怪女孩‧蛻變中

Bethany Bled had been washing clothes down at the river when the man on the drappled horse had ridden up to her and told her that she was the most beautiful woman in all of Delphi. She was not used to flattery. The daughter of a charcoal burner – and illegitimate at that – she had never known the company of a man who could weave words so exquisitely as the Duke Delphi. For the next several days he made secret assignations with her and by the time Sunday came, she was ready to give her hear and soul and body to him. They met under the yews in the churchyard, where the many dead o the village were laid in humble graves.

“Lie with me here,” he said to her.

She was astonished at how forward he was and even more astonished at how easily she fell for his fine words and gentle manner. She lay with him, there in the lush grass beneath the spreading yew trees, and within a matter of minutes he had talked her out of her clothes and was upon here, having his way.

There was precious little pleasure in it for her, at least in the doing of the dead. But afterward, when he parted from her, she thought of him over and over, and imagined his eyes upon her neck and breasts and heard the promises he had made to her.

“I will marry you,” he'd said to her as she'd unbottoned her bodice, “and you'll be the most beautiful Duchess Delphi that ever lived and you'll want for nothing.”

“For nothing.”

“For nothing.”

Nineteen times he had made lover to her, on several occasions in the churchyard and once in the church itself, there on the hard, cold floor. But she had not care that the floor was cold or that he sometimes bruised her in his ardor: his promises made everything alright. He loved her, he swore, loved her as no one had ever loved a woman, back to the beginning of the world.

“Shall we be man and wife?” she'd asked him.

“Of course,” he had said.

“When?”

“In time.”

That was what he always said when she asked him – in time, in time, but as the weeks went by his promises began to falter. He still made his demands of her (and she, still flattered that she had gained the attention of so mighty a man, still gave in to him). She wasn't stupid, however. She knew that it was only a matter of time before her fine Duke deserted her completely. She had to do something about it, had to find some way to hold onto him. But how?

There was a woman known as Old Etta who lived on the outskirts of the village. Nobody spoke to her much when she went about in the street. But Bethany had heard that when some of the young women wanted babies or a man needed to curse the cattle of a neighbor; it was to Old Etta that they went for their means. Bethany went to her one midnight and explained her situation.

The old woman listened and then said: “What do you need from me?”

“Some herb that will make me love him always, so that he'll never desert me.”

“I doubt such an herb exists,” Old Etta replied. “But I might have something that would help you, I suppose.”

“Please, please, please, give it to me. I don't care about the cost.”

“Ah, listen to her! So indifferent to the price of things!” The woman gave Bethany a toothless grin. “Didn't you Mama teach you that everything comes with a price, girl?”

Old Etta didn't wait for a reply, but went to the table, where a number of small pots and jars were assembled. She took a pinch of the contents of three pots and deposited them in a small purse of undyed linen.

“Sleep one night with this between you legs,” she said as she passed it over, “and you will have some consequence of it. This I guarantee.”

“Thank you,” Bethany said and, paying the woman, hurried away.

She did as the old woman had instructed and slept with the little purse of bitter-smelling herbs between her legs. The Duke did not visit her the next day, or the day after, nor the day after that, and when he finally did appear Bethany was sure any effect the old woman's magic might have had would surely have faded, but no sooner had he lain with her than Bethany had proof that her purchase had been worth its price.

“Bethany, “ the Duke said. “I love you.”

“Yes?”

“Bethany. I love you.”

“Well, that's good. So –“

“Bethany. I love you.”

“Please, Lord. say something other than –“

“Bethany. I love you.”

But he could not. The words were all he had in his skull apparently. He uttered them over and over and over until his voice grew hoarse. And while he uttered them he made love to her, over and over and over. She soon began to tire of his attentions and of the ceaseless professions of love that accompanied them, and struggled to be free of him.

“Bethany, I love you,” he said as she pulled herself out from underneath him.

“Bethany, I love you,” he said as he followed her out of the churchyard apparently unconcerned that he wore nothing but his arousal.

“Bethany, I love you,” he said as he followed her down into the village to the door of her house, which she had slammed in his perfect face.

That was where his followers found him an hour later, his throat ragged from repeating his words of love that he spoke blood instead of syllables. They didn't ask for an explanation. They simply covered their master's nakedness and took him home.

Witch –hunters came for Bethany Bled the next day, with their menaces and their pricking-forks and their comprehensive price-lists for what guilty witch might be expected to pay for the service of being flogged and branded and burned.

Bethany was summarily accused of diabolical works. She denied them fiercely, of course. They put her to their rack. And soon she was admitting everything.

Poor Old Etta was burned quickly and without trial. Too many men and women, high and mighty, had profited from her love-phials and her poisons to want her to have any chance to speak about what she'd done. But Bethany's death was not to be so quiet or kind.

For six nights they kept her in the darkness of her dungeon, until at last she heard a key in the lock. The great oak door swung open and a man – withered and twitching – was carried into the filthy cell. Only when he spoke did the prisoner recognize her visitor.

“Bethany, I love you,” he croaked.

It was the Duke! My god, she thought, look at him! So reduced! So dried up and frail, his beauty gone, his youth gone, all wasted away in the space of a week or two. So much for love. His continued expressions of devotion toward her could not save her, of course.

They brought her out into the great torture chamber, where stood tormenting implements of every kind. The rack they'd stretched her on, braziers with brands, heated white in the embers. Weights and ropes for the strappado; a common garrote; axes, of course, for the restraint of hands and feet and the lopping of heads.

And an Iron Maiden, sometimes called the Maiden of Nuremberg. A device made in the likeness of a woman, into which the prisoner was put, and all closed up, so that in its confines they would die a long slow death, pierced through by the spikes that were arranged upon the interior of the monstrous device.

The Duke pointed toward it.

“Bethany, I love you,” he said. Though his tongue had no choice but to speak words of affection, his gesture was clear enough. It was a death sentence. He intended to see her die inside the Iron Maiden.

The priest began to recite a prayer, as she was dragged to the Maiden. But their pieties could not drown out the Duke's crazed repetitions.

“Bethany, I love you.”

“Bethany, I love you.”

“Bethany, I love you.”

They closed the door on her. The pain as the spikes pierced her body made her scream, a shrill scream that echoed back and forth inside her hot prison.

Sitting close to the Maiden, rocking back and forth, the Duke kept up his litany of love as Bethany's blood poured from the bottom of the monstrous device. Only when the crawling red blood had reached his feet did he finally fall silent and allow himself be carried away.

In the agonizing darkness, pungent with the smell of her blood and her entrails, Bethany heard a voice say:

“Want to join us?”

Who was speaking to her? Some devil was it, come up out of Hell to claim her sinning soul? No, it wasn't a devil. She wasn't dead. She could fee the spikes piercing her through and through.

“Who are you?” she murmured.

“My name is Tom Requiem,” the man said, “and we've come to bring you to join our Infernal Parade, if you care to do so?”

“Am I not dead?”

“Alive? Dead? Who cares? We don't concern ourselves with such petty distinctions. But better hurry if you want to come. We have to get you and your show-piece out of her before first light.”

“My show-piece?” said Bethany.

“Your Maiden,” said Requiem, “your beautiful Maiden.”

How could she refuse? It was better than Hell, wasn't it, to be out on the road playing out her Death and Resurrection, nightly for the entertainment of those who had the good fortune to meet the Infernal Parade upon the road? And who knew? Perhaps she'd find somebody else to love her somewhere along the way. Someone that she wouldn't have to connive with charms to make them tell her they love her; and would forgive her the wounds in her flesh and the coldness of her skin, if she loved them truly in return.