The Black Douglas Part 62

"I decline to stand at your tribunal!" said the marshal, haughtily.

"_Soit!_" said the President, indifferently, "but all the same you shall be tried!"

Duke John, knowing well that while his court was being held in the capital city of his province, and especially during the trial of Gilles de Retz, Nantes was no place for young maidens who had suffered like Maud Lindesay and Margaret Douglas, sent them under escort to the Castle of Angers.

Sholto MacKim and his father were allowed to accompany them, that they might not be without some of their own country to speak with during their sojourn in France. The Lord James, however, elected to abide with the court. For there were many ladies there, and, having n.o.bility of address and desiring to perfect himself in the niceties of fashionable speech (which changed daily), he had great pleasure in their society, and rode in the lists by the side of the Loire with even more than his former gallantry and success.

For, as he said, he needed some compensation for the long abstinence enforced upon him by his habit of holy palmer. And right amply did he make himself amends, and was accounted by dames fair and free the lightsomest and properest Scot who had ever come into the land of France.

With him Laurence remained, both because his father was still angry with him on account of his desertion of them in Paris, and also because having been so long in the Castle of Machecoul, there were important matters concerning which in the forthcoming trial he alone could give evidence.

Pierre de l'Hopital would have detained the Lady Sybilla as a possible accomplice of the Sieur de Retz, but by the intercession of the Scottish maidens, as well as by the sworn evidence of Sholto and the Lord James, testifying that wholly by her means Gilles de Retz had finally been caught red-handed, she was permitted to depart whither she would.

"I will go to my sister," she said to Sholto, who came to know how he could serve her. "It matters little. My work is nearly done!"

So, riding as was her custom all alone upon a white palfrey, she pa.s.sed out of their sight towards the south.

In the city of Nantes the rumour of the taking of Gilles de Retz had spread like wild-fire, and as the cavalcade rode through the streets, the windows rained down curses and the citizens hooted up from the sidewalks. But the marshal kept his haughty and disdainful regard, appearing like a n.o.ble nature who perforce companies for the nonce with meaner men. He sat his favourite charger like a true companion of Dunois and De Richemont, and, as more than one remarked, on this occasion he looked like the royal prince and the Duke of Brittany the prisoner.

So in the New Tower of the Castle of Nantes, Gilles de Retz was placed to wait his trial. There is no need to give a long account of it. The doc.u.ments have been printed in plain letter, and all the world knows how Clerk Henriet faltered under the stern questioning of Pierre de l'Hopital, and how finally he declared fully all these iniquities without parallel in which he had borne so cruel a part.

Poitou, more faithful to his master, held out till the threat of torture and the appeals of his friend Henriet broke him down. But the att.i.tude and bearing of the chief culprit deserve that the historian should not wholly pa.s.s them over.

Even in his first haughty and contemptuous silence, Gilles de Retz was shifting his ground, and with a cool unheated intelligence orienting himself to new conditions. It soon became evident to his mind that the powers of Evil in which he trusted, and to whose service he had consecrated his life and fortune, had befooled and betrayed him.

Well--even so would he fool them--if, by the grace of G.o.d, there were yet any merit or hope in the service of Good. The priests said so. The Scripture said so, and they might be right after all. At least, the thing was worth trying.

For a cold and calculating brain lay behind the worst excesses of the terrible Lord de Retz. The religion of the Cross might not be of much final use--still, it was all that remained, and Gilles de Retz determined to avail himself of it. So once more he apostasised from Barran-Sathanas to Jehovah.

With an effrontery almost too stupendous for belief, he arrayed himself in the white robes of a Carmelite novice and spent his prison days in singing litanies and in private confession with his religious adviser.

When the great day of the trial at last arrived, the marshal, who had expected on the bench the weak kindly countenance of Duke John, was called upon to confront the indomitable judicial rect.i.tude of Pierre de l'Hopital, President and Grand-Seneschal of Brittany.

Gilles de Retz appeared at his trial dressed in white of the richest materials and with all his military decorations upon him. But his judge, habited in stern and simple black, was not in the least intimidated.

Then came the great surprise. After the evidence of Henriet and Poitou had been read to him, the marshal was asked to plead. To the surprise of all, the accused claimed benefit of clergy.

"I have been a great sinner," he said, "I have indeed deserved a thousand deaths. But now I am a man of G.o.d. I have confessed. I have received absolution for all my sins. G.o.d has forgiven me, and my soul is cleansed!"

"Good!" answered Pierre de l'Hopital, "I have nothing to do with your soul. I must leave that, as you very pertinently remark, to G.o.d. But I am here to try your body, and if found guilty to condemn that body to suffer the penalties by law provided according to the statutes of Brittany."

Then Clerk Henriet was brought in to testify more fully of the crimes beyond parallel in the history of mankind.

The court had been hung round with black, and the only object which appeared prominent was a beautiful ivory crucifix with a n.o.ble figure of the Redeemer of Men carved upon it. This was suspended, according to the custom, over the head of the President of the Tribunal.

Henriet had not proceeded far with his terrible relation of well nigh inconceivable crimes when he stopped.

"I cannot go on," he said, in a broken appealing voice; "I cannot tell what I have to tell with That Figure looking down upon me!"

So, with the whole Court standing up in reverence, the image of the Most Pitiful was solemnly veiled from sight, that such deeds of darkness might not be so much as named in that holy and gracious presence.

And during the ceremony Friar Gilles of the order of the Carmelites stood up more reverently than any, for now, seeing that no better might be, he had definitely renounced Barran-Sathanas and cast in his lot with G.o.d Almighty.

"The sentence of this court is that you, Gilles de Laval, Lord of Retz, Marshal of France, and you, Poitou and Henriet, be carried to the meadow of La Biesse at nine of the clock on the morning of to-morrow, and that you be there hanged and burned till you be dead.

And to G.o.d the Just One be the glory!"

The voice of Pierre de l'Hopital rang out through the silence of the hall of judgment.

"Amen!" said Friar Gilles, devoutly crossing himself.

And so in due course on the meadow of La Biesse, by the side of the blue Loire, the evil soul of Gilles de Retz went to its own place with all the paraphernalia of repentance and in the full odour of a somewhat hectic sanct.i.ty.

The day after the burning, a little company of riders left the city of Angers, journeying westward along the Loire. It consisted of the maidens Margaret Douglas and Maud Lindesay, with Sholto MacKim and a dozen hors.e.m.e.n belonging to his Grace of Brittany. It had been arranged that they were to be joined, upon an eminence above the river on the right bank, by the Lord James, Malise, and Laurence, with the escort which was to accompany them to the port of Saint Nazaire. There (as was necessary in order to escape the troublesome navigation of the swift and treacherous upper reaches) they would find vessels ready to set sail for Scotland.

As the little cloud of riders left behind them the black towers of Angers, they pa.s.sed through woodland glades wherein, in spite of the lateness of the season, the birds were singing. The air was mild and delightsome. At last, leaving the river, they struck away inland, having the frowning towers of Champtoce on their left as they rode.

Presently they came to a forest, wherein in days before the great cruelty, Gilles de Retz had often hunted the wolf and the wild boar.

Here the woodland paths were covered deep with fallen leaves, and the naked branches spoke of the desolation of a dead year.

As the maids rode forward first of their company and talked, as was natural, of that which had taken place the day before at Nantes, they became aware of the Lady Sybilla riding towards them on her palfrey of white. She would have pa.s.sed them without speech, with her head downcast and her eyes fixed upon the dank ground with its covering drift of dead autumnal leaves.

But Margaret, grateful for that which the Lady Sybilla had done for them at Machecoul, spurred her steed and rode thwartwise to intercept her.

"Sybilla," she said, "you will come with us to Scotland. I have many castles there, and, they tell me, a princessdom of mine own. We shall all be happy together and forget these ill times. Maud and I can never repay that which you have done for us."

"Yes, I pray you come with us," said Maud, a little more slowly, "we will be your sisters, and the ill times shall not come again."

The Lady Sybilla smiled a sad subtle smile and shook her head.

"I thank you. I thank you more than you know. It eases my heart that you should forgive a woman such as I for all the evil she has brought you and yours. But I am now no fit companion for you or any. I am become but a wandering shape, speaking to one who cannot answer, and seeking him whom I can never find."

The little Maid, being but a child, mistook her meaning.

"No, no," she cried, "your life is not done. If the one whom you love hath left you unkindly--well, bide awhile, and when the first smart is pa.s.sed, we will marry you to some braver and more handsome knight.

There are many such in Scotland. I pray you come with Maud and me even as we wish you. Why, there would not be three like us in all the land.

I wager we will set kings by the ears between us. Though, as for me, I can only marry a Douglas!"

The smile of the Lady Sybilla grew ever sadder and ever sweeter.

"The man whom I loved, and who loved me, I betrayed to the death.

There is no forgiveness for such as I in this life. Perhaps there may be in the next. At least, _he_ forgave me, and that is enough. He believed in me against myself, and I will wait. Till then I go hither and thither and none shall hinder me or molest--for upon Sybilla de Thouars G.o.d hath set the seal of Cain!"

Margaret Douglas flicked her steed impatiently, causing the spirited little beast to curvet.