"Unto God be the gloryIn the Highest;Peace be on the earth,On the earth,Unto men who have good-will."
"Unto God be the gloryIn 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!"
"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 MargaretDouglas, 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 thebent 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 practisingthe 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."
"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."
"Because they were not."
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 Sillé 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 andreckless 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 Sillé."
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 thecruelties 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 Sillé. 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!"
"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.
The prisoners of the White Tower.The prisoners of the White Tower.
"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 theyounger upon her knee and hushed her like a mother who puts a tired child to sleep.
Immediately behind this group, in the shadow of a buttress, Laurence saw a tall man, masked, clad in a black suit, and with a drawn sword in his hand.
The marshal looked out over the lad's shoulder.
"The day you are missed from the Castle of Machecoul, or the day that the rest of your company arrives here, that sword shall fall, but in a more terrible fashion than I can tell you! That sentinel can neither hear nor speak, but he has his orders and will obey them. I bid you good night. Go to your singing in the choir. It is time for the chanting of vespers in the chapel of the Holy Innocents."
It was in the White Tower of Machecoul that the Scottish maidens were held at the mercy of the Lord of Retz. At their first arrival in the country they had been taken to the quiet Chateau of Pouzauges, the birthplace of Poitou, the marshal's most cruel and remorseless confidant. Here, as the marshal had very truly informed the Lady Sybilla, they had been under the care of—or, rather, fellow-prisoners with—the neglected wife of Gilles de Retz, and at Pouzauges they had spent some days of comparative peace and security in the society of her daughter.
But at the first breath of the coming of the three strangers to the district they had been seized and securely conveyed to Machecoul itself—there to be interned behind the vast walls and triple bastions of that fortress prison.
"I wonder, Maudie," said Margaret Douglas, as they sat on the flat roof of the White Tower of Machecoul and looked over the battlements upon the green pine glades and wide seaward Landes, "I wonder whether we shall ever again see the water of Dee and our mother—and Sholto MacKim."
It is to be feared that the last part of the problem exceeded in interest all others in the eyes of Maud Lindesay.
"It seems as if we never could again behold any one we loved or wished to see—here in this horrible place," sighed Maud Lindesay. "If ever I get back to the dear land and see Solway side, I will be a different girl."
"But, Maud," said the little maid, reproachfully, "you were always good and kind. It is not well done of you to speak against yourself in that fashion."
Maud Lindesay shook her pretty head mournfully.
"Ah, Margaret, you will know some day," she said. "I have been wicked,—not in things one has to confess to Father Gawain, but,—well, in making people like me, and give me things, and come to see me, and then afterwards flouting them for it and sending them away."
It was not a lucid description, but it sufficed.
"Ah, but," said Margaret Douglas, "I think not these things to be wicked. I hope that some day I shall do just the same, though, of course, I shall not be as beautiful as you, Maudie; no, never! I asked Sholto MacKim if I would, and he said, 'Of course not!' in a deep voice. It was not pretty of him, was it, Maud?"
"I think it was very prettily said of him," answered Maud Lindesay, with the first flicker of a smile on her face. Her conscience was quite at ease about Sholto. He was different. Whatever pain she had caused him, she meant to make up to him with usury thereto. The others she had exercised no more for her own amusement than for their own souls' good.
"My brother William must indeed be very angry with us, that he hath never sent to find us and bring us home," went on the little girl. "It is three months since we met that horrible old woman in the woods above Thrieve Island, and believed her when she told us that the Earlhad instant need of us—and that Sholto MacKim was with him."
"None saw us taken away. Margaret," said the elder, "and perhaps, who knows, they may never have found any of the pieces of flower garlands I threw down before they put us in the boats from the beach of Cassencary."
But the eyes of the little Maid of Galloway were now fixed upon something in the green courtyard below.
"Maud, Maud, come hither quickly!" she whispered; "if yonder be not Laurence MacKim talking to the singing lads and dressed like them—why, then, I do not know Laurie MacKim!"
Maud came quickly now. Her face and neck blushed suddenly crimson with the springing of hope in her heart.
She looked down, and there, far below them indeed, but yet distinct enough, they saw Laurence daring Blaise Renouf to single combat and vaunting his Irish prowess, as we have already seen him do. Maud Lindesay caught her companion's hand as she looked.
"They have found us," she whispered; "at least, they are seeking for us. If Laurence is here, I warrant Sholto cannot be very far away. Oh, Margaret, am I looking very ill? Will he think I am as—(she paused for a word)—as comely as he thought me before in Scotland? Or have I grown old and ugly with being shut up so long?"
But the Maid of Galloway heard her not. She was pondering on the meaning of Laurence's presence in the Castle of Machecoul.
"Perhaps William hath sent Laurence to spy us out, and is even now coming from his French duchy with anarmy. He is a far greater man than the marshal, and will make him give us up as soon as he finds out where we are. Shall I call down to Laurie to let him know that we are here?"
Maud put her hand hastily over her companion's mouth.
"Hush!" she said, "we must not appear to know him, or they will surely kill him—and perhaps the others, too. If Laurence is here, I wot well that help is not far away. Let us be patient and abide. Come back from the wall and sit by me as if nothing, had happened."
But all the same she kept her own place in a spot where she could command the pleasaunce below, and looked longingly yet fearfully to see Sholto follow his brother across the green sward.
"Sweet and fair is the air of the evening," purred behind them a low voice—that of the woman who was called La Meffraye. "It brings the colour to the cheeks of the young. But I am old and wise, and I would advise that two maids so fair should not look down on the sports of the youths, lest they hear and see more than is fitting for such innocent eyes."
The girls turned away without looking at their custodian, who stood leaning upon her little hand crutch and smiling upon them her terrible soft smile.
"Ah," she said, "proud, are you? 'Tis an ill place to bring pride to, this Castle of Machecoul. You will not deign to speak a word to a poor old woman now. But the day is not far distant when I shall have my pretty spitfire clinging about these old trembling knees,and beseeching me whom you despise, as a woman either to save you or kill you—you will not care which.As a woman!Ha! ha! How long is it since La Meffraye was a woman? Was she ever rocked in a cradle? Did she play about any cottage door and fashion daisy chains, as I have seen you do, my pretties, long ere you came to Machecoul or even heard of the Sieur de Retz? Hath La Meffraye ever lain in any man's bosom—save as the tigress crouches upon her prey?"
She paused and smiled still more bitterly and malevolently than before upon the two maidens.
"Did you chance to be awake yester-even?" she went on. "Aye, I know well that you were awake. La Meffraye saw right carefully to that. And you heard the crying that rang out of yonder high window, from which the light streamed all through the night. Wait, wait, my pretties, till it is your turn to be sent for up thither, when the shining knife is sharpened and the red fire kindled. You will not despise La Meffraye when that day comes. You will grovel and weep, and then will La Meffraye spurn you with her foot, till the noise of your crying be borne out over the forest, and for very gladness the wolves howl in the darkness."
The little Maid of Galloway was moved to answer, and her lips quivered. But Maud Lindesay sat pale and motionless, looking towards the north, from which she hoped for help to come.
"Our brother, the Earl of Douglas, will bring an army from his dukedom of Touraine, and sweep you and your castle from the face of the earth, if your master dares to lay so much as a finger upon us."
La Meffraye laughed a low, cackling laugh, and inthe act showed the four long eye-teeth which were the sole remaining dental equipment of her mouth.
"Oh, Great Barran—" she chuckled, "listen to the pretty fool! Our brother will do this—our brother will do that.Ourbrother will lick the country of Retz as clean as a dog licks a platter. Know you not, silly fool, that both your brothers are long since dead and under sod in the castle of your city of Edinburgh. I tell you my master set his little finger upon them and crushed them like flies on a summer chamber wall!"
Maud Lindesay rose to her feet as La Meffraye spoke these words.
"It is not true," she cried; "you lie to us as you have done from the first. The Earl of Douglas is not dead!"
It was now little Margaret who showed the spirit of her race, and put out her hand to clasp that of her elder comrade.
"Do not let her even know that she has power to hurt us with her words," she whispered low to Maud Lindesay. Then she spoke aloud:
"If that which you say be true and my brothers are dead—there are yet Douglases. Our cousins will deliver us."
"Your cousins have entered into your possessions," jeered the hag; "it is indeed a likely thing that they will desire your return to Scotland in order to rob them of that which is their own."
"We are not afraid," said the little maid, stoutly; "there are many in the land of the Scots who would gladly die to help us."
"Aye, that is it. They shall die—all die. Three of them died yester-even, torn to pieces by my lord's wolves.Fine, swift, four-footed guardians of the Castle of Machecoul—La Meffraye's friends! And one young cock below there of the same gang hath gone even now to my lord's chamber. He hath mounted the stairs he will never descend."
"Well," said the Maid of Galloway, "even so—we are not afraid. We can die, as died our friends."
"Die—die!" cried the hag, sharply, angered at the child's persistence. "'Tis easy to talk. To snuff a candle out is to die. Poof, 'tis done! But the young and beautiful like you, my dearies, do not so die at Machecoul. No; rather as a dying candle flickers out—falls low, and rises again, so they die. As wine oozes drop by drop from the needle-punctured wine-skin—so shall you die, weeping, beseeching, drained to the white like a dripping calf in the shambles, yet at the same time reddened and shamed with the shame deadly and unnameable. Then La Meffraye, whom now you disdain to answer with a look, will wash her hands in your life's blood and laugh as your tears fall slowly upon the latchet of her shoon!"
But a new voice broke in upon the railing of the hideous woman fiend.
"Out, foul hag! Get you to your own place!" it said, with an accent strong and commanding.
And the affrighted and heart-sick girls turned them about to see the Lady Sybilla stand fair and pale at the head of the turret stair which opened out upon the roof of the White Tower.
At this interruption the eyes of La Meffraye seemed to burn with a fresher fury, and the green light in them shone as shines an emerald stone held up to the sun.
The hag cowered, however, before the outstretched index finger of Sybilla de Thouars.
"Ah, fair lady," she whimpered, "be not angry—and tell not my lord, I beseech you. I did but jest."
"Hence!" the finger was still outstretched, and, in obedience to the threatening gesture, the hag shrank away. But as she passed through the portal down the steps of the turret, she flung back certain words with a defiant fleer.
"Ah, you are young, my lady, and for the present—for the present your power is greater than mine. But wait! Your beauty will wither and grow old. Your power will depart from you. But La Meffraye can never grow older, and when once the secret is discovered, and my lord is young again, La Meffraye is the one who with him shall bloom with immortal youth, while you, proud lady, lie cold in the belly of the worm."
"It is true—all too true," said Sybilla de Thouars, sadly, "they are dead. The young, the noble were—and are no more. I who speak saw them die. And that so greatly, that even in death their lives cease not. Their glory shall flow on so that the young brook shall become a river, and the river become a sea."
Then in few words and quiet, she told them all the heavy tale.
But when the maids made as though they would cleave to her for the sympathy that was in her words and because of her tears, she set the palms of her hands against their breasts and cried, "Come not near one whom not all the fires of purgatory can purify—one who, like Iscariot, hath contracted herself outside the mercy of God and of our Lord Christ!"
But all the more they clave to her, overpassing her protestations and clasping her, so that, being deeply moved, she sat down on the steps of a corner turret which rose from the greater, and wept there, with the weeping wherewith women are wont to ease the heart.
Then went Maud Lindesay to her and set her hand about her neck, and kissed her, saying: "Do not be sorry any more. Confess to the minister of God. I also have sinned and been sorry. Yet after came forgiveness and the unbound heart."
Then the Lady Sybilla ceased quickly and looked up, as it had been, smiling. Yet she was not smiling as maidens are wont to smile.
"Pretty innocent," she said, "you mean well, but you know not what the word 'sin' means to such as I. Confess—absolve! Not even the Holy One and the Just could give me that. I tell you I have eaten of the apple of the knowledge of good and evil—yes, the very core I have eaten. I have the taste of innocent blood upon my lips. I have seen the axe fall, the axe which I put into the headsman's hands. I am condemned, and that justly. But one of you shall live to taste sweet love, and the crown of life, and to feel the innocent lips of children at her breasts. And the other—but enough. Farewell. Fear not. God, who has been cruel in all else, has given your lives to Sybilla de Thouars, ere in His own time He strike that guilty one with His thunderbolt."
And as she went within, the eyes of the maids followed her; but the masked man with the naked sword never so much as turned his head, gazing straight forward over the battlements of the White Tower into the lilac mist which hung above the Atlantic.
There stands a solitary rock at the base of which is a cave, on the seashore of La Vendée. Behind stretch the marshes, and the place is shut in and desolate. Birds cry there. The bittern booms in the thickets of grey willow and wet-shot alder. The herons nest upon the pine trees near by, till the stale scent of them comes down the wind from far. Ospreys fish in the waters of the shallow lake behind, and the scales of their prey flash in the sun of morning as they rise dripping from the dive.
In this place Sholto, Malise, and the Lord James Douglas were presently abiding.
It was but a tiny cell, originally formed by two portions of marly rock fallen together in some ancient convulsion or dropped upon each other from a floating iceberg. In some former age the cleft had been a lair of wild beasts, or the couch of some hairy savage hammering flint arrowheads for the chase, and drawing with a sharp point upon polished bone the yet hairier mammoth he hunted. But this solitary lodging in the wilderness had been enlarged in more recent times, till now the interior was about eight feet square and of the height of a man of stature when he stands erect.
The hearts of the three present cave-dwellers were sick and sad, and of them all the bitterest was the heart ofSholto MacKim. It seemed to his eager lover's spirit, as he climbed to the top of the sand dunes and gazed towards the massive towers of Machecoul rising above the green woodlands, that hitherto they had but wandered and done nothing. The sorcerer had prevented them about with his evil. They had lost Laurence utterly, and for the rest they had not even touched the outer defences of their arch enemy.
Thrice they had tried to enter the castle. The first time they had taken by force two waggons of fuel from certain men who went towards Machecoul, leaving the woodmen behind in the forest, bound and helpless. But at the first gate of the outer hall the marshal's guard had stopped them, and demanded that they should wait till the cars were unloaded and brought back to them. So, having received the money, the Scots returned as they went to the men whom they had left in the forest.
After this repulse they had gone round and round the vast walls of Machecoul seeking a place vulnerable, but finding none. The ramparts rose as it had been to heaven, and the flanking towers were crowded night and day with men on the watch. Round the walls for the space of a bow-shot every way there ran a green space fair and open to the view, but in reality full of pitfalls and secret engines. From the battlements began the arrow hail, so soon as any attempted to approach the castle along any other way than the thrice-defended road to the main gate.
The wolves howled in the forests by night, and more than once came so near that one of the three men had to take it in turns to keep watch in the cave's mouth. But for a reason not clear to them at the time they werenot again attacked by the marshal's wild allies of the wood.
The third time they had tried to enter the castle in their pilgrim's garb, and the outer picket courteously received them. But when they were come to the inner curtain, one Robin Romulart, the officer of the guard, a stout fellow, suddenly called to his men to bind and gag them—in which enterprise, but for the great strength of Malise, they might have succeeded. For the outer gates had been shut with a clang, and they could hear the soldiers of the garrison hasting from all sides in answer to Robin's summons.
But Malise snatched up the bar wherewith the winding cogs of the gate were turned, and, having broken more than one man's head with it, he forced the massive doors apart by main force, so that they were able all unharmed to withdraw themselves into the shelter of the woods. So near capture had they been, however, that over and over again they heard the shouting of the parties who scoured the woods in search of them.
It was the worst feature of their situation that the Marshal de Retz certainly knew of their presence in his territories, and that he would be easily able to guess their errand and take measures to prevent it succeeding.
Their last and most fatal failure had happened several days before, and the first eager burst of the search for them had passed. But the Scots knew that the enemy was thoroughly alarmed, and that it behoved them to abide very closely within their hiding-place.
The Lord James took worst of all with the uncertainty and confinement. Any restraint was unsuited to his jovial temper and open-air life. But for the present, atleast, and till they could gain some further information as to the whereabouts of the maidens, it was obvious that they could do no better than remain in their seaside shelter.
Their latest plan was to abide in the cave till the marshal set out again upon one of his frequent journeys. Then it would be comparatively easy to ascertain by an ambush whether he was taking the captives with him, or if he had left them behind. If the maids were of his travelling company, the three rescuers would be guided by circumstances and the strength of the escort, as to whether or not they should venture to make an attack.
But if by any unhoped-for chance Margaret and Maud were left behind at Machecoul, it would at least be a more feasible enterprise to attack the fortress during the absence of its master and his men.
Alone among the three Scots Malise faced their predicament with some philosophy. Sholto ate his heart out with uncertainty as to the fate of his sweetheart. The Lord James chafed at the compulsory confinement and at the consistent ill success which had pursued them. But Malise, unwearied of limb and ironic of mood as ever, fished upon the tidal flats for brown-spotted flounders and at the rocky points for white fish, often remaining at his task till far into the night. He constructed snares with a mechanical ingenuity in advance of his age. And what was worth more to the company than any material help, he kept up the spirits of Sholto and of Lord James Douglas both by his brave heart and merry speech, and still more by constantly finding them something to do.
At the hour of even, one day after they had been afortnight in the country of Retz, the three Scots were sitting moodily on a little hillock which concealed the entrance to their cave. The forest lay behind them, an impenetrable wall of dense undergrowth crowned along the distant horizon by the solemn domes of green stone pines. It circumvented them on all sides, save only in front, where, through several beaker-shaped breaks in the high sand dunes they could catch a glimpse of the sea. The Atlantic appeared to fill these clefts half full, like Venice goblets out of which the purple wine has been partially drained. To right and left the pines grew scantier, so that the rays of the sunset shone red as molten metal upon their stems and made a network of alternate gold and black behind them.
The three sat thus a long time without speech, only looking up from their tasks to let their eyes rest wistfully for a moment upon the deep and changeful amethyst of the sea, and then with a light sigh going back to the cleaning of their armoury or the shaping of a long bow.
It chanced that for several minutes no sound was heard except those connected with their labour, the low whistle with which the Lord James accompanied his polishing, thewisp-wispof Malise's arms as he sewed the double thread back and forth through a rent in his leathern jack, and the rasp of Sholto's file as he carved out the finials of the bow, the notched grooves wherein the string was to lie so easily and yet so firmly.
Thus they continued to work, absorbed, each of them in the sadness of his own thought, till suddenly a shadow seemed to strike between them and the red light of the western sky. They looked up, and before them, as it were ascending out of the very glow of sunset, they sawa woman on a white palfrey approaching them by the way of the sea.
So suddenly did she appear that the Lord James uttered a low cry of wonder, while Malise the practical reached for his sword. But Sholto had seen this vision twice already, and knew their visitor for the Lady Sybilla.
"Hold there!" he said in an undertone. "Remember it is as I said. This woman, though we have no cause to love her, is now our only hope. Her words brought us here. They were true words, and I believe that she comes as a friend. I will stake my life on it."
"Or if she comes as an enemy we are no worse off," grumbled sceptical Malise. "We can at least encourage the woman and then hold her as an hostage."
The three Scots were standing to receive their guest when the Lady Sybilla rode up. Her face had lost none of the pale sadness which marked it when Sholto last saw her, and though the look of utter agony had passed away, the despair of a soul in pain had only become more deeply printed upon it.
The girl having acknowledged their salutations with a stately and well-accustomed motion of the head, reached a hand for Sholto to lift her from her palfrey.
Then, still without spoken word, she silently seated herself on the grey-lichened rock rudely shaped into the semblance of a chair, on which Malise had been sitting at his mending. The strange maiden looked long at the blue sea deepening in the notches of the sand dunes beneath them. The three men stood before her waiting for her to speak. Each of them knew that lives, dearer and more precious than their own, hung upon what she might have to say.
At last she spoke, in a voice low as the wind when it blows its lightest among the trees:
"You have small cause to trust me or to count me your friend," she said; "but we have that which binds closer than friendship—a common enemy and a common cause of hatred. It were better, therefore, that we should understand one another. I have never lost sight of you since you came to this fatal land of Retz. I have been near you when you knew it not. To accomplish this I have deceived the man who is my taskmaster, swearing to him that in the witch crystal I have seen you depart. And I shall yet deceive him in more deadly fashion."
Sholto could restrain himself no longer.
"Enough," he said roughly; "tell us whether the maidens are alive, and if they are abiding in this Castle of Machecoul."
The Lady Sybilla did not remove her eyes from the red west.
"Thus far they are safe," she said, in the same calm monotone. "This very hour I have come from the White Tower, in which they are confined. But he whom I serve swears by an oath that if you or other rescuers are heard of again in this country, he will destroy them both."
She shuddered as she spoke with a strong revulsion of feeling.
"Therefore, be careful with a great carefulness. Give up all thought of rescuing them directly. Remember what you have been able to accomplish, and that your slightest actions will bring upon those you love a fate of which you little dream."
"After what we remember of Crichton Castle, how canwe trust you, lady?" said Malise, sternly. "Do you now speak the truth with your mouth?"
"You have indeed small cause to think so," she answered without taking offence. "Yet, having no choice, you must e'en trust me."
She turned sharply upon Sholto with a strip of paper in her outstretched hand.
"I think, young sir, that you have some reason to know from whom that comes."
Sholto grasped at the writing with a new and wonderful hope in his heart. He knew instinctively before he touched it that none but Maud Lindesay could have written that script—small, clear, and distinct as a motto cut on a gem.
"To our friends in France and Scotland," so it ran. "We are still safe this eve of the Blessed Saint Michael. Trust her who brings this letter. She is our saviour and our only hope in a dark and evil place. She is sorry for that which by her aid hath been done. As you hope for forgiveness, forgive her. And for God's dear sake, do immediately the thing she bids you. This comes from Margaret de Douglas and Maud Lindesay. It is written by the hand of M. L."
The wax at the bottom was sealed in double with the boar's head of Lindesay and the heart of Margaret of Douglas.
Sholto, having read the missive silently, passed it to the Lord James that he might prove the seals, for it was his only learning to be skilled in heraldry.
"It is true," he said; "I myself gave the little maid that ring. See, it hath a piece broken from the peak of the device."
"My lady," said Sholto, "that which you bring is more than enough. We kiss your hand and we will sacredly do all your bidding, were it unto the death or the trial by fire."
Then, as was the custom to do to ladies whom knights would honour, the Lord James and Sholto kneeled down and kissed the hand of Sybilla de Thouars. But Malise, not being a knight, took it only and settled it upon his great grizzled head, where it rested for a moment, lightly as upon some grey and ancient tower lies a flake of snow before it melts.
"I thank you for your overmuch courtesy," the girl said, casting her eyes on the ground with a new-born shyness most like that of a modest maid; "I thank you, indeed. You do me honour far above my desert. Still, after all, we work for one end. You have, it is true, the nobler motive,—the lives of those you love; but I the deadlier,—the death of one I hate! Hearken!"
She paused as if to gather strength for that which she had to reveal, and then, reaching her hands out, she motioned the three men to gather more closely about her, as if the blue Atlantic waves or the red boles of the pine trees might carry the matter.
"Listen," she said, "the end comes fast—faster than any know, save I, to whom for my sins the gift of second sight hath been given. I who speak to you am of Brittany and of the House of De Thouars. To one of us in each generation descends this abhorred gift of second sight. And I, because as a child it was my lot to meet one wholly given over to evil, have seen more and clearer than all that have gone before me. But now I do foresee the end of the wickedest and most devilish soul ever prisoned within the body of man."
As she spoke the heads of the three Scots bent lower and closer to catch every word, for the voice of the Lady Sybilla was more like the cooing of a mating turtle as it answers its comrade than that of a woman betrayed, denouncing vengeance and death upon him whom her soul hated.
"Be of good heart, then, and depart as I shall bid you. None can help or hinder here at Machecoul but I alone. Be sure that at the worst the unnameable shall not happen to the maids. For in me there is the power to slay the evil-doer. But slay I will not unless it be to keep the lives of the maids. Because I desire for Gilles de Retz a fate greater, more terrible, more befitting iniquity such as the world hath never heard spoken of since it arose from the abyss.
"And this is it given to me to bring upon him whom my soul hateth," she went on. "I have seen the hempen cord by which he shall hang. I have seen the fire through which his soul shall pass to its own place. Through me this fate shall come upon him suddenly in one night."
Her face lighted up with an inner glow, and shone translucent in the darkening of the day and the dusk of the trees, as if the fair veil of flesh wavered and changed about the vengeful soul within.
"And now," she went on after a pause, "I bid you, gentlemen of the house of Douglas, to depart to John, Duke of Brittany, and having found him to lay this paper before him. It contains the number and the names of those who have died in the castles of de Retz. It shows in what hidden places the bones of these slaughtered innocents may be found. Clamour in hisear for justice in the name of the King of France, and if he will not hear, then in the name of the folk of Brittany. And if still because of his kinship he will not listen, go to the Bishop of Nantes, who hates Gilles de Retz. Better than any he knows how to stir the people, and he will send with you trusty men to cause the country to rise in rebellion. Then they will overturn all the castles of de Retz, and the hidden things shall come to light. This do, and for this time depart from Machecoul, and entrust me (as indeed you must) with the honour and lives of those you love. I will keep them with mine own until destruction pass upon him who is outcast from God, and whom now his own fiend from hell hath deserted."
Then, having sworn to do her bidding, the three Scots conducted the Lady Sybilla with honour and observance to her white palfrey, and like a spirit she vanished into the sea mists which had sifted up from the west, going back to the drear Castle of Machecoul, but bearing with her the burden of her revenge.
The face of Gilles de Laval, Lord of Retz, had shone all day with an unholy lustre like that of iron in which the red heat yet struggles with the black. In the Castle of Machecoul his familiars went about, wearing expressions upon their countenances in which disgust and expectation were mingled with an overwhelming fear of the terrible baron.
The usual signs of approaching high saturnalia at Machecoul had not been wanting.
Early in the morning La Meffraye had been seen hovering like an unclean bird of prey about the playing grounds of the village children at Saint Benoit on the edges of the forest. At nine the frightened villagers heard the howl of a day-hunting wolf, and one Louis Verger, a woodman who was cutting bark for the tanneries in the valley, saw a huge grey wolf rush out and seize his little son, Jean, a boy of five years old, who came bringing his father's breakfast. With a great cry he hurried back to alarm the village, but when men gathered with scythes and rude weapons of the chase, the beast's track was lost in the depth of the forest.
Little Jean Verger of Saint Benoit was never seen again, unless it were he who, half hidden under the long black cloak of La Meffraye, was brought at noon by theprivate postern of the baron into the Castle of Machecoul.
So the men of Saint Benoit went not back to their work, but abode together all that day, sullen anger burning in their hearts. And one calling himself the servant of the Bishop of Nantes went about among them, and his words were as knives, sharp and bitter beyond belief. And ever as he spoke the men turned them about till they faced Machecoul. Their lips moved like those of a Moslemite who says his prayers towards Mecca. And the words they uttered were indeed prayers of solemnest import.
With his usual devotion at such seasons, Gilles de Retz had attended service thrice that day in his Chapel of the Holy Innocents. His behaviour had been marked by intense devoutness. An excessive tenderness of conscience had characterised his confessions to Père Blouyn, his spiritual director-in-ordinary. He confessed as his most flagrant sin that his thoughts were overmuch set on the vanities of the world, and that he had even sometimes been tempted of the devil to question the right of Holy Church herself to settle all questions according to the will of her priests and prelates.
Whereupon Père Blouyn, with suave correctness of judgment, had pointed out wherein his master erred; but also cautioned him against that undue tenderness of conscience natural to one with his exalted position and high views of duty and life. Finally the marshal had received absolution.
In the late afternoon the Lord of Retz commanded the fire to be laid ready for lighting in his chamber aloft in the keep of Machecoul, and set himself down to listen tothe singing of the choir, which, under the guidance of Precentor Renouf, rehearsed for him the sweetest hymns recently written for the choir of the Holy Father at Rome. For there the marshal's choir-master had been trained, and with its leader he still kept up a correspondence upon kindred interests.
Gilles de Retz, as he sat under the late blooming roses in the afternoon sunshine of the autumn of western France, appeared to the casual eye one of the most noble seigneurs and the most enlightened in the world. He affected a costume already semiecclesiastic as a token of his ultimate intention to enter holy orders. It seemed indeed as if the great soldier who had ridden into Orleans with Dunois and the Maid had begun to lay aside his earthly glories and seek the heavenly.
There, upon a chair set within the cloisters, in a place which the sunshine touched most lovingly and where it lingered longest, he sat, nodding his head to the sound of the sweet singing, and bowing low at each mention of the name of Jesus (as the custom is)—a still, meditative, almost saintly man. Upon the lap of his furred robe (for, after all, it was a sunshine with a certain shrewd wintriness in it) lay an illuminated copy of the Holy Gospels; and sometimes as he listened to the choir-boys singing, he glanced therein, and read of the little children to whom belongs the kingdom. Upon occasion he lifted the book also, and looked with pleasure at the pictured cherubs who cheered the way of the Master Jerusalemwards with strewn palm leaves and shouted hosannas.
And ever sweeter and sweeter fell the music upon his ear, till suddenly, like the silence after a thunderclap, the organ ceased to roll, the choir was silent, and out ofthe quiet rose a single voice—that of Laurence the Scot singing in a tenor of infinite sweetness the words of blessing: