Immediately behind this group, in the shadow of a buttress, Laurence saw a tall man, masked, clad in a black suit, and with a drawn sword in his hand.

The marshal looked out over the lad's shoulder.

"The day you are missed from the Castle of Machecoul, or the day that the rest of your company arrives here, that sword shall fall, but in a more terrible fashion than I can tell you! That sentinel can neither hear nor speak, but he has his orders and will obey them. I bid you good night. Go to your singing in the choir. It is time for the chanting of vespers in the chapel of the Holy Innocents."



CHAPTER LII

THE JESTING OF LA MEFFRAYE

It was in the White Tower of Machecoul that the Scottish maidens were held at the mercy of the Lord of Retz. At their first arrival in the country they had been taken to the quiet Chateau of Pouzauges, the birthplace of Poitou, the marshal's most cruel and remorseless confidant. Here, as the marshal had very truly informed the Lady Sybilla, they had been under the care of—or, rather, fellow-prisoners with—the neglected wife of Gilles de Retz, and at Pouzauges they had spent some days of comparative peace and security in the society of her daughter.

But at the first breath of the coming of the three strangers to the district they had been seized and securely conveyed to Machecoul itself—there to be interned behind the vast walls and triple bastions of that fortress prison.

"I wonder, Maudie," said Margaret Douglas, as they sat on the flat roof of the White Tower of Machecoul and looked over the battlements upon the green pine glades and wide seaward Landes, "I wonder whether we shall ever again see the water of Dee and our mother—and Sholto MacKim."

It is to be feared that the last part of the problem exceeded in interest all others in the eyes of Maud Lindesay.

"It seems as if we never could again behold any one we loved or wished to see—here in this horrible place," sighed Maud Lindesay. "If ever I get back to the dear land and see Solway side, I will be a different girl."

"But, Maud," said the little maid, reproachfully, "you were always good and kind. It is not well done of you to speak against yourself in that fashion."

Maud Lindesay shook her pretty head mournfully.

"Ah, Margaret, you will know some day," she said. "I have been wicked,—not in things one has to confess to Father Gawain, but,—well, in making people like me, and give me things, and come to see me, and then afterwards flouting them for it and sending them away."

It was not a lucid description, but it sufficed.

"Ah, but," said Margaret Douglas, "I think not these things to be wicked. I hope that some day I shall do just the same, though, of course, I shall not be as beautiful as you, Maudie; no, never! I asked Sholto MacKim if I would, and he said, 'Of course not!' in a deep voice. It was not pretty of him, was it, Maud?"

"I think it was very prettily said of him," answered Maud Lindesay, with the first flicker of a smile on her face. Her conscience was quite at ease about Sholto. He was different. Whatever pain she had caused him, she meant to make up to him with usury thereto. The others she had exercised no more for her own amusement than for their own souls' good.

"My brother William must indeed be very angry with us, that he hath never sent to find us and bring us home," went on the little girl. "It is three months since we met that horrible old woman in the woods above Thrieve Island, and believed her when she told us that the Earl had instant need of us—and that Sholto MacKim was with him."

"None saw us taken away. Margaret," said the elder, "and perhaps, who knows, they may never have found any of the pieces of flower garlands I threw down before they put us in the boats from the beach of Cassencary."

But the eyes of the little Maid of Galloway were now fixed upon something in the green courtyard below.

"Maud, Maud, come hither quickly!" she whispered; "if yonder be not Laurence MacKim talking to the singing lads and dressed like them—why, then, I do not know Laurie MacKim!"

Maud came quickly now. Her face and neck blushed suddenly crimson with the springing of hope in her heart.

She looked down, and there, far below them indeed, but yet distinct enough, they saw Laurence daring Blaise Renouf to single combat and vaunting his Irish prowess, as we have already seen him do. Maud Lindesay caught her companion's hand as she looked.

"They have found us," she whispered; "at least, they are seeking for us. If Laurence is here, I warrant Sholto cannot be very far away. Oh, Margaret, am I looking very ill? Will he think I am as—(she paused for a word)—as comely as he thought me before in Scotland? Or have I grown old and ugly with being shut up so long?"

But the Maid of Galloway heard her not. She was pondering on the meaning of Laurence's presence in the Castle of Machecoul.

"Perhaps William hath sent Laurence to spy us out, and is even now coming from his French duchy with an army. He is a far greater man than the marshal, and will make him give us up as soon as he finds out where we are. Shall I call down to Laurie to let him know that we are here?"

Maud put her hand hastily over her companion's mouth.

"Hush!" she said, "we must not appear to know him, or they will surely kill him—and perhaps the others, too. If Laurence is here, I wot well that help is not far away. Let us be patient and abide. Come back from the wall and sit by me as if nothing, had happened."

But all the same she kept her own place in a spot where she could command the pleasaunce below, and looked longingly yet fearfully to see Sholto follow his brother across the green sward.

* * * * *

"Sweet and fair is the air of the evening," purred behind them a low voice—that of the woman who was called La Meffraye. "It brings the colour to the cheeks of the young. But I am old and wise, and I would advise that two maids so fair should not look down on the sports of the youths, lest they hear and see more than is fitting for such innocent eyes."

The girls turned away without looking at their custodian, who stood leaning upon her little hand crutch and smiling upon them her terrible soft smile.

"Ah," she said, "proud, are you? 'Tis an ill place to bring pride to, this Castle of Machecoul. You will not deign to speak a word to a poor old woman now. But the day is not far distant when I shall have my pretty spitfire clinging about these old trembling knees, and beseeching me whom you despise, as a woman either to save you or kill you—you will not care which. As a woman! Ha! ha! How long is it since La Meffraye was a woman? Was she ever rocked in a cradle? Did she play about any cottage door and fashion daisy chains, as I have seen you do, my pretties, long ere you came to Machecoul or even heard of the Sieur de Retz? Hath La Meffraye ever lain in any man's bosom—save as the tigress crouches upon her prey?"

She paused and smiled still more bitterly and malevolently than before upon the two maidens.

"Did you chance to be awake yester-even?" she went on. "Aye, I know well that you were awake. La Meffraye saw right carefully to that. And you heard the crying that rang out of yonder high window, from which the light streamed all through the night. Wait, wait, my pretties, till it is your turn to be sent for up thither, when the shining knife is sharpened and the red fire kindled. You will not despise La Meffraye when that day comes. You will grovel and weep, and then will La Meffraye spurn you with her foot, till the noise of your crying be borne out over the forest, and for very gladness the wolves howl in the darkness."

The little Maid of Galloway was moved to answer, and her lips quivered. But Maud Lindesay sat pale and motionless, looking towards the north, from which she hoped for help to come.

"Our brother, the Earl of Douglas, will bring an army from his dukedom of Touraine, and sweep you and your castle from the face of the earth, if your master dares to lay so much as a finger upon us."

La Meffraye laughed a low, cackling laugh, and in the act showed the four long eye-teeth which were the sole remaining dental equipment of her mouth.

"Oh, Great Barran—" she chuckled, "listen to the pretty fool! Our brother will do this—our brother will do that. Our brother will lick the country of Retz as clean as a dog licks a platter. Know you not, silly fool, that both your brothers are long since dead and under sod in the castle of your city of Edinburgh. I tell you my master set his little finger upon them and crushed them like flies on a summer chamber wall!"

Maud Lindesay rose to her feet as La Meffraye spoke these words.

"It is not true," she cried; "you lie to us as you have done from the first. The Earl of Douglas is not dead!"

It was now little Margaret who showed the spirit of her race, and put out her hand to clasp that of her elder comrade.

"Do not let her even know that she has power to hurt us with her words," she whispered low to Maud Lindesay. Then she spoke aloud:

"If that which you say be true and my brothers are dead—there are yet Douglases. Our cousins will deliver us."

"Your cousins have entered into your possessions," jeered the hag; "it is indeed a likely thing that they will desire your return to Scotland in order to rob them of that which is their own."

"We are not afraid," said the little maid, stoutly; "there are many in the land of the Scots who would gladly die to help us."

"Aye, that is it. They shall die—all die. Three of them died yester-even, torn to pieces by my lord's wolves. Fine, swift, four-footed guardians of the Castle of Machecoul—La Meffraye's friends! And one young cock below there of the same gang hath gone even now to my lord's chamber. He hath mounted the stairs he will never descend."

"Well," said the Maid of Galloway, "even so—we are not afraid. We can die, as died our friends."

"Die—die!" cried the hag, sharply, angered at the child's persistence. "'Tis easy to talk. To snuff a candle out is to die. Poof, 'tis done! But the young and beautiful like you, my dearies, do not so die at Machecoul. No; rather as a dying candle flickers out—falls low, and rises again, so they die. As wine oozes drop by drop from the needle-punctured wine-skin—so shall you die, weeping, beseeching, drained to the white like a dripping calf in the shambles, yet at the same time reddened and shamed with the shame deadly and unnameable. Then La Meffraye, whom now you disdain to answer with a look, will wash her hands in your life's blood and laugh as your tears fall slowly upon the latchet of her shoon!"

But a new voice broke in upon the railing of the hideous woman fiend.

"Out, foul hag! Get you to your own place!" it said, with an accent strong and commanding.

And the affrighted and heart-sick girls turned them about to see the Lady Sybilla stand fair and pale at the head of the turret stair which opened out upon the roof of the White Tower.

At this interruption the eyes of La Meffraye seemed to burn with a fresher fury, and the green light in them shone as shines an emerald stone held up to the sun.

The hag cowered, however, before the outstretched index finger of Sybilla de Thouars.

"Ah, fair lady," she whimpered, "be not angry—and tell not my lord, I beseech you. I did but jest."

"Hence!" the finger was still outstretched, and, in obedience to the threatening gesture, the hag shrank away. But as she passed through the portal down the steps of the turret, she flung back certain words with a defiant fleer.

"Ah, you are young, my lady, and for the present—for the present your power is greater than mine. But wait! Your beauty will wither and grow old. Your power will depart from you. But La Meffraye can never grow older, and when once the secret is discovered, and my lord is young again, La Meffraye is the one who with him shall bloom with immortal youth, while you, proud lady, lie cold in the belly of the worm."

* * * * *

"It is true—all too true," said Sybilla de Thouars, sadly, "they are dead. The young, the noble were—and are no more. I who speak saw them die. And that so greatly, that even in death their lives cease not. Their glory shall flow on so that the young brook shall become a river, and the river become a sea."

Then in few words and quiet, she told them all the heavy tale.

But when the maids made as though they would cleave to her for the sympathy that was in her words and because of her tears, she set the palms of her hands against their breasts and cried, "Come not near one whom not all the fires of purgatory can purify—one who, like Iscariot, hath contracted herself outside the mercy of God and of our Lord Christ!"

But all the more they clave to her, overpassing her protestations and clasping her, so that, being deeply moved, she sat down on the steps of a corner turret which rose from the greater, and wept there, with the weeping wherewith women are wont to ease the heart.

Then went Maud Lindesay to her and set her hand about her neck, and kissed her, saying: "Do not be sorry any more. Confess to the minister of God. I also have sinned and been sorry. Yet after came forgiveness and the unbound heart."

Then the Lady Sybilla ceased quickly and looked up, as it had been, smiling. Yet she was not smiling as maidens are wont to smile.

"Pretty innocent," she said, "you mean well, but you know not what the word 'sin' means to such as I. Confess—absolve! Not even the Holy One and the Just could give me that. I tell you I have eaten of the apple of the knowledge of good and evil—yes, the very core I have eaten. I have the taste of innocent blood upon my lips. I have seen the axe fall, the axe which I put into the headsman's hands. I am condemned, and that justly. But one of you shall live to taste sweet love, and the crown of life, and to feel the innocent lips of children at her breasts. And the other—but enough. Farewell. Fear not. God, who has been cruel in all else, has given your lives to Sybilla de Thouars, ere in His own time He strike that guilty one with His thunderbolt."

And as she went within, the eyes of the maids followed her; but the masked man with the naked sword never so much as turned his head, gazing straight forward over the battlements of the White Tower into the lilac mist which hung above the Atlantic.



CHAPTER LIII

SYBILLA'S VENGEANCE

There stands a solitary rock at the base of which is a cave, on the seashore of La Vendee. Behind stretch the marshes, and the place is shut in and desolate. Birds cry there. The bittern booms in the thickets of grey willow and wet-shot alder. The herons nest upon the pine trees near by, till the stale scent of them comes down the wind from far. Ospreys fish in the waters of the shallow lake behind, and the scales of their prey flash in the sun of morning as they rise dripping from the dive.

In this place Sholto, Malise, and the Lord James Douglas were presently abiding.

It was but a tiny cell, originally formed by two portions of marly rock fallen together in some ancient convulsion or dropped upon each other from a floating iceberg. In some former age the cleft had been a lair of wild beasts, or the couch of some hairy savage hammering flint arrowheads for the chase, and drawing with a sharp point upon polished bone the yet hairier mammoth he hunted. But this solitary lodging in the wilderness had been enlarged in more recent times, till now the interior was about eight feet square and of the height of a man of stature when he stands erect.

The hearts of the three present cave-dwellers were sick and sad, and of them all the bitterest was the heart of Sholto MacKim. It seemed to his eager lover's spirit, as he climbed to the top of the sand dunes and gazed towards the massive towers of Machecoul rising above the green woodlands, that hitherto they had but wandered and done nothing. The sorcerer had prevented them about with his evil. They had lost Laurence utterly, and for the rest they had not even touched the outer defences of their arch enemy.

Thrice they had tried to enter the castle. The first time they had taken by force two waggons of fuel from certain men who went towards Machecoul, leaving the woodmen behind in the forest, bound and helpless. But at the first gate of the outer hall the marshal's guard had stopped them, and demanded that they should wait till the cars were unloaded and brought back to them. So, having received the money, the Scots returned as they went to the men whom they had left in the forest.

After this repulse they had gone round and round the vast walls of Machecoul seeking a place vulnerable, but finding none. The ramparts rose as it had been to heaven, and the flanking towers were crowded night and day with men on the watch. Round the walls for the space of a bow-shot every way there ran a green space fair and open to the view, but in reality full of pitfalls and secret engines. From the battlements began the arrow hail, so soon as any attempted to approach the castle along any other way than the thrice-defended road to the main gate.

The wolves howled in the forests by night, and more than once came so near that one of the three men had to take it in turns to keep watch in the cave's mouth. But for a reason not clear to them at the time they were not again attacked by the marshal's wild allies of the wood.

The third time they had tried to enter the castle in their pilgrim's garb, and the outer picket courteously received them. But when they were come to the inner curtain, one Robin Romulart, the officer of the guard, a stout fellow, suddenly called to his men to bind and gag them—in which enterprise, but for the great strength of Malise, they might have succeeded. For the outer gates had been shut with a clang, and they could hear the soldiers of the garrison hasting from all sides in answer to Robin's summons.

But Malise snatched up the bar wherewith the winding cogs of the gate were turned, and, having broken more than one man's head with it, he forced the massive doors apart by main force, so that they were able all unharmed to withdraw themselves into the shelter of the woods. So near capture had they been, however, that over and over again they heard the shouting of the parties who scoured the woods in search of them.

It was the worst feature of their situation that the Marshal de Retz certainly knew of their presence in his territories, and that he would be easily able to guess their errand and take measures to prevent it succeeding.

Their last and most fatal failure had happened several days before, and the first eager burst of the search for them had passed. But the Scots knew that the enemy was thoroughly alarmed, and that it behoved them to abide very closely within their hiding-place.

The Lord James took worst of all with the uncertainty and confinement. Any restraint was unsuited to his jovial temper and open-air life. But for the present, at least, and till they could gain some further information as to the whereabouts of the maidens, it was obvious that they could do no better than remain in their seaside shelter.

Their latest plan was to abide in the cave till the marshal set out again upon one of his frequent journeys. Then it would be comparatively easy to ascertain by an ambush whether he was taking the captives with him, or if he had left them behind. If the maids were of his travelling company, the three rescuers would be guided by circumstances and the strength of the escort, as to whether or not they should venture to make an attack.

But if by any unhoped-for chance Margaret and Maud were left behind at Machecoul, it would at least be a more feasible enterprise to attack the fortress during the absence of its master and his men.

Alone among the three Scots Malise faced their predicament with some philosophy. Sholto ate his heart out with uncertainty as to the fate of his sweetheart. The Lord James chafed at the compulsory confinement and at the consistent ill success which had pursued them. But Malise, unwearied of limb and ironic of mood as ever, fished upon the tidal flats for brown-spotted flounders and at the rocky points for white fish, often remaining at his task till far into the night. He constructed snares with a mechanical ingenuity in advance of his age. And what was worth more to the company than any material help, he kept up the spirits of Sholto and of Lord James Douglas both by his brave heart and merry speech, and still more by constantly finding them something to do.

At the hour of even, one day after they had been a fortnight in the country of Retz, the three Scots were sitting moodily on a little hillock which concealed the entrance to their cave. The forest lay behind them, an impenetrable wall of dense undergrowth crowned along the distant horizon by the solemn domes of green stone pines. It circumvented them on all sides, save only in front, where, through several beaker-shaped breaks in the high sand dunes they could catch a glimpse of the sea. The Atlantic appeared to fill these clefts half full, like Venice goblets out of which the purple wine has been partially drained. To right and left the pines grew scantier, so that the rays of the sunset shone red as molten metal upon their stems and made a network of alternate gold and black behind them.

The three sat thus a long time without speech, only looking up from their tasks to let their eyes rest wistfully for a moment upon the deep and changeful amethyst of the sea, and then with a light sigh going back to the cleaning of their armoury or the shaping of a long bow.

It chanced that for several minutes no sound was heard except those connected with their labour, the low whistle with which the Lord James accompanied his polishing, the wisp-wisp of Malise's arms as he sewed the double thread back and forth through a rent in his leathern jack, and the rasp of Sholto's file as he carved out the finials of the bow, the notched grooves wherein the string was to lie so easily and yet so firmly.

Thus they continued to work, absorbed, each of them in the sadness of his own thought, till suddenly a shadow seemed to strike between them and the red light of the western sky. They looked up, and before them, as it were ascending out of the very glow of sunset, they saw a woman on a white palfrey approaching them by the way of the sea.

So suddenly did she appear that the Lord James uttered a low cry of wonder, while Malise the practical reached for his sword. But Sholto had seen this vision twice already, and knew their visitor for the Lady Sybilla.

"Hold there!" he said in an undertone. "Remember it is as I said. This woman, though we have no cause to love her, is now our only hope. Her words brought us here. They were true words, and I believe that she comes as a friend. I will stake my life on it."

"Or if she comes as an enemy we are no worse off," grumbled sceptical Malise. "We can at least encourage the woman and then hold her as an hostage."

The three Scots were standing to receive their guest when the Lady Sybilla rode up. Her face had lost none of the pale sadness which marked it when Sholto last saw her, and though the look of utter agony had passed away, the despair of a soul in pain had only become more deeply printed upon it.

The girl having acknowledged their salutations with a stately and well-accustomed motion of the head, reached a hand for Sholto to lift her from her palfrey.

Then, still without spoken word, she silently seated herself on the grey-lichened rock rudely shaped into the semblance of a chair, on which Malise had been sitting at his mending. The strange maiden looked long at the blue sea deepening in the notches of the sand dunes beneath them. The three men stood before her waiting for her to speak. Each of them knew that lives, dearer and more precious than their own, hung upon what she might have to say.

At last she spoke, in a voice low as the wind when it blows its lightest among the trees:

"You have small cause to trust me or to count me your friend," she said; "but we have that which binds closer than friendship—a common enemy and a common cause of hatred. It were better, therefore, that we should understand one another. I have never lost sight of you since you came to this fatal land of Retz. I have been near you when you knew it not. To accomplish this I have deceived the man who is my taskmaster, swearing to him that in the witch crystal I have seen you depart. And I shall yet deceive him in more deadly fashion."

Sholto could restrain himself no longer.

"Enough," he said roughly; "tell us whether the maidens are alive, and if they are abiding in this Castle of Machecoul."

The Lady Sybilla did not remove her eyes from the red west.

"Thus far they are safe," she said, in the same calm monotone. "This very hour I have come from the White Tower, in which they are confined. But he whom I serve swears by an oath that if you or other rescuers are heard of again in this country, he will destroy them both."

She shuddered as she spoke with a strong revulsion of feeling.

"Therefore, be careful with a great carefulness. Give up all thought of rescuing them directly. Remember what you have been able to accomplish, and that your slightest actions will bring upon those you love a fate of which you little dream."

"After what we remember of Crichton Castle, how can we trust you, lady?" said Malise, sternly. "Do you now speak the truth with your mouth?"

"You have indeed small cause to think so," she answered without taking offence. "Yet, having no choice, you must e'en trust me."

She turned sharply upon Sholto with a strip of paper in her outstretched hand.

"I think, young sir, that you have some reason to know from whom that comes."

Sholto grasped at the writing with a new and wonderful hope in his heart. He knew instinctively before he touched it that none but Maud Lindesay could have written that script—small, clear, and distinct as a motto cut on a gem.

"To our friends in France and Scotland," so it ran. "We are still safe this eve of the Blessed Saint Michael. Trust her who brings this letter. She is our saviour and our only hope in a dark and evil place. She is sorry for that which by her aid hath been done. As you hope for forgiveness, forgive her. And for God's dear sake, do immediately the thing she bids you. This comes from Margaret de Douglas and Maud Lindesay. It is written by the hand of M. L."

The wax at the bottom was sealed in double with the boar's head of Lindesay and the heart of Margaret of Douglas.

Sholto, having read the missive silently, passed it to the Lord James that he might prove the seals, for it was his only learning to be skilled in heraldry.

"It is true," he said; "I myself gave the little maid that ring. See, it hath a piece broken from the peak of the device."

"My lady," said Sholto, "that which you bring is more than enough. We kiss your hand and we will sacredly do all your bidding, were it unto the death or the trial by fire."

Then, as was the custom to do to ladies whom knights would honour, the Lord James and Sholto kneeled down and kissed the hand of Sybilla de Thouars. But Malise, not being a knight, took it only and settled it upon his great grizzled head, where it rested for a moment, lightly as upon some grey and ancient tower lies a flake of snow before it melts.

"I thank you for your overmuch courtesy," the girl said, casting her eyes on the ground with a new-born shyness most like that of a modest maid; "I thank you, indeed. You do me honour far above my desert. Still, after all, we work for one end. You have, it is true, the nobler motive,—the lives of those you love; but I the deadlier,—the death of one I hate! Hearken!"

She paused as if to gather strength for that which she had to reveal, and then, reaching her hands out, she motioned the three men to gather more closely about her, as if the blue Atlantic waves or the red boles of the pine trees might carry the matter.

"Listen," she said, "the end comes fast—faster than any know, save I, to whom for my sins the gift of second sight hath been given. I who speak to you am of Brittany and of the House of De Thouars. To one of us in each generation descends this abhorred gift of second sight. And I, because as a child it was my lot to meet one wholly given over to evil, have seen more and clearer than all that have gone before me. But now I do foresee the end of the wickedest and most devilish soul ever prisoned within the body of man."

As she spoke the heads of the three Scots bent lower and closer to catch every word, for the voice of the Lady Sybilla was more like the cooing of a mating turtle as it answers its comrade than that of a woman betrayed, denouncing vengeance and death upon him whom her soul hated.

"Be of good heart, then, and depart as I shall bid you. None can help or hinder here at Machecoul but I alone. Be sure that at the worst the unnameable shall not happen to the maids. For in me there is the power to slay the evil-doer. But slay I will not unless it be to keep the lives of the maids. Because I desire for Gilles de Retz a fate greater, more terrible, more befitting iniquity such as the world hath never heard spoken of since it arose from the abyss.

"And this is it given to me to bring upon him whom my soul hateth," she went on. "I have seen the hempen cord by which he shall hang. I have seen the fire through which his soul shall pass to its own place. Through me this fate shall come upon him suddenly in one night."

Her face lighted up with an inner glow, and shone translucent in the darkening of the day and the dusk of the trees, as if the fair veil of flesh wavered and changed about the vengeful soul within.

"And now," she went on after a pause, "I bid you, gentlemen of the house of Douglas, to depart to John, Duke of Brittany, and having found him to lay this paper before him. It contains the number and the names of those who have died in the castles of de Retz. It shows in what hidden places the bones of these slaughtered innocents may be found. Clamour in his ear for justice in the name of the King of France, and if he will not hear, then in the name of the folk of Brittany. And if still because of his kinship he will not listen, go to the Bishop of Nantes, who hates Gilles de Retz. Better than any he knows how to stir the people, and he will send with you trusty men to cause the country to rise in rebellion. Then they will overturn all the castles of de Retz, and the hidden things shall come to light. This do, and for this time depart from Machecoul, and entrust me (as indeed you must) with the honour and lives of those you love. I will keep them with mine own until destruction pass upon him who is outcast from God, and whom now his own fiend from hell hath deserted."

Then, having sworn to do her bidding, the three Scots conducted the Lady Sybilla with honour and observance to her white palfrey, and like a spirit she vanished into the sea mists which had sifted up from the west, going back to the drear Castle of Machecoul, but bearing with her the burden of her revenge.



CHAPTER LIV

THE CROSS UNDER THE APRON

The face of Gilles de Laval, Lord of Retz, had shone all day with an unholy lustre like that of iron in which the red heat yet struggles with the black. In the Castle of Machecoul his familiars went about, wearing expressions upon their countenances in which disgust and expectation were mingled with an overwhelming fear of the terrible baron.

The usual signs of approaching high saturnalia at Machecoul had not been wanting.

Early in the morning La Meffraye had been seen hovering like an unclean bird of prey about the playing grounds of the village children at Saint Benoit on the edges of the forest. At nine the frightened villagers heard the howl of a day-hunting wolf, and one Louis Verger, a woodman who was cutting bark for the tanneries in the valley, saw a huge grey wolf rush out and seize his little son, Jean, a boy of five years old, who came bringing his father's breakfast. With a great cry he hurried back to alarm the village, but when men gathered with scythes and rude weapons of the chase, the beast's track was lost in the depth of the forest.

Little Jean Verger of Saint Benoit was never seen again, unless it were he who, half hidden under the long black cloak of La Meffraye, was brought at noon by the private postern of the baron into the Castle of Machecoul.

So the men of Saint Benoit went not back to their work, but abode together all that day, sullen anger burning in their hearts. And one calling himself the servant of the Bishop of Nantes went about among them, and his words were as knives, sharp and bitter beyond belief. And ever as he spoke the men turned them about till they faced Machecoul. Their lips moved like those of a Moslemite who says his prayers towards Mecca. And the words they uttered were indeed prayers of solemnest import.

With his usual devotion at such seasons, Gilles de Retz had attended service thrice that day in his Chapel of the Holy Innocents. His behaviour had been marked by intense devoutness. An excessive tenderness of conscience had characterised his confessions to Pere Blouyn, his spiritual director-in-ordinary. He confessed as his most flagrant sin that his thoughts were overmuch set on the vanities of the world, and that he had even sometimes been tempted of the devil to question the right of Holy Church herself to settle all questions according to the will of her priests and prelates.

Whereupon Pere Blouyn, with suave correctness of judgment, had pointed out wherein his master erred; but also cautioned him against that undue tenderness of conscience natural to one with his exalted position and high views of duty and life. Finally the marshal had received absolution.

In the late afternoon the Lord of Retz commanded the fire to be laid ready for lighting in his chamber aloft in the keep of Machecoul, and set himself down to listen to the singing of the choir, which, under the guidance of Precentor Renouf, rehearsed for him the sweetest hymns recently written for the choir of the Holy Father at Rome. For there the marshal's choir-master had been trained, and with its leader he still kept up a correspondence upon kindred interests.

Gilles de Retz, as he sat under the late blooming roses in the afternoon sunshine of the autumn of western France, appeared to the casual eye one of the most noble seigneurs and the most enlightened in the world. He affected a costume already semiecclesiastic as a token of his ultimate intention to enter holy orders. It seemed indeed as if the great soldier who had ridden into Orleans with Dunois and the Maid had begun to lay aside his earthly glories and seek the heavenly.

There, upon a chair set within the cloisters, in a place which the sunshine touched most lovingly and where it lingered longest, he sat, nodding his head to the sound of the sweet singing, and bowing low at each mention of the name of Jesus (as the custom is)—a still, meditative, almost saintly man. Upon the lap of his furred robe (for, after all, it was a sunshine with a certain shrewd wintriness in it) lay an illuminated copy of the Holy Gospels; and sometimes as he listened to the choir-boys singing, he glanced therein, and read of the little children to whom belongs the kingdom. Upon occasion he lifted the book also, and looked with pleasure at the pictured cherubs who cheered the way of the Master Jerusalemwards with strewn palm leaves and shouted hosannas.

And ever sweeter and sweeter fell the music upon his ear, till suddenly, like the silence after a thunderclap, the organ ceased to roll, the choir was silent, and out of the quiet rose a single voice—that of Laurence the Scot singing in a tenor of infinite sweetness the words of blessing:

"Suffer the little children to come unto Me, And forbid them not; For of such is the Kingdom of Heaven."

And as the boy's voice welled out, clear and thrilling as the song of an upward pulsing lark, the tears ran down the face of Gilles de Retz.

God knows why. Perhaps it was some glint of his own innocent childhood—some half-dimmed memory of his happily dead mother. Perhaps—but enough. Gilles de Laval de Retz went up the turret stair to find Poitou and Gilles de Sille on guard on either side the portals which closed his chamber.

"Is all ready?" he asked, though the tears were scarcely dry on his cheeks.

They bowed before him to the ground.

"All is ready, lord and master," they said as with one voice.

"And Prelati?"

"He is in waiting."

"And La Meffraye," he went on, "has she arrived?"

"La Meffraye has arrived," they said; "all goes fortunately."

"Good!" said Gilles de Retz, and shedding his furred monkish cloak carelessly from off his shoulders, he went within.

Poitou and Gilles de Sille both reached to catch the mantle ere it fell. As they did so their hands met and touched. And at the meeting of each other's flesh they started and drew apart. Their eyes encountered furtively and were instantly withdrawn. Then, having hung up the cloak, with pallid countenances and lips white and tremulous, they slowly followed the marshal within.

* * * * *

"Sybilla de Thouars, as you are in my power, so I bid you work my will!"

It was the deep, stern voice of the Marshal de Retz which spoke. The Lady Sybilla lay back in a great chair with her eyes closed, breathing slowly and gently through her parted lips. Messire Gilles stood before her with his hands joined palm to palm and his white fingertips almost touching the girl's brow.

"Work my will and tell me what you see!"

Her hands were clasped under a light silken apron which she wore descending from her neck and caught in a loose loop behind her gown. The fingers were firmly netted one over the other and clutched between them was a golden crucifix.

The girl was praying, as one prays who dares not speak.

"O God, who didst hang on this cross—keep now my soul. Condemn it afterwards, but help me to keep it this night. Deliver me—oh, deliver from the power of this man. Help me to lie. By Thy Son's blood, help me to lie well this night."

"Where are the three men from the land of the Scots? Tell me what you see. Tell me all," the marshal commanded, still standing before her in the same posture.

Then the voice of the Lady Sybilla began to speak, low and even, and with that strange halt at the end of the sentences. The Lord of Retz nodded, well pleased when he heard the sound. It was the voice of the seeress. Oftentimes he had heard it before, and it had never deceived him.

"I see a boat on a stormy sea," she said; "there are three men in it. One is great of stature and very strong. The others are young men. They are trying to furl the sail. A gust strikes them. The boat heels and goes over. I see them struggling in the pit of waters. There are cliffs white and crumbling above them. They are calling for help as they cling to the boat. Now there is but one of them left. I see him trying to climb up the slippery rocks. He falls back each time. He is weary with much buffeting. The waves break about him and suck him under. Now I do not see the men any more, but I can hear the broken mast of the boat knocking hollow and dull against the rocks. Some few shreds of the sail are wrapped about it. But the three men are gone."

She ceased suddenly. Her lips stopped their curiously detached utterance.

But under her breath and deep in her soul Sybilla de Thouars was still praying as before. And this which follows was her prayer:

"O God, his devil is surely departed from him. I thank thee, God of truth, for helping me to lie."

"It is well," said Gilles de Retz, standing erect with a satisfied air. "All is well. The three Scots who sought my life are gone to their destruction. Now, Sybilla de Thouars, I bid you look upon John, Duke of Brittany. Tell me what he does and says."

The level, impassive, detached voice began again. The hands clasped the cross of gold more closely under the silk apron.

"I see a room done about with silver scallop shells and white-painted ermines. I see a fair, cunning-faced, soft man. Behind him stands one tall, spare, haggard—"

"Pierre de l'Hopital, President of Brittany—one that hates me," said de Retz, grimly between his teeth. "I will meet my fingers about his dog's throat yet. What of him?"

The Lady Sybilla, without a quiver of her shut eyelids took up the cue.

"He hath his finger on a parchment. He strives to point out something to the fair-haired man, but that other shakes his head and will not agree—"

The marshal suddenly grew intent, and even excited.

"Look closer, Sybilla—look closer. Can you not read that which is written on the parchment? I bid you, by all my power, to read it."

Then the countenance of the Lady Sybilla was altered. Striving and blank failure were alternately expressed upon it.

"I cannot! Oh, I cannot!" she cried.

"By my power, I bid you. By that which I will make you suffer if you fail me, I command you!" cried Gilles de Retz, bending himself towards her and pressing his fingers against her brow so that the points dented her skin.

The tears sprang from underneath the dark lashes which lay so tremulously upon her white cheek.

"You make me do it! It hurts! I cannot!" she said in the pitiful voice of a child.

"Read—or suffer the shame!" cried Gilles de Retz.

"I will—oh, I will! Be not angry," she answered pleadingly.

And underneath the silk the hands were grasped with a grip like that of a vice upon the golden cross she had borrowed from the little Maid of Galloway.

"Read me that which is written on the paper," said the marshal.

The Lady Sybilla began to speak in a voice so low that Gilles de Retz had to incline his ear very close to her lips to listen.

"Accusation against the great lord and most noble seigneur, Gilles de Laval de Retz, Sire de—"

"That is it—go on after the titles," said the eager voice of the marshal.

"Accused of having molested the messengers of his suzerain, the supreme Duke John of Brittany, accused of ill intent against the State; accused of quartering the arms-royal upon his shield; called to answer for these offences in the city of Nantes—and that is all."

She ended abruptly, like one who is tired and desires no more than to sleep.

Gilles de Retz drew a long sigh of relief.

"All is hid," he said; "these things are less than nothing. What does the Duke?"

"I cannot look again, I am weary," she said.

"Look again!" thundered her taskmaster.

"I see the fair-haired man take the parchment from the hand of the dark, stern man—"

"With whom I will reckon!"

"He tries to tear it in two, but cannot. He throws it angrily in the fire."

"My enemies are destroyed," said Gilles de Retz, "I thank thee, great Barran-Sathanas. Thou hast indeed done that which thou didst promise. Henceforth I am thy servant and thy slave."

So saying, he took a glass of water from the table and dashed it on the face of the Lady Sybilla.

"Awake," he said, "you have done well. Go now and repose that you may again be ready when I have need of you."

A flicker of conscious life appeared under the purple-veined eyelids of the Lady Sybilla. Her long, dark lashes quivered, tried to rise, and again lay still.

The marshal took the illuminated copy of the Evangelists from the table and fanned her with the thin parchment leaves.

"Awake!" he cried harshly and sternly.

The eyes of the girl slowly opened their pupils dark and dilated. She carried her hand to her head, but wearily, as if even that slight movement pained her. The golden cross swung unseen under the silken folds of her apron.

"I am so tired—so tired," the girl murmured to herself as Gilles de Retz assisted her to rise. Then hastily handing her over to Poitou, he bade him conduct her to her own chamber.

But as she went through the door of the marshal's laboratory she looked upon the floor and smiled almost joyously.

"His devil has indeed departed from him," she murmured to herself. "I thank the God of Righteousness who this night hath enabled me to baffle him with a woman's poor wit, and to lie to him that he may be led quick to destruction, and fall himself into the pit which he hath prepared for the feet of the innocent."



CHAPTER LV

THE RED MILK

Darkly and swiftly the autumn night descended upon Machecoul. In the streets of the little feudal bourg there were few passers-by, and such as there were clutched their cloaks tighter round them and scurried on. Or if they raised their heads, it was only to take a hasty, fearful glance at the vast bulk of the castle looming imminent above them.

From a window high in the central keep a red light streamed out, and when the clouds flew low, strange dilated shadows were wont to be cast upon the rolling vapour. Sometimes smoke, acrid and heavy, bellied forth, and anon wild cries of pain and agony floated down to silence the footfalls of the home-returning rustics and chill the hearts of burghers trembling in their beds.

But none dared to question in public the doings of the great and puissant lord of all the country of Retz. It fared not well with him who even looked too much at the things which were done.

The night was yet darker up aloft in the Castle of Machecoul itself. In the sacristy good Father Blouyn, with an air of resigned reluctance, was handing over to an emissary of his master the moulds in which the tall altar candles for the Chapel of the Holy Innocents were usually cast and compacted. And as Clerk Henriet went out with the moulds he took a long look through a private spy-hole at the lads of the choir who were sitting in the hall apportioned to their use. They were supposed to be busy with their lessons, and, indeed, a few were poring over their books with some show of studious absorption. But for the most part they were playing at cards and dominos, or, in the absence of the master, sticking intimate pins and throwing about indiscriminate ink, according to the immemorial use of the choir-boy.

Clerk Henriet counted them twice over and in especial looked carefully to see what did the young Scots lad, who had so mysteriously escaped from the dread room of his master. Laurence MacKim played X's and O's upon a board with Blaise Renouf, the precentor's son, and at some hitch in the game he incontinently clouted the Frenchman upon the ear. Whereupon ensued trouble and the spilling of much ink.

Henriet, perfectly satisfied, took up the heavy moulds and made his way to his lord's chamber, where many things were used for purposes other than those for which they had been intended.

Upon the back of his departure came in the Precentor Renouf, who laid his baton conjointly and freely about the ears of his son and those of Laurence MacKim.

"Get to your beds both of you, and that supperless, for uproar and conduct ill becoming two youths who worship God all day in his sanctuary, and are maintained at grievous expense by our most devout and worthy lord, Messire Gilles of Laval and Retz, Seigneur and Lord!"

Laurence, who had of set purpose provoked the quarrel, was slinking away, when the "Psalta" (as the choir-master is called in lower Brittany) ordered them to sleep in separate rooms for the better keeping of the peace.

"And do you, Master Laurence, perform your vigil of the night upon the pavement of the chapel. For you are the most rebellious and troublesome of all—indeed, past bearing. Go! Not a word, sirrah!"

So, much rejoiced in heart that matters had thus fallen out, Laurence MacKim betook himself to the Chapel of the Holy Innocents, and was duly locked in by the irate precentor.

For, upon various occasions, he had watched the Lord of Retz descend into the chapel by a private staircase which opened out in an angle behind the altar. He had also seen Poitou, his confidential body-servant, lock it after him with a small key of a yellow colour which he took from his fork pocket.

Now Master Laurence, as may have already been observed, was (like most of the youthful unordained clergy) little troubled, at least in minor matters, with scruples about such slight distinctions as those which divide meum and tuum. He found no difficulty therefore in abstracting this key when Poitou was engaged in attending his master from the chapel, in which service it was his duty to pass the stalls with open lattice ends of carven work in which sat the elder choir-boys. Having secured the key, Laurence hid it instantly beneath the leaden saint on his cap, refastening the long pin which kept our Lady of Luz in her place through the fretwork of the little brazen key.

Presently he saw Poitou come back and look carefully here and there upon the floor, but after a while, not finding anything, he went out again to search elsewhere.

The idea had come to Laurence that at the head of the stairway from the chapel was the prison chamber of Maud Lindesay and her ward, the little Maid Margaret of Galloway.

He told himself at least that this was his main object, and doubtless he had the matter in his mind. But a far stronger motive was his curiosity and the magic influence of the mysterious and the unknown upon the heart of youth.

More than to deliver Margaret of Galloway, Laurence longed to look again upon the iron altar and to know the truth concerning the strange sacrifices which were consummated there. And he yearned to see again that rough-eared image graven after the fashion of a man.

And the reason was not far to seek.

For if even the worship of the High God, according to the practice of the most enlightened nations, grounds itself upon blood and sacrifice, what wonder if, in the worship of the lords of Hell, the blood of the innocent is an oblation well pleasing and desirable.

Rooted and ineradicable is the desire in man's heart to know good and evil—but particularly evil. And so now Laurence desired to see the sacrifice laid between the horns of the altar and the image above lean over as if to gloat upon the sweet savour of its burning.

Long and carefully Laurence listened before he ventured forth. The Chapel of the Innocents was dark and silent. Only a reflection of the red light which burned in the keep struck through the clerestory upon the great cross which swung above the altar. This, being dispersed like a halo about the sign of Christ's redemption, rendered the corner where was placed the door into the secret stairway light enough to enable the youth to insert therein Poitou's key. The wards were turned with well-accustomed smoothness.

Carefully shutting the door behind him so that if any one chanced to enter the chapel nothing would be observed, Laurence set his feet upon the steps and began his adventure of supreme peril.

It was a narrow staircase, only wide enough indeed for one to ascend or descend at once. And the heart of Laurence sank within him at the thought of meeting the dread Lord of Machecoul face to face in its strait, black spirals.

He accomplished the ascent, however, without incident, and, passing through another low arch, found himself at the end of the passage over against the door with the curious burned hieroglyphics imprinted upon it. There was no light in the corridor, and Laurence eagerly set his hand to the latch. It opened as before and admitted him at a touch.

The temple-like hall was silent and dim. Only an occasional thrill as if of an earthquake passed across it, waving the heavy hangings and bringing a hot breath of some strange heady perfume to the nostrils. Laurence, with a beating heart, ensconced himself in a hidden nook behind the door. The niche was covered by a curtain and furnished with a grooved slab of marble placed there for some purpose he could not fathom.

Yet it was by no means wholly dark. A light shone into the Chapel of Evil from the opposite side, and through it he could discern shadows cast upon the floors and striding gigantic across the roof, as unseen personages passed the light which streamed into the dusky temple.

In the gloomiest part of the background, hinted rather than seen, he could make out the vast dark figure dominating the iron altar.

Then Laurence remembered that the chamber of the marshal lay on the other side—the room with the immense fireplace which he had once entered and from which he had barely escaped with his life.

Little by little Laurence raised himself upon the grooved slab until, standing erect, he could see some small part of the whitewashed, red-floored chamber he remembered so well—only a strip, however, extending from the door through which he looked to the great fireplace whereon the heaped wood had already been kindled.

At first all was confused. Laurence saw Henriet and Poitou going hastily here and there, as servitors do who prepare for a great function. Then came a pause, heavy with doom. On the back of this he heard or seemed to hear the frightened pleading of a child, the short, sharp commands of a soldier's voice, a sound as of a blow stricken, and then again a whimpering hush. Laurence leaned against the wall with his face in his hands. He dared not look within. Then he lifted his head, and lo! in the gloom it seemed as if the huge image had turned towards him, and in a pleased, confidential way were nodding approval of his presence.

He heard the voice of the Marshal de Retz again—this time kindly, and even affectionate. Some one was not to be frightened. Some one was to take a draught from the goblet and fear nothing. They would not hurt him. They had but played with him.

Again Henriet and Poitou passed and repassed, and once Gilles de Sille flashed across the interspace handing a broad-edged gleaming knife swiftly and surreptitiously to some one unseen.

Then came a short, sharp cry of agony, a gurgling moan, and black, blank, unutterable horror shut down on Laurence's spirit.

He sank down on his face behind the door and covered his eyes and ears with his hands. So he lay for a space without motion, almost without sense, upon the naked grooves of the marble slab. When he came to himself, a dusky light was diffused through the chapel. As he looked he saw La Meffraye come to the door and set her face within, like some bird of night, hideous and foul. Then she returned and Gilles de Sille and Clerk Henriet came into the chapel bearing between them a great golden cup, filled (as it seemed by the care with which they carried it) to the very brim with some precious liquid.

To them, all clad in a priest's robe of flame-coloured velvet, succeeded the Lord of Retz himself. He held in his hand like a service-book the great manuscript written in red, which he had been transcribing at Sybilla's entrance, and as he walked he chanted, with a strange intonation, words that thrilled the very soul of the young man listening.

And yet, as Laurence looked forth from his hiding-place, it appeared that the black statue nodded once more to him as one who would say, "Take note and remember what thou seest; for one day thy testimony shall be needful."

These were the words he heard in the chanting monotone:

"O great and mighty Barran-Sathanas—my only lord and master, whom with all due observance I do worship, look mercifully upon this the sacrifice of innocent blood; let it be grateful to thee—to whom all evil is as the breath of life!

"Hear us, O Barran-Sathanas! Thou hast been deaf in past days, because we served thee not without drawback or withholding, without sparing and without remorse. Because we hesitated to give thee the best, the delicatest, the most pitiful. But now take this innocentest innocence. Behold I, Gilles de Retz, make to thee the matchless sacrifice of the Red Milk thou lovest.

"The Red Milk I pour for thee. The Red Milk I bring thee. The Red Milk I drink to thee—that thou mayest be pleased to restore vital energy and new youth to my veins, to make me strong as a young man in his strength, and wiser than the wisdom of age. Hear me, O great master of all the evil of the universe, thou equal and coadjutor of the Master of Good, hear and manifest thy so mighty power. Hear me and answer, O Barran-Sathanas!"

Gilles de Retz took the cup from the hands of the servitors. He seemed so weak with his crying that he could hardly hold it between his trembling palms.

He lifted his head and again cried aloud:

"See, I am weak, my Satan—see how I tremble. Strength is departed from me. Youth is dead. Help thy faithful servant, aid him to lift up this precious oblation to thee!"

And as the great dusky image seemed to lean over him, with a hoarse cry Gilles de Retz raised the cup and held it high above his head. As he did so a beam, sudden as lightning, fell upon it, and with a quick, instinctive horror, Laurence saw that it was filled to the brim with blood fresh and red.

The marshal's voice strengthened.

"It is coming! It is coming! Barran manifests himself! O great lord, to thee I drain this draught!" cried Gilles de Retz. "The Red Milk, the precious milk of innocence, to thee I drink it!"

And he set the cup to his lips and drank deep and long.

* * * * *

"It comes. It fills me. I am strong. O Barran, give me yet more strength. My limbs revive. My pulse beats. I am young as when I rode with Dunois. Barran, thou art indeed mightier than God. I will give thee yet more and more. I swear it. I have kept the best wine till the last—the death vintage of a great house. The wine of beauty and brightness—I have kept it for thee. Halt not to make me stronger! Help me—Barran, help—I fail—!"

His voice had risen higher and higher till it was well nigh a scream of agony. Strangely too, in spite of the fictitious youth that glowed in his veins and coloured his cheek, it sounded like a senile shriek.

But all suddenly, at the very height of his exaltation, the cup from which he had drunk slipped from his hand and rolled upon the tesselated pavement of the temple, staining it in gouts and vivid blotches of crimson.

"Hasten, ere I lose the power—I feel it checked. Poitou, De Sille, Henriet, go bring hither from the White Tower the Scottish maids. Run, dogs—or you die! Quick, Henriet! Good De Sille, quick! Fail not your master now! It ebbs, it weakens—and it was so near completion. Stay, O Barran, till I finish the sacrifice, and here at thy feet offer up to thee the richest, and the fairest, and the noblest! Bring hither the maidens! I tell you, bring them quickly!"

And the terrible Lord of Retz, exhausted with his own fury, cast himself at the feet of the gigantic image, which, bending over him, seemed with the same grimace sardonically to mock alike his exaltation and his downfall.

But Laurence heard no more. For sense and feeling had wholly departed from him, and he lay as one dead behind the door of the temple of Barran-Sathanas, Lord of Evil, in the thrice-abhorrent Castle of Machecoul.



CHAPTER LVI

THE SHADOW BEHIND THE THRONE

Within the grim walls of Black Angers Duke John of Brittany and reigning sovereign of western France was holding his court. The city and fortress did not properly, of right and parchment holding, appertain to him. But he had occupied it during the recent troubles with the English, and his loving cousin and nominal suzerain Charles the Seventh of France had not yet been strong enough to make him render it up again.

The Duke sat in the central tower of the fortress of Black Angers, that which looks between the high flanking turrets of the mighty enceinte of walls. He wriggled discontentedly in his chair and grumbled under his breath.

At his shoulder, tall, gaunt, angular, with lantern jaws and a mouth like a wolf trap, deep-set eyes that flamed under bushy eyebrows, stood Pierre de l'Hopital, the true master of Brittany.

"I tell you I will go to the tennis-courts—the three Scots must wait audience till to-morrow. What errand can they have with me—some rascals whom Charles will not pay now that his job is done? They come to take service doubtless. A beggarly lot are all such out-land varlets, but brave—yes, excellent soldiers are the Scots, so long as they are well fed, that is."

"Nay, my Lord Duke," said Pierre de l'Hopital, standing up tall and sombre, his long black gown accentuating the peculiarities of his figure. "It were almost necessary to see these men now and hear what they have to say. I myself have seen them and judge it to be so."

John of Brittany threw down the little sceptre, fashioned in imitation of that made for the King of France, with which he had been toying. The action was that of a pettish child.

"Oh," he cried, "if you have decided, there remains nothing for me but to obey!"

"I thank your Excellency for your gracious readiness to grant the men an interview," said Pierre de l'Hopital, having regard to the essential matter and disregarding the unessential manner.

Duke John sat glooming and kicking his feet to and fro on the raised dais, while behind his chair, impassive as the Grand Inquisitor himself, Pierre de l'Hopital, President of Brittany, lifted a hand to an unseen servitor; and in a few moments the three Scots were ushered into the ducal presence.

The Lord James in virtue of his quality stood a little in front, not by his own will or desire, but because Sholto and his father had so placed themselves that the young noble should have his own rightful precedence. For as to these things all Scots are careful by nature.

Duke John continued to keep his eyes averted from the men who sought his presence. He teased a little lop-eared spaniel, and nipped it till it yelped. But the President of Brittany never took his eyes off the strangers, examining them with a bold, keen, remorseless glance, in which, however, there was neither evil nor the tolerance of it. Not a man to make himself greatly beloved, this Pierre de l'Hopital.

And little he cared whether or no. In Brittany men did his will. That was enough.

James Douglas was nettled at the inattention of the Duke. He was of that large and sanguine nature which is at once easily touched by any discourtesy and very quick to resent it.

"My Lord of Brittany," he began in a loud clear voice, and in his usual immaculate French, "I claim your attention for a little. I come to lay before you that which touches your kin and kingdom."

Duke John continued to play with the lap-dog, and in addition he formed his mouth to whistle. But he never whistled.

"His Grace of Brittany will now give you his undivided attention," said the President from behind, without moving a muscle either of his body or of his face, save those necessary to propel the words from his vocal cords.

The brow of Duke John flushed with anger, but he did not disobey. He raised his head and gazed straight at the three men, fixing his eyes, however, with a studied discourtesy upon Sholto instead of upon their natural leader and spokesman.

Behind his chair Pierre de l'Hopital let his deep inscrutable eye droop once upon his master, and his spare and sinewy wrists twitched as he held his arms by his side. He seemed upon the point of dealing ducal dignity a box on the ear both sound and improving.

"I am the Lord James of Douglas and Avondale," said the leader of the Scots with grave dignity, "and I had three years ago the honour of breaking a lance with you in the tilt-yard of Poitiers, when in that town your Grace met with the King of France and the Duke of Burgundy."

At this John of Brittany looked up quickly.

"I do not remember you," he said, "and I never forget faces. Even Pierre will grant me that."

"Your Grace may possibly remember, then, the dint in your shoulder that you got from the point of a spear, caused by the breaking of the links of your shoulder-piece."

A light kindled in the Duke's eyes.

"What," he cried, "you are the young Scot who fought so well and kept his shield up day by day over the door of a common sergeant's tent, having no pavilion of his own, till it was all over dints like an alehouse tankard?"

"As were also the knights who dinted it," grimly commented Pierre de l'Hopital.

The Lord James of Avondale bowed.

"I am that knight," he said quietly and with gravity.

"But," cried the Duke, "I knew not then that you were of Douglas. That is a great name in Poitiers, and had we known your race and quality we had not been so ready with our shield-rapping."

"At that time," said James Douglas, "I had not the right to add 'of Douglas' to my titles. But during this year my father hath succeeded to the Earldom and estates."

"What—then is your father Duke of Touraine?" cried the Duke of Brittany, much astonished.

"Nay, my lord," said James Douglas, with some little bitterness. "The King of France hath caused that to revert to himself by the success which attended a certain mission executed for him in Scotland by his Chamberlain, the Marshal de Retz, concerning whom we have come from far to speak with you."

"Ah, my cousin Gilles!" cried Duke John. "He is not a beauty to look at, but he is a brave man, our Gilles. I heard he had gone to Scotland. I wonder if he contrived to make himself as popular in your land as he has done in ours."

With a certain grave severity to which Pierre de l'Hopital nodded approval, the Lord James replied: "At the instigation of the King of France and Louis the Dauphin he succeeded in murdering my two cousins William and David of Douglas, and in carrying over hither with him to his own country their only sister, the little Countess of Galloway—thus rooting out the greatest house in Scotland to the hurt of the whole realm."

"But to your profit, my Lord James of Avondale," commented the hollow voice of Pierre de l'Hopital, speaking over his master's head.

The face of James Douglas flushed quickly.

"No, messire," he answered with a swift heat. "Not to my profit—to my infinite loss. For I loved my cousin. I honoured him, and for his sake would have fought to the death. For his sake have I renounced my own father that begat me. And for his sake I stand here to ask for justice to the little maiden, the last of his race, to whom by right belongs the fairest province of his dominions. No, messire, you are wrong. In all this have I had no profit but only infinite hurt."

Pierre de l'Hopital bowed low. There was a pleased look on his face that almost amounted to a smile.

"I crave your pardon, my lord," he said; "that is well said indeed, and he is a gentleman who speaks it."

"Aye, it is indeed well said, and he had you shrewdly on the hip that time, Pierre," cried Duke John. "I wish he could teach me thus cleverly to answer you when you croak."

"If you had as good a cause, my lord," said the President of Brittany to the Duke, "it were not difficult to answer me as sharply. But we are keeping these gentlemen from declaring the purpose of their journey hither."

The Lord James waited for no further invitation.

"I come," he said boldly, holding a parchment in his hand, the same he had received from the Lady Sybilla, "to denounce Gilles de Retz and to accuse him of many cruel and unrighteous acts such as have never been done in any kingdom. I accuse him of the murder of over four hundred children of all ages and both sexes in circumstances of unparalleled barbarity. I am ready to lead you to the places where lie their bodies, some of them burned and their ashes cast into the ditch, others charred and thrown into unused towers. I have here names, instances, evidence enough to taint and condemn a hundred monsters such as Gilles de Retz."

"Ah, give me the paper," came the raucous voice of the President of Brittany, as he reached a bony hand over his master's shoulder to seize it.

The Lord James advanced, and giving it to him said, "Messire, I would have you know that a copy of this is already in the hands of a trusty person in each of the towns and villages which are named here, and from which children have been led to cruel death by him whom I have accused, Gilles de Retz, Marshal of France."

The President of Brittany nodded as he almost snatched the paper in his eagerness to peruse it.

"The point is cleverly taken," he said, "as justly indeed as if you knew my Lord of Brittany as well as, for instance, I know him."

The Duke was obviously discomfited. He shuffled his feet more than ever on the dais and combed his straggling fair beard with soft, white, tapering fingers.

"This is wild and wholly absurd," he said, without however looking at James Douglas; "our cousin Gilles is in ill odour with the commonalty. He is a philosopher and makes smells with bottles. But there is neither harm nor witchcraft in it. He is only trying to discover the elixir of life. So the silly folk think him a wizard. I know him better. He is a brave soldier and my good cousin. I will not have him molested."

"My lord speaks of kinship," grated the voice of Pierre de l'Hopital. "Here are the names of four hundred fathers and mothers who have also a claim to be heard on that subject, and whose voices, if I judge right, are being heard at this moment around the Castles of Machecoul, Tiffauges, Champtoce, and Pouzages. I wot there is now a crowd of a thousand men pouring through the passages of the Hotel de Suze in your Grace's own ducal city of Nantes. And if there goes a bruit abroad, that your Highness is protecting this monster whom the people hate, and the evidences of whose horrid cruelty are by this time in their hands—well, your Grace knows the Bretons as well as I. They will make one end of Gilles de Retz and of his cousin John, Duke of Brittany."

"Think you so—think you so truly, Pierre?" cried the unhappy reigning prince; "I would not screen him if this be true. But the King—what of the King? They say he hath promised him support with arms and men for recovering to him and to Louis the Dauphin the Duchy of Touraine."

"And think you, my lord, that the Dauphin will keep his promise, if we show him good cause why he should fare better by breaking it?" suggested Pierre de l'Hopital, with the grim irony which had become habitual to him.

John of Brittany paused irresolute.

"Besides which," continued James Douglas, "I may add that this paper is already in the hands of the Cardinal Bishop of Nantes, and if your Grace will not move in the matter, his Eminence has promised to see justice done."

"The hireling—the popular mouther after favour! I know him," cried Duke John, angrily. "What accursed demon sent you to him? In this, as in other matters, he will strive to oust me from the hearts of the folk of Brittany. He will be the people's advocate and will gain great honour from this trial, will he? We shall see. Ho! guards there! Turn out. Summon those that are asleep. Let the full muster be called. I will lead you to Machecoul myself. And these gentlemen shall march with us. But by Heaven and the bones of Saint Anne of Auray, if in one jot they shall fail to substantiate against Gilles de Retz those things which they have testified, they shall die by the rack, and by the cord, and by disembowelling, and by fire. So swear I, Duke John of Brittany."

"It is good," said James Douglas. And "It is good," accorded also Malise and Sholto MacKim.

"But before any dies in Brittany, Gilles de Retz or another, I will judge the case," commented Pierre de l'Hopital, President of Justice and Grand Councillor of the reigning sovereign.



CHAPTER LVII

THE TOWER OF DEATH

Throughout La Vendee and all the country of Retz had run a terrible rumour. "The Marshal de Retz is the murderer of our children. He has a thousand bodies in the vaults of his castles. The Duke of Brittany has given orders that they shall be searched. His soldiers are forsaking him. The names of the dead have been written in black and white, and are in the hands of the headmen of the villages. Hasten—it is the hour of vengeance! Let us overwhelm him! Rise up and let us seek our lost ones, even if we find no more than their bones!"

And terrible as had been the gathering of the were-wolves in the dark forests around Machecoul upon the night of the fight by the hollow tree, far more threatening and terrible was the uprising of the angry commons.

In whole villages there was not a man left, and mothers too marched in that muster armed with choppers and kitchen knives, wild eyed and angry hearted as lionesses robbed of their cubs. From the deep glens and deeper woods of the country of Retz they poured. They disgorged from the caves of the earth whither the greed and rapacity of their terrible lord had driven them.

Schoolmasters were there with the elder of their pupils. For many of the vanished children had disappeared on their way to school, and these men were in danger of losing both their credit and occupation.

Towards Tiffauges, Champtoce, Machecoul, the angry populace, long repressed, surged tumultuously, and with them, much wondering at their orders, went the soldiers of the Duke.

But it is with the columns that concentrated upon Machecoul that we have chiefly to do. Our three Scots accompanied these, and here, too, marched John of Brittany himself with his Councillor Pierre de l'Hopital by his side.

Night fell as they journeyed on, ever joined by fresh contingents from all the country round. In the van pressed forward the folk of Saint Philbert, warm from the utter destruction of the house of the witch woman, La Meffraye, so that not one stone was left upon another. Guided by these the Duke and his party made their way easily through the forest, even in the darkness of the night. And as they passed hamlet or cottage ever and anon some frenzied mother would rush upon them and fall on her knees before the Duke, praying him to look well for her darling, and bringing mayhap some pitiful shred of clothing or lock of hair by which the searchers might identify the lost innocent.

As they went forward the soldiers pricked on ahead, and caused the people to fall to the rear, lest any foreknowledge of their purpose might reach the wizard and warn him to escape.

The woods of Machecoul were dark and silent that night. Not the howl of a questing wolf was heard. Truly the marshal's demons had forsaken him, or mayhap they were all busy at that last carnival in the keep of the Castle of Machecoul.

As the storming party approached nearer, and while yet they were several miles distant, they became aware of a great red light that gleamed forth above them. They could not see whence it came, but the peasants of Saint Philbert with affrighted glances told how it beaconed only after the disappearance of some little one from their homes, what strange cries were heard ringing out from that lofty tower, and how for days after the smoke of a great burning would hang about the gloomy turrets of devil-haunted Machecoul.

Fiercer and ever fiercer shone the red glare, and the faces of the soldiers were lit up so that Pierre de l'Hopital ordered them to keep to the more gloomy arcades of the forest.

Then by midnight the cordon was drawn so closely that none might pass in or out. And behind the soldiery the common folk lay crouched, anger in their hearts, and their eyes turned towards the open windows in the keep of Machecoul, from which flared the red light of bale.

Then, covering their lanterns, the three Scots, with Duke John, Pierre de l'Hopital, and a score of officers, stole silently towards the tower by which the Lady Sybilla had promised that an entrance should be gained to the Castle of Machecoul.

It was situated at the western corner towards the south, and was joined to its fellows at the corresponding angles of the fortress by galleried walls of great height. Ten feet above the ground was a little door of embossed iron, but ordinarily no steps led to it when the castle was in a state of defence. Yet when Sholto adventured into the angle of the wall, he stumbled upon a ladder that leaned against the little landing-ledge, above which was the entrance denoted on the plan.

Sholto ascended first, being the lightest and most agile of all. As he had expected, he found the door unlocked and a narrow passage leading within the tower. He lay a moment and listened, and then, being certain there was a light and the sounds of labour within, he crawled back to the ladder head, and whispered to the Lord James an order for total silence.

Whereupon, Sholto holding the ladder at the top, Duke John and his Councillor mounted like shadows, and with Malise and James Douglas to guard them they were presently crouched in the passage with the door shut behind them, and the officers keeping watch at the foot of the tower without.

These five listened to the sounds of busy picks within the tower. They could hear the ring of iron on stones and the panting of men engaged in severe toil.

"The marshal is preparing for flight," whispered the Duke, exultantly. "He is interring his treasures. He has been warned. But we will be overspeedy for him."

And he chuckled in his satisfaction so loudly that Malise, using no ceremony with Duke or varlet at such a season, put his hand over his mouth.

Then one by one they crawled along the narrow passage on their hands and knees, and presently from a little balcony, plastered like a swallow's nest on the inner wall of the tower, they found themselves looking down upon a strange scene.

A flight of steps led slantwise to the bottom, and at the foot of the tower, stripped to the waist, they beheld two men busily filling great sacks with a curious cargo.

The turret had never been finished. It contained nothing whatever except the staircase. So far as Sholto could see there was not even a window anywhere. The door by which they had entered and another which evidently led into the interior of the castle were its only outlets. The earth at the bottom had remained as it had been left by the builders, who surely must have thought that no madder architectural freak was ever planned than this shut tower of the Castle of Machecoul with its blank walls and sordid accoutrement.

But most strange of all, the original earth had been covered to the depth of a foot or more with dark objects, the true significance of which did not appear from the distance of the little gallery where the party of five had stationed themselves.

The two men at work below had brought torches with them, which were fastened to the walls by iron spikes. The smoke from these hung in heavy masses about the tower, still further diminishing the clearness with which the watchers aloft could observe what went on below.

One of the workmen was tall and spare, with the forward thrust of head and neck seen in vultures and other unclean birds. The other, who held the sacks while his companion shovelled, was on the contrary stout and short, of a notably jovial, rubicund countenance, in habit like the hostler of an inn, or perhaps a well-to-do carrier upon the roads.

The two worked without speaking, as if the task were distasteful. When one sack was full, both would seize their picks and dig furiously at the floor of the tower. Then when they had enough loosened, they would fall to shovelling the curiously shaped objects into the sacks again.

As Sholto looked down he heard a hissing whisper at his ear.

"These be Blanchet the sorcerer and Robin Romulart. But last week they took notice of my little Jean and praised him for a noble boy."

Sholto turned round, and there at his elbow, having followed them in spite of all orders and precautions, he discerned the woodman Louis Verger, whose little son had been carried off by the grey she-wolf.

Sholto motioned him back, and at a sign from the Duke, his father and he began to descend. So silently did they make their way down the stone steps, and so intent were the men upon their work, that in a minute after leaving the little gallery Malise stood behind the taller and Sholto stole like a shadow along the wall nearer to the little rotund man who had been called Robin Romulart.

The Duke held up his hand. Sholto and Malise each took their man about the throat with their left arms and pulled them backward, at the same time covering their mouths with their right hands. Blanchet never moved in the strong arms of Malise. But Robin, whose rotund figure concealed his great muscular development, might have escaped from Sholto had not the woodman Verger flung himself at the little man's throat and brought him to the ground. Then the Duke and the others descended, and as they did so they became conscious of a choking mephitic vapour which clung dank and heavy to the lower courses of the tower.

Suddenly a wild cry made all shiver. It came from Louis Verger, who had sprung upon something that lay tossed aside in a corner.

"Silence, man—on your life! Silence!" hissed Pierre de l'Hopital. "Whatever you have found, think only of revenge and help us to it!"

"I have found him. He is dead! The fiends! The fiends!" sobbed Louis Verger, covering a small partially charred object with the curtmantle of which he had rapidly divested himself for the purpose.

Then it came upon those who stood on the floor of the tower that they were in the marshal's main charnel-house. These vague forms, mostly charred like half-burned wood, these scraps of white bone, these little crushed skulls, were all that remained of the innocent children who, in the freshness of their youth and beauty, had been seduced into the fatal Castle of Machecoul.

And what wonder that an appalling terror sat on the heart and mastered the soul of Sholto MacKim. For how did he know that he was not treading under foot at each step the calcined fragments of the fair body of Maud Lindesay?

Twenty sacks had been filled ready for transport, and as many more lay folded and empty in a heap in a corner. The marshal, uneasy perhaps as to the suspicions against him, and anxious to remove evidence from the precincts of his castle, had ordered this Tower of Death to be cleared. But truly his devil had once more forsaken him. The order had been given a day too late.

"God's grace, I stifle. Let us get out of this, and seize the murderer," quoth Duke John, making his way towards the door.

"Wait a moment," said Pierre de l'Hopital, "we must consider. We cannot let the commons see this or they will sack the castle from foundation to roof tree, and slay the innocent with the guilty. We must seize and hold for fair trial all who are found within. And I, Pierre de l'Hopital, will try them!"

"What then do you propose?" said the Duke, getting as near the door as possible.

"Let us bring in hither the officers and what soldiers you can trust—that is not my business," answered the President. "Then we will go through the castle, and after we have secured the prisoners and made sure of sufficient pieces of justificative evidence, of which we have infinite supply in these sacks, we may e'en permit the people to work their will."

As it was Sholto who had first entered, so it was Sholto who first left the Tower of Death. He it was also who, at the head of a strong band, surprised the marshal's sleepy inner guard, and helped to bind them with his own hands. It was Sholto who, at the foot of the stairs of the great keep, stood listening that he might know the right moment to lead the besiegers upward.

But even as he stood thus, down the stairway there came pealing a terrible cry, the shriek of a woman in the final agony, shrill, desperate, unavailing.

And at the sound Sholto flew up the stone steps in the direction of the cry, not knowing what he did, save that he went to kill.

And scarce a foot behind him followed the woodman, Louis Verger, and as they fled upward the red gloom grew brighter till they seemed to be rushing headlong into a furnace mouth.



CHAPTER LVIII

THE WHITE TOWER OF MACHECOUL

So at the command of the Marshal de Retz they sent to bring forth Margaret of Douglas and Maud Lindesay out of the White Tower, where they had been abiding. Margaret had gone to bed, and, as was her custom, Maud Lindesay sat awhile by her side. For so far as they could they kept to the good and kindly traditions of Castle Thrieve. It seemed somehow to bring them nearer home in that horrible place where they were doomed to abide.

"Give me your hand, Maud, and tell on," said little Margaret, nestling closer to her friend, and laying her head against her arm as she leaned on the low bedstead beside her.

Margaret was gowned in a white linen night-rail, made long ago for the marshal's daughter, little Marie de Retz, in the brighter days before the setting up of the iron altar. Catherine, his deserted wife, had been kind to the girls at Pouzages, and had given to both of them such articles of garmenture as they were sorely in need of.

"Tell on—haste you," commanded little Margaret, with the imperiousness of loving childhood, nestling yet closer as she spoke. "It helps me to forget. I can almost think when you are speaking that we are again at Thrieve, and that if we looked out at the window we should see the Dee running by and Screet and Ben Gairn—and hear Sholto MacKim drilling his men out in the courtyard. Why, Maudie, what is the matter? I did not mean to make you cry. But it is all so sweet to think upon in this place. Oh, Maudie, Maudie, what would you give to hear a whaup whistle?"

Then drawing herself into a sitting posture, with her hands about Maud's neck, she took a kerchief from under the pillow and dried her friend's tears, murmuring the while, "Ah, do not cry, Maud, my vision will yet come true, and you shall indeed see Ben Gairn and Thrieve—and everything. I was dreaming about it last night. Shall I tell you about it, sweet Maud?"

Maud Lindesay did not reply, not having recovered power over her voice. So the little Maid of Galloway went on unbidden.

"Yes, I dreamed a glad dream yester-even. Shall I tell it you all and all? I will—though you can tell stories far better than I.

"Methought that I and you—I mean, dear Maud, you and I, were sitting together in the gloaming at the door of a little house up on the edges of the moorland, where the heather is prettiest, and reddest, and longest. And we were happy. We were waiting for some one. I shall not tell you who, Maudie, but if you are good, and stop crying, you can guess. And there was a ring on your finger, Maud. No, not like the old ones—not a pretty ring like those in your box, yet you loved it more than them all, and never stopped turning it about between your finger and thumb.

"They had let me come up to stay with you, and the men who had accompanied me were drinking in the clachan. As we sat I seemed to hear their loud chorus, sounding up from the change-house.

"And you listened and said: 'I wish he would come. He is very long. It is always long when he is away.' But you never said who it was that was long away. And I shall not tell you, though I know. Perhaps it was old Jock Lacklands, who used to be captain of the guard, and perhaps grouting Peter, from the gate-house by the ford. But somehow I do not think so. Ah, that is better! Now do not cry again. But listen, else I will not tell you any more, but go off to sleep instead.

"Perhaps you do not want to hear the rest. Yet—it was such a pretty dream, and of good omen.

"You do want to hear? Well, then, be good!

"As we sat there we could hear the bumblebees scurrying home, and every now and then one of the big boom-beetles would sail whirring past us. We could hear the sheep crying below in the little green meadows so lonesomely, and the snipe bleating an answer away up in the sky above their heads, and you said, 'It is all so empty, wanting him!'

"Then the maids brought in the cows, and milked them standing at the gable end, and we could smell the smell of their breath, sweet like the scent of the flowers they had been eating all day long. Then, after a while, they were driven out of the yard again, and went in a string, one after the other, back to their pastures, doucely and sedately, just like folk going to holy kirk on Sabbath days when it is summer time in Galloway.

"Then you said, 'I am weary of waiting for him!' And I answered, 'Why,—he has not been gone more than a day. Sometimes I do not see him for weeks, and I never fret like that!'

"Then you answered (it has all come so clear into my mind), 'Some day you will know, little one!' And you patted me on the head, and went to the house end to look into the sunset. You looked many minutes under your hand, and when you came back you said, as if you had never said it before, 'He is long a-coming! I wonder what can be keeping him.'

"Then the maidens told us that the supper was ready to put on the table, whereat you scolded them, telling them that it was too early, and that they must keep it hot against their master's coming. And to me you said, 'You are not hungry, are you?' And I answered, 'No,' though I was indeed very hungry—(in my dream, that is). Then you said again, sighing: 'It is strange that he should not come home! I cannot eat till he comes! Perhaps he has fallen into a ditch, or some eagle may have pecked out his eyes!'

"Then all the while it grew darker, and still no one came. Whereat you cried a little softly, and said: 'He might have come—I know right well he could have been here by this time if he had tried. But he does not love me any more.' And you were patting the ground with your foot as you used to do when—well, when he went away from Thrieve without coming out upon the leads to say 'Good-night.' Then, all at once, there was a noise of quick feet brushing eagerly through the heather, and some one (no, not Landless Jock) leaped the wall and caught me—me—in his arms."

"No, it was not you whom he caught in his arms!" cried Maud Lindesay, indignantly, and then stopped, abashed at her own folly. But the little maid laughed merrily.

"Aha!" she said, "I caught you that time in my trap. You know who it was in my dream, though I have never told you, nor so much as hinted.

"And he asked if you had missed him, and you made a sign for me not to speak, just as you used to do at Castle Thrieve, and answered, 'No, not a little bit! Margaret and I were quite happy. We hoped you would not come back at all this night, for then we could have slept together.'"

Maud Lindesay drew a long, soft breath, and looked out of the window of the White Tower into the dark.

"That is a sweet dream," she murmured. "Ah, would that it were true, and that Sholto—!"

She broke off short again, for the maid clapped her hands gleefully. "You said it! You said it!" she cried. "You called him Sholto. Now I know; and I am so glad, for he is nearly as good to play with as you. And I shall not mind him a bit."

Little Margaret stopped short in her turn, seeing something in her friend's face.

"Why are you suddenly grown so sad, Maudie?" she asked.

"It came upon me, dear Margaret," said Maud, "how that we are but two helpless maids in a dreadful place without a friend. Let us say a prayer to God to keep us!"

Then Margaret Douglas turned and knelt with her face to the pillow and her small hands clasped in front of her.

"Give me your silver cross," she said, "I lent the little gold one that was William's to the Lady Sybilla, and she hath not returned it me again."

Maud gave her the cross and she took it and held it in the palm of her hand looking long at it. Then she repeated one by one the children's orisons she had been taught, and after that she made a little prayer of her own. This is the prayer.

"Lord of mercy, be good to two maids who are lonely and weak, and shut up in this place of evil men. Keep our lives and our souls, and also our bodies from harm. Make us not afraid of the dark or of the devil. For Thou art the stronger. And do not forget to be near us this night, for we have no other friend and sorely do we need one to love and deliver us. Amen."

It was true. More bitterly than any two in the whole world, these maidens needed a friend at that moment. For scarcely had the childish accents been lost in the night silence, when the outer door of the White Tower was thrown open to the wall, and on the steps of the turret stair they heard the noise of men coming upwards to their prison-room.

But first, though the inner door of their chamber was locked within, the bolts glided back apparently of their own accord. It opened, and the hideous face of La Meffraye looked in upon them with a cackle of fiendish laughter.

"Come, sweet maidens," she cried gleefully, as the frightened girls clasped each other closer upon the bed, "come away. The Marshal de Retz calls for you. He hath need of your beauty to grace his feast. The lights of the banquet burn in his hall. See the fire of burning shine out upon the night. The very trees are red with it. The skies are red. All is red. Come—up—make yourselves fair for the eyes of the great lord to behold!"

Then behind La Meffraye entered Gilles de Sille and Poitou, the marshal's servants.

"Make ready in haste—you are both to go instantly before my lord, who abides your coming!" said Gilles de Sille. "Poitou and I will abide without the door, and La Meffraye here shall be your tirewoman and see that you have that which you need. But hasten, for my lord is instant and cannot be kept waiting!"

* * * * *

So they brought the Scottish maidens down from the White Tower into the night. They walked hand in hand. Their steps did not falter, and, as they went, they prayed to God to keep them from the dangers of the place. Astarte, the she-wolf, who must have kept guard beneath, stalked before them, and behind them they seemed to hear the hobbling crutch and cackling laughter of La Meffraye.

Across the wide courtyard of Machecoul they went. It also was filled with the reflection of the red tide of light which ebbed and flowed, waxing and waning above. Saving for that window the whole castle was wrapped in gloom and silence, and if there were any awake within the precincts they knew better than to spy upon the midnight doings of their dread lord.

The little party passed up the great staircase of the keep and presently halted before the inscribed wooden door by which Laurence had entered the Temple of Evil.

As Gilles de Sille opened it for the maids to precede him, the skirt of Maud Lindesay's robe, blown back by the draught of the chamber, fluttered against the cheek of Laurence MacKim as he lay on his face in the niche of the wall. At the light touch he came to himself, and looked about with a strange and instant change in all the affections and movements of his heart.

With the coming in of the maidens, fear seemed utterly to forsake him. A clarity of purpose, an alertness of brain, a strength of heart unknown before, took the place of the trembling bath of horror in which he had swooned away.

It was like the sudden appearance of two white angels walking fearless and unscathed through the grim dominions of the Lords of Hell.

Incarnate Good had somehow entered the house of the Demon, though it was in the slender periphery of two maidens' bodies, and evil, strong and resistless before, seemed in the moment to lose half its power.



CHAPTER LIX

THE LAST SACRIFICE TO BARRAN-SATHANAS

And as Laurence MacKim, crouched in the dim obscurity of the curtained doorway, looked forth, this is what he saw.

Maud Lindesay and Margaret Douglas advanced into the centre of the temple where was a slab of white marble let into the floor. As if by instinct the two maids stopped upon it, standing hand in hand before the iron altar and the vast shadowy image which gloomed above and appeared to reach forward in act to clutch them. After the first check in his hideous incantations, Gilles de Retz had returned to his own chamber, in which, after his entrance, the light gleamed brighter and more fiercely red than ever. As the maidens stood on the marble square La Meffraye went to the door and called certain words within, conveying some message which Laurence could not hear.

Then with an assured carriage and haughty stride came forth the marshal, his grey hair and blue-black beard in strong contrast with his haggard corpse-pale face, from which the momentary glow of youth half-restored had already faded, as fades a footprint upon wet sand.

Gilles de Sille and Poitou bowed silently before him as men who have done their commission, and who retire to await further orders. But La Meffraye, once more apparent, stood her ground.

"Here are the dainty maids from the far land; no beggars' brats are they. No strays and pickings from the streets. No, nor yet silly village innocents who follow La Meffraye from the play-fields through the woodlands to the Paradise of our Lord Gilles! Hasten not the joy! Let these pearls of youth and beauteousness die indeed, but let them die slowly and deliciously. And in the last blood of an ancient race let our master bathe and find the new life he seeks. Hear us, O Barran-Sathanas, and grant our prayer!"

Then La Meffraye approached the maids and would have touched the dress of the little Margaret, as if to order it more daintily for the pleasing of her master's eye. But Maud Lindesay thrust her aside like an unclean thing.

Whereat La Meffraye laughed till her rusty black cloak quivered and rustled from hood to hem.

"Ah, my proud lady," she croaked, "in a little, in a very little, you too will be calling upon La Meffraye to save you, to pity you. But I, La Meffraye, will gloat over each drop of blood that distils from your fair neck. Aha, you shall change your tone when at the white throat-apple which your sweetheart would have loved to kiss, you feel the bite of the sharp slow knife. Then you will not thrust aside La Meffraye. Then you shall cry and none shall pity. Then she will spurn you from her knees."

"Out!" said Gilles de Retz, briefly, and like some inferior imping devilkin before the great Master of Evil, La Meffraye retreated hobbling to the doorway of the marshal's chamber, where she crouched nodding and chuckling, mumbling inaudible words, and mingling them ever with her dry cackling laughter.

Gilles de Retz stopped at the corner of the platform and looked long at Maud and Margaret where they stood on the great central square of marble. It was the Maid who spoke first.