CHAPTER XI.
THE TEN CROSSES.
OGIER DEL' PEYRA, with a much larger body of men, murderously, if notwell, equipped, had left Ste. Soure an hour after the departure of Jean.The Vezere makes a great sweep to meet the Beune, but, as thoughdisgusted at the insignificance of its tributary, after having receivedits waters, it at once turns and flows in an almost directly oppositedirection, leaving a broad, flat tongue of land round which it curls, atongue of rich alluvial soil, interspersed with gravel that is purple inautumn with crocus, and in summer blue with salvia.
Here the party, headed by Ogier, waited in patience till the signalflashed thrice from the heights opposite, when it was immediatelyanswered by three corresponding flares of dry grass.
Then Ogier and his men, under cover of the darkness, moved up the riverto the ford, waded across the water, and cautiously crept along theriver bank among the osiers in straggling line, till they had reached asuitable point below the "Church." From this point they could see thelights from the windows of that unhallowed edifice shining before them,half-way up the sky like stars, but stars of lurid hue.
Then they sat down in the dewy grass and waited. Hour passed after hour.The stars before them waxed faint and went out.
Then, suddenly, bringing all to their feet, came the peal of the horn,echoed and re-echoed from every cliff, and followed by a crash and aflare.
The scene that ensued was one such as none who witnessed it had ever hada chance of beholding before, or were likely to see again.
The immense pile of brushwood and fat and other fuel caught withrapidity and rose in a burst of flame high up, as it were in mid-heaven,followed immediately by its being poured over the lip of the precipice,the molten, blazing tar, the incandescent fat, streaked the cliff aswith rivers of light, fell on the projecting roof, ran in through theinterstices created by the fall of stones that had shivered the coveringtiles, and set fire to the rafters they had protected.
Dense volumes of swirling red smoke, in which danced ghostly jets ofblue flame, rolled about the habitation of the robber band, andpenetrated to its interior. It broke out of the windows in long spiralsand tongues, forked as those of adders.
The rocks up the Vezere were visible, glaring orange, every tree was litup, and its trunk turned to gold. The Vezere glowed a river of flame;clouds that had vanished gathered, crowding to see the spectacle, andpalpitated above it.
"Forward!" yelled Ogier, and the whole party rushed up the steep ascent.
For one reason it would have been better had they crept up the steepslope before the horn was blown, so as to be ready at once to burst thegates and occupy every avenue. But Ogier had considered this course, andhad deemed the risk greater than the advantage. To climb the rubbleslope without displacing the shale was impossible; to do so withoutmaking sufficient noise to alarm the sentinel was hardly feasible insuch a still night. This might have been done in blustering wind andlashing rain, not on such a night as that when the bullfrog's call rangdown the valley and was answered by another frog a mile distant.
The ascent was arduous; it could not have been made easily in pitchdarkness; now it was effected rapidly by the glare of the cataract offalling fire and of blazing rafters.
In ten minutes, with faces streaming, with lungs blowing, the peasantsreached the gate-house. They beat at it with stones, with their fists;they drove their pikes at it, but could not open it.
Then a man--it was one of those who had been taken and confined in thecastle--bid all stand back. He buckled on to his feet a sort of spikedshoe, with three prongs in each sole, and held a crooked axe in hishand.
"I have not been in there for nothing," laughed he. "I saw what they hadfor climbing walls, and I've made the like at my forge."
Then he went to the wall, drove in the end of his pick, and in a moment,like a cat, went up from stone course to stone course, till he reachedthe summit of the wall, when he threw aside his foot-grapnels and leapedwithin. In the panic caused by the sudden avalanche of stones and firethe sentinel had deserted the gate. The oak doors were cast open, andthe whole body of armed men burst in.
They found the small garrison huddled together, paralysed with fear, alltheir daring, their insolence, their readiness on an occasion gone. Theystood like sheep, unable to defend themselves, and were taken withoutoffering any resistance.
The surprise was so complete, the awfulness of the manner in which theywere visited was so overwhelming, that the ruffians did not know whetherthey were not called to their final account, and whether theirassailants were not fiends from the flaming abyss.
It had come on them in the midst of sleep when stupefied with drink.
"Follow me!" ordered Ogier, and he led the way through fallen flakes offire, smouldering beams, and smoking embers, to a portion of the castlethat was intact. It consisted wholly of a cavern faced up with stone,and the cataract of fire had not reached it, or had not injured it.
"Bring the prisoners to me," said Ogier. "Where is the Captain? Where isLe Gros Guillem?"
The head of the band was not taken.
"Disperse--seek him everywhere!" ordered Del' Peyra.
The men ran in every possible direction. They searched every cranny.
"He has escaped up the ladder to the Last Refuge!" shouted one. The LastRefuge was the chamber excavated above the projecting roof of thecastle, cut in the solid rock.
"He cannot," said another, "the ladder was the first thing to burn. See,it is in pieces now."
"If he be there," scoffed a third, "let him there abide. He can neitherget up nor down."
"I do not think he is there. He is in Hell's Mouth."
This Hell's Mouth was the tortuous cavern opening upon the ledge of rockoccupied by the castle.
"If he is there, who will follow him?" asked one.
"Aye! who--when the foul fiend will hide him."
"I do not believe it," said one of the men who had been confined in the"Church." He indicated with his finger. "There is a _mal-pas_ yonder; hehas escaped along that."
A _mal-pas_, in fact, exists in many of these rock castles. It consistsof a track sometimes natural, often artificially cut in the face of thecliff, so narrow that only a man with an unusually steady head can treadit; often is the _mal-pas_ so formed that it cannot be walked alongupright, but in a bent posture. Often also it is cut through abruptlyand purposely to be crossed by a board which he who has fled over it cankick down and so intercept pursuit.
"Bring up the men for me to judge them," said Ogier, "and you, Mathieu,give me your sharp-pointed pick."
The man addressed handed the implement to his Seigneur, who seatedhimself on the floor of rock with his legs apart and extended.
"Giraud!" said Ogier, "and you, Roland, run out a beam through one ofthe windows--through yonder, and one of you find rope--abundance. Howmany are here?"
"There are twelve," was the answer.
"That is well; twelve--enough rope to hang twelve men, one after anotherfrom the window."
Sufficiency of rope was not to be found.
"It matters not," said Ogier. "There are other ways into another worldthan along a rope. They shall walk the beam. Thrust it through thewindow and rope the end of it."
"Which end?"
"This one in the room, to hold it down."
A large beam, fallen from the roof in the adjoining chamber, and stillsmoking and glowing at one end, was dragged in, and the burning endthrust out through a window. The driving it through the opening,together with the inrush of air to the heated apartments, caused the redand charred wood to burst into light; it projected some ten feet beyondthe wall, fizzing, spurting forth jets of blue flame over the abyss.
"Number one!" shouted Ogier. "Make him walk the rafter. Drive himforward with your pikes if he shrinks back."
One of the ruffians of the band, his face as parchment, speechless inthe stupefaction of his fear, was made to mount the beam, and then thepeasants
round shouted, drove at him with their knives andpruning-hooks, and made him pass through the window.
There were three men seated on the end of the beam, which rested on abench in the chamber.
The moment the unhappy wretch had disappeared through the window, Ogierbegan to hew with his pick into the floor.
"Forward! He is hanging back! He clings to the wall! Coward! He isendeavouring to scramble in again!" was yelled by the peasants, crowdinground the window to watch the man on the charred and glowing beam end.
"Drive him off with a pike! Make him dance on the embers!" called onewithin, and a reaping-hook, bound to a pole, was thrust forth.
A scream, horrible in its agony, in its intensity; and those seated onthe beam felt there was no longer a counterpoise.
Chip, chip, went Ogier.
Presently he looked up. He had cut a Greek cross in the chalk floor.
"Number two!" he ordered.
Then the wretch who was seized burst from his captors, rushed up toOgier, threw himself on his knees, and implored to be spared. He woulddo anything. He would forswear the English. He would never plunderagain.
Old Del' Peyra looked at him coldly.
"Did you ever spare one who fell into your hands? Did you spareRossignol? Make him walk the beam."
The shrieking wretch was lifted by strong arms on to the rafter; herefused to stand, he threw himself on his knees, he struggled, bit,prayed, sobbed--all the manhood was gone out of him.
"Thrust him through the window," said one. "If he will not walk the beamhe shall cling to it."
The brigand's efforts were in vain. He was driven through the opening.In his frantic efforts to save himself he gripped the rafter, hangingfrom it, his legs swinging in space.
"Cut off his fingers," said one.
Then the man, to escape a blow from an axe, ran his hands along, putthem on glowing red charcoal, and dropped.
Chip, chip! went Ogier. He had cut a second cross.
"Number three!" he said.
The man whose turn came thrust aside those who held him, leaped on thebeam, and walked deliberately through the window and bounded into thedarkness.
Chip, chip! went Ogier. He worked on till he had incised a third crossin the floor.
Thus one by one was sent to his death out of the chamber reeking withwood-smoke, illumined by the puffs of flame from the still burningbuildings that adjoined. Ten crosses had been cut in the floor.
"Number eleven!" said Ogier; and at that same moment his son Jeanentered at the head of those who had ignited and sent down the cataractof fire that had consumed the nest.
"What are you doing, father?"
"Sending them before their Judge," answered Ogier. "See these tencrosses. There are ten have been dismissed."
Then the man who had been brought forward to be sent along the same roadas the rest said--
"I do not cry for life; but this I say; it was I, aye, I and my fellowhere, Amanieu, who provided the hundred livres, without which the sevenwould not have been set free."
"You provided it?"
"Aye, under the Captain's daughter. It was we who did it. If that goesto abate our sentence--well."
"Father, spare these two," pleaded Jean.
"As you will, Jean; but there is space for two more crosses.Would--would I could cut an eleventh, and that a big one, for the GrosGuillem."
Then murmurs arose. The peasants, their love of revenge, their lust forslaughter whetted, clamoured for the death of the last two of the band.
But Jean was firm.
"My father surrenders them to me," he said.
"Then let them run on the _mal-pas_," shouted one of the peasants.
"Good!" said the brigand Roger; "give me a plank and I will run on it,so will Amanieu."
Ogier looked ruefully at the crosses.
"'Tis a pity," said he. "I intended to cut a dozen."
If the visitor to the Eglise de Guillem will look, to this day, rudelyhacked in the floor, he will see the ten crosses: he will seefurther--but we will leave the rest to the sequel.
Noémi Page 11