On the other side, next to Louise de Roche d’or, rode a tall and handsome youth, wearing the belt and spurs of knighthood, and gazing at times into the face of the beautiful girl with eyes full of deep, ardent affection, and speaking to her in those low, earnest tones which denote so certainly the existence of strong and pervading interest and affection. The knight, already famous far beyond his years, for deeds of dauntless daring, was Sir Louis de Montfauçon, a puissant baron of Auvergne, whose bands marched with those of Castel de Roche d’or, and the affianced husband of the young and fair Louise. Pages and equerries, with the usual attendants, followed, and the courtyard rang and re-echoed with the clang of hoofs, the neighing of coursers, the deep baying of the bloodhounds, and the screams of the frightened falcons.
They issued from the castle-gates; wound through the open park, and the dense woodland chase beyond it; swept down a steep descent into a broad and fertile valley, watered by a great, clear river, which they crossed by a wooden bridge: traversed the narrow, sandy street of the village of Castel de Roche d’or, and, turning off short to the right, entered a little dell, through which a bright, clear rivulet murmured over its pebbly bed, on its way to join the larger river in the valley.
The lower part of this little dell was principally open pasturage, dotted here and there with brakes and solitary bushes of hawthorn; and along the margin of the rivulet there ran a fringe of willow and alder thickets, but a little higher up it degenerated into a mere gorge or ravine, thickly overshadowed by the gnarled arms and dense, verduous umbrage of huge, immemorial oaks, the outskirts and advanced guard, as it were, of a vast oak-forest, which covered leagues on leagues of rough and broken country, to which this dell formed the readiest means of access.
Just in the jaws of this pass, overhung by the oaks, stood a small, gray, rustic chapel, supported on four clustered columns,with groined arches intersecting each other resting upon them, a small, arched canopy containing a bell on the summit of its steep, slated roof, and a low-browed door, with a round arch, decorated with the wolf-toothed carvings of the earliest Norman style. Immediately in front of the door, the little rivulet which watered the dell burst out of the other in a strong, gushing spring, which had been blessed by some saint of old, and, being surmounted by a vaulted canopy, was held to be peculiarly holy by the superstitious rustics of the region.
This lovely spot, however, peaceful as it showed, and calm in its tranquil and sequestered security, had been the scene, some two or three years before, of a fearful and cruel crime: had witnessed the violent seizure of a sweet, innocent, and rarely lovely bride, fresh from the marriage benediction, by this very Raoul de Canillac; and the girl had escaped pollution only by self-immolation.
It was a cursed deed—and cursed was the vengeance it provoked!
Just as the company I have described wheeled into the lower end of the little dell, conversing joyously together, and enjoying the sweet influences of the season and the place, they were saluted by the long, keen blast of a bugle, well and clearly winded, in that peculiarly note known at that period as themort, being the call that announced the death of the game, whatever it was, which might be the object of pursuit.
This call came from the oaks above the chapel, although no performer was seen, nor was there any baying of hounds or clamor of hunters, such as usually accompanies the termination of a chase.
There was no privilege at that time more highly regarded by the nobles than the rights of the chase, nor was there any crime more jealously pursued and punished more vindictively than the infraction of the forest-laws; so much so, indeed, that the deathof a stag or wild-boar by unlicensed hands was visited with a far deeper meed of vengeance than the murder of a man!
It was with a face, therefore, inflamed by the fiercest ire, a flashing eye, and a knitted brow, that Raoul de Canillac unsheathed his sword, and spurred his horse into a gallop, calling upon his men with a vehement and angry oath to follow him, for there were of a surety villeyns in the wood slaughtering the deer.
The ladies of the party checked their horses on the instant in affright, while the men rushed forward in confusion, drawing their weapons, and casting loose the hounds and hawks which they had led or carried, in order to wield their arms with more advantage; and between the shouts of the feudal retainers, the deep baying of the released bloodhounds, and the wild screams of the hawks, all that calm and peaceful solitude was transformed on the instant into a scene of the wildest turmoil and confusion. At this moment, just as the lord of Roche d’or spurred his horse up the slight eminence toward the little church, a man of great height and powerful frame stepped slowly forward from among the oaks, clad in a full suit of knightly armor, of plain, unornamented black steel, with no device or bearing on his shield, and no crest on his casque, which was overshadowed by an immense plume of black ostrich-feathers. He had a two-handed sword slung across his shoulders, and carried a ponderous battle-axe in his right hand.
Startled by this unexpected apparition, Raoul de Canillac checked his horse suddenly, exclaiming: “Treason! fy! treason! Ride, ladies, for your lives!—ride! ride!”
But this warning came too late: for, simultaneously with the appearance of the leader, above five hundred crossbow-men and lancers poured out from the wood on either flank, with their weapons ready; and a body of fifty or sixty mounted men-atarms drew out from behind a spur of the hills at the entranceof the gorge, and effectually cut off their retreat. Entirely surrounded, escape was impossible, and resistance hopeless, so great was the numerical superiority of the enemy, and so perfectly were they armed and accoutred for offence and defence, while the retainers of the lords had no defensive arms whatever, nor any weapons except their swords and hunting-staves, and a few bows and arbalasts.
The leader of the Jacquerie—for it needed not a second glance to inform Raoul de Canillac into whose hands he had fallen—waved his axe on high as a signal, and instantly a single crossbow was discharged; and the bolt, striking the horse of the seigneur full in the centre of the chest, he went down on the instant: and before he could recover his feet, the marquis was seized by a dozen stout hands, and bound securely hand and foot with stout hempen cords.
On perceiving this, the elder nobleman, Canillac the madman, with the desperate and reckless fury for which he was so conspicuous, dashed forward, sword in hand, with his paternal war-cry, followed by a dozen or two of the armed servitors, as if to rescue his kinsman. Perhaps he perceived the hopelessness of their condition, and preferred selling his life dearly to surrendering only to be slaughtered in cold blood: and if such was his notion, he was not all unwise.
Again the battle-axe was waved, and this time a close and well-aimed volley followed, the bolts taking effect fatally on the bodies of the old lord and several of his followers, three of whom with their chief were slain outright, while several others staggered back more or less severely wounded.
With this, all resistance ended, the men throwing down their arms, and crying for quarter, which—as they were all, with the exception of two pages and an esquire, men of low birth—was granted, and they were discharged without further condition. To those of gentle origin, however, no such clemencywas extended. The pages and esquire were stripped of their costly garb, and immediately hanged up by the necks from the oak-trees, together with the young knight affianced to Mademoiselle Roche d’or, in spite of the entreaties and supplications of his beautiful betrothed.
The ladies were then compelled to dismount, and their arms being bound behind their backs, were tied with ropes to the tails of their captors’ horses; and, together with Raoul de Canillac, whose feet were now released from their fetters, were dragged in painful and disgraceful procession back to the gates of the feudal fortalice from which they had so lately issued free and happy!
On the first summons of the leader of the Jacques—seeing their lord and the ladies captive, weak in numbers, dispirited, and without a leader—the garrison immediately surrendered: the portcullis was drawn up, the pontlevis lowered, and, with their wretched prisoners, the fierce marauders entered the walls, which, by their massive strength, might otherwise have long defied them.
Meantime, not one word had been uttered by the leader of the party, who indicated his demands to his men merely by the wafture of his hand or the gesture of his head, which were promptly understood and implicitly obeyed. In compliance with a sign, the prisoners were now led after him into their own magnificent abode, and carried through long, winding passages, and up an almost interminable stairway, to an apartment in the summit of a huge, square tower, overlooking the castle-moat, from a battlemented balcony, at the height of above a hundred feet. A dread foreboding shook the breast of Raoul de Canillac, as he was brought into that chamber, the scene of his outrageous cruelty to the lovely Marguerite in past years, and now to be the scene of its as cruel retribution.
The black warrior raised the vizor of his helmet, and gazed into the face of his former lord with the fixed, resolute, determined scowl of Maurice Champrèst, while the bad, bold oppressor shook before his captor with a visible, convulsive air.
“Ay! tremble, murderer and tyrant—tremble!” thundered the fierce avenger; “tremble! for thy time is at hand: and, Marguerite—lovely and beloved Marguerite—right royally shalt thou be now avenged! Away with these! away with them! their doom is spoken!”
And a scene of more than fiendish cruelty and violence ensued. Those innocent and lovely women, subjected to the last dishonor before the eyes of the husband and brother—tortured with merciless ingenuity when their violators were satiate of their beauties—and then cast headlong from the bartizan into the moat which had received the corpse of the Vassal’s Wife! Raoul de Canillac, scourged till the flesh was literally torn from his bones, was plunged headlong after them!
Such was the Vassal’s Vengeance!—and when he fell, shortly afterward, before the walls of Meaux, by the lance of the renowned Captal de Buch, his last words were: “I care not—I care not to live longer. My task was ended, my race won, when thou wert avenged, Marguerite—Marguerite!” and he perished with her name on his tongue. His crimes were great, but was not his temptation greater? Pray we, that we be not tempted!