CHAPTER XXXIV
"WHERE be the true men?"
"Here be we. God bless you all! God bless you!"
There was a rush to the stairs, and half a dozen hard but friendly handswere held out and grasped them warmly. "Y'have saved our lives, lads,"cried Denys, "y'have saved our lives this night."
A wild sight met the eyes of the rescued pair. The room flaring withtorches, the glittering breastplates of the archers, their bronzedfaces, the white cheeks of the bound thieves, and the bleeding giant,whose dead body these hard men left lying there in its own gore.
Gerard went round the archers and took them each by the hand withglistening eyes, and on this they all kissed him; and this time hekissed them in return. Then he said to one handsome archer of his ownage, "Prithee, good soldier, have an eye to me. A strange drowsinessovercomes me. Let no one cut my throat while I sleep--for pity's sake."
The archer promised with a laugh; for he thought Gerard was jesting: andthe latter went off into a deep sleep almost immediately.
Denys was surprised at this: but did not interfere; for it suited hisimmediate purpose. A couple of archers were inspecting the Abbot's body,turning it half over with their feet, and inquiring, "Which of the twohad flung this enormous rogue down from an upper story like that; theywould fain have the trick of his arm."
Denys at first pished and pshawed, but he dared not play the braggart,for he said to himself "That young vagabond will break in and say 'twasthe finger of Heaven, and no mortal arm, or some such stuff, and make melook like a fool." But now, seeing Gerard unconscious, he suddenly gavethis required information:
"Well, then, you see, comrades, I had run my sword through this one upto the hilt; and one or two more of 'em came buzzing about me; so itbehoved me have my sword or die: so I just put my foot against hisstomach, gave a tug with my hand and a spring with my foot, and sent himflying to kingdom come! He died in the air, and his carrion rolled inamongst you without ceremony: made you jump I warrant me. But pikestavesand pillage! what avails prattling of these trifles once they are goneby? buvons, camarades, buvons."
The archers remarked that it was easy to say "buvons" where no liquorwas, but not so easy to do it.
"Nay, I'll soon find ye liquor. My nose hath a natural alacrity atscenting out the wine. You follow me: and I my nose: bring a torch!" Andthey left the room, and, finding a short flight of stone steps,descended them and entered a large, low, damp cellar.
It smelt close and dank: and the walls were encrusted here and therewith what seemed cobwebs; but proved to be saltpetre that had oozed outof the damp stones, and crystallized.
"Oh! the fine mouldy smell," said Denys. "In such placen still lurks thegood wine: advance thy torch. Diable! what is that in the corner? A pileof rags? No: 'tis a man."
They gathered round with the torch, and lo! a figure crouched on a heapin the corner, pale as ashes and shivering.
"Why, it is the landlord," said Denys.
"Get up, thou craven heart!" shouted one of the archers.
"Why, man, the thieves are bound, and we are dry, that bound them. Up!and show us thy wine; for no bottles see I here."
"What, be the rascals bound?" stammered the pale landlord; "good news.W--w--wine? that will I, honest sirs."
And he rose with unsure joints and offered to lead the way to the winecellar. But Denys interposed. "You are all in the dark, comrades. He isin league with the thieves."
"Alack, good soldier, me in league with the accursed robbers! Is thatreasonable?"
"The girl said so any way."
"The girl! What girl? Ah! Curse her, traitress!"
"Well," interposed the other archer; "the girl is not here, but gone onto the bailiff. So let the burghers settle whether this craven be guiltyor no: for we caught him not in the act: and let him draw us our wine."
"One moment," said Denys, shrewdly. "Why cursed he the girl? If he be atrue man, he should bless her as we do."
"Alas, sir!" said the landlord, "I have but my good name to live by, andI cursed her to you, because you said she had belied me."
"Humph! I trow thou art a thief, and where is the thief that cannot liewith a smooth face? Therefore hold him, comrades: a prisoner can drawwine an if his hands be not bound."
The landlord offered no objection; but on the contrary said he wouldwith pleasure show them where his little stock of wine was, but hopedthey would pay for what they should drink, for his rent was due this twomonths.
The archers smiled grimly at his simplicity as they thought it; one ofthem laid a hand quietly but firmly on his shoulder, the other led onwith the torch.
They had reached the threshold when Denys cried "Halt!"
"What is't?"
"Here be bottles in this corner; advance thy light."
The torch-bearer went towards him. He had just taken off his scabbardand was probing the heap the landlord had just been crouched upon.
"Nay, nay," cried the landlord, "the wine is in the next cellar. Thereis nothing _there_."
"Nothing is mighty hard, then," said Denys, and drew out something withhis hand from the heap.
It proved to be only a bone.
Denys threw it on the floor: it rattled.
"There is nought there but the bones of the house," said the landlord.
"Just now 'twas nothing. Now that we have found something 'tis nothingbut bones. Here's another. Humph? look at this one, comrade; and youcome too and look at it, and bring yon smooth knave along."
The archer with the torch, whose name was Philippe, held the bone to thelight and turned it round and round.
"Well?" said Denys.
"Well, if this was a field of battle I should say 'twas the shank-boneof a man! no more, no less. But 'tisn't a battle field, nor achurchyard; 'tis an inn."
"True, mate: but yon knave's ashy face is as good a light to me as afield of battle. I read the bone by it. Bring yon face nearer, I say.When the chine is amissing, and the house dog can't look at you withouthis tail creeping between his legs, who was the thief? Good brothersmine, my mind it doth misgive me. The deeper I thrust the more there be.Mayhap if these bones could tell their tale they would make true men'sflesh creep that heard it."
"Alas! young man, what hideous fancies are these! The bones are bones ofbeeves, and sheep, and kids, and not, as you think, of men and women.Holy saints preserve us!"
"Hold thy peace! thy words are air. Thou hast not got burghers by theear, that know not a veal knuckle from their grandsire's ribs; butsoldiers--men that have gone to look for their dear comrades, and foundtheir bones picked as clean by the crows, as these I doubt have been bythee and thy mates. Men and women, saidst thou? And prithee, when spakeI a word of women's bones? Wouldst make a child suspect thee. Field ofbattle, comrade! Was not this house a field of battle half an houragone? Drag him close to me, let me read his face; now then, what isthis, thou knave?" and he thrust a small object suddenly in his face.
"Alas! I know not."
"Well, I would not swear neither: but it is too like the thumb bone ofa man's hand; mates, my flesh it creeps. Churchyard! how know I this isnot one?"
And he now drew his sword out of the scabbard and began to rake the heapof earth and broken crockery and bones out on the floor.
The landlord assured him he but wasted his time. "We poor innkeepers aresinners," said he, "we give short measure and baptize the wine; we arefain to do these things; the laws are so unjust to us; but we are notassassins. How could we afford to kill our customers? May Heaven'slightning strike me dead if there be any bones there but such as havebeen used for meat. 'Tis the kitchen wench flings them here; I swear byGod's holy mother, by holy Paul, by holy Dominic, and Denys my patronsaint----ah!"
Denys held out a bone under his eye in dead silence. It was a bone noman however ignorant, however lying, could confound with those of sheepor oxen. The sight of it shut the lying lips, and palsied the heartlessheart.
The landlord's hair rose visibly on his head like spikes, and his
kneesgave way as if his limbs had been struck from under him. But the archersdragged him fiercely up, and kept him erect under the torch staringfascinated at the dead skull which, white as the living cheek opposed,but no whiter, glared back again at its murderer, whose pale lips nowopened, and opened, but could utter no sound.
"Ah!" said Denys, solemnly, and trembling now with rage, "look on thesockets out of which thou hast picked the eyes, and let them blast thineeyes, that crows shall pick out ere this week shall end. Now, hold thouthat while I search on. Hold it, I say, or here I rob the gallows--" andhe threatened the quaking wretch with his naked sword, till with a groanhe took the skull and held it, almost fainting.
Oh! that every murderer, and contriver of murder, could see him, sick,and staggering with terror, and with his hair on end holding the coldskull, and feeling that his own head would soon be like it. And soon theheap was scattered, and, alas! not one nor two, but many skulls werebrought to light, the culprit moaning at each discovery.
Suddenly Denys uttered a strange cry of distress to come from so boldand hard a man; and held up to the torch a mass of human hair. It waslong, glossy, and golden. A woman's beautiful hair. At sight of it thearchers instinctively shook the craven wretch in their hands: and hewhined.
"I have a little sister with hair just so fair and shining as this,"gulped Denys. "Jesu! if it should be hers! There quick, take my swordand dagger, and keep them from my hand, lest I strike him dead and wrongthe gibbet. And thou, poor innocent victim, on whose head this mostlovely hair did grow, hear me swear thus, on bended knee, never to leavethis man till I see him broken to pieces on the wheel even for thysake."
He rose from his knee. "Ay, had he as many lives as here be hairs, I'dhave them all, by God." And he put the hair into his bosom. Then in asudden fury seized the landlord fiercely by the neck, and forced him tohis knees; and foot on head ground his face savagely among the bones ofhis victims, where they lay thickest: and the assassin first yelled,then whined and whimpered, just as a dog first yells, then whines, whenhis nose is so forced into some leveret or other innocent he has killed.
"Now lend me thy bowstring, Philippe!" He passed it through the eyes ofa skull alternately, and hung the ghastly relic of mortality and crimeround the man's neck; then pulled him up and kicked him industriouslyinto the kitchen, where one of the aldermen of the burgh had arrivedwith constables, and was even now taking an archer's deposition.
The grave burgher was much startled at sight of the landlord driven inbleeding from a dozen scratches inflicted by the bones of his ownvictims, and carrying his horrible collar. But Denys came panting after,and in a few fiery words soon made all clear.
"Bind him like the rest," said the alderman sternly. "I count him theblackest of them all."
While his hands were being bound, the poor wretch begged piteously that"the skull might be taken from him."
"Humph!" said the alderman. "Certes I had not ordered such a thing to beput on mortal man. Yet being there I will not lift voice nor finger todoff it. Methinks it fits thee truly, thou bloody dog. 'Tis thy ensign,and hangs well above a heart so foul as thine."
He then inquired of Denys if he thought they had secured the whole gangor but a part.
"Your worship," said Denys, "there are but seven of them, and thislandlord. One we slew upstairs, one we tumbled down dead, the rest arebound before you."
"Good! go fetch the dead one from upstairs, and lay him beside him Icaused to be removed."
Here a voice like a guinea-fowl's broke peevishly in. "Now, now, now,where is the hand? that is what I want to see." The speaker was a littlepettifogging clerk.
"You will find it above, nailed to the door-post by a cross-bow bolt."
"Good!" said the clerk. He whispered his master, "What a godly show willthe 'pieces de conviction' make!" and with this he wrote them down,enumerating them in separate squeaks as he penned them.Skulls,--Bones,--A woman's hair,--A thief's hand,--1 axe--2 carcases,--1cross-bow bolt. This done he itched to search the cellar himself: theremight be other invaluable morsels of evidence, an ear, or even anearring. The alderman assenting he caught up a torch and was hurryingthither, when an accident stopped him, and indeed carried him a step ortwo in the opposite direction.
The constables had gone up the stair in single file.
But the head constable no sooner saw the phosphorescent corpse seated bythe bedside, than he stood stupefied: and next he began to shake likeone in an ague, and, terror gaining on him more and more, he uttered asort of howl and recoiled swiftly. Forgetting the steps, in his recoil,he tumbled over backward on his nearest companion: but _he_, shaken bythe shout of dismay, and catching a glimpse of something horrid, wasalready staggering back, and in no condition to sustain the headconstable, who, like most head constables was a ponderous man. The twocarried away the third, and the three the fourth, and they streamed intothe kitchen, and settled on the floor, overlapping each other like asequence laid out on a card-table. The clerk coming hastily with historch ran an involuntary tilt again the fourth man, who, sharing themomentum of the mass, knocked him instantly on his back, the ace of thatfair quint: and there he lay kicking and waving his torch, apparently intriumph, but really in convulsion; sense and wind being driven outtogether by the concussion.
"What is to do now, in Heaven's name?" cried the alderman, starting upwith considerable alarm. But Denys explained, and offered to accompanyhis worship. "So be it," said the latter. His men picked themselvesruefully up, and the alderman put himself at their head and examined thepremises above and below. As for the prisoners, their interrogatory waspostponed till they could be confronted with the servant.
Before dawn, the thieves, alive and dead, and all the relics andevidences of crime and retribution, were swept away into the law's net,and the inn was silent and almost deserted. There remained but oneconstable, and Denys and Gerard, the latter still sleeping heavily.
The Cloister and the Hearth: A Tale of the Middle Ages Page 35