Thirty-Seven: Of the Visitation at Villeneuve

Robert Hanicotte spends the night before his elevation savoring food and wine while suppressing memories of the vineyard horrors and doubts about betraying Delphine. He frets over his unfitness for high office but comforts himself by comparison to an inept young cardinal. Uneasy portents—the red-rimmed moon and something passing before it—stir his anxiety.

A serving boy, Vincent, warns that men are in the house. In the stables, the stable boy refuses to approach the residence, hinting the Devil is within. Robert, too frightened to wield a sword, arms himself with a carving knife and ascends toward Cardinal Cyriac’s chambers.

At the doorway, Robert sees a man-shaped, pallid creature with its arm down the cardinal’s throat to the elbow. As it withdraws, the creature’s skin and features shift into Cyriac’s likeness, and it speaks in the cardinal’s voice, ordering Robert to go back to bed and stay in the house. The true Cyriac lies twitching, mouth torn wide, eyes fixed and dead.

Robert drops the knife and retreats to his pallet, willfully smothering what he heard. At first light, the impostor—now indistinguishable from Cyriac—soothes Robert, and Robert yields to him, pretending normalcy. The lone telltale change: the new Cardinal Cyriac now sleeps on his back, sealing the replacement.