speak and push himself upright, only to see his father - or some wild and stinking fiend pretending to be his father - step forward brandishing a knife...
The End
Written between 9th and 15th October 2021