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 sn.i.g.g.e.red 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 f.a.ggot 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. f.a.ggots 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 f.a.ggots, 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 f.a.ggots 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 p.r.o.ngs. And as he stirred he talked:
"G.o.d bless you, say I, brave gentlemen and good pilgrims. Surely it was a wind n.o.ble 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 p.r.o.ng 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. "G.o.d 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 h.o.a.rd, 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 princ.i.p.al 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."
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 sh.o.r.es 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 G.o.d"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 h.e.l.l--one day when G.o.d 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 h.e.l.l--that I might escape for ever from La Meffraye."
His hand fumbled a moment at the closely b.u.t.toned collar of his blue blouse. Then he succeeded in undoing it and showed his neck. From chin to bosom it was a ma.s.s 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 h.e.l.l 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.