Chapter 9 - The Trials of Winter
The courthouse in Nîmes was a massive structure of white limestone, built during the reign of Louis XIV, its grand facade dominated by eight Corinthian columns that looked like stone guards protecting the archives of the state. For three months, the winter of 1883 held the city in an iron grip, the mistral wind blowing down from the mountains, turning the fountains into blocks of green ice, scattering the dead leaves across the wide avenues where the carriages of the wealthy rolled.
Inside the grand chamber of the Assizes, the heat was suffocating, generated by three massive coal stoves and the breath of three hundred spectators who had traveled from every corner of the department to see the trial of the "Monster of the Cévennes."
Roland sat in the iron dock, his face pale and thin, his jaw healed but twisted slightly to the left, giving his mouth a permanent, bitter sneer. He was wearing a simple black coat, his gold watches and silver rings gone, his hands secured to the iron rail in front of him by a set of heavy judicial rings.
"The state calls Élise Monier," the crier shouted, his voice echoing up into the high, vaulted ceiling where the painted figures of Justice and Mercy looked down with indifferent eyes.
Élise walked down the center aisle, her long wool dress black, her hair pulled back into a neat, simple chignon. She did not look at the crowd, nor did she look at Roland. She walked straight to the small, wooden witness box in front of the three judges, her hand resting flat on the great Bible that lay open on the rail.
"Tell the court what you found in the ledger of Charles Monier, Madame," the state prosecutor said, his fingers tracing the edge of the yellowed notebook that lay on the table under the judges' bench.
Élise took a deep breath, her voice clear, steady, and entirely free of the terror that had chased her through the chestnut woods three months before.
"I found the record of a century of murder, Monsieur," she said, her blue eyes locking onto the chief judge’s face. "I found that the Monier land was never bought with gold; it was bought with the blood of the younger sons. My husband Arthur knew this. He died because he wanted his son to have his mother's vines without paying the family tax in poison. Roland Monier did not kill a brother for money; he killed him to keep the lie whole."
A low, rhythmic murmur ran through the crowd, a wave of shock and indignation that made the chief judge strike his wooden gavel three times against the desk.
Roland’s attorney, a famous legal mind from Paris who had been paid with the last of the estate’s liquid gold, stood up, adjusting his silken robes. "This is the testimony of a woman who was found living in the woods with a known sorceress, Monsieur the President," he said, his voice dripping with an elegant, urban contempt. "The old woman Agnès has since disappeared from her cabin; the gendarmes found nothing but a pile of ash and some old wood carvings. We cannot base a sentence of execution on the rumors of the mountains."
Before the prosecutor could answer, the heavy oak doors at the back of the chamber swung open with a sound that sounded like a clap of thunder.
Monsieur de Vigny walked down the aisle. He was no longer wearing his civilian cloak; he was in the full dress uniform of a Colonel of the Gendarmerie, his left arm carried in a black silk sling, his silver medal missing, replaced by a jagged tear where a buckshot slug had ripped through the fabric. Behind him came Pierre, the young stable hand, carrying a heavy, rusted iron strongbox covered in dried mud and river slime.
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"The rumors of the mountains have been verified, Maître," de Vigny said, his voice cutting through the heated air of the chamber like a steel razor.
"We dug out the stone cellar beneath the grand vat room last Tuesday. Behind the false masonry of the old press, we found the remains of Henri Monier, who disappeared in the winter of 1882. And inside this strongbox, which Hector tried to throw into the Gardon river before my men ran him down, we found the original royal deed of 1704. The land belongs to the younger line, Monsieur the President. It has always belonged to them."
