Beasts of the Bastille
Part 5
For Part 1 of this serial, read HERE
For the previous part read HERE
The Story So Far - twins Joseph-Marie, a witch, and Marie-Joseph, a deserting soldier, are held in separate prisons. They contrive a way to write letters to each other involving familiars requiring blood payment.
In their years of wandering since separation, they’ve encountered many bizarre incidents and strange people, including the monstrous glutton Tararreand the revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat. Marie explains that she has also become a lycanthrope, known as the Beast of Gévaudan.
Joseph continues their correspondence…
Yes, sweet sister,
I feel your beast squirming inside your skin and I feel that it also dwells in me, but perhaps it manifests in completely a different way in my case. You transform into a – I was going to say monster, but you are no monster, or if you are, you are my lovely monster and I own your monstrosity for my own. You become a thing of vengeance and so do I, but I remain a man for all that with the weaknesses of a simple human beast, and for that I confess to some considerable envy for your state. If I could become as you are, I would.
Your messenger indeed came to me and brought your gold pieces, and I paid the postage with my blood though it weakened me in my already weakened state. But I have the coins and can resume these letters with some regularity, at least while I stay in this fetid hole.
You’re right, it is a squalid cell I’m forced to survive in, but there are worse. This is the luxury suite and below me is the oubliette, the place where those with no money are dumped to waste away. I’ve seen it and was threatened by the jailer with placement in there, but now I have your remittances I am spared it, at least until my plan reaches fruition and I may be... not here.
It’s truly abhorrent what people can be made into. In that dark oubliette are wretches you would not even imagine are people, things that scrounge in the rancid straw for beetles and who count a raw trapped rat as a feast. But enough of that.
After I escaped from Tararre, after I became a deserter and vagabond and sentenced to a summary death like the one I’d myself imposed as a soldier, strung up on the nearest tree limb and left to the crows, after that I wandered the byways. I stole a suit of clothes and left my army uniform behind. I was free, free of fear, but not of the consequences of my acts.
Again Jean-Jacques says “Peoples once accustomed to masters are not in a condition to do without them. If they attempt to shake off the yoke still they are alienated from freedom.” Utter freedom is freedom from want, my sister, not pretty words about liberty.
I wandered the Margaride mountain peaks in the Gévaudan, that stark country where even the goats shiver in the wind that drives madness from mountaintop to mountaintop. The people there spoke about a Beast in the forest, some kind of wolf or lion or beast of prey that slunk down from time to time to prey on their flocks. They were disposed to hire shepherds to watch their sheep and goats, and so I found a place to stay with a peasant family called the Roberts.
They gave me a dish of gruel every day, poor stuff but no more than what they ate themselves, and they had me stay in the shepherd’s hut up on the hillside which was good for me as I was far from the roads and the patrols of the King’s soldiers.
And so it was that on one night with the moon full and the sky a mess of scudding frightened clouds, I saw the Beast, prowling not far from my hut. It had eyes like red rubies and a strong body like a dog’s but much larger, and a way of moving that was like a liquid fire. I felt you were near and I felt something that I thought had gone away from me, that plunging in the belly that marks fear.
And so I squatted down in the hut and cowered while outside a sheep screamed and was carried off. I felt you nearby and I feared for you and I feared you and I feared you were the Beast and I knew it and I feared again.
But now I know and I fear no more.
Write soon
Your loving brother,
Joseph-Marie
Mon Cher,
I have often wondered, what is a monster? Is it one that kills, or merely frightens with its hideous features? A creature no human could countenance? One without pity or remorse? Or one that is merely different? Many kill and are not considered monsters… I was in Gévaudan some time ago, I had to protect some of my sisters from accusations that would have seen them hanged. Were the people I killed innocent? Not in my mind. They were a sect of witch hunters, training their children to kill my kind. My conscience is clear. My sisters do not think me a monster, but to the families of the ones I murdered, I most certainly am. So perhaps there are no monsters, or perhaps we’re all monsters. Our gods, whoever they might be, are left to sort out the mess. I see myself as an instrument of my master, no more, no less. His morality is mine, although it might not be the morality of my victims. Where does this leave morality and monstrosity? Perhaps I am not the beast to decide….
I remember your scent in Gévaudan, it was you, unmistakably, but an older, wiser you. I can discern friend from foe in wolf form, but affection is impossible. I would never harm you, but our reunion would nonetheless not have been congenial. Still, odd as it sounds, it was good to taste you on the wind.
I will do all can to spare you the oubliette, vile places that turn men into animals. Want does that, does it not? Make animals of men? My Marat also spoke of freedom, as did your Jean-Jacques, “freedom is abolition from want,” he said. Want, not desire. Men will never find abolition from desire. I have heard of the men in the far east who live without desire… but I am skeptical. Having all of one’s creature comforts met, one’s thoughts will turn to desire, it is simply the way of mankind. We are not capable of being satisfied.
I’m guilty of desire myself. At Gévaudan, I killed more than just witch hunters. I killed some merely for the taste of their blood. I ripped out throats to drink the hot, frothy rush of life. There’s nothing like it, mon frère, to feel a life ebb through the grip of your teeth. There are scents that one must coddle in the belly…
Enough. I go on too much, you’ll be disgusted with me.
After the mountains, I returned to the city, in Lyon. I hate the smell of humans. You can almost smell them rotting inside their living flesh. Overworked to living death. Empires built on their backs as though they’re merely a spade handle one can replace when it breaks. I know, it seems hypocritical of me to talk of the value of human life. But at least, I will die without what I eat. I savor, but I do not glut… my mind wanders. He’s starving me again. Perhaps this explains my gustatory preoccupations.
But I was in Lyon. Some of my sisters there lived in the Cordeliers. They ran an apothecary shop. Herbs were never my strength, but I’m skilled with protective magic and they needed it. They were five women living without a man, that will always arouse suspicion. There is something so unsettling to men about an unwed woman, gather a few of us together and we’re downright terrifying. Once I arrived the harassment from the city government stopped, and for a time I thought we would live in peace.
But decay is the way of nature, peace will decay into chaos.
I shall have to tell you more later, I grow weary and my hand shakes.
You mentioned a plan. Perhaps you could tell me of it, if it isn’t too dangerous.
Yours eternally,
Marie-Joseph
Dear sister, I write in haste
Too late to tell you of my plan for it is already executed and I am free. I had hoped to break out without bloodshed, but it was not to be. Someone needed to die and I regret it had to be that way. But I regret it far less when I consider who it was.
Your servant, the one who brought me your coins, was key. Perhaps he hasn’t told you, the fine little fellow, but we have reached our own arrangement. Instead of an offering of my blood as payment for those courier services, I suggested that he slide into the jailer’s rooms on his way out and take a few drops of that gentleman’s arterial substance.
I may also have suggested that he take it all, all the bastard’s blood, along with the keys that hung at his belt. Is it a crime to set a beast out to pasture, or a send a servant out for victuals? I certainly didn’t suggest he do the same to the guardsman at the inner gate, but so it was. I knew that one too and I knew him for a brigand, so it weighs little on my conscience. The wretches whom he used to rape in the oubliette will sleep more soundly for his absence this night.
And with that we stepped out into the moonlight, the creature and I. We were in the courtyard of the old fortress they use as a prison here in Grenoble, the Bastille. Do you know the place? It stands high above the city, pointing its cannons at the citizens below. There are many detachments of cannoneers in this place and guards stand sentry at the main gates. There was only one way to go – up.
I will spare you a detailed narration of how I scaled the walls with the help of your servant, my new friend. How I stood on the roof of the fortress with a world at my feet, the full moon glancing its silver light on the sleeping rooftops of the city far below. How I stood at the brink of the roof with the creature whispering in my ear: “Jump, for I and my friends will catch you... Jump and place your faith in the beasts of the nearworld!”
I scarcely knew what was happening. The waves of nausea that wove their skeins around me, the hot breath of your creature in my ear, the silver tracery of the city so far beneath my feet.
I jumped
This serial continues with PART 6 next Tuesday, 16 June
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