The Black Douglas, Samuel Rutherford Crockett [best books under 200 pages .TXT] 📗

there it is," said the marshal, raising his hand with gentle deprecation, "even you, who are so highly privileged, are not wholly superior to vulgar prejudice. I keep a college of priests for the service of God and the Virgin. They have done me but little good. Surely therefore I may be allowed a little service of That Other, who has afforded me such exquisite pleasure and aided me so much. The Master of Evil knows all things, and he can help whom he will to the secrets of wealth, of power, and of eternal youth."
"Have you gained any of these by the aid of that Master whom you serve?" asked the Lady Sybilla, with great quiet in her voice.
"Nay, not yet," cried the marshal, moved for the first time, "not yet--perhaps because I have sought too eagerly and hotly. But I am now at least within sight of the wondrous goal. See," he added, with genuine excitement labouring in his voice, "see--I am still a young man, yet though I, Gilles de Retz, was born to the princeliest fortune in France, and by marriage added another, they have both been spent well nigh to the last stiver in learning the hidden secrets of the universe. I am still a young man, I say, but look at my whitening hair, count the deep wrinkles on my forehead, consider my withered cheek. Have I not tasted all agonies, renounced all delights, and cast aside all scruples that I might win back my youth, and with it the knowledge of good and evil?"
Sybilla went to the door and stood again by the curtain.
"Then you swear by your own God that you will let no evil befall the Scottish maids?" she said.
"I have told you already--let that suffice!" he replied with sudden coldness; "you know that, like the Master whom I serve, I can keep my word. I will not harm them, so long as their Scottish kinsfolk come not hither meddling with my purposes. I have enough of meddlers in France without adding outlanders thereto! I cannot keep a new and permanent danger at grass within my gates."
The Lady Sybilla passed through the portal by which she had entered, without adieu or leave-taking of any kind. Gilles de Retz rose as soon as the curtain had fallen, and shook himself with a yawn, like one who has got through a troublesome necessary duty. Then he walked to the window and looked out. The woman had come back and was kneeling before the Hotel de Pornic.
At sight of him she cried with sudden shrillness, "My lord, my great lord, give me back my child--my little Pierre. He is my heart's heart. My lord, he never did you any harm in all his innocent life!"
The Marshal de Retz shut the window with a shrug of protest against the vulgarity of prejudice. He did not notice four men in the garb of pilgrims who stood in the dark of a doorway opposite.
"This is both unnecessary and excessively discomposing," he muttered; "I fear Poitou has not been judicious enough in his selections."
He turned towards the private door, and as he did so Astarte the she-wolf rose and silently followed him with her head drooped forward. He went along a dark passage and pushed open a little iron door. A bright light as of a furnace burnt up before him, and the heat was overpowering as it rushed like a ruddy tide-race against his face.
"Well, Poitou, does it go better?" he said cheerfully, "or must we try them of the other sex and somewhat younger, as I at first proposed?"
He let the door slip back, and the action of a powerful spring shut out Astarte. Whereat she sat down on her haunches in the dark of the passage, and showed her gleaming teeth in a grin, as, with cocked ears, she listened to the sounds from within the secret laboratory of the Marshal de Retz.


CHAPTER XLIII
MALISE FETCHES A CLOUT
The four men whom the Messire Gilles, by good fortune, failed to see standing in the doorway opposite the Hotel de Pornic were attired in the habit of pilgrims to the shrine of Saint James of Compostella. Upon their heads they wore broad corded hats of brown. Long brown robes covered them from head to foot. Their heads were tonsured, and as they went along they fumbled at their beads and gave their benediction to the people that passed by, whether they returned them an alms or not. This they did by spreading abroad the fingers of both hands and inclining their heads, at the same time muttering to themselves in a tongue which, if not Latin, was at least equally unknown to the good folk of Paris.
"It is the house," said the tallest of the four, "stand well back within the shade!"
"Nay, Sholto, what need?" grumbled another, a very thickset palmer he; "if the maids be within, let us burst the gates, and go and take them out!"
"Be silent, Malise," put in the third pilgrim, whose dress of richer stuff than that of his companions, added to an air of natural command, betrayed the man of superior rank, "remember, great jolterhead, that we are not at the gates of Edinburgh with all the south country at our backs."
The fourth, a slender youth and fresh of countenance, stood somewhat behind the first three, without speaking, and wore an air of profound meditation and abstraction.
It is not difficult to identify three out of the four. Sholto's quest for his sweetheart was a thing fixed and settled. That his father and his brother Laurence should accompany him was also to be expected. But the other and more richly attired was somewhat less easy to be certified. The Lord James of Douglas it was, who spoke French with the idiomatic use and easy accentuation of a native, albeit of those central provinces which had longest owned the sway of the King of France. The brothers MacKim also spoke the language of the country after a fashion. For many Frenchmen had come over to Galloway in the trains of the first two Dukes of Touraine, so that the Gallic speech was a common accomplishment among the youths who sighed to adventure where so many poor Scots had won fortune, in the armies of the Kings of France.
Indeed, throughout the centuries Paris cannot be other than Paris. And Paris was more than ever Paris in the reign of Charles the Seventh. Her populace, gay, fickle, brave, had just cast off the yoke of the English, and were now venting their freedom from stern Saxon policing according to their own fashion. Not the King of France, but the Lord of Misrule held the sceptre in the capital.
It was not long therefore before a band of rufflers swung round a corner arm-in-arm, taking the whole breadth of the narrow causeway with them as they came. It chanced that their leader espied the four Scots standing in the wide doorway of the house opposite the Hotel de Pornic.
"Hey, game lads," he cried, in that roistering shriek which then passed for dashing hardihood among the youth of Paris, "here be some holy men, pilgrims to the shrine of Saint Denis, I warrant. I, too, am a clerk of a sort, for Henriet tonsured me on Wednesday sennight. Let us see if these men of good works carry any of the deceitful vanities of earth about with them in their purses. Sometimes such are not ill lined!"
The youths accepted the proposal of their leader with alacrity.
"Let us have the blessing of the holy palmers," they cried, "and eke the contents of their pockets!"
So with a gay shout, and in an evil hour for themselves, they bore down upon the four Scots.
"Good four evangelists," cried the youth who had spoken first--a tall, ill-favoured, and sallow young man in a cloak of blue lined with scarlet, swaggering it with long strides before the others, "tell us which of you four is Messire Matthew. For, being a tax-gatherer, he will assuredly have money of his own, and besides, since the sad death of your worthy friend Judas, he must have succeeded him as your treasurer."
"This is the keeper of our humble store, noble sir," answered the Lord James Douglas, quietly, indicating the giant Malise with his left hand, "but spare him and us, I pray you courteously!"
"Ha, so," mocked the tall youth, turning to Malise, "then the gentleman of the receipt of custom hath grown strangely about the chest since he went a-wandering from Galilee!"
And he reached forward his hand to pull away the cloak which hung round the great frame of the master armourer.
Malise MacKim understood nothing of his words or of his intent, but without looking at his tormentor or any of the company, he asked of James Douglas, in a voice like the first distant mutterings of a thunder-storm, "Shall I clout him?"
"Nay, be patient, Malise, I bid you. This is an ill town in which to get rid of a quarrel once begun. Be patient!" commanded James Douglas under his breath.
"We are clerks ourselves," the swarthy youth went on, "and we have come to the conclusion that such holy palmers as you be, men from Burgundy or the Midi, as I guess by your speech, Spaniards by your cloaks and this good tax-gatherer's beard, ought long ago to have taken the vows of poverty. If not, you shall take them now. For, most worthy evangelistic four, be it known unto you that I am Saint Peter and can loose or bind. So turn out your money-bags. Draw your blades, limber lads!"
Whereupon his companions with one accord drew their swords and advanced upon the Scots. These stood still without moving as if they had been taken wholly unarmed.
"Shall I clout them now?" rumbled Malise the second time, with an anxious desire in his voice.
"Bide a wee yet," whispered the Lord James; "we will try the soft answer once more, and if that fail, why then, old Samson, you may clout your fill."
"_His_ fill!" corrected Malise, grimly.
"Your pardon, good gentlemen," said James of Douglas aloud to the spokesman, "we are poor men and travel with nothing but the merest necessities--of which surely you would not rob us."
"Nay, holy St. Luke," mocked the swarthy one, "not rob. That is an evil word--rather we would relieve you of temptation for your own souls' good. You are come for your sins to Paris. You know that the love of money is the root of all evil. So in giving to us who are clerks of Paris you will not lose your ducats, but only contribute of your abundance to Holy Mother Church. I am a clerk, see--I do not deceive you! I will both shrive and absolve you in return for the filthy lucre!"
And, commanding one of his rabble to hold a torch close to his head, he uncovered and showed a tonsured crown.
"And if we refuse?" said Lord James, quietly.
"Then, good Doctor Luke," answered the youth, "we are ten to four--and it would be our sad duty to send you all to heaven and then ease your pockets, lest, being dead, some unsanctified passer-by might be tempted to steal your money."
"Surely I may clout him now?" came again like the nearer growl of a lion from Malise the smith.
Seeing the four men apparently intimidated and without means of defence, the ten youths advanced boldly, some with swords in their right hands and torches in their left, the rest with swords and daggers both. The Scots stood silent and firm. Not a weapon showed from beneath a cloak.
"Down on your knees!" cried the leader of the young roisterers, and with his left hand he thrust a