"Suffer the little children to come unto Me,And forbid them not;For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
"Suffer the little children to come unto Me,And forbid them not;For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."
And as the boy's voice welled out, clear and thrilling as the song of an upward pulsing lark, the tears ran down the face of Gilles de Retz.
God knows why. Perhaps it was some glint of his own innocent childhood—some half-dimmed memory of his happily dead mother. Perhaps—but enough. Gilles de Laval de Retz went up the turret stair to find Poitou and Gilles de Sillé on guard on either side the portals which closed his chamber.
"Is all ready?" he asked, though the tears were scarcely dry on his cheeks.
They bowed before him to the ground.
"All is ready, lord and master," they said as with one voice.
"And Prelati?"
"He is in waiting."
"And La Meffraye," he went on, "has she arrived?"
"La Meffraye has arrived," they said; "all goes fortunately."
"Good!" said Gilles de Retz, and shedding his furred monkish cloak carelessly from off his shoulders, he went within.
Poitou and Gilles de Sillé both reached to catch the mantle ere it fell. As they did so their hands met and touched. And at the meeting of each other's flesh they started and drew apart. Their eyes encountered furtively and were instantly withdrawn. Then, having hung up the cloak, with pallid countenances and lips white and tremulous, they slowly followed the marshal within.
"Sybilla de Thouars, as you are in my power, so I bid you work my will!"
It was the deep, stern voice of the Marshal de Retz which spoke. The Lady Sybilla lay back in a great chair with her eyes closed, breathing slowly and gently through her parted lips. Messire Gilles stood before her with his hands joined palm to palm and his white fingertips almost touching the girl's brow.
"Work my will and tell me what you see!"
Her hands were clasped under a light silken apron which she wore descending from her neck and caught in a loose loop behind her gown. The fingers were firmly netted one over the other and clutched between them was a golden crucifix.
The girl was praying, as one prays who dares not speak.
"O God, who didst hang on this cross—keep now my soul. Condemn it afterwards, but help me to keep it this night. Deliver me—oh, deliver from the power of this man. Help me to lie. By Thy Son's blood, help me to lie well this night."
"Where are the three men from the land of the Scots? Tell me what you see. Tell me all," the marshal commanded, still standing before her in the same posture.
Then the voice of the Lady Sybilla began to speak, low and even, and with that strange halt at the end of the sentences. The Lord of Retz nodded, well pleased whenhe heard the sound. It was the voice of the seeress. Oftentimes he had heard it before, and it had never deceived him.
"I see a boat on a stormy sea," she said; "there are three men in it. One is great of stature and very strong. The others are young men. They are trying to furl the sail. A gust strikes them. The boat heels and goes over. I see them struggling in the pit of waters. There are cliffs white and crumbling above them. They are calling for help as they cling to the boat. Now there is but one of them left. I see him trying to climb up the slippery rocks. He falls back each time. He is weary with much buffeting. The waves break about him and suck him under. Now I do not see the men any more, but I can hear the broken mast of the boat knocking hollow and dull against the rocks. Some few shreds of the sail are wrapped about it. But the three men are gone."
She ceased suddenly. Her lips stopped their curiously detached utterance.
But under her breath and deep in her soul Sybilla de Thouars was still praying as before. And this which follows was her prayer:
"O God, his devil is surely departed from him. I thank thee, God of truth, for helping me to lie."
"It is well," said Gilles de Retz, standing erect with a satisfied air. "All is well. The three Scots who sought my life are gone to their destruction. Now, Sybilla de Thouars, I bid you look upon John, Duke of Brittany. Tell me what he does and says."
The level, impassive, detached voice began again. The hands clasped the cross of gold more closely under the silk apron.
"I see a room done about with silver scallop shells and white-painted ermines. I see a fair, cunning-faced, soft man. Behind him stands one tall, spare, haggard—"
"Pierre de l'Hopital, President of Brittany—one that hates me," said de Retz, grimly between his teeth. "I will meet my fingers about his dog's throat yet. What of him?"
The Lady Sybilla, without a quiver of her shut eyelids took up the cue.
"He hath his finger on a parchment. He strives to point out something to the fair-haired man, but that other shakes his head and will not agree—"
The marshal suddenly grew intent, and even excited.
"Look closer, Sybilla—look closer. Can you not read that which is written on the parchment? I bid you, by all my power, to read it."
Then the countenance of the Lady Sybilla was altered. Striving and blank failure were alternately expressed upon it.
"I cannot! Oh, I cannot!" she cried.
"By my power, I bid you. By that which I will make you suffer if you fail me, I command you!" cried Gilles de Retz, bending himself towards her and pressing his fingers against her brow so that the points dented her skin.
The tears sprang from underneath the dark lashes which lay so tremulously upon her white cheek.
"You make me do it! It hurts! I cannot!" she said in the pitiful voice of a child.
"Read—or suffer the shame!" cried Gilles de Retz.
"I will—oh, I will! Be not angry," she answered pleadingly.
And underneath the silk the hands were grasped witha grip like that of a vice upon the golden cross she had borrowed from the little Maid of Galloway.
"Read me that which is written on the paper," said the marshal.
The Lady Sybilla began to speak in a voice so low that Gilles de Retz had to incline his ear very close to her lips to listen.
"Accusation against the great lord and most noble seigneur, Gilles de Laval de Retz, Sire de—"
"That is it—go on after the titles," said the eager voice of the marshal.
"Accused of having molested the messengers of his suzerain, the supreme Duke John of Brittany, accused of ill intent against the State; accused of quartering the arms-royal upon his shield; called to answer for these offences in the city of Nantes—and that is all."
She ended abruptly, like one who is tired and desires no more than to sleep.
Gilles de Retz drew a long sigh of relief.
"All is hid," he said; "these things are less than nothing. What does the Duke?"
"I cannot look again, I am weary," she said.
"Look again!" thundered her taskmaster.
"I see the fair-haired man take the parchment from the hand of the dark, stern man—"
"With whom I will reckon!"
"He tries to tear it in two, but cannot. He throws it angrily in the fire."
"My enemies are destroyed," said Gilles de Retz, "I thank thee, great Barran-Sathanas. Thou hast indeed done that which thou didst promise. Henceforth I am thy servant and thy slave."
So saying, he took a glass of water from the table and dashed it on the face of the Lady Sybilla.
"Awake," he said, "you have done well. Go now and repose that you may again be ready when I have need of you."
A flicker of conscious life appeared under the purple-veined eyelids of the Lady Sybilla. Her long, dark lashes quivered, tried to rise, and again lay still.
The marshal took the illuminated copy of the Evangelists from the table and fanned her with the thin parchment leaves.
"Awake!" he cried harshly and sternly.
The eyes of the girl slowly opened their pupils dark and dilated. She carried her hand to her head, but wearily, as if even that slight movement pained her. The golden cross swung unseen under the silken folds of her apron.
"I am so tired—so tired," the girl murmured to herself as Gilles de Retz assisted her to rise. Then hastily handing her over to Poitou, he bade him conduct her to her own chamber.
But as she went through the door of the marshal's laboratory she looked upon the floor and smiled almost joyously.
"His devil has indeed departed from him," she murmured to herself. "I thank the God of Righteousness who this night hath enabled me to baffle him with a woman's poor wit, and to lie to him that he may be led quick to destruction, and fall himself into the pit which he hath prepared for the feet of the innocent."
Darkly and swiftly the autumn night descended upon Machecoul. In the streets of the little feudal bourg there were few passers-by, and such as there were clutched their cloaks tighter round them and scurried on. Or if they raised their heads, it was only to take a hasty, fearful glance at the vast bulk of the castle looming imminent above them.
From a window high in the central keep a red light streamed out, and when the clouds flew low, strange dilated shadows were wont to be cast upon the rolling vapour. Sometimes smoke, acrid and heavy, bellied forth, and anon wild cries of pain and agony floated down to silence the footfalls of the home-returning rustics and chill the hearts of burghers trembling in their beds.
But none dared to question in public the doings of the great and puissant lord of all the country of Retz. It fared not well with him who even looked too much at the things which were done.
The night was yet darker up aloft in the Castle of Machecoul itself. In the sacristy good Father Blouyn, with an air of resigned reluctance, was handing over to an emissary of his master the moulds in which the tall altar candles for the Chapel of the Holy Innocents wereusually cast and compacted. And as Clerk Henriet went out with the moulds he took a long look through a private spy-hole at the lads of the choir who were sitting in the hall apportioned to their use. They were supposed to be busy with their lessons, and, indeed, a few were poring over their books with some show of studious absorption. But for the most part they were playing at cards and dominos, or, in the absence of the master, sticking intimate pins and throwing about indiscriminate ink, according to the immemorial use of the choir-boy.
Clerk Henriet counted them twice over and in especial looked carefully to see what did the young Scots lad, who had so mysteriously escaped from the dread room of his master. Laurence MacKim played X's and O's upon a board with Blaise Renouf, the precentor's son, and at some hitch in the game he incontinently clouted the Frenchman upon the ear. Whereupon ensued trouble and the spilling of much ink.
Henriet, perfectly satisfied, took up the heavy moulds and made his way to his lord's chamber, where many things were used for purposes other than those for which they had been intended.
Upon the back of his departure came in the Precentor Renouf, who laid his baton conjointly and freely about the ears of his son and those of Laurence MacKim.
"Get to your beds both of you, and that supperless, for uproar and conduct ill becoming two youths who worship God all day in his sanctuary, and are maintained at grievous expense by our most devout and worthy lord, Messire Gilles of Laval and Retz, Seigneur and Lord!"
Laurence, who had of set purpose provoked the quarrel, was slinking away, when the "Psalta" (as the choir-master is called in lowerBrittany) ordered them to sleep in separate rooms for the better keeping of the peace.
"And do you, Master Laurence, perform your vigil of the night upon the pavement of the chapel. For you are the most rebellious and troublesome of all—indeed, past bearing. Go! Not a word, sirrah!"
So, much rejoiced in heart that matters had thus fallen out, Laurence MacKim betook himself to the Chapel of the Holy Innocents, and was duly locked in by the irate precentor.
For, upon various occasions, he had watched the Lord of Retz descend into the chapel by a private staircase which opened out in an angle behind the altar. He had also seen Poitou, his confidential body-servant, lock it after him with a small key of a yellow colour which he took from his fork pocket.
Now Master Laurence, as may have already been observed, was (like most of the youthful unordained clergy) little troubled, at least in minor matters, with scruples about such slight distinctions as those which dividemeumandtuum. He found no difficulty therefore in abstracting this key when Poitou was engaged in attending his master from the chapel, in which service it was his duty to pass the stalls with open lattice ends of carven work in which sat the elder choir-boys. Having secured the key, Laurence hid it instantly beneath the leaden saint on his cap, refastening the long pin which kept our Lady of Luz in her place through the fretwork of the little brazen key.
Presently he saw Poitou come back and look carefully here and there upon the floor, but after a while,not finding anything, he went out again to search elsewhere.
The idea had come to Laurence that at the head of the stairway from the chapel was the prison chamber of Maud Lindesay and her ward, the little Maid Margaret of Galloway.
He told himself at least that this was his main object, and doubtless he had the matter in his mind. But a far stronger motive was his curiosity and the magic influence of the mysterious and the unknown upon the heart of youth.
More than to deliver Margaret of Galloway, Laurence longed to look again upon the iron altar and to know the truth concerning the strange sacrifices which were consummated there. And he yearned to see again that rough-eared image graven after the fashion of a man.
And the reason was not far to seek.
For if even the worship of the High God, according to the practice of the most enlightened nations, grounds itself upon blood and sacrifice, what wonder if, in the worship of the lords of Hell, the blood of the innocent is an oblation well pleasing and desirable.
Rooted and ineradicable is the desire in man's heart to know good and evil—but particularly evil. And so now Laurence desired to see the sacrifice laid between the horns of the altar and the image above lean over as if to gloat upon the sweet savour of its burning.
Long and carefully Laurence listened before he ventured forth. The Chapel of the Innocents was dark and silent. Only a reflection of the red light which burned in the keep struck through the clerestory upon the great cross which swung above the altar. This, being dispersed like a halo about the sign of Christ's redemption, rendered the corner where was placed the door into the secret stairway light enough to enable the youth to insert therein Poitou's key. The wards were turned with well-accustomed smoothness.
Carefully shutting the door behind him so that if any one chanced to enter the chapel nothing would be observed, Laurence set his feet upon the steps and began his adventure of supreme peril.
It was a narrow staircase, only wide enough indeed for one to ascend or descend at once. And the heart of Laurence sank within him at the thought of meeting the dread Lord of Machecoul face to face in its strait, black spirals.
He accomplished the ascent, however, without incident, and, passing through another low arch, found himself at the end of the passage over against the door with the curious burned hieroglyphics imprinted upon it. There was no light in the corridor, and Laurence eagerly set his hand to the latch. It opened as before and admitted him at a touch.
The temple-like hall was silent and dim. Only an occasional thrill as if of an earthquake passed across it, waving the heavy hangings and bringing a hot breath of some strange heady perfume to the nostrils. Laurence, with a beating heart, ensconced himself in a hidden nook behind the door. The niche was covered by a curtain and furnished with a grooved slab of marble placed there for some purpose he could not fathom.
Yet it was by no means wholly dark. A light shone into the Chapel of Evil from the opposite side, and through it he could discern shadows cast upon the floorsand striding gigantic across the roof, as unseen personages passed the light which streamed into the dusky temple.
In the gloomiest part of the background, hinted rather than seen, he could make out the vast dark figure dominating the iron altar.
Then Laurence remembered that the chamber of the marshal lay on the other side—the room with the immense fireplace which he had once entered and from which he had barely escaped with his life.
Little by little Laurence raised himself upon the grooved slab until, standing erect, he could see some small part of the whitewashed, red-floored chamber he remembered so well—only a strip, however, extending from the door through which he looked to the great fireplace whereon the heaped wood had already been kindled.
At first all was confused. Laurence saw Henriet and Poitou going hastily here and there, as servitors do who prepare for a great function. Then came a pause, heavy with doom. On the back of this he heard or seemed to hear the frightened pleading of a child, the short, sharp commands of a soldier's voice, a sound as of a blow stricken, and then again a whimpering hush. Laurence leaned against the wall with his face in his hands. He dared not look within. Then he lifted his head, and lo! in the gloom it seemed as if the huge image had turned towards him, and in a pleased, confidential way were nodding approval of his presence.
He heard the voice of the Marshal de Retz again—this time kindly, and even affectionate. Some one was not to be frightened. Some one was to take a draughtfrom the goblet and fear nothing. They would not hurt him. They had but played with him.
Again Henriet and Poitou passed and repassed, and once Gilles de Sillé flashed across the interspace handing a broad-edged gleaming knife swiftly and surreptitiously to some one unseen.
Then came a short, sharp cry of agony, a gurgling moan, and black, blank, unutterable horror shut down on Laurence's spirit.
He sank down on his face behind the door and covered his eyes and ears with his hands. So he lay for a space without motion, almost without sense, upon the naked grooves of the marble slab. When he came to himself, a dusky light was diffused through the chapel. As he looked he saw La Meffraye come to the door and set her face within, like some bird of night, hideous and foul. Then she returned and Gilles de Sillé and Clerk Henriet came into the chapel bearing between them a great golden cup, filled (as it seemed by the care with which they carried it) to the very brim with some precious liquid.
To them, all clad in a priest's robe of flame-coloured velvet, succeeded the Lord of Retz himself. He held in his hand like a service-book the great manuscript written in red, which he had been transcribing at Sybilla's entrance, and as he walked he chanted, with a strange intonation, words that thrilled the very soul of the young man listening.
And yet, as Laurence looked forth from his hiding-place, it appeared that the black statue nodded once more to him as one who would say, "Take note and remember what thou seest; for one day thy testimony shall be needful."
These were the words he heard in the chanting monotone:
"O great and mighty Barran-Sathanas—my only lord and master, whom with all due observance I do worship, look mercifully upon this the sacrifice of innocent blood; let it be grateful to thee—to whom all evil is as the breath of life!
"Hear us, O Barran-Sathanas! Thou hast been deaf in past days, because we served thee not without drawback or withholding, without sparing and without remorse. Because we hesitated to give thee the best, the delicatest, the most pitiful. But now take this innocentest innocence. Behold I, Gilles de Retz, make to thee the matchless sacrifice of the Red Milk thou lovest.
"The Red Milk I pour for thee. The Red Milk I bring thee. The Red Milk I drink to thee—that thou mayest be pleased to restore vital energy and new youth to my veins, to make me strong as a young man in his strength, and wiser than the wisdom of age. Hear me, O great master of all the evil of the universe, thou equal and coadjutor of the Master of Good, hear and manifest thy so mighty power. Hear me and answer, O Barran-Sathanas!"
Gilles de Retz took the cup from the hands of the servitors. He seemed so weak with his crying that he could hardly hold it between his trembling palms.
He lifted his head and again cried aloud:
"See, I am weak, my Satan—see how I tremble. Strength is departed from me. Youth is dead. Help thy faithful servant, aid him to lift up this precious oblation to thee!"
And as the great dusky image seemed to lean overhim, with a hoarse cry Gilles de Retz raised the cup and held it high above his head. As he did so a beam, sudden as lightning, fell upon it, and with a quick, instinctive horror, Laurence saw that it was filled to the brim with blood fresh and red.
The marshal's voice strengthened.
"It is coming! It is coming! Barran manifests himself! O great lord, to thee I drain this draught!" cried Gilles de Retz. "The Red Milk, the precious milk of innocence, to thee I drink it!"
And he set the cup to his lips and drank deep and long.
"It comes. It fills me. I am strong. O Barran, give me yet more strength. My limbs revive. My pulse beats. I am young as when I rode with Dunois. Barran, thou art indeed mightier than God. I will give thee yet more and more. I swear it. I have kept the best wine till the last—the death vintage of a great house. The wine of beauty and brightness—I have kept it for thee. Halt not to make me stronger! Help me—Barran, help—I fail—!"
His voice had risen higher and higher till it was well nigh a scream of agony. Strangely too, in spite of the fictitious youth that glowed in his veins and coloured his cheek, it sounded like a senile shriek.
But all suddenly, at the very height of his exaltation, the cup from which he had drunk slipped from his hand and rolled upon the tesselated pavement of the temple, staining it in gouts and vivid blotches of crimson.
"Hasten, ere I lose the power—I feel it checked. Poitou, De Sillé, Henriet, go bring hither from the WhiteTower the Scottish maids. Run, dogs—or you die! Quick, Henriet! Good De Sillé, quick! Fail not your master now! It ebbs, it weakens—and it was so near completion. Stay, O Barran, till I finish the sacrifice, and here at thy feet offer up to thee the richest, and the fairest, and the noblest! Bring hither the maidens! I tell you, bring them quickly!"
And the terrible Lord of Retz, exhausted with his own fury, cast himself at the feet of the gigantic image, which, bending over him, seemed with the same grimace sardonically to mock alike his exaltation and his downfall.
But Laurence heard no more. For sense and feeling had wholly departed from him, and he lay as one dead behind the door of the temple of Barran-Sathanas, Lord of Evil, in the thrice-abhorrent Castle of Machecoul.
Within the grim walls of Black Angers Duke John of Brittany and reigning sovereign of western France was holding his court. The city and fortress did not properly, of right and parchment holding, appertain to him. But he had occupied it during the recent troubles with the English, and his loving cousin and nominal suzerain Charles the Seventh of France had not yet been strong enough to make him render it up again.
The Duke sat in the central tower of the fortress of Black Angers, that which looks between the high flanking turrets of the mighty enceinte of walls. He wriggled discontentedly in his chair and grumbled under his breath.
At his shoulder, tall, gaunt, angular, with lantern jaws and a mouth like a wolf trap, deep-set eyes that flamed under bushy eyebrows, stood Pierre de l'Hopital, the true master of Brittany.
"I tell you I will go to the tennis-courts—the three Scots must wait audience till to-morrow. What errand can they have with me—some rascals whom Charles will not pay now that his job is done? They come to take service doubtless. A beggarly lot are all such out-land varlets, but brave—yes, excellent soldiers are the Scots, so long as they are well fed, that is."
"Nay, my Lord Duke," said Pierre de l'Hopital, standing up tall and sombre, his long black gown accentuating the peculiarities of his figure. "It were almost necessary to see these men now and hear what they have to say. I myself have seen them and judge it to be so."
John of Brittany threw down the little sceptre, fashioned in imitation of that made for the King of France, with which he had been toying. The action was that of a pettish child.
"Oh," he cried, "if you have decided, there remains nothing for me but to obey!"
"I thank your Excellency for your gracious readiness to grant the men an interview," said Pierre de l'Hopital, having regard to the essential matter and disregarding the unessential manner.
Duke John sat glooming and kicking his feet to and fro on the raised dais, while behind his chair, impassive as the Grand Inquisitor himself, Pierre de l'Hopital, President of Brittany, lifted a hand to an unseen servitor; and in a few moments the three Scots were ushered into the ducal presence.
The Lord James in virtue of his quality stood a little in front, not by his own will or desire, but because Sholto and his father had so placed themselves that the young noble should have his own rightful precedence. For as to these things all Scots are careful by nature.
Duke John continued to keep his eyes averted from the men who sought his presence. He teased a little lop-eared spaniel, and nipped it till it yelped. But the President of Brittany never took his eyes off the strangers, examining them with a bold, keen, remorseless glance, in which, however, there was neither evil northe tolerance of it. Not a man to make himself greatly beloved, this Pierre de l'Hopital.
And little he cared whether or no. In Brittany men did his will. That was enough.
James Douglas was nettled at the inattention of the Duke. He was of that large and sanguine nature which is at once easily touched by any discourtesy and very quick to resent it.
"My Lord of Brittany," he began in a loud clear voice, and in his usual immaculate French, "I claim your attention for a little. I come to lay before you that which touches your kin and kingdom."
Duke John continued to play with the lap-dog, and in addition he formed his mouth to whistle. But he never whistled.
"His Grace of Brittany will now give you his undivided attention," said the President from behind, without moving a muscle either of his body or of his face, save those necessary to propel the words from his vocal cords.
The brow of Duke John flushed with anger, but he did not disobey. He raised his head and gazed straight at the three men, fixing his eyes, however, with a studied discourtesy upon Sholto instead of upon their natural leader and spokesman.
Behind his chair Pierre de l'Hopital let his deep inscrutable eye droop once upon his master, and his spare and sinewy wrists twitched as he held his arms by his side. He seemed upon the point of dealing ducal dignity a box on the ear both sound and improving.
"I am the Lord James of Douglas and Avondale," said the leader of the Scots with grave dignity, "andI had three years ago the honour of breaking a lance with you in the tilt-yard of Poitiers, when in that town your Grace met with the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy."
At this John of Brittany looked up quickly.
"I do not remember you," he said, "and I never forget faces. Even Pierre will grant me that."
"Your Grace may possibly remember, then, the dint in your shoulder that you got from the point of a spear, caused by the breaking of the links of your shoulder-piece."
A light kindled in the Duke's eyes.
"What," he cried, "you are the young Scot who fought so well and kept his shield up day by day over the door of a common sergeant's tent, having no pavilion of his own, till it was all over dints like an alehouse tankard?"
"As were also the knights who dinted it," grimly commented Pierre de l'Hopital.
The Lord James of Avondale bowed.
"I am that knight," he said quietly and with gravity.
"But," cried the Duke, "I knew not then that you were of Douglas. That is a great name in Poitiers, and had we known your race and quality we had not been so ready with our shield-rapping."
"At that time," said James Douglas, "I had not the right to add 'of Douglas' to my titles. But during this year my father hath succeeded to the Earldom and estates."
"What—then is your father Duke of Touraine?" cried the Duke of Brittany, much astonished.
"Nay, my lord," said James Douglas, with some littlebitterness. "The King of France hath caused that to revert to himself by the success which attended a certain mission executed for him in Scotland by his Chamberlain, the Marshal de Retz, concerning whom we have come from far to speak with you."
"Ah, my cousin Gilles!" cried Duke John. "He is not a beauty to look at, but he is a brave man, our Gilles. I heard he had gone to Scotland. I wonder if he contrived to make himself as popular in your land as he has done in ours."
With a certain grave severity to which Pierre de l'Hopital nodded approval, the Lord James replied: "At the instigation of the King of France and Louis the Dauphin he succeeded in murdering my two cousins William and David of Douglas, and in carrying over hither with him to his own country their only sister, the little Countess of Galloway—thus rooting out the greatest house in Scotland to the hurt of the whole realm."
"But to your profit, my Lord James of Avondale," commented the hollow voice of Pierre de l'Hopital, speaking over his master's head.
The face of James Douglas flushed quickly.
"No, messire," he answered with a swift heat. "Not to my profit—to my infinite loss. For I loved my cousin. I honoured him, and for his sake would have fought to the death. For his sake have I renounced my own father that begat me. And for his sake I stand here to ask for justice to the little maiden, the last of his race, to whom by right belongs the fairest province of his dominions. No, messire, you are wrong. In all this have I had no profit but only infinite hurt."
Pierre de l'Hopital bowed low. There was a pleased look on his face that almost amounted to a smile.
"I crave your pardon, my lord," he said; "that is well said indeed, and he is a gentleman who speaks it."
"Aye, it is indeed well said, and he had you shrewdly on the hip that time, Pierre," cried Duke John. "I wish he could teach me thus cleverly to answer you when you croak."
"If you had as good a cause, my lord," said the President of Brittany to the Duke, "it were not difficult to answer me as sharply. But we are keeping these gentlemen from declaring the purpose of their journey hither."
The Lord James waited for no further invitation.
"I come," he said boldly, holding a parchment in his hand, the same he had received from the Lady Sybilla, "to denounce Gilles de Retz and to accuse him of many cruel and unrighteous acts such as have never been done in any kingdom. I accuse him of the murder of over four hundred children of all ages and both sexes in circumstances of unparalleled barbarity. I am ready to lead you to the places where lie their bodies, some of them burned and their ashes cast into the ditch, others charred and thrown into unused towers. I have here names, instances, evidence enough to taint and condemn a hundred monsters such as Gilles de Retz."
"Ah, give me the paper," came the raucous voice of the President of Brittany, as he reached a bony hand over his master's shoulder to seize it.
The Lord James advanced, and giving it to him said, "Messire, I would have you know that a copy of this is already in the hands of a trusty person in each of the towns and villages which are named here, andfrom which children have been led to cruel death by him whom I have accused, Gilles de Retz, Marshal of France."
The President of Brittany nodded as he almost snatched the paper in his eagerness to peruse it.
"The point is cleverly taken," he said, "as justly indeed as if you knew my Lord of Brittany as well as, for instance, I know him."
The Duke was obviously discomfited. He shuffled his feet more than ever on the dais and combed his straggling fair beard with soft, white, tapering fingers.
"This is wild and wholly absurd," he said, without however looking at James Douglas; "our cousin Gilles is in ill odour with the commonalty. He is a philosopher and makes smells with bottles. But there is neither harm nor witchcraft in it. He is only trying to discover the elixir of life. So the silly folk think him a wizard. I know him better. He is a brave soldier and my good cousin. I will not have him molested."
"My lord speaks of kinship," grated the voice of Pierre de l'Hopital. "Here are the names of four hundred fathers and mothers who have also a claim to be heard on that subject, and whose voices, if I judge right, are being heard at this moment around the Castles of Machecoul, Tiffauges, Champtocé, and Pouzages. I wot there is now a crowd of a thousand men pouring through the passages of the Hotel de Suze in your Grace's own ducal city of Nantes. And if there goes a bruit abroad, that your Highness is protecting this monster whom the people hate, and the evidences of whose horrid cruelty are by this time in their hands—well, your Grace knows the Bretons as well as I. They will makeone end of Gilles de Retz and of his cousin John, Duke of Brittany."
"Think you so—think you so truly, Pierre?" cried the unhappy reigning prince; "I would not screen him if this be true. But the King—what of the King? They say he hath promised him support with arms and men for recovering to him and to Louis the Dauphin the Duchy of Touraine."
"And think you, my lord, that the Dauphin will keep his promise, if we show him good cause why he should fare better by breaking it?" suggested Pierre de l'Hopital, with the grim irony which had become habitual to him.
John of Brittany paused irresolute.
"Besides which," continued James Douglas, "I may add that this paper is already in the hands of the Cardinal Bishop of Nantes, and if your Grace will not move in the matter, his Eminence has promised to see justice done."
"The hireling—the popular mouther after favour! I know him," cried Duke John, angrily. "What accursed demon sent you to him? In this, as in other matters, he will strive to oust me from the hearts of the folk of Brittany. He will be the people's advocate and will gain great honour from this trial, will he? We shall see. Ho! guards there! Turn out. Summon those that are asleep. Let the full muster be called. I will lead you to Machecoul myself. And these gentlemen shall march with us. But by Heaven and the bones of Saint Anne of Auray, if in one jot they shall fail to substantiate against Gilles de Retz those things which they have testified, they shall die by the rack, and by the cord, andby disembowelling, and by fire. So swear I, Duke John of Brittany."
"It is good," said James Douglas. And "It is good," accorded also Malise and Sholto MacKim.
"But before any dies in Brittany, Gilles de Retz or another,Iwill judge the case," commented Pierre de l'Hopital, President of Justice and Grand Councillor of the reigning sovereign.
Throughout La Vendée and all the country of Retz had run a terrible rumour. "The Marshal de Retz is the murderer of our children. He has a thousand bodies in the vaults of his castles. The Duke of Brittany has given orders that they shall be searched. His soldiers are forsaking him. The names of the dead have been written in black and white, and are in the hands of the headmen of the villages. Hasten—it is the hour of vengeance! Let us overwhelm him! Rise up and let us seek our lost ones, even if we find no more than their bones!"
And terrible as had been the gathering of the were-wolves in the dark forests around Machecoul upon the night of the fight by the hollow tree, far more threatening and terrible was the uprising of the angry commons.
In whole villages there was not a man left, and mothers too marched in that muster armed with choppers and kitchen knives, wild eyed and angry hearted as lionesses robbed of their cubs. From the deep glens and deeper woods of the country of Retz they poured. They disgorged from the caves of the earth whither the greed and rapacity of their terrible lord had driven them.
Schoolmasters were there with the elder of their pupils. For many of the vanished children had disappeared on their way to school, and these men were in danger of losing both their credit and occupation.
Towards Tiffauges, Champtocé, Machecoul, the angry populace, long repressed, surged tumultuously, and with them, much wondering at their orders, went the soldiers of the Duke.
But it is with the columns that concentrated upon Machecoul that we have chiefly to do. Our three Scots accompanied these, and here, too, marched John of Brittany himself with his Councillor Pierre de l'Hopital by his side.
Night fell as they journeyed on, ever joined by fresh contingents from all the country round. In the van pressed forward the folk of Saint Philbert, warm from the utter destruction of the house of the witch woman, La Meffraye, so that not one stone was left upon another. Guided by these the Duke and his party made their way easily through the forest, even in the darkness of the night. And as they passed hamlet or cottage ever and anon some frenzied mother would rush upon them and fall on her knees before the Duke, praying him to look well for her darling, and bringing mayhap some pitiful shred of clothing or lock of hair by which the searchers might identify the lost innocent.
As they went forward the soldiers pricked on ahead, and caused the people to fall to the rear, lest any foreknowledge of their purpose might reach the wizard and warn him to escape.
The woods of Machecoul were dark and silent that night. Not the howl of a questing wolf was heard. Truly the marshal's demons had forsaken him, or mayhap they were all busy at that last carnival in the keep of the Castle of Machecoul.
As the storming party approached nearer, and while yet they were several miles distant, they became aware of a great red light that gleamed forth above them. They could not see whence it came, but the peasants of Saint Philbert with affrighted glances told how it beaconed only after the disappearance of some little one from their homes, what strange cries were heard ringing out from that lofty tower, and how for days after the smoke of a great burning would hang about the gloomy turrets of devil-haunted Machecoul.
Fiercer and ever fiercer shone the red glare, and the faces of the soldiers were lit up so that Pierre de l'Hopital ordered them to keep to the more gloomy arcades of the forest.
Then by midnight the cordon was drawn so closely that none might pass in or out. And behind the soldiery the common folk lay crouched, anger in their hearts, and their eyes turned towards the open windows in the keep of Machecoul, from which flared the red light of bale.
Then, covering their lanterns, the three Scots, with Duke John, Pierre de l'Hopital, and a score of officers, stole silently towards the tower by which the Lady Sybilla had promised that an entrance should be gained to the Castle of Machecoul.
It was situated at the western corner towards the south, and was joined to its fellows at the corresponding angles of the fortress by galleried walls of great height. Ten feet above the ground was a little door of embossed iron, but ordinarily no steps led to it when the castlewas in a state of defence. Yet when Sholto adventured into the angle of the wall, he stumbled upon a ladder that leaned against the little landing-ledge, above which was the entrance denoted on the plan.
Sholto ascended first, being the lightest and most agile of all. As he had expected, he found the door unlocked and a narrow passage leading within the tower. He lay a moment and listened, and then, being certain there was a light and the sounds of labour within, he crawled back to the ladder head, and whispered to the Lord James an order for total silence.
Whereupon, Sholto holding the ladder at the top, Duke John and his Councillor mounted like shadows, and with Malise and James Douglas to guard them they were presently crouched in the passage with the door shut behind them, and the officers keeping watch at the foot of the tower without.
These five listened to the sounds of busy picks within the tower. They could hear the ring of iron on stones and the panting of men engaged in severe toil.
"The marshal is preparing for flight," whispered the Duke, exultantly. "He is interring his treasures. He has been warned. But we will be overspeedy for him."
And he chuckled in his satisfaction so loudly that Malise, using no ceremony with Duke or varlet at such a season, put his hand over his mouth.
Then one by one they crawled along the narrow passage on their hands and knees, and presently from a little balcony, plastered like a swallow's nest on the inner wall of the tower, they found themselves looking down upon a strange scene.
A flight of steps led slantwise to the bottom, and atthe foot of the tower, stripped to the waist, they beheld two men busily filling great sacks with a curious cargo.
The turret had never been finished. It contained nothing whatever except the staircase. So far as Sholto could see there was not even a window anywhere. The door by which they had entered and another which evidently led into the interior of the castle were its only outlets. The earth at the bottom had remained as it had been left by the builders, who surely must have thought that no madder architectural freak was ever planned than this shut tower of the Castle of Machecoul with its blank walls and sordid accoutrement.
But most strange of all, the original earth had been covered to the depth of a foot or more with dark objects, the true significance of which did not appear from the distance of the little gallery where the party of five had stationed themselves.
The two men at work below had brought torches with them, which were fastened to the walls by iron spikes. The smoke from these hung in heavy masses about the tower, still further diminishing the clearness with which the watchers aloft could observe what went on below.
One of the workmen was tall and spare, with the forward thrust of head and neck seen in vultures and other unclean birds. The other, who held the sacks while his companion shovelled, was on the contrary stout and short, of a notably jovial, rubicund countenance, in habit like the hostler of an inn, or perhaps a well-to-do carrier upon the roads.
The two worked without speaking, as if the task were distasteful. When one sack was full, both would seize their picks and dig furiously at the floor of thetower. Then when they had enough loosened, they would fall to shovelling the curiously shaped objects into the sacks again.
As Sholto looked down he heard a hissing whisper at his ear.
"These be Blanchet the sorcerer and Robin Romulart. But last week they took notice of my little Jean and praised him for a noble boy."
Sholto turned round, and there at his elbow, having followed them in spite of all orders and precautions, he discerned the woodman Louis Verger, whose little son had been carried off by the grey she-wolf.
Sholto motioned him back, and at a sign from the Duke, his father and he began to descend. So silently did they make their way down the stone steps, and so intent were the men upon their work, that in a minute after leaving the little gallery Malise stood behind the taller and Sholto stole like a shadow along the wall nearer to the little rotund man who had been called Robin Romulart.
The Duke held up his hand. Sholto and Malise each took their man about the throat with their left arms and pulled them backward, at the same time covering their mouths with their right hands. Blanchet never moved in the strong arms of Malise. But Robin, whose rotund figure concealed his great muscular development, might have escaped from Sholto had not the woodman Verger flung himself at the little man's throat and brought him to the ground. Then the Duke and the others descended, and as they did so they became conscious of a choking mephitic vapour which clung dank and heavy to the lower courses of the tower.
Suddenly a wild cry made all shiver. It came fromLouis Verger, who had sprung upon something that lay tossed aside in a corner.
"Silence, man—on your life! Silence!" hissed Pierre de l'Hopital. "Whatever you have found, think only of revenge and help us to it!"
"I have found him. He is dead! The fiends! The fiends!" sobbed Louis Verger, covering a small partially charred object with the curtmantle of which he had rapidly divested himself for the purpose.
Then it came upon those who stood on the floor of the tower that they were in the marshal's main charnel-house. These vague forms, mostly charred like half-burned wood, these scraps of white bone, these little crushed skulls, were all that remained of the innocent children who, in the freshness of their youth and beauty, had been seduced into the fatal Castle of Machecoul.
And what wonder that an appalling terror sat on the heart and mastered the soul of Sholto MacKim. For how did he know that he was not treading under foot at each step the calcined fragments of the fair body of Maud Lindesay?
Twenty sacks had been filled ready for transport, and as many more lay folded and empty in a heap in a corner. The marshal, uneasy perhaps as to the suspicions against him, and anxious to remove evidence from the precincts of his castle, had ordered this Tower of Death to be cleared. But truly his devil had once more forsaken him. The order had been given a day too late.
"God's grace, I stifle. Let us get out of this, and seize the murderer," quoth Duke John, making his way towards the door.
"Wait a moment," said Pierre de l'Hopital, "we must consider. We cannot let the commons see this or they will sack the castle from foundation to roof tree, and slay the innocent with the guilty. We must seize and hold for fair trial all who are found within.And I, Pierre de l'Hopital, will try them!"
"What then do you propose?" said the Duke, getting as near the door as possible.
"Let us bring in hither the officers and what soldiers you can trust—that is not my business," answered the President. "Then we will go through the castle, and after we have secured the prisoners and made sure of sufficient pieces of justificative evidence, of which we have infinite supply in these sacks, we may e'en permit the people to work their will."
As it was Sholto who had first entered, so it was Sholto who first left the Tower of Death. He it was also who, at the head of a strong band, surprised the marshal's sleepy inner guard, and helped to bind them with his own hands. It was Sholto who, at the foot of the stairs of the great keep, stood listening that he might know the right moment to lead the besiegers upward.
But even as he stood thus, down the stairway there came pealing a terrible cry, the shriek of a woman in the final agony, shrill, desperate, unavailing.
And at the sound Sholto flew up the stone steps in the direction of the cry, not knowing what he did, save that he went to kill.
And scarce a foot behind him followed the woodman, Louis Verger, and as they fled upward the red gloom grew brighter till they seemed to be rushing headlong into a furnace mouth.
So at the command of the Marshal de Retz they sent to bring forth Margaret of Douglas and Maud Lindesay out of the White Tower, where they had been abiding. Margaret had gone to bed, and, as was her custom, Maud Lindesay sat awhile by her side. For so far as they could they kept to the good and kindly traditions of Castle Thrieve. It seemed somehow to bring them nearer home in that horrible place where they were doomed to abide.
"Give me your hand, Maud, and tell on," said little Margaret, nestling closer to her friend, and laying her head against her arm as she leaned on the low bedstead beside her.
Margaret was gowned in a white linen night-rail, made long ago for the marshal's daughter, little Marie de Retz, in the brighter days before the setting up of the iron altar. Catherine, his deserted wife, had been kind to the girls at Pouzages, and had given to both of them such articles of garmenture as they were sorely in need of.
"Tell on—haste you," commanded little Margaret, with the imperiousness of loving childhood, nestling yet closer as she spoke. "It helps me to forget. I can almost think when you are speaking that we are againat Thrieve, and that if we looked out at the window we should see the Dee running by and Screet and Ben Gairn—and hear Sholto MacKim drilling his men out in the courtyard. Why, Maudie, what is the matter? I did not mean to make you cry. But it is all so sweet to think upon in this place. Oh, Maudie, Maudie, what would you give to hear a whaup whistle?"
Then drawing herself into a sitting posture, with her hands about Maud's neck, she took a kerchief from under the pillow and dried her friend's tears, murmuring the while, "Ah, do not cry, Maud, my vision will yet come true, and you shall indeed see Ben Gairn and Thrieve—and everything. I was dreaming about it last night. Shall I tell you about it, sweet Maud?"
Maud Lindesay did not reply, not having recovered power over her voice. So the little Maid of Galloway went on unbidden.
"Yes, I dreamed a glad dream yester-even. Shall I tell it you all and all? I will—though you can tell stories far better than I.
"Methought that I and you—I mean, dear Maud, you and I, were sitting together in the gloaming at the door of a little house up on the edges of the moorland, where the heather is prettiest, and reddest, and longest. And we were happy. We were waiting for some one. I shall not tell you who, Maudie, but if you are good, and stop crying, you can guess. And there was a ring on your finger, Maud. No, not like the old ones—not a pretty ring like those in your box, yet you loved it more than them all, and never stopped turning it about between your finger and thumb.
"They had let me come up to stay with you, and themen who had accompanied me were drinking in the clachan. As we sat I seemed to hear their loud chorus, sounding up from the change-house.
"And you listened and said: 'I wish he would come. He is very long. It is always long when he is away.' But you never said who it was that was long away. And I shall not tell you, though I know. Perhaps it was old Jock Lacklands, who used to be captain of the guard, and perhaps grouting Peter, from the gate-house by the ford. But somehow I do not think so. Ah, that is better! Now do not cry again. But listen, else I will not tell you any more, but go off to sleep instead.
"Perhaps you do not want to hear the rest. Yet—it was such a pretty dream, and of good omen.
"Youdowant to hear? Well, then, be good!
"As we sat there we could hear the bumblebees scurrying home, and every now and then one of the big boom-beetles would sail whirring past us. We could hear the sheep crying below in the little green meadows so lonesomely, and the snipe bleating an answer away up in the sky above their heads, and you said, 'It is all so empty, wanting him!'
"Then the maids brought in the cows, and milked them standing at the gable end, and we could smell the smell of their breath, sweet like the scent of the flowers they had been eating all day long. Then, after a while, they were driven out of the yard again, and went in a string, one after the other, back to their pastures, doucely and sedately, just like folk going to holy kirk on Sabbath days when it is summer time in Galloway.
"Then you said, 'I am weary of waiting for him!' And I answered, 'Why,—he has not been gone morethan a day. Sometimes I do not see him for weeks, andInever fret like that!'
"Then you answered (it has all come so clear into my mind), 'Some day you will know, little one!' And you patted me on the head, and went to the house end to look into the sunset. You looked many minutes under your hand, and when you came back you said, as if you had never said it before, 'He is long a-coming! I wonder what can be keeping him.'
"Then the maidens told us that the supper was ready to put on the table, whereat you scolded them, telling them that it was too early, and that they must keep it hot against their master's coming. And to me you said, 'You are not hungry, are you?' And I answered, 'No,' though I was indeed very hungry—(in my dream, that is). Then you said again, sighing: 'It is strange that he should not come home! I cannot eat till he comes! Perhaps he has fallen into a ditch, or some eagle may have pecked out his eyes!'
"Then all the while it grew darker, and still no one came. Whereat you cried a little softly, and said: 'He might have come—I know right well he could have been here by this time if he had tried. But he does not love me any more.' And you were patting the ground with your foot as you used to do when—well, when he went away from Thrieve without coming out upon the leads to say 'Good-night.' Then, all at once, there was a noise of quick feet brushing eagerly through the heather, and some one (no, not Landless Jock) leaped the wall and caught me—me—in his arms."
"No, it was not you whom he caught in his arms!" cried Maud Lindesay, indignantly, and then stopped,abashed at her own folly. But the little maid laughed merrily.
"Aha!" she said, "Icaught you that time in my trap. You know who it was in my dream, though I have never told you, nor so much as hinted.
"And he asked if you had missed him, and you made a sign for me not to speak, just as you used to do at Castle Thrieve, and answered, 'No, not a little bit! Margaret and I were quite happy. We hoped you would not come back at all this night, for then we could have slept together.'"
Maud Lindesay drew a long, soft breath, and looked out of the window of the White Tower into the dark.
"That is a sweet dream," she murmured. "Ah, would that it were true, and that Sholto—!"
She broke off short again, for the maid clapped her hands gleefully. "You said it! You said it!" she cried. "You called him Sholto. Now I know; and I am so glad, for he is nearly as good to play with as you. And I shall not mind him a bit."
Little Margaret stopped short in her turn, seeing something in her friend's face.
"Why are you suddenly grown so sad, Maudie?" she asked.
"It came upon me, dear Margaret," said Maud, "how that we are but two helpless maids in a dreadful place without a friend. Let us say a prayer to God to keep us!"
Then Margaret Douglas turned and knelt with her face to the pillow and her small hands clasped in front of her.
"Give me your silver cross," she said, "I lent thelittle gold one that was William's to the Lady Sybilla, and she hath not returned it me again."
Maud gave her the cross and she took it and held it in the palm of her hand looking long at it. Then she repeated one by one the children's orisons she had been taught, and after that she made a little prayer of her own. This is the prayer.
"Lord of mercy, be good to two maids who are lonely and weak, and shut up in this place of evil men. Keep our lives and our souls, and also our bodies from harm. Make us not afraid of the dark or of the devil. For Thou art the stronger. And do not forget to be near us this night, for we have no other friend and sorely do we need one to love and deliver us. Amen."
It was true. More bitterly than any two in the whole world, these maidens needed a friend at that moment. For scarcely had the childish accents been lost in the night silence, when the outer door of the White Tower was thrown open to the wall, and on the steps of the turret stair they heard the noise of men coming upwards to their prison-room.
But first, though the inner door of their chamber was locked within, the bolts glided back apparently of their own accord. It opened, and the hideous face of La Meffraye looked in upon them with a cackle of fiendish laughter.
"Come, sweet maidens," she cried gleefully, as the frightened girls clasped each other closer upon the bed, "come away. The Marshal de Retz calls for you. He hath need of your beauty to grace his feast. The lights of the banquet burn in his hall. See the fire of burning shine out upon the night. The very trees are red withit. The skies are red. All is red. Come—up—make yourselves fair for the eyes of the great lord to behold!"
Then behind La Meffraye entered Gilles de Sillé and Poitou, the marshal's servants.
"Make ready in haste—you are both to go instantly before my lord, who abides your coming!" said Gilles de Sillé. "Poitou and I will abide without the door, and La Meffraye here shall be your tirewoman and see that you have that which you need. But hasten, for my lord is instant and cannot be kept waiting!"
So they brought the Scottish maidens down from the White Tower into the night. They walked hand in hand. Their steps did not falter, and, as they went, they prayed to God to keep them from the dangers of the place. Astarte, the she-wolf, who must have kept guard beneath, stalked before them, and behind them they seemed to hear the hobbling crutch and cackling laughter of La Meffraye.
Across the wide courtyard of Machecoul they went. It also was filled with the reflection of the red tide of light which ebbed and flowed, waxing and waning above. Saving for that window the whole castle was wrapped in gloom and silence, and if there were any awake within the precincts they knew better than to spy upon the midnight doings of their dread lord.
The little party passed up the great staircase of the keep and presently halted before the inscribed wooden door by which Laurence had entered the Temple of Evil.
As Gilles de Sillé opened it for the maids to precede him, the skirt of Maud Lindesay's robe, blown back by the draught of the chamber, fluttered against the cheekof Laurence MacKim as he lay on his face in the niche of the wall. At the light touch he came to himself, and looked about with a strange and instant change in all the affections and movements of his heart.
With the coming in of the maidens, fear seemed utterly to forsake him. A clarity of purpose, an alertness of brain, a strength of heart unknown before, took the place of the trembling bath of horror in which he had swooned away.
It was like the sudden appearance of two white angels walking fearless and unscathed through the grim dominions of the Lords of Hell.
Incarnate Good had somehow entered the house of the Demon, though it was in the slender periphery of two maidens' bodies, and evil, strong and resistless before, seemed in the moment to lose half its power.