The Black Douglas Part 45

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 s.p.a.ce 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 n.o.ble 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 f.a.ggots.

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 p.o.r.nic. 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 cas.e.m.e.nt, 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 G.o.d'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