"Aid us, Thy true men," he cried in a loud and solemn voice, "against all the powers of evil. In the name of G.o.d--Amen!"
The howling stopped and there fell a silence. Lord James would have spoken.
"Hush!" said Malise, yet more solemnly.
And far off, like an echo from another world, thin and sweet and silver clear, a c.o.c.k crew.
The blue leaping flame of the wild-fire abruptly ceased. The dawn arose red and broad in the east. The piles of dead beasts shone out black on the grey plain of the forest glade, and on the topmost bough of a pine tree a thrush began to sing.
CHAPTER L
THE ALTAR OF IRON
And now what of Master Laurence, lately clerk in the Abbey of Dulce Cor, presently in service with the great Lord of Retz, Messire Gilles de Laval, Marshal and Chamberlain of the King of France?
Laurence had been a month at Machecoul and had not yet worn out his welcome. He was sunning himself with certain young clerks and choristers of the marshal"s privy chapel of the Holy Innocents.
Suddenly Clerk Henriet appeared under the arches at the upper end of the pretty cloisters, in the aisles of which the youths were seated.
Henriet regarded them silently for a moment, looking with special approval upon the blonde curls and pink cheeks of the young Scottish lad.
Machecoul was a vast feudal castle with one great central square tower and many smaller ones about it. The circuit of its walls enclosed gardens and pleasaunces, and included within its limits the new and beautiful chapel which has been recently finished by that good Catholic and ardent religionary, the Marshal de Retz.
As yet, Laurence had been able to learn nothing of the maids, not even whether they were alive or dead, whether at Machecoul or elsewhere. At the first mention of maidens being brought from Scotland to the castle, or seen about its courts, a dead silence fell upon the company of priests and singers in the marshal"s chapel. It was the same when Laurence spoke of the business privately to any of his new acquaintances.
No matter how briskly the conversation had been prospering hitherto, if, at Holy Ma.s.s or jovial supper board, Laurence so much as breathed a question concerning the subject next his heart, an instant blight pa.s.sed over the gaiety of his companions. Fear momently wiped every other expression from their faces, and they answered with lame evasion, or more often not at all.
The shadow of the Lord of Machecoul lay heavy upon them.
Clerk Henriet stood awhile watching the lads and listening to their talk behind the carved lattice of Caen stone, with its lace-like tracery of buds and flowers, through which the natural roses pushed their way, and over which the clematis tangled its twining stems.
"Stand up and prove on my body that I am a rank Irelander," Laurence was saying defiantly to the world at large, with his fists up and his head thrown back. "Saint Christopher, but I will take the lot of you with one hand tied behind me. Stand up and I will teach you how to sing "Miserable sinners are we all!" to a new and unkenned tune."
""Tis easy for you to boast, Irelander," retorted Blaise Renouf, the son of the lay choir-master, who had been brought specially from Rome to teach the choir-boys of the marshal"s chapel the latest fashions in holy song. "We will either fight you with swords or not at all. We do not fight with our bare knuckles, being civilised. And that indeed proves that you are no true lover of the French, but an English dog of unknightly birth."
This retort still further irritated the hot-headed son of Malise.
"I will fight you or any galley slave of a French frog with the sword, or spit you upon the rapier. I will cleave you with the axe, transfix you with the arrow, or blow you to the pit with the devil"s sulphur. I will fight any of you or all of you with any weapons from a battering-ram to a toothpick--and G.o.d a.s.sist the better man. And there you have Laurence O"Halloran, at your service!"
"You are a loud-crowing young c.o.c.k for a newcomer," said Henriet, the confidential clerk of the marshal, suddenly appearing in the doorway; "you are desired to follow me to my lord"s chamber immediately. There we will see if you will flap your wings so boldly."
Laurence could not help noticing the blank alarm which this announcement caused among the youth with whom he had been playing the ancient game of brag.
It was Blaise Renouf who first recovered. He looked across the little rose-grown s.p.a.ce of the cloister to see that Henriet had turned his back, and then came quickly up to Laurence MacKim.
"Listen to me," he said; "you are a game lad enough, but you do not know where you are going, nor yet what may happen to you there. We will fight you if you come back safe, but meantime you are one of ourselves, and we of the choir have sworn to stand by one another. Can you keep a pea in your mouth without swallowing it?"
"Why, of course I can," said Laurence, wondering what was to come next. "I can keep a dozen and shoot them through a bore of alder tree at a penny without missing once, which I wot is more than any Frenchman ever--"
"Well, then," whispered the lad Renouf, breaking in on his boast with a white countenance, "hearken well to me. When you enter the chamber of the marshal, put this in your mouth. And if nothing happens keep it there, but be careful neither to swallow it nor yet to bite upon it.
But if it should chance that either Henriet or Poitou or Gilles de Sille seize hold of your arms, bite hard upon the pellet till you feel a bitter taste and then swallow. That is all. You are indeed a c.o.c.k whose comb wants cutting, and if all be well, we will incise it for your soul"s good. But in the meanwhile you are of our company and fellowship. So for G.o.d"s sake and your own do as you are bid. Fare you well."
As he followed Clerk Henriet, Laurence looked at the round pellet in his hand. It was white, soft like ripe fruit, of an elastic consistency, and of the largeness of a pea.
As Laurence ascended the stairs, he heard the practice of the choir beginning in the chapel. Precentor Renouf, the father of Blaise, had summoned the youths from the cloisters with a long mellow whistle upon his Italian pitch-pipe, running up and down the scale and ending with a flourished "A-a-men."
The open windows and the pierced stone railing of the great staircase of Machecoul brought up the sound of that sweet singing from the chapel to the ear of the adventurous Scot as through a funnel. They were beginning the practice for the Christmas services, though the time was not yet near.
"_Unto G.o.d be the glory In the Highest; Peace be on the earth, On the earth, Unto men who have good-will._"
So they chanted in their white robes in the Chapel of the Holy Innocents in the Castle of Machecoul near by the Atlantic sh.o.r.e.
The chamber of Gilles de Retz testified to the extraordinary advancement of that great man in knowledge which has been claimed as peculiar to much later centuries. The window cas.e.m.e.nts were so arranged that in a moment the place could either be made as dark as midnight or flooded with bright light. The walls were always freshly whitewashed, and the lime was constantly renewed. The stone floor was stained a deep brick red, and that, too, would often be applied freshly during the night. At a time when the very word "sanitation"
was unknown, Gilles had properly constructed conduits leading from an adjoining apartment to the castle ditch. The chimney was wide as a peasant"s whole house, and the vast fireplace could hold on its iron dogs an entire waggon-load of f.a.ggots. Indeed, that amount was regularly consumed every day when the marshal deigned to abide at Machecoul for his health and in pursuance of his wonderful studies into the deep things of the universe.
"Bide here a moment," said Clerk Henriet, bending his body in a writhing contortion to listen to what might be going on inside the chamber; "I dare not take you in till I see whether my lord be in good case to receive you."
So at the stair-head, by a window lattice which looked towards the chapel, Laurence stood and waited. At first he kept quite still and listened with pleasure to the distant singing of the boys. He could even hear Precentor Renouf occasionally stop and rebuke them for inattention or singing out of tune.
"_My soul is like a watered garden, And I shall not sorrow any more at all!_"
So he hummed as he listened, and beat the time on the ledge with his fingers. He felt singularly content. Now he was on the eve of penetrating the mystery. At last he would discover where the missing maidens were concealed.
But soon he began to look about him, growing, like the boy he was, quickly weary of inaction. His eye fell upon a strange door with curious marks burnt upon its panels apparently by hot irons. There were circles complete and circles that stopped half-way, together with letters of some unknown language arranged mostly in triangles.
This door fixed the lad"s attention with a certain curious fascination. He longed to touch it and see whether it opened, but for the moment he was too much afraid of his guide"s return to summon him into the presence of the marshal.
He listened intently. Surely he heard a low sound, like the wind in a distant keyhole--or, as it might be (and it seemed more like it), the moaning of a child in pain, it knows not why.
The heart of the youth gave a sudden leap. It came to him that he had hit upon the hiding-place of Margaret Douglas, the heiress of the great province of Galloway. His fortune was made.
With a trembling hand he moved a step towards the door of white wood with the curious burned marks upon it. He stood a moment listening, half for the returning footsteps of Clerk Henriet, and half to the low, persistent whimper behind the panels. Suddenly he felt his right foot wet, for, as was the fashion, he wore only a velvet shoe pointed at the toe. He looked down, and lo! from under the door trickled a thin stream of red.
Laurence drew his foot away, with a quick catching sob of the breath.
But his hand was already on the door, and at a touch it appeared to open almost of its own accord. He found himself looking from the dusk of the outer whitewashed pa.s.sage into a high, vaulted chapel, wherein many dim lights glimmered. At the end there was a great altar of iron standing square and solemn upon the platform on which it was set up, and behind it, cut indistinctly against a greenish glow of light, and imagined rather than clearly defined, the vast statue of a man with a curiously high shaped head. Laurence could not distinguish any features, so deep was the gloom, but the whole figure seemed to be bending slightly forward, as if gloating upon that which was laid upon the altar. But what struck Laurence with a sense of awe and terror was the fact that as the greenish light behind waxed and waned, he could see shadowy horns which projected from either side of the forehead, and lower, short ears, p.r.i.c.ked and s.h.a.ggy like those of a he-goat.
Nearer the door, where he stood in the densest gloom, something moved to and fro, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness Laurence could see that it was the bent figure of a woman. He could not distinguish her face, but it was certainly a woman of great age and bodily weakness, whose tangled hair hung down her back, and who halted curiously upon one foot as she walked. She was bending over a low couch, whereon lay a little shrouded figure, from which proceeded the low whimpering sound which he had heard from without. But even at that moment, as he waited trembling at the door, the moaning ceased, and there ensued a long silence, in which Laurence could clearly distinguish the beating of his own heart. It sounded loud in his ears as a drum that beats the alarm in the streets of a city.
The figure of the woman bent low to the couch, and, after a pause, with a satisfied air she threw a white cloth over the shrouded form which lay upon it. Then, without looking towards the door where Laurence stood, she went to the great iron altar at the upper end of the weird chapel and threw something on the red embers which glowed upon it.
"_Barran--most mighty Barran-Sathanas, accept this offering, and reveal thyself to my master!_" she said in a voice like a chant.
A greenish smoke of stifling odour rose and filled all the place, and through it the huge horned figure above the altar seemed to turn its head and look at the boy.
Laurence could scarcely repress a cry of terror. He set his hand to the door, and lo! as it had opened, so it appeared to shut of itself.
He sank almost fainting against the cold iron bars of the window which looked out upon the courtyard below. The wind blew in upon him sweet and cool, and with it there came again the sound of the singing of the choir. They were practising the song of the Holy Innocents, which, by command of the marshal himself, Precentor Renouf had set to excellent and accordant music of his own invention.