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S. R. Crockett - The Black Douglas

S >> S. R. Crockett >> The Black Douglas




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The swarthy youth turned to Laurence.

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

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

His companion nodded approvingly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

With an ever loosening tongue the favourite went on:

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

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




CHAPTER XLVI

THE COUNTRY OF THE DREAD


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XLVII

CAESAR MARTIN'S WIFE


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The cripple laughed again his feeble, fleering laugh.

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

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

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

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

Caesar the cripple looked about him and lowered his voice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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