Michael Rowe - Enter, Night

If the stories were true, and if Father de Céligny had brought his plague with him from the Old World to the New, then he and the Savages would have had to find a place to rest during the daylight hours. There were no obvious graves (nor would there have been, in light of the Savages animosity towards the interment of their dead, preferring, as I understood the custom, to raise the departed one’s body on a sort of platform above ground).

A thought came to me then, as a blessing from God. I remembered the diabolical wolves that had stalked me without attacking when I came too close to the cliffs outside the village yesterday morning. The very same wolves that had proved such ruthlessly efficient jailers, which had kept me inside the house until sunset when these creatures would once again walk unencumbered through the night. If control of the wolves through supernatural agency was within de Céligny’s power, than it could only mean that they were protecting him while he slept.

Which meant, simply, that the place where he-where they-slept could only be the place where the cliffs rose up. Perhaps there were caves. Dark places where the light would not reach, wild places where they could sleep undisturbed.

I searched the huts in the village and was in despair of finding what I needed until I came to the last one, which seemed to be a storehouse of some sort. In that hut, beneath a pungent heap of dried animal hides, I found a bundle wrapped tightly beneath the skins. Eagerly, I pulled it open and found a smallish bow and two crude arrows. Even to my untrained eye it seemed old and warped, and more like a child’s toy than an actual weapon. But I took it gladly, adding it to my poor arsenal, along with a candle, and a tinderbox.

I turned my eyes towards the sky. Though it was still morning, there was a silver-grey quality to the light that hinted of shortening days and early dusk. I struck out across the village towards the cliffs with the bow and my faith. My fate was now entirely in God’s hands. If I were to fail in my mission this time, it would be into His hands that I would consign my martyrdom.

By the position of the sun, I reckoned that I had spent three hours, perhaps four, exploring the cliffs that ringed St. Barthélemy. The upward climb had been difficult, but the rock face was dry enough that my feet could find purchase.

It seems strange to think of it tonight, but as I remember the early hours of that bloody day so many years ago, the immediate recollection I have of that long walk to the caves is not only a memory of terror, but also of great beauty.

They say that in the hours before his execution, a condemned man experiences a fatal sort of calmness, one that allows for deep meditation, prayer, and reflection. Since my arrival in New France, I had not allowed myself to see anything but the perilous danger of the unknown, be it the inclemency of the seasons, the barbarous inhospitality of the Savages, and the dangers that seemed to lurk behind every distant, jutting island in every impossible lake. While I had grown accustomed to the foul smells and the casual barbarism that infected even the most mundane interaction in New France, from the crudeness of the filthy voyageurs who came to resemble the Indians in appearance and bearing, to the awful customs of the Savages themselves, I had never been able to see any beauty anywhere, except in my memories of home.

Today, facing certain death, I saw beauty. Wild, cruel, implacable beauty, to be sure, but beauty nonetheless. The world was gold and blue, the trees aflame with fiery colours the likes of which I had never seen. Against them, the sky was an indescribably exquisite lapis. All around me was a sense of silent vastness, as though this land was its own world, a world whose borders were so distant as to be irrelevant. I could easily picture the sun rising on one end of this country whilst simultaneously setting on the other.

And then, I felt yet another chill, this one coming from my soul. For I remembered that to all this beauty had come Father de Céligny, carrying his secret like a plague bacillus from the old world into the new. Did the monster wonder at his good fortune at finding such an exquisite expanse of unspoiled innocence upon which to stake his claim? Had this been his plan, perhaps? Had he intuited that, in France and elsewhere in Europe, there would be those who knew what he was, and, ignorant peasants though they would most likely be, they would also know the means of dispatching him?

Here in New France, the creature would find only innocence upon which to prey. He would only find the childlike, trusting Savages whose own superstitions did not encompass European superstitions that might correctly show him for what he was.

Did de Céligny dream of outwardly spiralling concentric circles of cannibalistic creation-of feeding on these people and making them like him, then sending them to prey on other Savages, first ten, then a hundred, then a thousand, then a million, until the entirety of New France was his personal Tartarus, with de Céligny crowned its Lord of Chaos?

Did this demon delight in mocking by his very existence our sworn mission, as Jesuits sworn to bring the light of Christ to the Savages by bringing them darkness? By taking from these poor people their lives and eternal souls instead of saving them? By disguising himself as one of us, turning our priest’s robes into the cerements of the grave, wreaking fiendish machinations while calling himself a holy Father?

The very thought filled me with revulsion and outrage. Ahead, through the trees, loomed the cliffs. I was awed yet again at the uncanny silence all around me, as I had on the first day I’d arrived at St. Barthélemy. No birds sang, nor even wind in the treetops. The only noise was the sound of my feet on the leaves and the fallen twigs on the ground.

The wolf attacked without warning. There was no stalking, nor growling, no herding this time. It was almost as though they had read my mind and understood that my intentions this time were not exploratory, but rather carried a purpose that was deadly to their master. Into the silence came a sudden sound, like thunder or galloping horses. I felt it before I heard it, and then the daylight was momentarily blotted out by a massive, hurtling form that appeared to spring at me from everywhere and nowhere all at once. I was knocked into the air. I fell backwards, my body smashing to the earth.

Pain sang through every joint and fibre of my being, and the bow secured around my shoulder cut into my back like a knife blade.

I barely had time to raise myself on one elbow when the beast launched itself at me again. But I was ready for it this time. I raised my leg at the same moment it leaped and kicked the filthy animal as hard as I could. I heard the sickening sound of the wolf’s ribs cracking against my boot and its own scream of agony. It landed in a heap a short distance away and lay there, writhing in pain.

Scrambling to my feet, I ran for a thick pine tree with low-hanging branches and began to climb it. Like a madman, I strove crazily to remember if a wolf could climb a tree or not. Normal wolves could do no such thing, of course, but in that moment, my imagination was flooded with images of werewolves and sorcery, unsure as I was of the limits of the powers of the creatures that commanded the wolves. Or even whether what had attacked me was a wolf, or merely something in the shape of a wolf.

From the vantage point of the higher branches of the trees, I watched the wolf struggle to raise itself to its feet and limp over to the trunk of the tree. In any other circumstance, I would have felt pity, for it has always distressed me to see an animal in pain. But this creature wanted-nay, needed -my death. It glared upwards balefully, then threw back its head and howled.