The Black Douglas Part 61

"Give me the knife!" he cried, sudden as a trumpet that is blown.

And reaching a withered hand within the marshal's chamber as if to detach something from the wall, La Meffraye hobbled quickly across the altar platform, bearing in her hand a shining weapon of steel, broad of blade and curved at the point. She placed the ebony handle in the marshal's hand, who weighed it lovingly in his grasp.

Then for the first time since the men had bound her, the sweet childish eyes of little Margaret were unclosed and looked up at Gilles de Retz with the touching wonder of helplessness and innocence.

At that moment the image appeared to Laurence to beckon to him out of the gloom. A quick and nervous resolve ran through his veins. His muscles became like steel within his flesh. He rose to his feet, and, without pause for thought, rushed across the chapel from the niche where he had been hidden.

"Murderer! Fiend! I will kill you!" he cried, and with his dagger bare in his hand he would have thrown himself upon the marshal. But swifter than the rush of the young man in his strength there came another from the door of the inner chamber.

With a deep-throated roar of wholly b.e.s.t.i.a.l fury, Astarte the she-wolf sprang upon Laurence, and, though he sank his dagger twice to the hilt in her hairy chest, she over-bore him and they fell to the ground with her teeth gripping his shoulder. Laurence felt the hot life-blood of the beast spurt forth and mingle with his own. Then a flood of swirling waters seemed to bear him suddenly away into the unknown.

When Laurence MacKim came to himself he emerged into a chill world in which he felt somehow infinitely lonely and forsaken. Next he grew slowly conscious that his feet and arms were bound tightly with cords that cut painfully into the flesh. Then he realised that he, too, had taken his place beside the maids upon the altar of iron. Strangely enough he did not feel afraid nor even wish himself elsewhere. He only wondered what would happen next.

He opened his eyes and lo! they looked directly into the leering countenance of the monstrous image. Yet there seemed something curiously encouraging and even beneficent about the aspect of the demon. But so often as Gilles de Retz pa.s.sed the triple array of his victims with his back to the image, the regard of the sculptured devil followed him, grim and mocking.

Words of angry altercation came to the ears of Laurence MacKim.

"I tell you," cried the voice of Gilles de Retz, "I will not spare them. Well nigh had I succeeded. Almost I was young again. I was tasting the first sweetness of knowledge wide as that of the G.o.ds. I felt the new life stirring within me. But I had not enough of the blood of innocence, which is the only worthy libation to Barran-Sathanas, who alone can bestow youth and life."

Then the Lady Sybilla answered him. "I pray you, Gilles de Retz, as you hope for mercy, slay not these maidens and this youth. Take me, and bind me, instead, for the sacrifice of death. I have wrought enough of evil! Take of my blood and work out your purpose. Let me give you the libation you desire. Gilles de Retz, if ever I have aided you, grant me this boon now. I beseech you, let these innocents go, and bind me upon the altar in their places."

Long and loud laughed Gilles de Retz, a hard, evil, and relentless laugh.

"Sybilla de Thouars an innocent maiden's sacrifice! Barran-Sathanas himself laughs at the jest. He would have no pleasure in your death.

Soul and body you are his already. He desires only the blood and suffering of the innocent--of those on whom he has never set his mark.

Nay, these three shall surely die, and in that bath of porphyry hollowed out under his altar I will lave me from head to foot in the Red Milk of innocence. I have no more need of you, Sybilla mine. You have done your work, and for your reward you can now depart to your own place. Out of my way, I say. Henriet, Poitou, quick! Remove this woman from before the altar!"

Then, struggling strongly in their hands, the servitors carried the Lady Sybilla to the farther end of the chapel, where they abode on either side, holding her fast. And as the last grains of sand began to swirl towards their fall and a little whirlpool to form funnel-wise in the midst of the hour-gla.s.s, the butcher was left alone with his victims upon the platform of the iron altar.

Gilles de Retz turned towards the image, and, lifting up his hand solemnly, he cried in a great voice, "O Barran-Sathanas, be pleased to behold this innocent blood spilled slowly in thine honour. As the red fount flows and the red fire burns, restore my youth and make me strong. Faithfully will I serve thee and thee alone, renouncing all other. O Barran-Sathanas, great and only Lord, receive my sacrifice.

It is the hour!"

And so saying he laid hold of Maud Lindesay by the hair, and raised the curved knife on high.

Then from the end of the chapel to which the Lady Sybilla had been taken there came a sound. With a great despairing effort she burst from her captors' hands and ran forward. She knelt down on the marble slab whereon the maids had stood at their first entering, and as she knelt she held aloft a golden crucifix.

"If there be a G.o.d in heaven, let him manifest himself now!" she cried, "by the virtue of this cross of His son Jesus Christ, I call upon Him!"

Then suddenly all the place was filled with a mighty rushing noise.

The last grains ran low in the hour-gla.s.s. It shifted in its stand and turned over. A tremor like that of an earthquake shook all the castle to its foundations. The solid keep itself rocked like a vessel in a stormy sea. The great image overturned, and by its fall Gilles de Retz was stricken senseless to the earth. The next moment, like flood-gates burst by a mighty tide, the doors of the temple were opened with a clang, and through them a crowd of armed men came rushing in with triumphant shouts and angry cries of vengeance.

Sholto was far ahead of the others, and, as if led by the unerring instinct of love, he ran to the altar whereon his love lay white as death, but without a mark upon her fair body.

It was the work of a moment to cut their cords and chafe the numbed wrists and ankles. James Douglas took the little Margaret. Sholto had his sweetheart in his arms, while Laurence recovered quickly enough to aid his father in securing Gilles de Retz and his servants. La Meffraye they took not, for she lay dead within the inner chamber, where yet burned the great fire which was used to consume the bodies of the demon's victims. Two gaping wounds were found in her breast, in the same place in which the dagger of Laurence MacKim had smitten the she-wolf as she sprang upon him. But Astarte, woman witch or were-wolf, was never seen again, neither by starlight, moonlight, nor yet in the eye of day. Truly of Gilles de Retz was it said, "His demon hath deserted him."

Beneath in the courts and quadrangles, swarming through the towers and clambering perilously on the roofs, surged the press of the furious populace. It was all that Duke John and his officers could do to keep the prisoners in ward, and to prevent them from being torn limb from limb (as had perhaps been fittest), and tossed alive into the flaming funeral pyre of Castle Machecoul, which, lighted by a hundred hands, presently began to flame like a volcano to the skies.

For the hour that comes to every evil-doer had come to Gilles de Retz.

And in that hour, as it shall ever be, the devil in whom he trusted had forsaken him.

But the Lady Sybilla stood on the garden tower that in happier days had been her pleasaunce, and beheld. And as she watched she kissed the golden crucifix of the child Margaret. And her heart rejoiced because the lives of the innocent as well as the death of the guilty had been given her for her portion.

"And now, O Lord, I am ready to pay the price!" she said.

CHAPTER LX

HIS DEMON HATH DESERTED HIM

The soldiers of the Duke of Brittany stood with bared swords and deadly pikes around the Marshal de Retz and those of his servants who had been taken--that is to say, round Poitou, Clerk Henriet, Blanquet, and Robin Romulart. About them surged ever more fiercely the angry populace, drunk with the hot wine of destruction, having been filled with inconceivable fury by that which they had seen in the round tower wherein stood the filled bags of little charred remains.

"Tear the wolves into gobbets! Kill them! Burn them! Send them quick to h.e.l.l!" So ran the cry.

And twice and thrice the villagers of the Pays de Retz charged desperately as men who fight for their lives.

"Stand to it, men!" cried Pierre de l'Hopital. "Gilles de Retz shall have fair trial!

"_But I shall try him!_" he added, under his breath.

Never was seen such a sight as the procession which conducted Gilles de Retz to the city of Nantes. The Duke had sent for his whole band of soldiers, and these, in ordered companies, marched in front and rear.

A triple file guarded the prisoners, and even their levelled pikes could scarce beat back the furious rushes of the populace.

It was like a civil war, for the a.s.sailants struck fiercely at the soldiers--as if in protecting him, they became accessory to the crimes of the hated marshal.

"_Barbe Bleu! Barbe Bleu!_" they cried. "Slay _Barbe Bleu_! Make his beard blood-red. He hath dipped it often in the life-blood of our children. Now we will redden it with his own!"

So ran the tumult, surging and gathering and scattering. And ever the pikes of the guard flashed, and the ordered files shouldered a path through the press.

"Make way there!" cried the provost marshals. "Make way for the prisoners of the Duke!"

And as they entered the city, from behind and before, from all the windows and roofs, rose the hoa.r.s.e grunting roar of the hatred and cursing of a whole people.

But the object of all this rested calm and unmoved, and his cruel grey eye had no expression in it save a certain tolerant and amused contempt.

"Bah!" he muttered. "Would that I had slain ten millions of you! It is my only regret that I had not the time. It is almost unworthy to die for a few score children!"

During the journey to Nantes, Gilles de Retz kept the grand reserve with which, when he came to himself, he had treated those who had captured him. To the Duke only would he condescend to reply, and to him he rather spoke as an equal unjustly treated than as a guilty prisoner and suppliant.

"For this, Sire of Brittany," he said, "must you answer to your overlord, the King of France, whose minister and marshal I am!"

The Duke would have made some feeble reply, but Pierre de l'Hopital cut across the conversation with that stern irony which characterised him.

"My lord," he said, "remember that before you were made Marshal of France you were born a subject of the Duke of Brittany! And as such you shall be judged."