'They took hold of her then, by the shoulders and the feet, and they laid her in the hole. They'd not mercy enough even to throttle her, or put a dagger in her heart. From where I was, I could see her, all white in the black earth, with her hands bound on her breast and her eyes above the gag – her eyes – two dark pools filled with horror.'
Here Guégan paused and groped for a drink. Gilles filled his cup and he drained it at a draught.
'Go on,' Gilles ordered harshly.
'I didn't see much more of her. They threw her veil in over her and then they started shovelling the earth back, bigger and bigger spadefuls, going faster and faster until the hole was all filled in. I was having to cling on to my tree so as not to fall out. I wanted to throw up. I was sick with horror and dread! I couldn't see how the good God could let such monsters live.'
'And then?' Gilles asked roughly. 'What happened next?'
'They stayed there for a moment, spreading the moss and dried leaves back over their handiwork. I thought they'd never go. But in the end they got the carriage turned round and mounted their horses again and rode away into the night like the devils they were. So then I hopped out of my tree and ran to the chateau. I had to tell someone, the porter, a servant, anyone, and if they started asking me questions it was just too bad. I swung on the bell and rang it as loud as I could, shouting for help. Someone opened it at last, and I was in such a state that at first the porter took me for a madman. I couldn't tell you now just what I said, for I don't remember, but I suddenly found myself face to face with a gentleman in his dressing gown and nightcap with a sword tucked under his arm. It was the Comte de Châteaugiron. Contrary to what I'd thought, he and his family were at the chateau, only they'd gone to bed early because they were due to start for Rennes first thing in the morning.
'Seeing him there somehow helped me get my wits back and, as quickly as I could, I told him what I'd seen.
' "Come quickly, Monsieur le Comte," I begged him. "Please come! I'll show you the place. It may not be too late."
'He believed me at once, thank God! He called his servants to bring spades and torches and we all ran back to the scene of the crime. The marks of the carriage wheels were still fresh and clearly to be seen and showed that I was not making it up. So then they began to dig, six of them, with spades at first and then with their hands, as the count told them, so as not to risk hurting the young lady if, by God's will, she were still alive in the bottom of the grave. Well, they got her out of the ground at last, and, oh your honour, if you had only seen her, with her white face and her hair and her dress all stained with earth! There in the torchlight, it was a dreadful sight.
' "Hurry!" the count said. "Send a man on horseback for a physician! Her heart is still beating faintly. We'll carry her to the chateau."
'We all set off in a body and in the courtyard of the chateau I saw madame the countess and her maids and the chaplain, all crying out for pity. They carried the young lady into the house and then the count came over to me. He gave me a gold piece and said I was a stout fellow and that he did not grudge me the poaching, and that now I might go home in peace. But I asked him if I might wait a while to see how the poor young lady did. Alas, when it was getting light they came to tell me that it was all over. She had finally passed on, in spite of all the lady of the house and the chaplain could do to save her. The physician from Ploermel that they had sent the man on the horse for came just in time to learn that there was no more need for him. Well, I went home after that. But ever since then, I've kept on seeing that lovely bride lying in her grave. It's a nasty story, isn't it, sir, and a sad one?'
A silence followed. The group of rough men looked at one another and in all their eyes there was the same horror. Gilles loosened his collar uneasily, for he felt as if it were choking him.
'Does anyone know the name of the young lady?' he asked. 'Or of her murderers?'
'Why, no, sir,' Guégan said. 'No one at the chateau knew the young lady at all. I heard the countess say that she had never set eyes on her, nor had she even heard tell of a wedding in the neighbourhood on that day. While as to the men, they wore masks. And now, by your leave, your honour, I'll take just one more little sup and then be off home. It's getting late, and I don't care to be out much after dark these days.'
One by one, the drinkers bade farewell to the stranger and left. But he had ceased to notice them. He was standing before the fire, with his back turned to the room and his arms folded, the fingers of one hand playing nervously with the folds of his cravat, striving to fight off a growing sense of despair. He seemed to see Judith in the flames on the hearth, as Guégan had described her in that hideous scene. Judith, wearing a wedding dress, with flowers in her flaming hair, Judith cast living into that muddy hole in the ground. For he could no longer doubt the identity of the bride of Trecesson. It was Judith, basely murdered by her vile brothers. The poacher's description had been recognizable enough for him, that and the panic beating of his own heart. But why had those two villains killed her on her wedding night, when it was for that wedding that they had wanted her and had taken her from her convent? And what of the husband? Where was he while they were burying his wife? Already dead, perhaps?
The gruff voice of the landlord roused him from his dismal meditations.
'You ought to get some sleep, sir. Here, drink this. It's my turn.'
Gilles turned. Le Coz was standing there, holding out a glass. It seemed to the young man that he read sympathy and something like pity in his grey eyes. He took the glass and drained it. The liquor scorched his throat without warming his body. He felt cold to the marrow of his bones.
'And you?' he asked abruptly. 'Have you no idea either as to the identity of the participants in this horrible crime?'
The landlord's face retained its stony expression.
'It doesn't do for an innkeeper to go having ideas, not if he wants to make old bones. But something tells me, young sir, that you've some ideas of your own. You looked like death, just now, when Guégan described the beautiful young lady with the copper-coloured hair.'
'Perhaps – only I am not certain. If you know anything that may help me to find the means to punish her murderers, if you know who she was – I beg you to tell me.'
'I do not know. As God is my judge, I swear I never saw her. But a villain with red hair and one that has a brother with the same – I think that you and I can both put a name to him. Or else why did you ask me earlier if I knew the whereabouts of Le Frêne? Only I did not know there was a girl in the family. I daresay she must have been living somewhere else. But will you let me give you a piece of advice?'"
'If you must. But I can't promise to act on it.'
The landlord smiled and began wiping down the tables with a cloth.
'You'll do as you please. But rather than rushing off hotfoot to Le Frêne first thing in the morning, as I can see you're burning to, you'd do better to go first to Trecesson. I know the count is there. He may be able to add something which will make you quite certain. For there is still some possibility of doubt, however small.'
The church clock was striking nine. The chimes were lost suddenly in the clatter of a heavy vehicle arriving at speed. The air was full of the noise of hooves, the jingle of bells and the shouts of postilions. A door slammed. The Rennes coach had arrived.
'Good night to you,' Gilles said, turning to the stairs. The wooden treads creaked under his feet.
'Good night, sir. God send you have no bad dreams,' Le Coz returned, already hurrying out to greet the travellers.
Back in his own room, the Chevalier de Tournemine got out his pistols and checked them coolly. Then he drew his sword and examined it carefully, testing the edge and the point. Finally, he turned to the black wooden crucifix on the wall and addressed it sternly.
'Lord, if you have allowed this abominable crime to happen, know that by this time tomorrow both Saint-Mélaines will be dead – or I shall. And either way, I shall be guiltless.'
Chapter
Sixteen
Aultre n'auray
Gilles sat motionless in the saddle, while Merlin pawed the ground impatiently. He was gazing at Trecesson with mingled pain and wonderment, surprised to find the place so attractive, despite the horrid associations that clung to it.
Despite the austerity of the bare, wintry woods all around, the feudal look of its castellated gatehouse, its six-sided tower and deep, gothic archway, the lowering skies, heavy with rain, which hung above its slate roofs, the chateau, built of pink stone softly mantled with ivy, stood dreaming with the proud grace of a fairytale prince beside its lake. There was no sign now of the events to which it had formed the background on that dreadful night. It was as though nothing could touch it behind its rampart of quiet waters, the home of ducks and croaking frogs.
Gilles lingered for a moment before the castle, as though on the verge of a certainty, perhaps to give the nervousness tightening his stomach muscles time to subside. During the sleepless night he had just passed, he had been through a hell of regrets, combined with hatred and the thirst for vengeance. He had dreamed of a death for the Saint-Mélaine brothers that would equal the worst that the Iroquois could do. A sword thrust or pistol shot were too good for monsters capable of smothering the grace of such a child as his sunny little siren of the estuary beneath the dark earth. When he pictured the agony of her death, buried alive in that grave, the last descendant of the bloody Tournemines yearned to hear the brothers screaming under long-drawn-out tortures.
Merlin, tired of standing still, tossed his graceful head and whinnied, rousing Gilles from his gloomy meditations.
'You're quite right,' he sighed. 'We're wasting time. We must go on – and find out. We have to make sure. I may yet be wrong.' But he did not really believe it.
The pealing of the bell brought a groom running, to bow deferentially before the haughty gentleman. No, he said, the count was not at home, but the countess was in.
'Then ask her if she will be good enough to grant me a few moments of her time. My name is the Chevalier de Tournemine de la Hunaudaye and my business is a matter of some gravity.'
The man led Gilles over the drawbridge, through the arched gateway and out into a neat courtyard which opened on to a terraced garden bounded by the dense mass of the forest. From there, he gave Merlin's bridle into the groom's hands and followed the butler indoors. In another moment he was being ushered into a pretty little sitting-room on the ground floor. It had pale panelled walls and looked out on the courtyard on one side and the lake on the other. A bright fire burned in the hearth and a selection of family portraits gazed down, somewhat fixedly, from the walls.
A young woman was seated in a flowered tapestry armchair by the fire. She had a lace cap on her head and her brown velvet dress was cunningly designed so that its fullness concealed the bulge about her waist. She was winding a large skein of wool which a young peasant girl seated on a stool at her feet was holding in both hands. She greeted her visitor with an inclination of her head.
'I am told that you wish to see me on some grave business, sir, and I will not conceal from you that you come at a most inopportune moment. My husband left early this morning to go to Coëtquidan about a matter of boundaries and I cannot tell when he will return, and I am afraid that I am not at all sure that I can take his place. But, please, do come in. Come in and sit down.' She indicated an armchair placed near her own.
Gilles bowed and took the seat she offered.
'I ask you to believe me, madame, when I say that I should never have ventured to thrust myself upon you in this way if my business was not of too serious a nature to be postponed even for a moment. Forgive me – and remember that it concerns the thing that matters most in all the world to me.'
Agathe de Trecesson, wife to René Joseph Le Prestre, Comte de Châteaugiron and Marquis d'Espinay was some twenty-five or twenty-six years old. She was not strictly beautiful but her serious little face, under its magnificent crown of chestnut hair, was the picture of gentleness. There was a touch of weariness also, in the shadows round her brown eyes which just then were studying her visitor in some perplexity.
'Is it so grave?' she said at last.
'More than I can tell you, madame.'
She sighed. 'Well then, you had better leave us, Perrine. The wool can wait.'
The girl rose, looking for somewhere to put down the big skein in her hands. Gilles held out his own without thinking.
'Permit me. I have done this many times as a child.'
A spark of amusement flickered in the eyes of the mother-to-be as Gilles got up from his armchair and came instead to fold his long legs on to the little stool.
'It will be the first time I have had a soldier to hold my wool for me,' she said with a smile. 'For you are a military man, chevalier, are you not? I can tell it by your bearing.'
'Yes indeed, madame. Lieutenant in the Queen's Dragoons.'
The countess picked up her ball again and went on winding the coarse natural wool as it slipped easily from the young man's hands.
'Do you know, it surprised me a little when I heard your name just now?' she said after a moment. 'I did not know that there were any Tournemines still left. I thought the name had died out.'
'It had, madame. Or rather would have died out with my father, Count Pierre, mortally wounded in the battle for Yorktown, if he had not, on the battlefield, solemnly recognized me in the presence of all the chiefs of the army. The King has been good enough to endorse that recognition of a youth who, until that moment, was no more than – an accident.'
Her face lit with sudden interest.
'Yorktown? Where is that?'
'In America, madame. In Virginia, to be precise. Have you heard nothing of our army's successes in America?'
'America? You have been there, sir?'
'I returned two months since, with the Duc de Lauzun who was entrusted by Count Rochambeau and General Washington with bringing the news of their victory to Versailles.'
'A victory! In America! Indeed, we are as ignorant as savages here. Oh, chevalier, you must certainly wait and meet my husband. He will be very cross with me if I let such an interesting person go. Positively, you shall not escape.'
'Alas, madame, I fear I cannot wait. Must I remind you that my business here is grave – and also urgent.'
The countess blushed and smiled apologetically.
'Pardon me. I was forgetting. I find you so sympathetic that already I am treating you like an old friend.'
'I hope you will continue to do so when you have heard my story. Although I must remind you of an unpleasant affair, madame. Not long ago, just before Christmas, the woods not far from here were the scene of an appalling crime. A young woman, dressed as for a wedding—'
Madame de Châteaugiron rose abruptly, so that the ball of wool rolled off her lap and across the floor. She had turned so pale that Gilles thought for a moment she was going to faint. She put both hands over her ears, as if to shut out screams that only she could hear.
'For the love of God, sir, do not speak to me of that abominable business! I do not want to discuss it – I cannot bear it. It haunts my dreams—'
'Yet now it is for me to say for the love of God, madame, take pity on me. I know how painful it must be for you to recall it, but only think that it is killing me. Ever since I first heard it, I have been afraid – oh God! I should rather say I have been half dead with the fear of learning that the victim was the girl I loved, for whose sake I went to fight in America and whom I had come to find. Only listen to me, madame. Do not refuse to hear what I have to say! You must help me.'
He had slipped easily from his stool and was half kneeling at the countess' feet. Slowly, she let fall her hands and a little colour returned to her cheeks.
'If you have already heard the story, sir, I do not see what else I can tell you,' she said in an exhausted voice. 'From whom, by the way, did you hear it?'
'From one Guégan, a cobbler from Campénéac'
'The man wh
o was up the tree? I see.'
'He, too, has been losing sleep over it, poor man. He drinks, and in his cups he talks. I implore you, madame, I have no wish to make you suffer any more, only I must have your answer to one question – only one!'
'What is it?'
'According to Guégan, the victim was not quite dead when they got her out. It was some time before your husband gave out the news that she was no more. Is it possible that she recovered consciousness at all – that she was able to tell you her name?'
'If that is your question, sir, I am not going to answer it.'
Gilles came slowly to his feet, until his eyes were gazing straight into hers.
'No. That is not my question. You would not answer it, of course, because you may not altogether trust me yet. I will put my question in a minute. I am going to give you a name, countess. All I ask of you in return is one little word. Yes or no. That is all.'
He was standing over her, taller by a head, striving to hold her eyes which persistently refused to meet his. But, little by little, she gave in, and the horror he read in them was not feigned. Neither was the fear.
'But, chevalier, what makes you think that I will be able to answer your question? What makes you think that poor child was able—'
'Nothing, madame. Nothing but my own heart and my faith in God. He could not have let such an infamous thing happen and leave no trace behind, however small, to avenge her.'
'Vengeance! Do you mean that if I could answer yes to your question—?'
'Before tonight I shall have seen that justice is done. That I swear, by my father's memory. Will you give me your answer?'
Madame de Châteaugiron bowed her head and turned away as if to escape from the commanding gaze that seemed to be trying to search out the depths of her consciousness. She was silent for a moment, then she moved towards the door.
'Come,' she said simply.
Once out in the hall, she took a great hooded cloak from a maidservant and wrapped herself in it.
Falcon 1 - The Lure of the Falcon Page 43