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S. R. Crockett - The Black Douglas

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




CHAPTER XLVIII

THE MERCY OF LA MEFFRAYE


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was the Lord James who asked the next question.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But La Meffraye was nowhere to be seen.




CHAPTER XLIX

THE BATTLE WITH THE WERE-WOLVES


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: ALL THE WILD BEASTS APPEARED TO BE OBEYING THE SUMMONS
OF THE WITCH WOMAN.]

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

"_La Meffraye! La Meffraye! Meffraye!_"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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