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

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,