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

weary of inaction. His eye fell upon a strange door with curious marks burnt upon its panels apparently by hot irons. There were circles complete and circles that stopped half-way, together with letters of some unknown language arranged mostly in triangles.
This door fixed the lad's attention with a certain curious fascination. He longed to touch it and see whether it opened, but for the moment he was too much afraid of his guide's return to summon him into the presence of the marshal.
He listened intently. Surely he heard a low sound, like the wind in a distant keyhole--or, as it might be (and it seemed more like it), the moaning of a child in pain, it knows not why.
The heart of the youth gave a sudden leap. It came to him that he had hit upon the hiding-place of Margaret Douglas, the heiress of the great province of Galloway. His fortune was made.
With a trembling hand he moved a step towards the door of white wood with the curious burned marks upon it. He stood a moment listening, half for the returning footsteps of Clerk Henriet, and half to the low, persistent whimper behind the panels. Suddenly he felt his right foot wet, for, as was the fashion, he wore only a velvet shoe pointed at the toe. He looked down, and lo! from under the door trickled a thin stream of red.
Laurence drew his foot away, with a quick catching sob of the breath. But his hand was already on the door, and at a touch it appeared to open almost of its own accord. He found himself looking from the dusk of the outer whitewashed passage into a high, vaulted chapel, wherein many dim lights glimmered. At the end there was a great altar of iron standing square and solemn upon the platform on which it was set up, and behind it, cut indistinctly against a greenish glow of light, and imagined rather than clearly defined, the vast statue of a man with a curiously high shaped head. Laurence could not distinguish any features, so deep was the gloom, but the whole figure seemed to be bending slightly forward, as if gloating upon that which was laid upon the altar. But what struck Laurence with a sense of awe and terror was the fact that as the greenish light behind waxed and waned, he could see shadowy horns which projected from either side of the forehead, and lower, short ears, pricked and shaggy like those of a he-goat.
Nearer the door, where he stood in the densest gloom, something moved to and fro, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness Laurence could see that it was the bent figure of a woman. He could not distinguish her face, but it was certainly a woman of great age and bodily weakness, whose tangled hair hung down her back, and who halted curiously upon one foot as she walked. She was bending over a low couch, whereon lay a little shrouded figure, from which proceeded the low whimpering sound which he had heard from without. But even at that moment, as he waited trembling at the door, the moaning ceased, and there ensued a long silence, in which Laurence could clearly distinguish the beating of his own heart. It sounded loud in his ears as a drum that beats the alarm in the streets of a city.
The figure of the woman bent low to the couch, and, after a pause, with a satisfied air she threw a white cloth over the shrouded form which lay upon it. Then, without looking towards the door where Laurence stood, she went to the great iron altar at the upper end of the weird chapel and threw something on the red embers which glowed upon it.
"_Barran--most mighty Barran-Sathanas, accept this offering, and reveal thyself to my master!_" she said in a voice like a chant.
A greenish smoke of stifling odour rose and filled all the place, and through it the huge horned figure above the altar seemed to turn its head and look at the boy.
Laurence could scarcely repress a cry of terror. He set his hand to the door, and lo! as it had opened, so it appeared to shut of itself. He sank almost fainting against the cold iron bars of the window which looked out upon the courtyard below. The wind blew in upon him sweet and cool, and with it there came again the sound of the singing of the choir. They were practising the song of the Holy Innocents, which, by command of the marshal himself, Precentor Renouf had set to excellent and accordant music of his own invention.
"_A voice was heard in Ramah,
In Ramah,
Lamentations and bitter weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children,
Refused to be comforted:
For her children,
Because they were not._"
Obviously there was some mistake or lack of attention on the part of the choir, for the last line had to be repeated three times.
"_Because they were not._"


CHAPTER LI
THE MARSHAL'S CHAMBER
There came a low voice in Laurence MacKim's ear, chill and sinister: "You do well to look out upon the fair world. None knoweth when we may have to leave it. Yonder is a star. Look well at it. They say God made it. Perhaps He takes more interest in it than in the concerns of this other world He hath made."
The son of Malise MacKim gripped himself, as it were, with both hands, and turned a face pale as marble to look into the grim countenance which hid the soul of the Lord of Machecoul.
Gilles de Retz appeared to peruse each feature of the boy's person as if he read in a book. Yet even as Laurence gave back glance for glance, and with the memory of what he had seen yet fresh upon him, a strange courage began to glow in the heart of the young Scot. There came a kind of contempt, too, into his breast, as though he had it in him to be a man in despite of the devil and all his works.
The marshal continued his scrutiny, and Laurence returned his gaze with interest.
"Well, boy," said the marshal, smiling as if not ill pleased at his boldness, "what do you think of me?"
"I think, sir," said Laurence, simply, "that you have grown older since I saw you in the lists at Thrieve."
It seemed to Laurence that the words were given him. And all the time he was saying to himself: "Now I have done it. For this he will surely put me to death. He cannot help himself. Why did I not stick to it that I was an Irelander?"
But, somehow, the answer seemed like an arrow from a bow shot at a venture, entering in between the joints of the marshal's armour.
"Do you think so?" he said, with some startled anxiety, yet without surprise; "older than at Thrieve? I do not believe it. It is impossible. Why, I grow younger and younger every day. It has been promised me that I should."
And setting his elbow on the sill of the window, Gilles de Retz looked thoughtfully out upon the cool dusk of the rose garden. Then all at once it came to him what was implied in that unlucky speech of Laurence's. The grim intensity returned to his eyes as he erected himself and bent his brows, white with premature age, upon the boy, who confronted him with the fearlessness born of youth and ignorance.
"Ah," he said, "this is interesting; you have changed your nation. You were an Irishman to De Sille in Paris, to the clerk Henriet, and to the choir at Machecoul. Yet to me you admit in the very first words you speak that you are a Scot and saw me at the Castle of Thrieve."
Even yet the old Laurence might have turned the corner. He had, as we know, graduated as a liar ready and expert. He had daily practised his art upon the Abbot. He had even, though more rarely, succeeded with his father. But now in the day of his necessity the power and wit had departed from him.
To the lord of the Castle of Machecoul Laurence simply could not lie. Ringed as he was by evil, his spirit became strong for good, and he testified like one in the place of final judgment, when the earthly lendings of word and phrase and covering excuse must all be cast aside and the soul stand forth naked and nakedly answer that which is required.
"I am a Scot," said Laurence, briefly, and without explanation.
"Come with me into my chamber," said the marshal, and turned to precede him thither.
And without word of complaint or backward glance, the lad followed the great lord to the chamber, into which so many had gone before him of the young and beautiful of the earth, and whence so few had come out alive.
As he passed the threshold, Laurence put into his mouth the elastic pellet which had been given him by Blaise Renouf, the choir-master's son.
The marshal threw himself upon a chair, reclining with a wearied air upon the hands which were clasped behind his head. In the action of throwing himself back one could see that Gilles de Retz was a young and not an old man, though ordinarily his vitality had been worn to the quick, and both in appearance and movement he was already prematurely aged.
"What is your name?"
The question came with military directness from the lips of the marshal of France.
"Laurence MacKim," said the lad, with equal directness.
"For what purpose did you come to the Castle of Machecoul?"
"I came," said Laurence, coolly, "to take service with you, my lord. And because I was tired of monk rule, and getting only the husks of life, tired too of sitting dumb and watching others eat the kernel."
"Ha!" cried Gilles de Retz, "I am with you there. There is, after all, some harmony between our immortal parts. For my part, I would have all of life,--husk, kernel, stalk,--aye, and the root that grows amid the dung."
He paused a moment, looking at Laurence with the air of a connoisseur.
"Come hither, lad," he said, with a soft and friendly accent; "sit on this seat with your back to the window. Turn your head so that the lamp shines aright upon your face. You are not so handsome as was reported, but that there is something wondrously taking about your countenance, I do admit. There--sit so, and fear nothing."
Laurence sat down with the bad grace of a manly youth who is admired for what he privately despises, and wishes himself well quit of. But, notwithstanding this, there was something so insinuating and pleasant about the marshal's manner that the lad almost thought he must have dreamed the incident of the burned door and the sacrifice upon the iron altar.
"You came hither to search for Margaret of Douglas," said the marshal, suddenly bending forward as if to take him by surprise.
Laurence, wholly taken aback, answered neither yea nor nay, but held his peace.
Then Gilles de Retz nodded sagely, with a quiet satisfaction in his own prevision, which