But James Douglas and Sholto earnestly dissuaded him from the adventure. How did they know (they reminded him) in which to look? They were all fortresses of large extent, well garrisoned, and it was as likely as not that they might spend their whole time fruitlessly upon one, without gaining either knowledge or advantage.

Besides, they argued it was not likely that any harm would befall the maids so long as their captor remained in Paris—that is, none which had not already overtaken them on their journey as prisoners on board the marshal's ships.

So the Hotel de Pornic and its inhabitants remained under the strict espionage of Sholto and Lord James, while up in the garret in the Rue des Ursulines Laurence nursed his brother clerk and Malise sat gloomily polishing and repolishing the weapons and secret armour of the party.

It was the evening of the third day before the "clout" showed signs of healing. Its recipient had been conscious on the second day, but, finding himself a prisoner in the hands of the enemy, he had been naturally enough inclined to be a little sulky and suspicious. But the bright carelessness of Laurence, who dashed at any speech in idiomatic but ungrammatical outlander's French, gradually won upon him. As also the fact that Laurence was clerk-learned and could sing and play upon the viol with surprising skill for one so young.

The prisoner never tired of watching the sunny curls upon the brow of Laurence MacKim, as he wandered about trying the benches, the chairs, and even the floor in a hundred attitudes in search of a comfortable position.

"Ah," the sallow youth said at last, one afternoon as he lay on his pallet, "you should be one of the choristers of my master's chapel. You can sing like an angel!"

"Well," laughed Laurence in reply, "I would be indeed content, if he be a good master, and if in his house it snoweth wherewithal to eat and drink. But tell me what unfortunate may have the masterage of so profitless a servant as yourself?"

"I am the poor gentleman Gilles de Sille of the household of the Marshal de Retz!" answered the swarthy youth, readily.

"De Silly indeed to bide with such a master!" quoth Laurence, with his usual prompt heedlessness of consequences.

The sallow youth with his bandaged head did not understand the poor jest, but, taking offence at the tone, he instantly reared himself on his elbow and darted a look at Laurence from under brows so lowering and searching that Laurence fell back in mock terror.

"Nay," he cried, shaking at the knees and letting his hands swing ludicrously by his sides, "do not affright a poor clerk! If you look at me like that I will call the cook from yonder eating-stall to protect me with his basting-ladle. I wot if he fetches you one on the other side of your cracked sconce, you will never take service again with the Marshal de Retz."

"What know you of my master?" reiterated Gilles de Sille, glowering at his mercurial jailer, without heeding his persiflage.

"Why, nothing at all," said Laurence, truthfully, "except that while we stood listening to the singing of the choir within his hotel, a poor woman came crying for her son, whom (so she declared) the marshal had kidnapped. Whereat came forth the guard from within, and thrust her away. Then arrived you and your varlets and got your heads broken for your impudence. That is all I know or want to know of your master."

Gilles de Sille lay back on his pallet with a sigh, still, however, continuing to watch the lad's countenance.

"You should indeed take service with the marshal. He is the most lavish and generous master alive. He thinks no more of giving a handful of gold pieces to a youth with whom he is taken than of throwing a crust to a beggar at his gate. He owns the finest province in all the west from side to side. He has castles well nigh a dozen, finer and stronger than any in France. He has a college of priests, and the service at his oratory is more nobly intoned than that in the private chapel of the Holy Father himself. When he goes in procession he has a thurifer carried before him by the Pope's special permission. And I tell you, you are just the lad to take his fancy. That I can see at a glance. I warrant you, Master Laurence, if you will come with me, the marshal will make your fortune."

"Did the other young fellow make his fortune?" said Laurence. Gilles de Sille glared as if he could have slain him.

"What other?" he growled, truculently.

"Why, the son of the poor woman who cried beneath your kind master's window the night before yestreen'."

The lank swarthy youth ground his teeth.

"'Tis ill speaking against dignities," he replied presently, with a certain sullen pride. "I daresay the young fellow took service with the marshal to escape from home, and is in hiding at Tiffauges, or mayhap Machecoul itself. Or he may well have been listening at some lattice of the Hotel de Pornic itself to the idiot clamour of his mother and of the ignorant rabble of Paris!"

"Your master loves the society of the young?" queried Laurence, mending carefully a string of his viol and keeping the end of the catgut in his mouth as he spoke.

"He doats on all young people," answered Gilles de Sille, eagerly, the flicker of a smile running about his mouth like wild-fire over a swamp. "Why, when a youth of parts once takes service with my master, he never leaves it for any other, not even the King's!"

Which in its way was a true enough statement.

"Well," quoth Master Laurence, when he had tied his string and finished cocking his viol and twingle-twangling it to his satisfaction, "you speak well. And I am not sure but what I may think of it. I am tired both of working for my father without pay, and of singing psalms in a monastery to please my lord Abbot. Moreover, in this city of Paris I have to tell every jack with a halbert that I am not the son of the King of England, and then after all as like as not he marches me to the bilboes!"

"Of what nativity are you?" asked de Sille.

"Och, I'm all of a rank Irelander, and my name is Laurence O'Halloran, at your service," quoth the rogue, without a blush. For among other accomplishments which he had learned at the Abbey of Dulce Cor, was that of lying with the serene countenance of an angel. Indeed, as we have seen, he had the rudiments of the art in him before setting out from the tourneying field at Glenlochar on his way to holy orders.

"Then you will come with me to-morrow?" said Gilles, smiling.

Laurence listened to make sure that neither his father nor Sholto was approaching the garret.

"I will go with you on two conditions," he said: "you shall not mention my purpose to the others, and when we escape, I must put a bandage over your eyes till we are half a dozen streets away."

"Why, done with you—after all you are a right gamesome cock, my Irelander," cried Gilles, whom the conditions pleased even better than Laurence's promise to accompany him.

Then, lending the prisoner his viol wherewith to amuse himself and locking the door, Laurence made an excuse to go to the kitchen, where he laughed low to himself, chuckling in his joy as he deftly handled the saucepans.

"Aha, Master Sholto, you are the captain of the guard and a knight, forsooth, and I am but poor clerk Laurence—as you have ofttimes reminded me. But I will show you a shift worth two of watching outside the door of the marshal's hotel for tidings of the maids. I will go where the marshal goes, and see all he sees. And then, when the time comes, why, I will rescue them single-handed and thereafter make up my mind which of them I shall marry, whether Sholto's sweetheart or the Fair Maid of Galloway herself."

Thus headlong Laurence communed with himself, not knowing what he said nor to what terrible adventure he was committing himself.

But Gilles de Sille of the house of the Marshal de Retz, being left to himself in the half darkness of the garret, took up the viol and sang a curious air like that with which the charmer wiles his snakes to him, and at the end of every verse, he also laughed low to himself.



CHAPTER XLV

THE BOASTING OF GILLES DE SILLE

But, as fate would have it, it was not in the Hotel de Pornic nor yet in the city of Paris that Laurence O'Halloran was destined to enter the service of the most mighty Marshal de Retz.

Not till three days after his converse with the prisoner did Laurence find an opportunity of escaping from the house in the street of the Ursulines. Sholto and his father meantime kept their watch upon the mansion of the enemy, turn and turn about; but without discovering anything pertinent to their purpose, or giving Laurence a chance to get clear off with Gilles de Sille. The Lord James had also frequently adventured forth, as he declared, in order to spy out the land, though it is somewhat sad to relate that this espionage conducted itself in regions which gave more opportunities for investigating the peculiar delights of Paris than of discovering the whereabouts of Maud Lindesay and his cousin, the Fair Maid of Galloway.

The head of Gilles de Sille was still swathed in bandages when, with an additional swaddling of disguise across his eyes, he and Laurence, that truant scion of the house of O'Halloran, stole out into the night. A frosty chill had descended with the darkness, and a pale, dank mist from the marshes of the Seine made the pair shiver as arm in arm they ventured carefully forth.

Laurence was doing a foolish, even a wicked, thing in thus, without warning, deserting his companions. But he was just at the age when it is the habit of youth to deceive themselves with the thought that a shred of good intent covers a world of heedless folly.

The fugitives found the Hotel de Pornic practically deserted. They approached it cautiously from the back, lest they should run into the arms of any of the numerous enemies of its terrible lord, who, though not abhorred in Paris as in most other places which he favoured with his visits, had yet little love spent upon him even there.

The custodian in the stone cell by the gate came yawning out to the bars at the sound of Gilles de Sille's knocking, and after a growl of disfavour admitted the youth and his companion.

"What, gone—my master gone!" cried Gilles, striking his hand on his thigh with an astounded air, "impossible!"

"It was, indeed, a thing particularly unthoughtful and discourteous of my Lord de Retz, Marshal of France and Chamberlain of the King, to undertake a journey without consulting you," replied the man, who considered irony his strong point, but feebly concealing his pleasure at the favourite's discomfiture; "we all know upon what terms your honourable self is with my lord. But you must not blame him, for he waited whole twenty-four hours for news of you. It was reported that you were set upon by four giants, and that your bones, crushed like a filbert, had been discovered in the horse pond at the back of the Convent of the Virgins of Complaisance."

Gilles de Sille looked as if he could very well have murdered the speaker on the spot. His favour with his lord was evidently not a thing of repute in his master's household. So much was clear to Laurence, who, for the first time, began to have fears as to his own reception, having such an unpopular person as voucher and introducer.

"If you do not keep a civil tongue in your head, sirrah Labord,"—the youth hissed the words through his clenched teeth,—"I will have your throat cut."

"Ah, I am too old," said the man, boldly; "besides, this is Paris, and I have been twenty years concierge to his Grace the Duke of Orleans. I and my wife have his secrets even as you, most noble Sire de Sille, possess those of my new master. You, or he either, by God's grace, will think twice before cutting my throat. Moreover, you will be good enough at this point to state your business or get to bed. For I am off to mine. I serve my master, but I am not compelled to spend the night parleying with his lacqueys."

Now the concierges of Paris are very free and independent personages, and their tongues are accustomed to wag freely and to some purpose in their heads.

"Whither has my master gone?" asked de Sille, curbing his wrath in order to get an answer.

"He said that he went to Tiffauges. Whether that be true, you have better means of knowing than I."

The swarthy youth turned to Laurence.

"How much money have you, Master O'Halloran? I have spent all of mine, and this city swine will not lend me a single sou for my expenses. We must to the stables and follow the Sieur de Retz forthwith to Brittany."

"I have ten golden angels which the prior of the convent gave me at my departure," said Laurence, with some pride.

His companion nodded approvingly.

"So much will see us through—that is, with care. Give them here to me," he added after a moment's thought; "I will pay them out with more economy, being of the country through which we pass."

But Laurence, though sufficiently headlong and reckless, had not been born a Scot for naught.

"Wait till there is necessity," he replied cautiously, "and the angels shall not be lacking. Till then they are quite safe with me. For security I carry them in a secret place ill to be gotten at hastily."

Gilles de Sille turned away with some movement of impatience, yet without saying another word upon the subject.

"To the stables," he said; then turning to the concierge he added, "I suppose we can have horses to ride after my lord?"

"So far as I am concerned," growled Labord, "you can have all the horses you want—and break your necks off each one of them if you will. It will save some good hemp and hangman's hire. Such devil's dogs as you two be bear your dooms ready written on your faces."

And this saying nettled our Laurence, who prided himself no little on an allure blonde and gallant.

But Gilles de Sille cared no whit for the servitor's sneers, so long as they got horses between their knees and escaped out of Paris that night. In an hour they were ready to start, and Laurence had expended one of his gold angels on the provend for the journey, which his companion and he stored in their saddle-bags.

And in this manner, like an idle lad who for mischief puts body and soul in peril, went forth Laurence MacKim to take up service with the redoubtable Messire Gilles de Laval, Sieur de Retz, High Chamberlain of Charles the Seventh, Marshal of France, and lately companion-in-arms of the martyred Maid of Orleans.

Now, before he went forth from the street of the Ursulines, he had laid a sealed letter on the bed of his brother, which ran thus: "Ha, Sir Sholto MacKim, while you stand about in the rain and shiver under your cloak, I am off to find out the mystery. When I have done all without assistance from the wise Sir Sholto, I will return. But not before. Fare your knightship well."

Laurence and Gilles de Sille rode out of Paris by the Versailles road, and the latter insisted on silence till they had passed the forest of St. Cyr, which was at that time exceedingly dangerous for horsemen not travelling in large companies. Once they were fairly on the road to Chartres, however, and clear of the valley of the Seine and its tangled boscage of trees, Gilles relaxed sufficiently to break a bottle of wine to the success of their journey and to the new service and duty upon which Laurence was to enter at the end of it.

Having proposed this toast, he handed the bumper first to Laurence, who, barely tasting the excellent Poitevin vintage, handed the leathern bottle back to de Sille. That sallow youth immediately, without giving his companion a second chance, proceeded to quaff the entire contents of the pigskin.

Then as the stiff brew penetrated downwards, it was not long before the favourite of the marshal began to wax full of vanity and swelling words.

"I tell you what it is," he said, "there would be trembling in the heart of a very great man when the nine cravens returned without me. For I am no shaveling ignoramus, but a gentleman of birth; aye, and one who, though poor, is a near cousin of the marshal himself. I warrant the rascals who ran away would smart right soundly for leaving me behind. For Gilles de Sille is no simpleton. He knows more than is written down in the catechism of Holy Church. None can touch my favour with my lord, no matter what they testify against me. For me I have only to ask and have. That is why I take such pride in bringing you to my Lord of Retz. I know that he will give you a post about his person, and if you are not a simple fool you may go very far. For my master is a friend of the King and, what is better, of Louis the Dauphin. He gat the King back a whole province—a dukedom so they say, from the hands of some Scots fool that had it off his grandfather for deeds done in the ancient wars. And in return the King will protect my master against all his enemies. Do I not speak the truth?"

Laurence hoped that he did, but liked not the veiled hints and insinuations of some surprising secret in the life of the marshal, possessed by his dear cousin and well-beloved servant Gilles de Sille.

With an ever loosening tongue the favourite went on:

"A great soldier is our master—none greater, not even Dunois himself. Why, he rode into Orleans at the right hand of the Maid. None in all the army was so great with her as he. I tell you, Charles himself liked it not, and that was the beginning of all the bother of talk about my lord—ignorant gabble of the countryside I call it. Lord, if they only knew what I know, then, indeed—but enough. Marshal Gilles is a mighty scholar as well, and hath Henriet the clerk—a weak, bleating ass that will some day blab if my master permit me not to slice his gizzard in time—he hath him up to read aloud Latin by the mile, all out of the books called Suetonius and Tacitus—such high-flavoured tales and full of—well, of things such as my master loves."

So ran Gilles de Sille on as the miles fled back behind their horses' heels and the towers of Chartres rose grey and solemn through the morning mists before the travellers.



CHAPTER XLVI

THE COUNTRY OF THE DREAD

The three remaining Scottish palmers were riding due west into a sunset which hung like a broad red girdle over the Atlantic. All the sky above their heads was blue grey and lucent. But along the horizon, as it seemed for the space of two handbreadths, there was suspended this bandolier of flaming scarlet.

The adventurers were not weary of their quest. They were only sick at heart with the fruitlessness of it.

First upon leaving Paris they had gone on to the Castle of Champtoce, and from beneath had surveyed the noble range of battlements crowning the heights above the broad, poplar-guarded levels of the Loire. The Chateau de Thouars also they had seen, a small white-gabled house, most like a Scottish baron's tower, which the Marshal de Retz possessed in virtue of his neglected wife Katherine. In it her sister the Lady Sybilla had been born. Solitary and tenantless, save for a couple of guards and their uncovenanted womenkind, it looked down on its green island meadows, while on the horizon hung the smoke of the wood fires lit at morn and eve by the good wives of Nantes.

To that place the three had next journeyed and had there beheld the great Hotel de Suze, set like an enemy's fortress in the midst of the turbulent city, over against the Castle of the King. But the Hotel, though held like a place of arms, was untenanted by the marshal, his retinue, or the lost Scottish maids.

Next they found the strong Castle of Tiffauges, above the green and rippling waters of the Sevres, void also as the others. No light gleamed out of that window of sinister repute, high up in the cliff-like wall, from which strange shapes were reported to look forth even at deep midnoon.

North, south, and east the three had ridden through the country of Retz. There remained but Machecoul, more remote and also darker in repute than any of the other dwelling-places of Gilles de Retz. As they rode westward towards it, they became day by day more conscious of the darkening down of the atmosphere of fear and suspicion, which, murky and lowering, overhung all that fair land of southern Brittany.

The vast pine forests from which rose the lonely towers of this the marshal's most remote castle could now be seen, serrated darkly against the broad belt of the sky. The sombre blackness of their spreading branches, the yet blacker darkness where the gaps between their red trunks showed a way into the wood, increased the gloom of the weary travellers. Yet they rode on, Sholto eagerly, Malise grimly, and the Lord James with the dogged resignation of a good knight who may be depended on to see an adventure through, however irksome it may be proving.

James of Avondale thought within himself that the others had greater interests in the quest than he—the younger MacKim having at stake the honour of his sweetheart Maud, the elder the life of his young mistress, the last of the Galloway house of Douglas.

Yet it was with that jolly heart of his beating strong and loyal under his brown palmer's coat, that James Douglas rode towards Machecoul, only whistling low to himself and wishing that something would happen to break the monotony of their journey.

Nor had he long to wait. For just as the sun was setting they rode all three of them abreast into the little hamlet of Saint Philbert, and saw the sullen waters of the Etang de Grande Lieu spread marshy and brackish as far as the eye could reach, edged by peat bogs and overhung perilously by gloomy pines nodding over pools blacker than scrivener's ink.

As the three Scots looked into the stockaded entrance of the village, they could see the children playing on the long, irregular street, and the elder folk sitting about their doors in the evening light.

But as soon as the clatter of horses' hoofs was heard, borne from far down the aisles of the forest, there arose a sudden clamour and a crying. From each little sparred enclosure rushed forth a woman who snatched a baby here and there and drove a herd of children before her indoors, glancing around and behind her as she did so with the anxious look of a motherly barn-door fowl when the hawk hangs poised in the windless sky.

By the time the three men had entered the gate and ridden up the village street, all was silent and dark. The windows were shut, the doors were barred, and the village had become a street of living tombs.

"What means this?" said the Lord James; "the people are surely afraid of us."

"'Tis doubtless but their wonted welcome to their lord, the Sieur de Retz. He seems to be popular wherever he goes," said Malise, grimly; "but let us dismount and see if we can get stabling for our beasts. Did they not tell us there was not another house for miles betwixt here and Machecoul?"

So without waiting for dissent or counter opinion, the master armourer went directly up to the door of the most respectable-appearing house in the village, one which stood a little back from the road and was surrounded by a wall. Here he dismounted and knocked loudly with his sword-hilt upon the outer gate. The noise reverberated up and down the street, and was tossed back in undiminished volume from the green wall of pines which hemmed in the village.

But there was no answer, and Malise grew rapidly weary of his own clamour.

"Hold my bridle," he said curtly to Sholto, and with a single push of his shoulders he broke the wooden bar, and the two halves of the outer gate fell apart before him. A great, smooth-haired yellow dog of the country rushed furiously at the intruders, but Malise, who was as dexterous as he was powerful, received him with so sound a buffet on the head that he paused bewildered, shaking his ears, whereat Malise picked him up, tucked him under his arm, and with thumbs about his windpipe effectually choked his barking. Then releasing him, Malise took no further notice of this valorous enemy, and the poor, loyal, baffled beast, conscious of defeat, crept shamefacedly away to hide his disgrace among the faggots.

But Malise was growing indignant and therefore dangerous and ill to cross.

"Never did I see such mannerless folk," he growled; "they will not even give a stranger a word or a bite for his beast."

Then he called to his companions, "Come hither and speak to these cravens ere I burst their inner doors as well."

At this by no means empty threat came the Lord James and spoke aloud in his cheery voice to those within the silent house: "Good people, we are no robbers, but poor travellers and strangers. Be not afraid. All we want is that you should tell us which house is the inn that we may receive refreshment for ourselves and our horses."

Then there came a voice from behind the door: "There is no inn nearer than Pornic. We are poor people and cannot support one. We pray your highness to depart in peace."

"But, good sir," answered James Douglas, "that we cannot do. Our steeds are foot weary with a long day's journey. Give us the shelter of your barns and a bundle of fodder and we will be content. We have food and drink with us. Open, and be not afraid."

"Of what country are you? Are you of the household of the Sieur de Retz?"

"Nay," cried James again, "we are pilgrims returning to our own city of Albi in the Tarn country. We know nothing of any Sieur de Retz. Look forth from a window and satisfy yourself."

"Then if there be treachery in your hearts, beware," said the tremulous voice again; "for I have four young men here by me whose powder guns are even now ready to fire from all the windows if you mean harm."

A white face looked out for a moment from the casement, and as quickly ducked within. Then the voice continued its bleating.

"My lords, I will open the door. But forgive the fears of a poor old man in a wide, empty house."

The door opened and a curious figure appeared within. It was a man apparently decrepit and trembling, who in one hand carried a lantern and in the other a staff over which he bent with many wheezings of exhausted breath.

"What would you with a poor old man?" he said.

"We would have shelter and fodder, if it please you to give them to us for the sake of God's grace."

The old man trembled so vehemently that he was in danger of shaking out the rushlight which flickered dismally in his wooden lantern.

"I am a poor, poor man," he quavered; "I have naught in the world save some barley meal and a little water."

"That will do famously," said James Douglas; "we are hungry men, and will pay well for all you give us."

The countenance of the cripple instantly changed. He looked up at the speaker with an alert expression.

"Pay," he said, "pay—did you not say you would pay? Why, I thought you were gentlefolks! Now, by that I know that you are none, but of the commonalty like myself."

James Douglas took a gold angel out of his belt and threw it to him. The cripple collapsed upon the top of the piece of money and groped vainly for it with eager, outspread fingers in the dust of the yard.

"I cannot find it, good gentleman," he piped, shrill as an east wind; "alas, what shall I do? Poor Caesar cannot find it. It was not a piece of gold;—do tell me that it was not a piece of gold; to lose a piece of gold, that were ruin indeed."

Sholto picked up the lantern which had slipped from his trembling hand. The tallow was beginning to gutter out as it lay on its side, and a moment's search showed him the gold glittering on some farmyard rubbish. With a little shrill cry like a frightened bird the old man fell upon it, as it had been with claws.

"Bite upon it and see if the gold be good," said Sholto, smiling.

"Alas," cried the cripple, "I have but one tooth. But I know the coin. It is of the right mintage and greasiness. O lovely gold! Beautiful gentlemen, bide where you are and I will be back with you in a moment."

And the old man limped away with astonishing quickness to hide his acquisition, lest, mayhap, his guests should repent them and retract their liberality.



CHAPTER XLVII

CAESAR MARTIN'S WIFE

Presently he returned and conducted them to a decent stable, where they saw their beasts bestowed and well provided with bedding and forage for the night. Then the old cripple, more than ever bent upon his stick, but nevertheless chuckling to himself all the way, preceded them into the house.

"Ah, she is clever," he muttered; "she thinks her demon tells her everything. But even La Meffraye will not know where I have hidden that beautiful gold."

So he sniggered senilely to himself between his fits of coughing.

It was a low, wide room of strange aspect into which the old man conducted his guests. The floor was of hard-beaten earth, but cleanly kept and firm to the feet. The fireplace, with a hearth round it of built stone, was placed in the midst, and from the rafters depended many chains and hooks. A wooden settle ran half round the hearthstone on the side farthest from the draught of the door. The weary three sat down and stretched their limbs. The fire had burnt low, and Sholto, reaching to a faggot heap by the side wall, began to toss on boughs of green birch in handfuls, till the lovely white flame arose and the sap spat and hissed in explosive puffs.

"Birk when 'tis green Makes a fire for a king!"

Malise hummed the old Scots lines, and the cripple coming in at that moment raised a shrill bark of protest.

"My good wood, my fuel that cost me so many sore backs—be careful, young sir. Faggots of birch are dear in this country of Machecoul. My lord is of those who give nothing for naught."

"Oh, we shall surely pay for what we use," cried careless James; "let us eat, and warm our toes, and therewith have somewhat less of thy prating, old dotard. It can be shrewdly cold in this westerly country of yours."

"Pay," cried the old man, holding up his clawed hands; "do you mean more pay—more besides the beautiful gold angel? Here—"

He ran out and presently returned with armful after armful of faggots, while his guests laughed to find his mood so changed.

"Here," he cried, running to and fro like a fretful hen, "take it all, and when that is done, this also, and this. Nay, I will stay up all night to carry more from the forest of Machecoul."

"And you who were so afraid to open to three honest men, would you venture to bring faggots by night from yon dark wood?"

"Nay," said the old man, cunningly, "I meant not from the forest, but from my neighbours' woodpiles. Yet for lovely gold I would even venture to go thither—that is, if I had my image of the Blessed Mother about my neck and the moon shone very bright."

"Now haste thee with the barley brew," said Lord James, "for my stomach is as deep as a well and as empty as the purse of a younger son."

The strange cripple emitted another bird-like cachinnation, resembling the sound which is made by the wooden cogwheels wherewithal boys fright the crows from the cornfields when the August sun is yellowing the land.

"Poor old Caesar Martin can show you something better than that," he cried, as he hirpled out (for so Malise described it afterwards) and presently returned dragging a great iron pot with a strength which seemed incredible in so ramshackle a body.

"Ha! ha!" he said, "here is fragrant stew; smell it. Is it not good? In ten minutes it will be so hot and toothsome that you will scarce have patience to wait till it be decently cool in the platters. This is not common Angevin stew, but Bas Breton—which is a far better thing."

Malise rose, and, relieving the old man, with one finger swung the pot to a crook that hung over the cheerful blaze of the birchwood.

The old cripple Caesar Martin now mounted on a stool and stirred the mess with a long stick, at the end of which was a steel fork of two prongs. And as he stirred he talked:

"God bless you, say I, brave gentlemen and good pilgrims. Surely it was a wind noble and fortunate that blew you hither to taste my broth. There be fine pigeons here, fat and young. There be leverets juicy and tender as a maid untried. There—what think you of that?" (he held each ingredient up on a prong as he spoke). "And here be larks, partridge stuffed with sage, ripe chestnuts from La Valery, and whisper it not to any of the marshal's men, a fawn from the park of a month old, dressed like a kid so that none may know."

"I suppose that so much providing is for your four sons?" said Sholto.

The cripple laughed again his feeble, fleering laugh.

"I have no sons, honest sir," he said; "it was but a weakling's policy to tell you so, lest there should have been evil in your hearts. But I have a wife and that is enough. You may have heard of her. She is called La Meffraye."

As he spoke his face took on an access of white terror, even as it had done when he looked out of the window.

"La Meffraye is she well named," he repeated the appellation with a harsh croak as of a night-hawk screaming. "God forfend that she should come home to-night and find you here!"

"Why, good sir," smiled James Douglas, "if that be the manner in which you speak of your housewife, faith, I am right glad to have remained a bachelor."

Caesar the cripple looked about him and lowered his voice.

"Hush!" he quavered, breathing hard so that his words whistled between his toothless gums, "you do not know my wife. I tell you, she is the familiar of the marshal himself."

"Then," cried James Douglas, slapping his thigh, "she is young and pretty, of a surety. I know what these soldiers are familiar with. I would that she would come home and partake with us now."

"Nay," said the old man, without taking offence, "you mistake, kind sir, I meant familiar in witchcraft, in devilry—not (as it were) in levity and cozenage."

The fragrant stew was now ready to be dished in great platters of wood, and the guests fell to keenly, each being provided with a wooden spoon. The meat they cut with their daggers, but the most part was, however, tender enough to come apart in their fingers, which, as all know, better preserves the savour.

At first the cripple denied having any wine, but another gold angel from the Lord James induced him to draw a leathern bottle from some secret hoard, and decant it into a pitcher for them. It was resinous and Spanish, but, as Malise said, "It made warm the way it went down." And after all with wine that is always the principal thing.

As the feast proceeded old Caesar Martin told the three Scots why the long street of the village had been cleared of children so quickly at the first sound of their horses' feet.

"And in truth if you had not come across the moor, but along the beaten track from the Chateau of Machecoul, you would never have caught so much as a glimpse of any child or mother in all Saint Philbert."

At this point he beckoned Sholto, Malise, and the Lord James to come nearer to him, and standing with his back to the fire and their three heads very close, he related the terrible tale of the Dread that for eight years had stalked grim and gaunt through the westlands of France, La Vendee, and Bas Bretagne. In all La Vendee there was not a village that had not lost a child. In many a hamlet about the shores of the sunny Loire was there scarce a house from which one had not vanished. They were seen playing in the greenwood, the eye was lifted, and lo! they were not. A boy went to the well. An hour after his pitcher stood beside it filled to the brim. But he himself was never more seen by holt or heath. A little maid, sweet and innocent, looked over the churchyard wall; she spied something that pleased her. She climbed over to get it—and was not.

"Oh, I could tell you of a thousand such if I had time," shrilled the thin treble of the cripple in their eager ears, "if I dared—if I only dared!"

"Dared," said Malise; "why man—what is the matter with you? None could hear you but we three men."

"My wife—my wife," he quavered; "I bid you be silent, or at least speak not so loud. La Meffraye she is called—she can hear all things. See—"

He made a sudden movement and bared his right arm. It was withered to the shoulder and of a dark purple colour approaching black.

"La Meffraye did that," he gasped; "she blasted it because I would not do the evil she wished."

"Then why do you not kill her?" said Malise, whose methods were not subtle. "If she were mine, I would throttle her, and give her body to the hounds."

"Hush, I bid you be silent for dear God's sake in whom I believe," again came the voice of the cripple. "You do not know what you say. La Meffraye cannot die. Perhaps she will vanish away in a blast of the fire of hell—one day when God is very strong and angry. But she cannot die. She only leads others to death. She dies not herself."

"You are kind, gentlemen," he went on after a pause, finding them continue silent; "I will show you all. Pray the saint for me at his shrine that I may die and go to purgatory. Or (if it were to a different one) even to hell—that I might escape for ever from La Meffraye."

His hand fumbled a moment at the closely buttoned collar of his blue blouse. Then he succeeded in undoing it and showed his neck. From chin to bosom it was a mass of ghastly bites, some partially healed, more of them recent and yet raw, while the skin, so far as the three Scots could observe it, was covered with a hieroglyphic of scratches, claw marks, and, as it seemed, the bites of some fierce wild beast.

"Great Master of Heaven!" cried James Douglas. "What hell hound hath done this to you?"

"The wife of my bosom," quoth very grimly Caesar the cripple.

"A good evening to you, gentlemen all," said a soft and winning voice from the doorway.

At the sound the old man staggered, reeled, and would have swayed into the fire had not Sholto seized him and dragged him out upon the floor. All rose to their feet.

In the doorway of the cottage stood an old woman, small, smiling, delicate of feature. She looked benignly upon them and continued to smile. Her hair and her eyes were her most noticeable features. The former was abundant and hung loosely about the woman's brow and over her shoulders in wisps of a curious greenish white, the colour almost of mouldy cheese, while, under shaggy white eyebrows, her large eyes shone piercing and green as emerald stones on the hand of some dusky monarch of the Orient.

The old woman it was who spoke first, before any of the men could recover from their surprise.

"My husband," she said, still calmly smiling upon them, "my poor husband has doubtless been telling you his foolish tales. The saints have permitted him to become demented. It is a great trial to a poor woman like me, but the will of heaven be done!"

The three Scots stood silent and transfixed, for it was an age of belief. But the cripple lay back on the settle where Sholto had placed him, his lips white and gluey. And as he lay he muttered audibly, "La Meffraye! La Meffraye! Oh, what will become of poor Caesar Martin this night!"



CHAPTER XLVIII

THE MERCY OF LA MEFFRAYE

It was a strange night that which the three Scots spent in the little house standing back from the street of Saint Philbert on the gloomy edges of the forest of Machecoul. The hostess, indeed, was unweariedly kind and brought forth from her store many dainties for their delectation. She talked with touching affection of her poor husband, afflicted with these strange fits of wolfish mania, in the paroxysms of which he was wont to tear himself and grovel in the dust like a beast.

This she told them over and over as she moved about setting before them provend from secret stores of her own, obviously unknown or perhaps forbidden to Caesar Martin.

Wild bee honey from the woods she placed before them and white wheaten bread, such as could not be got nearer than Paris, with wine of some rarer vintage than that out of the cripple's resinous pigskin. These and much else La Meffraye pressed upon them till she had completely won over the Lord James, and even Malise, easy natured like most very strong men, was taken by the sympathetic conversation and gracious kindliness of the wife of poor afflicted Caesar Martin of Saint Philbert. Only Sholto kept his suspicion edged and pointed, and resolved that he would not sleep that night, but watch till the dawn the things which might befall in the house on the forest's border.

Yet it was conspicuously to Sholto that La Meffraye directed most of her blandishments.

Her ruddy face, so bright that it seemed almost as if wholly covered with a birthmark, gleamed with absolute good nature as she looked at him. She threw off the black veil which half concealed her strange coiffure of green toadstool-coloured hair. She placed her choicest morsels before the young captain of the Douglas guard.

"'Tis hard," she said, touching him confidentially on the shoulder, "hard to dwell here in this country wherein so many deeds of blood are wrought, alone with a poor imbecile like my husband. None cares to help me with aught, all being too busy with their own affairs. It falls on me to till the fields, which, scanty as they are, are more than my feeble strength can compass unaided. Alone I must prune and water the vines, bring in the firewood, and go out and in by night and day to earn a scanty living for this afflicted one and myself. You will hear, perchance, mischief laid to my charge in this village of evil speakers and lazy folk. They hate me because I am no gadabout to spend time abusing my neighbours at the village well. But the children love me, and that is no ill sign. Their young hearts are open to love a poor lone old woman. What cares La Meffraye for the sneers of the ignorant and prejudiced so long as the children run to her gladly and search her pockets for the good things she never forgets to bring them from her kitchen?"

So the old woman, talking all the time, bustled here and there, setting sweet cakes baked with honey, confitures and bairns' goodies, figs, almonds, and cheese before her guests. But through all her blandishments Sholto watched her and had his eyes warily upon what should befall her husband, who could be seen lying apparently either asleep or unconscious upon the bed in an inner room.

"You do not speak like the folk of the south," she said to the Lord James. "Neither are you Northmen nor of the Midi. From what country may you come?" The question dropped casually as to fill up the time.

"We are poor Scots who have lived under the protection of your good King Charles, the seventh of that name, and having been restored to our possessions after the turning out of the English, we are making a pilgrimage in order to visit our friends and also to lay our thanks upon the altar of the blessed Saint Andrew in his own town in Scotland."

The old woman listened, approvingly nodding her head as the Lord James reeled off this new and original narrative. But at the mention of the land of the Scots La Meffraye pricked her ears.

"Scots," she said meditatively; "that will surely interest my lord, who hath but recently returned from that country, whither they say he hath been upon a very confidential embassy from the King."

It was the Lord James who asked the next question.

"Have you heard whether any of our nation returned with him from our country? We would gladly meet with any such, that we might hear again the tongue of our nativity, which is ever sweet in a strange land—and also, if it might be, take back tidings of them to their folk in Scotland."

"Nay," answered La Meffraye, standing before them with her eyes shrewdly fixed upon the face of the speaker, "I have heard of none such. Yet it may well be, for the marshal is very fond of the society of the young, even as I am myself. He has many boy singers in his choir, maidens also for his religious processions. Indeed, never do I visit Machecoul without finding a pretty boy or a stripling girl passing so innocently in and out of his study, that it is a pleasure to behold."

"Is his lordship even now at Machecoul?" asked James Douglas, bluntly. The Lord James prided himself upon his tact, but when he set out to manifest it, Sholto groaned inwardly. He was never certain from one moment to another what the reckless young Lord might do or say next.

"I do not even know whether the marshal is now at Machecoul. The rich and great, they come and go, and we poor folk understand it no more than the passing of the wind or the flight of the birds. But let us get to our couches. The morn will soon be here, and it must not find our bodies unrested or our eyes unrefreshed."

La Meffraye showed her guests where to make their beds in the outer room of the cottage, which they did by moving the bench back and stretching themselves with their heads to the wall and their feet to the fire. Sholto lay on the side furthest from the entrance of the room to which La Meffraye had retired with her husband. Malise was on the other side, and Lord James lay in the midst, as befitted his rank.

These last were instantly asleep, being tired with their journey and heavy with the meal of which they had partaken. But every sense in Sholto's body was keenly awake. A vague inexpressible fear possessed him. He lay watching the red unequal glow thrown upwards from the embers, and through the wide opening in the roof he could discern the twinkling of a star.

Within the chamber of La Meffraye there was silence. Sholto could not even hear the heavy breathing of Caesar Martin. The silence was complete.

Suddenly, from far away, there came up the howling of a wolf. It was not an uncommon sound in the forests of France, or even in those of his own country, yet somehow Sholto listened with a growing dread. Nearer and nearer it came, till it seemed to reverberate immediately beneath the eaves of the dwelling of Caesar the cripple.

The flicker of the embers died slowly out. Malise lay without a sound, his head couched on his hand. Lord James began to groan and move uneasily, like one in the grip of nightmare. Sholto listened yet more acutely. Outside the house he could hear the soft pad-pad of wild animals. Their pelts seemed almost to brush against the wooden walls behind his head with a rustle like that of corded silk. Sholto felt nervously for his sword and cleared it instinctively of the coverture in which he was wrapped. Expectation tingled in his cheeks and palms. The silence grew more and more oppressive. He could hear nothing but that soft brushing and the galloping pads outside, as of something that went round and round the house, weaving a coil of terror and death about the doomed inmates.

Suddenly from the adjoining chamber a cry burst forth, so shrill and terrible that not only Sholto but Malise also leaped to his feet.

"Mercy—mercy! Have mercy, La Meffraye!" it wailed.

Sholto rushed across the floor, striding the body of James Douglas in his haste. He dashed the door of the inner chamber open and was just in time to see something dark and lithe dart through the window and disappear into the indigo gloom without. From the bed there came a series of gasping moans, as from a man at the point of death.

"For God's sake bring a light!" cried Sholto, "there is black murder done here."

His father ran to the hearth, and, seizing a birchen brand, the end of which was still red, he blew upon it with care and success so that it burst into a white brilliant flame that lighted all the house. Then he, too, entered the room where Sholto, with his sword ready in his hand, was standing over the gasping, dying thing on the bed.

When Malise thrust forward his torch, lo! there, extended on the couch to which they had carried him two hours before, lay the yet twitching body of Caesar the cripple with his throat well nigh bitten away.

But La Meffraye was nowhere to be seen.



CHAPTER XLIX

THE BATTLE WITH THE WERE-WOLVES

"Let us get out of this hellish place," cried James Douglas so soon as he had seen with his eyes that which lay within the bedchamber of the witch woman, and made certain that it was all over with Caesar Martin.

So the three men issued out into the gloom of the night, and made their way to the stable wherein they had disposed their horses so carefully the night before.

The door lay on the ground smashed and broken. It had been driven to kindling wood from within. Its inner surface was dinted and riven by the iron shoes of the frightened steeds, but the horses themselves were nowhere to be found. They had broken their halters and vanished. The three Scots were left in the heart of the enemy's country without means of escape save upon their own feet.

But the horror which lay behind them in the house of La Meffraye drove them on.

Almost without knowing whither they went, they turned their faces towards the west, in the direction in which lay Machecoul, the castle of the dread Lord of all the Pays de Retz. Malise, as was his custom, walked in front, Sholto and the Lord James Douglas a step behind.

A chill wind from the sea blew through the forest. The pines bent soughing towards the adventurers. The night grew denser and blacker about them, as with the wan waters of the marismas on one side and the sombre arches of the forest on the other, they advanced sword in hand, praying that that which should happen might happen quickly.

But as they went the woods about them grew clamorous with horrid noises. All the evil beasts of the world seemed abroad that night in the forests of Machecoul. Presently they issued forth into a more open space. The greyish dark of the turf beneath their feet spread further off. The black blank wall of the pines retreated and they found themselves suddenly with the stars twinkling infinitely chill and remote above them.

They were now, however, no more alone, for round them circled and echoed the crying of many packs of wolves. In the forest of Machecoul the guardian demons of its lord had been let loose, and throughout all its borders poor peasant folk shivered in their beds, or crouched behind the weak defences of their twice barred doors. For they knew that the full pack never hunted in the Pays de Retz without bringing death to some wanderer found defenceless within the borders of that region of dread.

"Let us stop here," said Sholto; "if these howling demons attack us, we are at least in somewhat better case to meet them and fight it out till the morning than in the dense darkness of the woods."

In the centre of the open glade in which they found themselves, they stumbled against the trunk of a huge pine which had been blasted by lightning. It still stood erect with its withered branches stretching bare and angular away from the sea. About this the three Scots posted themselves, their backs to the corrugations of the rotting stump, and their swords ready in their hands to deal out death to whatever should attack them.

Well might Malise declare the powers of evil were abroad that night. At times the three men seemed wholly ringed with devilish cries. Yells and howls as of triumphant fiends were borne to their ears upon the western wind. The noises approached nearer, and presently out of the dark of the woods shadowy forms glided, and again Sholto heard the soft pad-pad of many feet. Gleaming eyes glared upon them as the wolves trotted out and sat down in a wide circle to wait for the full muster of the pack before rushing their prey.

Sholto knew well how those in the service of Satan were able to change themselves into the semblance of wolves, and he never doubted for a moment that he and his friends were face to face with the direct manifestations of the nether pit. Nevertheless Sholto MacKim was by nature of a stout heart, and he resolved that if he had to die, it would be as well to die as became a captain of the Douglas guard.

The blue leme of summer lightning momentarily lit up the western sky. The men could see the great gaunt pack wolves sitting upon their haunches or moving restlessly to and fro across each other, while from the denser woods behind rose the howling of fresh levies, hastening to the assistance of the first. Sholto noted in especial one gigantic she-wolf, which appeared at every point of the circle and seemed to muster and encourage the pack to the attack.



The wild-fire flickered behind the jet black silhouettes of the dense trees so that their tops stood out against the pale sky as if carved in ebony. Then the night shut down darker than before. As the soundless lightning wavered and brightened, the shadows of the wolves appeared simultaneously to start forward and then retreat, while the noise of their howling carried with it some diabolic suggestion of discordant human voices.

"La Meffraye! La Meffraye! Meffraye!"

So to the excited minds of the three Scots the wolf legions seemed to be crying with one voice as they came nearer. All the wild beasts of the wood appeared to be obeying the summons of the witch woman.

The strain of the situation first told upon the Lord James Douglas. "Great Saints!" he cried, "let us attack them and die sword in hand. I cannot endure much more of this."

"Stand still where you are. It is our only chance," commanded Sholto, as abruptly as if James Douglas had been a doubtful soldier of his company.

"It were better to find a tree that we could climb," growled Malise with a practical suggestiveness, which, however, came too late. For they dared not move out of the open space, and the great trunk of the blasted pine rose behind them bare of branches almost to the top.

"Your daggers in your left hands, they are upon us!" cried Sholto, who, standing with his face to the west, had a lower horizon and more light than the others. The three men had cast their palmers' cloaks from their shoulders and now stood leaning a little forward, breathing hard as they waited the assault of foes whom they believed to be frankly diabolic and instinct with all the powers of hell. This required greater courage than storming many fortifications.

Almost as he spoke Sholto became aware that a fierce rush of shaggy beasts was crossing the scanty grass towards him. He saw a vision of red mouths, gleaming teeth, and hairy breasts, into the leaping chaos of which he plunged and replunged his sword till his arm ached. Mostly the stricken died snapping and tearing at each other; but ever and anon one stronger than the rest would overleap the barrier of dead and dying wolves that grew up in front of the three men, and Sholto would feel the teeth click clean and hard upon the mail of his arm or thigh before he could stoop to despatch the brute with the dirk which he grasped in his left hand.

The rush upon Sholto's side fortunately did not last long, but while it continued the battle was strange and silent and grim—this notable fight of man and beast. As the youth at last cleared his front of a hairy monster that had sprung at his throat, he found himself sufficiently free to look round the trunk of the blasted pine that he might see how it fared with his companions.

At first he could see nothing clearly, for the same strange and weird conditions continued to permeate the earth and air.

For a moment all would be dark and then flash on continuous flash would follow, the wild-fire running about the tree-tops and glinting up through the recesses of the woods as if the heavens themselves were instinct with diabolic light.

As he looked, Sholto saw his father, a gigantic figure standing black and militant against the brightest of it. His hand grasped a huge wolf by the heels, and he swung the beast about his head as easily as he was wont to handle the forehammer at home. With his living weapon Malise had swept a space about him clear, and the beasts seemed to have fallen back in terror before such a strange enemy.

But what of the Lord James? Overleaping the pile of dead and dying wolves which his sword and dagger had made, and from which savage heads still bit and snarled up at him as he went, Sholto ran round to seek the young Lord of Avondale. At the first flash after leaving the tree trunk he was nowhere to be seen, but a second revealed him lying on the ground, with four shaggy beasts bending over him and tearing fiercely at his gorget and breast-armour. With a loud shout Sholto was among them. He passed his sword through and through the largest, and in its fall the wounded monster turned and bit savagely at the fore leg of a companion. The bone cracked as a rotten branch snaps underfoot, and in another moment the two animals were rolling over and over, locked together in the death grapple.

Once, twice, and thrice Sholto struck right and left. The rest of the beasts, seemingly astonished by the sudden flank attack, turned and fled. Then, pushing off a huge wounded brute which lay gasping out its life in red jets upon the breast of the fallen man, he dragged James Douglas back to the tree which had been their fortress and propped him up against the trunk.

At the same moment a long wailing cry from the forest called the wolves off. They retreated suddenly, disappearing apparently by magic into the depths of the forest, leaving their dead in quivering heaps all about the little bare glade where the unequal fight had been fought.

Malise the Brawny flung down the wolf whose head had served him with such deadly effect as a weapon against his brethren. The beast had long been dead, with a skull smashed in and a neck dislocated by the sweeping blows it had dealt its kin.

"Sholto! My Lord James!" cried Malise, coming up to them hastily. "How fares it with you?"

"We are both here," answered his son. "Come and help me with the Lord James. He has fallen faint with the stress of his armour."

After the disappearance of the wolves the unearthly brilliance of the wild-fire gradually diminished, and now it flickered paler and less frequently.

But another hail from Sholto revealed to Malise the whereabouts of his companions, and presently he also was on his knees beside the young Lord of Avondale.

Sholto gave him into the strong arms of Malise and stood erect to listen for any renewal of the attack. The wise smith, whose skill as a leech was proverbial, carefully felt James Douglas all over in the darkness, and took advantage of every flicker of summer lightning to examine him as well as his armour would permit.

"Help me to loosen his gorget and ease him of his body mail," said Malise, at last. "He has gotten a bite or two, but nothing that appears serious. I think he has but fainted from pressure."

Sholto bent down and with his dagger cut string by string the stout leathern twists which secured the knight's mail. And as he did so his father widened it out with his powerful fingers to ease the weight upon the young man's chest.

Presently, with a long sigh, James Douglas opened his eyes.

"Where are the wolves?" he said, with a grimace of disgust. Sholto told him how all that were left alive had, for the present at least, disappeared.

"Ugh, the filthy brutes!" said Lord James. "I fought till the stench of their hot breaths seemed to stifle me. I felt my head run round like a dog in a fit, and down I went. What happened after that?"

"This," said Malise, sententiously, pointing to the heaps of dead wolves which were becoming more apparent as the night ebbed and the blue flame rose and fell like a fluttering pulse along the horizon.

"Then to one or the other of you I owe my life," said Lord James Douglas, reaching a hand to both.

"Sholto dragged you from under half a dozen of the devils," said Malise.

"My father it was who brought you to," said Sholto.

"I thank you both with all my heart—for this as for all the rest. I know not, indeed, where to begin," said James Douglas, gratefully. "Give me your hands. I can stand upright now."

So saying, and being assisted by Malise, he rose to his feet.

"Will they come again?" he asked, as with an intense disgust he surveyed the battle-field in the intermittent light from over the marshes.

"Listen," said Malise.

The low howling of the wolves had retreated farther, but seemed to retain more and more of its strange human character.

"La Meffraye! La Meff—raye!" they seemed to wail, with a curious swelling upon the last syllable.

"I hear only the yelling of the infernal brutes," said the Lord James; "they seem to be calling on their patron saint—the woman whom we saw in the house of the poor cripple. I am sure I saw her going to and fro among the devils and encouraging them to the assault."

"'Tis black work at the best," answered Malise; "these are no common wolves who would dare to attack armed men—demons of the nethermost pit rather, driven on by their hellish hunt-mistress. There will be many dead warlocks to-morrow throughout the lands of France."

"Stand to your arms," cried Sholto, from the other side of the tree. And indeed the howling seemed suddenly to grow nearer and louder. The noise circled about them, and they could again perceive dusky forms which glided to and fro in the faint light among the arches of the forest.

In the midst of the turmoil Malise took off his bonnet and stood reverently at prayer.

"Aid us, Thy true men," he cried in a loud and solemn voice, "against all the powers of evil. In the name of God—Amen!"

The howling stopped and there fell a silence. Lord James would have spoken.

"Hush!" said Malise, yet more solemnly.

And far off, like an echo from another world, thin and sweet and silver clear, a cock crew.

The blue leaping flame of the wild-fire abruptly ceased. The dawn arose red and broad in the east. The piles of dead beasts shone out black on the grey plain of the forest glade, and on the topmost bough of a pine tree a thrush began to sing.



CHAPTER L

THE ALTAR OF IRON

And now what of Master Laurence, lately clerk in the Abbey of Dulce Cor, presently in service with the great Lord of Retz, Messire Gilles de Laval, Marshal and Chamberlain of the King of France?

Laurence had been a month at Machecoul and had not yet worn out his welcome. He was sunning himself with certain young clerks and choristers of the marshal's privy chapel of the Holy Innocents. Suddenly Clerk Henriet appeared under the arches at the upper end of the pretty cloisters, in the aisles of which the youths were seated. Henriet regarded them silently for a moment, looking with special approval upon the blonde curls and pink cheeks of the young Scottish lad.

Machecoul was a vast feudal castle with one great central square tower and many smaller ones about it. The circuit of its walls enclosed gardens and pleasaunces, and included within its limits the new and beautiful chapel which has been recently finished by that good Catholic and ardent religionary, the Marshal de Retz.

As yet, Laurence had been able to learn nothing of the maids, not even whether they were alive or dead, whether at Machecoul or elsewhere. At the first mention of maidens being brought from Scotland to the castle, or seen about its courts, a dead silence fell upon the company of priests and singers in the marshal's chapel. It was the same when Laurence spoke of the business privately to any of his new acquaintances.

No matter how briskly the conversation had been prospering hitherto, if, at Holy Mass or jovial supper board, Laurence so much as breathed a question concerning the subject next his heart, an instant blight passed over the gaiety of his companions. Fear momently wiped every other expression from their faces, and they answered with lame evasion, or more often not at all.

The shadow of the Lord of Machecoul lay heavy upon them.

Clerk Henriet stood awhile watching the lads and listening to their talk behind the carved lattice of Caen stone, with its lace-like tracery of buds and flowers, through which the natural roses pushed their way, and over which the clematis tangled its twining stems.

"Stand up and prove on my body that I am a rank Irelander," Laurence was saying defiantly to the world at large, with his fists up and his head thrown back. "Saint Christopher, but I will take the lot of you with one hand tied behind me. Stand up and I will teach you how to sing 'Miserable sinners are we all!' to a new and unkenned tune."

"'Tis easy for you to boast, Irelander," retorted Blaise Renouf, the son of the lay choir-master, who had been brought specially from Rome to teach the choir-boys of the marshal's chapel the latest fashions in holy song. "We will either fight you with swords or not at all. We do not fight with our bare knuckles, being civilised. And that indeed proves that you are no true lover of the French, but an English dog of unknightly birth."

This retort still further irritated the hot-headed son of Malise.

"I will fight you or any galley slave of a French frog with the sword, or spit you upon the rapier. I will cleave you with the axe, transfix you with the arrow, or blow you to the pit with the devil's sulphur. I will fight any of you or all of you with any weapons from a battering-ram to a toothpick—and God assist the better man. And there you have Laurence O'Halloran, at your service!"

"You are a loud-crowing young cock for a newcomer," said Henriet, the confidential clerk of the marshal, suddenly appearing in the doorway; "you are desired to follow me to my lord's chamber immediately. There we will see if you will flap your wings so boldly."

Laurence could not help noticing the blank alarm which this announcement caused among the youth with whom he had been playing the ancient game of brag.

It was Blaise Renouf who first recovered. He looked across the little rose-grown space of the cloister to see that Henriet had turned his back, and then came quickly up to Laurence MacKim.

"Listen to me," he said; "you are a game lad enough, but you do not know where you are going, nor yet what may happen to you there. We will fight you if you come back safe, but meantime you are one of ourselves, and we of the choir have sworn to stand by one another. Can you keep a pea in your mouth without swallowing it?"

"Why, of course I can," said Laurence, wondering what was to come next. "I can keep a dozen and shoot them through a bore of alder tree at a penny without missing once, which I wot is more than any Frenchman ever—"

"Well, then," whispered the lad Renouf, breaking in on his boast with a white countenance, "hearken well to me. When you enter the chamber of the marshal, put this in your mouth. And if nothing happens keep it there, but be careful neither to swallow it nor yet to bite upon it. But if it should chance that either Henriet or Poitou or Gilles de Sille seize hold of your arms, bite hard upon the pellet till you feel a bitter taste and then swallow. That is all. You are indeed a cock whose comb wants cutting, and if all be well, we will incise it for your soul's good. But in the meanwhile you are of our company and fellowship. So for God's sake and your own do as you are bid. Fare you well."

As he followed Clerk Henriet, Laurence looked at the round pellet in his hand. It was white, soft like ripe fruit, of an elastic consistency, and of the largeness of a pea.

As Laurence ascended the stairs, he heard the practice of the choir beginning in the chapel. Precentor Renouf, the father of Blaise, had summoned the youths from the cloisters with a long mellow whistle upon his Italian pitch-pipe, running up and down the scale and ending with a flourished "A-a-men."

The open windows and the pierced stone railing of the great staircase of Machecoul brought up the sound of that sweet singing from the chapel to the ear of the adventurous Scot as through a funnel. They were beginning the practice for the Christmas services, though the time was not yet near.

"Unto God be the glory In the Highest; Peace be on the earth, On the earth, Unto men who have good-will."

So they chanted in their white robes in the Chapel of the Holy Innocents in the Castle of Machecoul near by the Atlantic shore.

The chamber of Gilles de Retz testified to the extraordinary advancement of that great man in knowledge which has been claimed as peculiar to much later centuries. The window casements were so arranged that in a moment the place could either be made as dark as midnight or flooded with bright light. The walls were always freshly whitewashed, and the lime was constantly renewed. The stone floor was stained a deep brick red, and that, too, would often be applied freshly during the night. At a time when the very word "sanitation" was unknown, Gilles had properly constructed conduits leading from an adjoining apartment to the castle ditch. The chimney was wide as a peasant's whole house, and the vast fireplace could hold on its iron dogs an entire waggon-load of faggots. Indeed, that amount was regularly consumed every day when the marshal deigned to abide at Machecoul for his health and in pursuance of his wonderful studies into the deep things of the universe.

"Bide here a moment," said Clerk Henriet, bending his body in a writhing contortion to listen to what might be going on inside the chamber; "I dare not take you in till I see whether my lord be in good case to receive you."

So at the stair-head, by a window lattice which looked towards the chapel, Laurence stood and waited. At first he kept quite still and listened with pleasure to the distant singing of the boys. He could even hear Precentor Renouf occasionally stop and rebuke them for inattention or singing out of tune.

"My soul is like a watered garden, And I shall not sorrow any more at all!"

So he hummed as he listened, and beat the time on the ledge with his fingers. He felt singularly content. Now he was on the eve of penetrating the mystery. At last he would discover where the missing maidens were concealed.

But soon he began to look about him, growing, like the boy he was, quickly weary of inaction. His eye fell upon a strange door with curious marks burnt upon its panels apparently by hot irons. There were circles complete and circles that stopped half-way, together with letters of some unknown language arranged mostly in triangles.

This door fixed the lad's attention with a certain curious fascination. He longed to touch it and see whether it opened, but for the moment he was too much afraid of his guide's return to summon him into the presence of the marshal.

He listened intently. Surely he heard a low sound, like the wind in a distant keyhole—or, as it might be (and it seemed more like it), the moaning of a child in pain, it knows not why.

The heart of the youth gave a sudden leap. It came to him that he had hit upon the hiding-place of Margaret Douglas, the heiress of the great province of Galloway. His fortune was made.

With a trembling hand he moved a step towards the door of white wood with the curious burned marks upon it. He stood a moment listening, half for the returning footsteps of Clerk Henriet, and half to the low, persistent whimper behind the panels. Suddenly he felt his right foot wet, for, as was the fashion, he wore only a velvet shoe pointed at the toe. He looked down, and lo! from under the door trickled a thin stream of red.

Laurence drew his foot away, with a quick catching sob of the breath. But his hand was already on the door, and at a touch it appeared to open almost of its own accord. He found himself looking from the dusk of the outer whitewashed passage into a high, vaulted chapel, wherein many dim lights glimmered. At the end there was a great altar of iron standing square and solemn upon the platform on which it was set up, and behind it, cut indistinctly against a greenish glow of light, and imagined rather than clearly defined, the vast statue of a man with a curiously high shaped head. Laurence could not distinguish any features, so deep was the gloom, but the whole figure seemed to be bending slightly forward, as if gloating upon that which was laid upon the altar. But what struck Laurence with a sense of awe and terror was the fact that as the greenish light behind waxed and waned, he could see shadowy horns which projected from either side of the forehead, and lower, short ears, pricked and shaggy like those of a he-goat.

Nearer the door, where he stood in the densest gloom, something moved to and fro, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness Laurence could see that it was the bent figure of a woman. He could not distinguish her face, but it was certainly a woman of great age and bodily weakness, whose tangled hair hung down her back, and who halted curiously upon one foot as she walked. She was bending over a low couch, whereon lay a little shrouded figure, from which proceeded the low whimpering sound which he had heard from without. But even at that moment, as he waited trembling at the door, the moaning ceased, and there ensued a long silence, in which Laurence could clearly distinguish the beating of his own heart. It sounded loud in his ears as a drum that beats the alarm in the streets of a city.

The figure of the woman bent low to the couch, and, after a pause, with a satisfied air she threw a white cloth over the shrouded form which lay upon it. Then, without looking towards the door where Laurence stood, she went to the great iron altar at the upper end of the weird chapel and threw something on the red embers which glowed upon it.

"Barran—most mighty Barran-Sathanas, accept this offering, and reveal thyself to my master!" she said in a voice like a chant.

A greenish smoke of stifling odour rose and filled all the place, and through it the huge horned figure above the altar seemed to turn its head and look at the boy.

Laurence could scarcely repress a cry of terror. He set his hand to the door, and lo! as it had opened, so it appeared to shut of itself. He sank almost fainting against the cold iron bars of the window which looked out upon the courtyard below. The wind blew in upon him sweet and cool, and with it there came again the sound of the singing of the choir. They were practising the song of the Holy Innocents, which, by command of the marshal himself, Precentor Renouf had set to excellent and accordant music of his own invention.

"A voice was heard in Ramah, In Ramah, Lamentations and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children, Refused to be comforted: For her children, Because they were not."

Obviously there was some mistake or lack of attention on the part of the choir, for the last line had to be repeated three times.

"Because they were not."



CHAPTER LI

THE MARSHAL'S CHAMBER

There came a low voice in Laurence MacKim's ear, chill and sinister: "You do well to look out upon the fair world. None knoweth when we may have to leave it. Yonder is a star. Look well at it. They say God made it. Perhaps He takes more interest in it than in the concerns of this other world He hath made."

The son of Malise MacKim gripped himself, as it were, with both hands, and turned a face pale as marble to look into the grim countenance which hid the soul of the Lord of Machecoul.

Gilles de Retz appeared to peruse each feature of the boy's person as if he read in a book. Yet even as Laurence gave back glance for glance, and with the memory of what he had seen yet fresh upon him, a strange courage began to glow in the heart of the young Scot. There came a kind of contempt, too, into his breast, as though he had it in him to be a man in despite of the devil and all his works.

The marshal continued his scrutiny, and Laurence returned his gaze with interest.

"Well, boy," said the marshal, smiling as if not ill pleased at his boldness, "what do you think of me?"

"I think, sir," said Laurence, simply, "that you have grown older since I saw you in the lists at Thrieve."

It seemed to Laurence that the words were given him. And all the time he was saying to himself: "Now I have done it. For this he will surely put me to death. He cannot help himself. Why did I not stick to it that I was an Irelander?"

But, somehow, the answer seemed like an arrow from a bow shot at a venture, entering in between the joints of the marshal's armour.

"Do you think so?" he said, with some startled anxiety, yet without surprise; "older than at Thrieve? I do not believe it. It is impossible. Why, I grow younger and younger every day. It has been promised me that I should."

And setting his elbow on the sill of the window, Gilles de Retz looked thoughtfully out upon the cool dusk of the rose garden. Then all at once it came to him what was implied in that unlucky speech of Laurence's. The grim intensity returned to his eyes as he erected himself and bent his brows, white with premature age, upon the boy, who confronted him with the fearlessness born of youth and ignorance.

"Ah," he said, "this is interesting; you have changed your nation. You were an Irishman to De Sille in Paris, to the clerk Henriet, and to the choir at Machecoul. Yet to me you admit in the very first words you speak that you are a Scot and saw me at the Castle of Thrieve."

Even yet the old Laurence might have turned the corner. He had, as we know, graduated as a liar ready and expert. He had daily practised his art upon the Abbot. He had even, though more rarely, succeeded with his father. But now in the day of his necessity the power and wit had departed from him.

To the lord of the Castle of Machecoul Laurence simply could not lie. Ringed as he was by evil, his spirit became strong for good, and he testified like one in the place of final judgment, when the earthly lendings of word and phrase and covering excuse must all be cast aside and the soul stand forth naked and nakedly answer that which is required.

"I am a Scot," said Laurence, briefly, and without explanation.

"Come with me into my chamber," said the marshal, and turned to precede him thither.

And without word of complaint or backward glance, the lad followed the great lord to the chamber, into which so many had gone before him of the young and beautiful of the earth, and whence so few had come out alive.

As he passed the threshold, Laurence put into his mouth the elastic pellet which had been given him by Blaise Renouf, the choir-master's son.

The marshal threw himself upon a chair, reclining with a wearied air upon the hands which were clasped behind his head. In the action of throwing himself back one could see that Gilles de Retz was a young and not an old man, though ordinarily his vitality had been worn to the quick, and both in appearance and movement he was already prematurely aged.

"What is your name?"

The question came with military directness from the lips of the marshal of France.

"Laurence MacKim," said the lad, with equal directness.

"For what purpose did you come to the Castle of Machecoul?"

"I came," said Laurence, coolly, "to take service with you, my lord. And because I was tired of monk rule, and getting only the husks of life, tired too of sitting dumb and watching others eat the kernel."

"Ha!" cried Gilles de Retz, "I am with you there. There is, after all, some harmony between our immortal parts. For my part, I would have all of life,—husk, kernel, stalk,—aye, and the root that grows amid the dung."

He paused a moment, looking at Laurence with the air of a connoisseur.

"Come hither, lad," he said, with a soft and friendly accent; "sit on this seat with your back to the window. Turn your head so that the lamp shines aright upon your face. You are not so handsome as was reported, but that there is something wondrously taking about your countenance, I do admit. There—sit so, and fear nothing."

Laurence sat down with the bad grace of a manly youth who is admired for what he privately despises, and wishes himself well quit of. But, notwithstanding this, there was something so insinuating and pleasant about the marshal's manner that the lad almost thought he must have dreamed the incident of the burned door and the sacrifice upon the iron altar.

"You came hither to search for Margaret of Douglas," said the marshal, suddenly bending forward as if to take him by surprise.

Laurence, wholly taken aback, answered neither yea nor nay, but held his peace.

Then Gilles de Retz nodded sagely, with a quiet satisfaction in his own prevision, which to one less bold and reckless than the young clerk of Dulce Cor would have proved disconcerting. Then he propounded his next question:

"How many came hither with you?"

"One," said Laurence, promptly; "I came here alone with your servant De Sille."

The marshal smiled.

"Good—we will try some other method with you," he said; "but be advised and speak. None hath ever hidden aught from Gilles de Retz."

"Then, my lord," said Laurence, "there is the less reason for you to put me to the question."

"I can expound dark speeches," said the marshal, "and I also know my way through the subtleties of lying tongues. Hope not to lie to me. How many were they that came to France with you?"

"I will not tell you," said the son of Malise.

The marshal smiled again and nodded his head repeatedly with a certain gustful appreciation.

"You would make a good soldier. It is a pity that I have gone out of the business. Yet I have only (as it were) descended from wholesale to particular, from the gross to the detail."

Laurence, who felt that the true policy was to be sparing of his words, made no answer.

"You say that you are a clerk. Can you read Latin?"

"Yes," said Laurence, "and write it too."

"Read this, then," said the marshal, and handed him a book.

Laurence had been well instructed in the humanities by Father Colin of Saint Michael's Kirk by the side of Dee water, and he read the words, which record the cruelties of the Emperor Caligula with exactness and decorum.

"You read not ill," said his auditor; "you have been well taught, though you have a vile foreign accent and know not the shades of meaning that lie in the allusions.

"You say that you came to Machecoul with desire to serve me," the marshal continued after a pause for thought. "In what manner did you think you could serve, and why went you not into the house of some other lord?"

"As to service," said Laurence, "I came because I was invited by your henchman de Sille. And as to what I can do, I profess that I can sing, having been well taught by a master, the best in my country. I can play upon the viol and eke upon the organ. I am fairly good at fence, and excellent as any at singlestick. I can faithfully carry a message and loyally serve those who trust me. I would have some money to spend, which I have never had. I wish to live a life worth living, wherein is pleasure and pain, the lack of sameness, and the joy of things new. And if that may not be—why, I am ready to die, that I may make proof whether there be anything better beyond."

"A most philosophic creed," cried the marshal. "Well, there is one thing in which I can prove, if indeed you lie not. Sing!"

Then Laurence stood up and sang, even as the choir had done, the lamentation of Rachel according to the setting of the Roman precentor.

"A voice was heard in Ramah!"

And as he sang, the Lord of Retz took up the strain, and, with true accord and feeling, accompanied him to the end.



"Brava!" cried Gilles de Retz when Laurence had finished; "that is truly well sung indeed! You shall sing it alone in my chapel next feast day of the Holy Innocents."

He paused as if to consider his words.

"And now for this time go. But remember that this Castle of Machecoul is straiter than any prison cell, and better guarded than a fortress. It is surrounded with constant watchers, secret, invisible, implacable. Whoso tries to escape, dies. You are a bold lad, and, as I think, fear not much death for yourself. But come hither, and I will show you something which will chain you here."

With a kind of solicitous familiarity the Marshal de Retz took the lad by the arm and drew him to another window on the further side of the keep.

"Look forth and tell me what you see," he said.

Laurence set his head out of the window. He looked upon an intricate mass of building, composing the western wing of the castle, and it was some moments before he could distinguish what the Sieur de Retz wished him to see. Then, as his eyes took in the details, he saw on the flat roof of a square tower beneath him two maidens seated, and when he looked closer—lo! they were Margaret Douglas and, beside her, his brother's sweetheart Maud Lindesay. These two were sitting hand in hand, as was their wont, and the head of the child was bowed almost to her friend's knee. Maud's arm was about Margaret's neck, and her fingers caressed the childish tangle of hair. Presently the elder lifted the younger upon her knee and hushed her like a mother who puts a tired child to sleep.