In a Robber Camp
On a low ridge overlooking the town of Carcassonne—girt then, as now,
by the huge, dark-grey walls, against which, a century and a half
before, Simon de Montfort’s destroying hosts had beaten in vain—was
pitched the camp of one of those terrible “Free Companies” which, as
the old peasant of the Loire had truly said, were the bane of France.
At every period of the Dark Ages, Europe swarmed with robber bands; but
the fourteenth century alone could have exhibited such a phenomenon as
robber bands six, eight, and ten thousand strong, with tents, banners,
waggon-trains, generals, officers, and even clergymen of their own. For
so strange a thing is human nature, that each of these brigand-armies
had its own chaplain (usually as ruffianly as his bandit flock), and
these double-dyed villains, who set at nought all the laws of God and
man, would have shuddered at the thought of going forth to rob and
murder till this model Churchman had solemnly blessed the enterprise,
and prayed Heaven to aid them to steal and slay.
The strong walls of Carcassonne itself had defied these plunderers; but
all around it they had been terribly busy—seizing castles, burning
villages, sacking towns, wasting what miserable remnants of cultivation
the ceaseless wars had left, inflicting tortures too hideous to name on
all whom they suspected of having any money, and, in a word, draining
the very life-blood of the ill-fated land on which all calamities known
to men seemed outpoured at once.
Apart from the brutal faces of the men themselves, unmistakable proofs
of what they were lay all around. Splendid armour, flecked with ominous
drops of red, rich gold and silver plate, gay clothing and costly
jewels, lay scattered in the dirt like things of no value, and, farther
on, appeared a bound and helpless mass of men, women, and children,
some dissolved in tears, others plunged in silent despair, who had been
prosperous burghers, thriving farmers, or well-to-do craftsmen, till
the clutch of the Free Company changed them in a moment to beggared and
broken-hearted captives.
On one side, two old comrades were fighting hand to hand, and mangling
each other with ghastly wounds over a sudden and senseless quarrel
about the division of their plunder. On the other, a ruffian who had
been losing heavily at dice, had just ended the game by the simple
method of stabbing the winner to the heart, and was rummaging from the
dead man’s pockets, with a wolfish grin, all the coin they held. From
end to end of the camp brutal oaths, blasphemous songs, ribald tales,
savage abuse in half a dozen languages, and jests too horribly foul to
quote, made the air ring; and, in the midst of this hell on earth, a
filthy and half-drunken cut-throat, supporting himself by the shoulder
of an equally drunken comrade, was boisterously drinking the health of
the Evil One, while his companion, holding a plundered church-chalice
to his lips with a hand still wet from recent murder, hoarsely added,
“May he send us a long and bloody war!”
A little apart sat the leader of that wolfish host—a leader fully
worthy of them, who, so far as he differed from his fellow-brutes,
differed for the worse.
He was a man of giant size, whose heavy, low-browed, bulldog face,
seamed with scars and bloated with habitual excess, was half hidden by
a shaggy beard and a mane of coarse black hair. By him lay his stained
and battered armour, and his mighty limbs were thrown carelessly on a
torn and muddied altar-cloth of embroidered velvet, as he drank his
wine from a sacramental cup—proceedings watched with visible dismay by
some of his followers, who, steeped as they were in the foulest crimes,
could still tremble at the thought of sacrilege.
But whatever they might think, no one dared to say a word; for Croquart
(the Cruncher)—as this ruffian was named, from the ravages that had
made him the terror of the whole country—was not a safe man to provoke
at any time; and just then it was plain by the black frown which
darkened his low brow, that he was, if possible, in a worse temper than
usual.
In fact, the worthy cut-throat was finding out, to his great disgust,
that even robbers cannot get a living where there is no one to rob; and
such was now the case in his present field of operations.
As soon as it was known that the dreaded Croquart and his men were
encamped by Carcassonne, all alike—travellers, traders, pilgrims,
labourers, and even beggars—avoided the town as if the plague were in
it, preferring to make a circuit of many miles rather than risk falling
into the hands of a man whose pet sport was to burn people alive, or
tie them to a tree to be shot full of arrows!
For three days the wide sweep of bare upland overlooked by the robber
camp had lain voiceless and lifeless as a desert. No living thing was
to be seen, and Croquart, not having robbed or murdered any one for
three whole days, found time hang heavy on his unwashed hands.
“Where loiter these dog scouts of mine?” growled the ruffian, glaring
round with his bloodshot eyes in quest of the two swift riders whom he
had sent forth to watch for any sign of prey. “If they bring not word
of some game afoot, it shall go ill with them! Swords and halberds! a
man may as well be a stone or a stock as sit here doing nought till his
sinews wax rusty through idleness!”
Hardly had he spoken when two riders were seen approaching, but so
slowly and unwillingly that it was plain they had no success to report.
Keeping at a safe distance—for this savage, in his fits of drunken
fury, cared as little for the lives of his own men as for those of his
wretched captives—they shouted to him that they had scoured the whole
district and found nothing.
Croquart growled a fearful curse, and gripped his sword-hilt as if
about to kill them both. Then his mood suddenly changed, and he gave a
hoarse laugh.
“Since my guests are so long in coming, it is meet they be well
received when they do. May I never take plunder more if I bind not to a
tree the first man who passes, and shoot as many arrows into him as
there be quills on a hedge-hog!”
As the wretch uttered his cruel vow—which all who heard it knew he
would keep—a single figure was seen advancing, in the dark robe of a
monk. A nearer view showed the white hair and beard of an old man; and
then the startled robbers recognized the pilgrim-monk, Brother Michael!