Kitabı oku: «Noémi», sayfa 11

CHAPTER XXI.
A DISAPPEARANCE

The old Seigneur del' Peyra was not exactly a changed man since his descent into and release from the oubliette; he was rather the man he had been of old with his dullness, inertness intensified. He spoke very little, never referred to his adventures – it might almost be thought that he had forgotten them, but that on the smallest allusion to Le Gros Guillem his eye would fire, all the muscles of his face quiver, and he would abruptly leave the society of such as spoke of the man who had so ill-treated him.

Except for the sudden agitations into which he was thrown by such allusions, he was almost torpid. He took no interest in his land, in his people, in his castle. He sat much on a stone in the sun when the sun shone, looking at the ground before him. When the cold and rainy weather set in, then he sat in the fire-corner with his eyes riveted on the flames. One thing he could not endure, and that was darkness. The coming on of night filled him with unrest. He could not abide in a room where did not burn a light. He would start from sleep during the night several times to make sure that the lamp was still burning.

At first Jean had spoken to his father relative to the incidents of his capture, and had asked him particulars about his treatment, but desisted from doing so as he saw how profoundly it affected the old man, and how slow he was of recovering his equanimity after such an attempt to extract his recollections from him. Nor could he consult him about the affairs of the Seigneurie. The old man seemed incapable of fixing his mind on any such matters. Not that his brain had ceased to act, but that it was preoccupied with one absorbing idea, from which it resented diversion.

Jean made an attempt to sound his father's thoughts, but in vain, and he satisfied himself that the only course open to him was to leave the old man alone, and to trust to the restorative forces of Nature to recover him. He had received a shock which had shaken his powers but had not destroyed them. If left alone he would in time be himself again.

There was much to occupy the mind and take up the time of Jean del' Peyra.

The winter had set in. The leaves had been shed from the trees. There had set in a week of rain, and the river Vézère had swelled to a flood red-brown in colour, sweeping away the soil rich in phosphates that overlay the chalk, and which alone sustained vegetation. If the Vézère were in flood, so also was the Dordogne, and both rivers being impassable, the little Seigneurie of Le Peuch Ste. Soure was safe. It was divided from its foe at Domme by these swollen dykes.

But floods would subside in time, the weather would clear, and although it was not probable that Le Gros Guillem would attempt reprisals during the winter, yet it would be injudicious not to maintain watch and be prepared against an attack.

The peasant, impulsive and inconsiderate, was not to be trusted without direction, and required to be watched so as to be kept to the ungrateful task of semi-military service. He was easily stirred to acts of furious violence, and as easily allowed himself to lapse into blind security. Having taken and destroyed l'Eglise and beaten back the routiers on the Beune, the peasants considered that they had done all that could be required of them; they hastily reconverted their swords into the ploughshares that they had been, and dismounted their spears to employ them for their proper use as pruning-hooks. At the same time that they thus turned their implements of husbandry to peaceful ends, so did they dismantle themselves of all military ambition, and revert to the condition of the boor, whose thoughts are in the soil he turns and returns, whose produce he reaps and mows. The peasant mind is not flexible, and it is very limited in its range. It can think of but one thing at a time, and it is wholly void of that nimbleness which is acquired by association with men of many avocations and of intellectual culture. For a moment, stirred by intolerable wrongs, his passions had flared into an all-consuming flame. Now he was again the plodding ploughman, happy to handle the muckfork and the goad.

Jean found it impossible to rouse the men to understand the necessity of being ever on the alert against the foe. Gros Guillem, said they, had pillaged Ste. Soure; he had done his worst; now he would go and plunder elsewhere. He had tried conclusions with them and had been worsted; in future he would test his strength against weaker men. Allons! we have had enough of fighting – there is much to be done on the farm. Jean del' Peyra foresaw danger, and would not relax his efforts to be prepared to meet it. He established sentinels to keep watch night and day, and he marshalled the peasants and drilled them. They grumbled, and endeavoured to shirk, and he had hard matter to enforce discipline. He received tidings from Domme, and ascertained that the feet of the Captain were completely restored; and that he was about the town and citadel as usual.

He had matter to occupy him and divert his attention from Le Peuch. For some time the great stress of war between the French and the English had been in the north; there the Maid of Orleans had led to victory, and there she had been basely deserted and allowed to fall into the hands of the English. No sooner, however, had these latter burnt "the sorceress" than they turned their attention to Guyenne. There matters had not been favourable to the three Leopards. Bergerac, on the Dordogne, an important mercantile centre devoted to the French cause, and which had been long held by the English, had been freed, and had the Lilies waving from its citadel. Then suddenly the English forces from Bordeaux had appeared under the walls, and the garrison, unable to defend itself unassisted, had fled, and once more the Lilies were thrown down and the Leopards unfurled. But recently, owing to some outrage committed in the town by some of the soldiers of the castle, the whole of the inhabitants had risen in a mass, had surprised the garrison, and had butchered them to a man. Bergerac was again French. For the last time it had borne the English yoke. During three hundred years, with the exception of a few intervals, it had been under English dominion (1150-1450), many a time had French and English fought under its walls for the possession of such a strong point, which by its position commanded the course of the Dordogne. Tradition even says that in one day the town passed thrice into English and thrice into French hands.

The recovery of Bergerac by the Count of Penthièvre, the Lieutenant of the King of France in Guyenne, and the treatment of the garrison by the citizens, alarmed Le Gros Guillem. He was keenly alive to the disaffection of the town of Domme. He was in a less satisfactory position than the commandant of Bergerac. For this latter place was surrounded by strongholds of barons attached to the English cause, not on principle, but for their own interest; the nearest town up the river, Le Linde, was a bastide in English hands. The heights bristled with castles, all held by men strongly opposed to the crown of France, all ready to harass in every way the citizens who had dared to free themselves. The situation at Domme was other. Nearly in face of it was a town almost as important in population, quite as securely defended by Nature, and dominated by a castle of exceptional inexpugnability. The Governor of this place was the brother of the Bishop of Sarlat, and could not be bribed to betray his charge. From his eyrie every movement of Guillem was watched. La Roque was a stronghold with the whole county of Sarlat at its back, and thence it could be filled with men unseen from Domme, to organise a sudden attack on the enemy's position. That alone might be repelled, but that aided by treachery within the walls might succeed.

Consequently Guillem was engaged in filling his ranks and accumulating material of war. Desire as he might, and did, to chastise those at Ste. Soure, he could not do so at the moment.

Never did he ride by La Roque without casting on it a covetous gaze. It was the key to the whole of the Black Périgord – the county of Sarlat.

Jean del' Peyra's mind reverted often to Noémi. He had not seen her since that incident of the ring. Then, attended by Amanieu and Roger, she had ridden away at full gallop and had escaped. At the same time he had succeeded in cutting the bands that held the arms of Heliot, and had suffered him to ride away as well. Jean was naturally adverse to deeds of bloodshed; and though the fellow justly merited death, he had no desire that the peasantry should constitute themselves at once accusers, judges, and executioners. Jean thought repeatedly of that strange scene – his engagement by ring to Noémi, forced on him to save her from the violence of the angry peasants – the only means available to him at the moment for evading the question as to her parentage.

But though he had quickly proclaimed her to be his affianced bride, he did not seriously purpose to make her his. Though he loved her, though his heart eagerly recognised her generosity of feeling, the real goodness that was in her, he could not forget to what stock she belonged. It would not be possible for him to consider her as one who would be his – when he was at deadly enmity with the father. It would not be decent, natural, to take to his side the child of the ruffian who had treated his own father in a manner of refined barbarity. It was known throughout the country what Guillem had done – and the whole country would point the finger of scorn at him if he so condoned the outrage as to marry the daughter of the perpetrator of it. But, more than that, he was certain to be engaged in hand-to-hand fight with Guillem. He did not for a moment doubt that this man would seize the first opportunity of attacking and probably of overwhelming him with numbers. When next they met the meeting would be final, and fatal to one or the other. Either he or Le Gros Guillem would issue from the struggle with his hands wet with the blood of the other. It mattered not which turn matters took, what the result was – either precluded union with Noémi.

He would have liked to have seen her, to have parted from her with words of gratitude for what she had done for him and his father. He would have liked to come to an understanding with her. She was not a child, surely she did not hold those words spoken by him, that ring put on her finger, as binding them together?

He was thinking over this, scheming how he could meet her, when one of his men came to him and said —

"Monsieur Jean, have you seen your father?"

"When? Just now?"

"Yes," said the man, "recently."

"No, Antoine, not for several hours."

"Nor has anyone else."

"Not seen my father?"

"No, Monsieur Jean, we have been looking for him in every direction, and cannot find him."

"He is in the castle."

"No, Monsieur Jean, there he is not."

"He is in the field."

"No, Monsieur Jean, he is nowhere."

"That is not possible."

"He is nowhere that we can find, and no one has seen him leave – no one knows whether he has been carried off again, and if so, how, when, or by whom?"

It was so – Ogier del' Peyra had vanished, not leaving a trace behind him.

CHAPTER XXII.
THE CASTELLAN

Le Gros Guillem was pacing the stone-vaulted hall of the Castle of Domme. It was a hall that ran the whole depth of the castle, from one face to the other, and was lighted solely by large windows to the north, commanding the valley of the Dordogne. The room was vaulted, not ribbed; cradled with white stone, the walls were of stone, and the hall was paved with stone – all of one whiteness. No tapestry covered the naked sides, nor carpets clothed the floors, only some panelling of oak to man's height took off some of the chill of the walls, and straw was littered on the floor. Of ornament there was none in the hall, unless weapons and defensive armour might be so regarded. Even antlers and boars' heads were absent. The occupants of the castle had other amusements than the chase.

"I must have thirty men more," said the Captain. "Let Heliot ride into the Bretenoux country; he will get them there; and let that sulky Amanieu, who is neither one of us nor against us, go to Gramat, on the bald and barren Causse, where nothing grows save lank and hungry men, there is always a supply of daredevils to be had for the asking. Offer what you will – we must make an attempt on Bergerac – and have the looting of its fat merchants' houses. We will make a raid into Sarlat and put the oily canons into the olive-press. There is plenty to be had for the taking. I want men. I must have more men. I dare not leave Domme without a thumb on it to hold it down; and there is that accursed eye of La Roque watching unwinkingly. Fine times are coming. I hear that the English are sending an army under the great Talbot. Let us do something – pick over the vineyard before he comes or the Englishmen will have the biggest bunches."

One of the attendants came up to the Captain and informed him that there was an old man desired to speak with him.

"What does he want? Where does he come from? I want no old men. The young are those who can serve me. I have not here an almshouse for bedemen, but a training school for soldiers."

"He will not say what he wants – except only that he comes on matters of extreme importance."

"Importance! importance!" repeated Le Gros Guillem irritably. "Importance to him and not to me. What is he? a farmer? Some of my boys have lifted an ox or carried off a daughter. I will not see him."

"Captain, he comes from La Roque."

"Then I will have nothing to do with him. I have no dealings with the people of La Roque. Run your pikes into his calves and make him skip down the hill."

The attendant retired but returned shortly with a slip of paper, which he put into the Captain's hand. Guillem would have thrust it aside. "A scribbling petitioner – worst of all! Does he look as if he had money? Can he be made to pay? If so we will put him in the mortar and pound him."

With careless indifference Guillem opened the paper and read the lines —

Messire le Gros, – If you want a lodging in La Roque now is your opportunity.

From one who has charge of the keys.

"Eh! eh!" exclaimed the Captain, flushing over his bald head, and his long fingers crushed the paper in excitement. "What! a chance of that? Show him in – and you, guard, stand at a distance at the door."

In another moment an old man with short-cut grey hair was introduced. He walked with the aid of a stick, and kept his eyes on the ground. He was habited in a shabby dark suit, out at elbows, somewhat clerical in cut, and he was shaved like a priest. His face was singularly mottled, in places yellow with sunburn, elsewhere white. He had bushy eyebrows that contrasted singularly with his close-clipped head and his smooth jaws.

"So!" said Guillem, striding up to him, "you have the keys – and who are you?"

"Messire Captain, I am your very humble servant."

"To the point! What are you at La Roque, and what do you want with me?"

"Messire, I am now caretaker of the fortress in the cliff. I hold the keys and am responsible for its custody."

"And what brings you here?"

"Messire, I am willing to let you in."

"Ah! On what terms?"

"Messire – I trust to your generosity."

"That is not a usual mode of doing business. Why do you come to me? Why betray your trust? There is a reason – is it money? I will pay. What do you demand?"

"I ask no money."

"Then in Heaven's name what do you want?"

"Revenge!" answered the old man, and bowed his head lower over his staff.

"Revenge! Hah! I can understand that. Revenge on someone in La Roque?"

"On someone who is not there now, but who will be there on the night that I admit you."

"And you ask me to revenge your wrong."

"I will do that for myself, Messire – only I can do nothing now. I am prepared to admit you within the walls of the town. I can do better than that – I will give you access to the castle – the town without the castle is nothing. The castle in itself is nothing. But the castle commands the town."

"Hah! let us in, within the walls of La Roque, and we will soon have the castle."

"You think that, Messire? You are mistaken. The castle is victualled for three months. There is a well in it that never runs dry. There is a garrison under the Sieur François de Bonaldi, brother of the Bishop. If you took the town with my help, it would be cracking the nut and not getting the kernel. From the castle they could rain down rocks on you, and if you attempted to hold the town they would dislodge you, though it might ruin the houses. No – the town without the castle is an eyeball without the iris. Take the castle and the town is yours."

"You may be right," said Le Gros Guillem, after a pause.

"I am positive I am right," said the old man, looking up and dropping his eyes again.

"What, then, do you propose?"

"On a night – let us say to-morrow before midnight, I will admit you and five men – "

"Why not more?"

"Harken, Messire, I have thought the plan out."

"Go on! – I am impatient to hear."

"It is you, Messire le Gros, who have interrupted me."

"Go on with your plan! If I do not approve, I will none of it. I am not going to run into a trap."

"A trap! Oh, Messire, how can you think of that?"

"Tell me your plan at once."

"It is this, Messire. I will let you in through the postern gate on the upper – the Vitrac – Sarlat Road, you and five men – no more. As many as you will need can be admitted later; they shall remain without till the castle is in your hands, and then two of your men who will tarry by the gate will unbar to them and let them all enter. But consider, Messire, it will not do to allow access to more than five at the outset – there are sentinels on the walls. I have no understanding with them, and they might see and give the alarm. If the alarm were given before you had obtained possession of the castle, then the whole expedition would be in vain. If you hold the castle you have the heart of La Roque Gageac in your hands."

"And you will admit us into the fortress?"

"I will admit you and three men."

"It is not enough."

"It suffices. There are but six men in the castle – and no guard is kept at night, for none is needed, as you will see when you get there. That on the town walls suffices; one of these men is in agreement with me. Him you must pay, but not me. I shall be well indemnified if I get my revenge."

"So then – you will first open the gate to me and five men. Then, two are to be left in charge of the gate, I and three others are next to be given admittance to the castle, where we are to overpower the garrison. You say there are but six men. That is very few."

"Messire, the Bishop says he can afford no more, and his brother, the Sieur François, has written to urge him to supply him with more, but he says that his treasury is exhausted and his land impoverished, and that there are no more men to be got. Besides, what they reckon on is for the whole garrison of the town to fly to the castle should the walls of the town fall into the enemy's power. It has never entered into their heads that the citadel should be first grasped, and the citadel commands all – it commands the town, it commands the road to Sarlat, it commands the whole country."

"And the Bishop says there is nothing to be got – no money?"

"So he says; that is the reason he gives. He told the Sieur François to do his best with the handful he has; he was unable to assist further."

"We will speedily prove if his words be true. We shall soon make him beat his head to think that he was so parsimonious that he had scruples about melting up his church plate. That only is an exhausted land which yields naught when it has passed through my sieve." Guillem halted in his walk, laid one hand on the shoulder of the old man, and said, in a tone in which was some suspicion, "So you will turn traitor, betray a trust for nothing!"

"Pardon, Messire; I said that I did it to satisfy my revenge."

"By the Holy Caul of Cahors!" ⁹ laughed Le Gros Guillem, "revenge is sweet, especially to the old. When the kisses of women and the clink of spurs and the fingering of gold no longer charm, revenge is still palatable. What makes you so lust for vengeance, old man?"

"Ah, Messire! what do the small troubles of a nobody like me concern you?"

Guillem let go his hold and recommenced his pacing: "The Holy Caul to my aid! but I, too, have my grievance, and my mouth waters for the same dainty as does yours. Let me but be established at La Roque, and they may expect me at Le Peuch."

"Who is at Le Peuch, Messire?"

"Old man, one who has injured my honour; one to whom I will show no mercy if I but get him in my grip. From La Roque I can command all the Sarladais, and I can swoop down at my leisure on Le Peuch. I shall get gold at Sarlat and blood at Le Peuch. By Heaven, I do not know which will best please me!"

"You accept my offer, Messire le Gros?"

"Aye – to-morrow, at an hour to midnight. Are you an ecclesiastic?"

"No, Messire."

"You have a clerical aspect; but I suppose all who serve the Bishop assume something of that. Very well. I shall be there – I and my men. Will you eat? Will you drink?"

"Thank you, Messire. I have not come from far – only across the water. The ferryman put me over. I made some excuse that I had a married daughter to visit, and none suspect evil; but I must make speed and return before mistrust breeds. Mistrust will spoil all, Messire."

"Very well. Go! So we meet to-morrow. If you fail – if you prove false, old man – terrible will be your lot."

"I shall not fail. Fear not. I shall not eat, I shall not sleep; I shall count the hours till you come."

Le Gros Guillem mused a moment. Then he said: "What shall be the sign by which you will know we are there – at the gate?"

"You will come," answered the old man, "to the little postern at the Sarlat gate. It lays on the right – twenty strides up the slope; you pass by a vineyard to it. I will tarry there till I hear you scratch like a cat."

"Very well – and the word?"

"The word – for a merry jest – as you said it, Le Peuch."

"Le Peuch – so be it," said the Captain. "Further – the main body of men will be posted outside, and they are not to be admitted till the castle is ours. How shall I communicate with them?"

"Nothing is easier," replied the castellan. "When Messire is above, and has got the men of the garrison bound, let him ring the alarm-bell. It is in the tower of the castle gate, and at once your men below will admit their fellows, and the townsfolk will awake to discover themselves betrayed, and in the hands of the illustrious and very generous Captain Guillem."

"It is good!" said the routier."You have thought this plan well out, old man."

"Oh, I have thought it well out. I have been long about it. I took much consideration before all was fitted together. So – there – all is agreed. I wish you well till we meet."

The castellan made for the door, but before he reached it, he rested on his staff, and burst into a convulsive fit of laughter.

"What is that?" asked the Captain, coming towards him. "What makes you laugh?"

"Excuse me, Messire. I am old, and my nerves are shaken. I have had much to agitate them – and these convulsive fits come on me – when I think I am on the eve of a great pleasure – and it will be a great pleasure," he turned and bowed, and made a salutation with his cap, and with extended hands – "ah! Messire a great pleasure, to open the gate, and let you in!" He bowed profoundly, and went out backwards laughing and saluting.