CÆSAR MARTIN'S WIFE
Presently he returned and conducted them to a decent stable, where
they saw their beasts bestowed and well provided with bedding and
forage for the night. Then the old cripple, more than ever bent upon
his stick, but nevertheless chuckling to himself all the way, preceded
them into the house.
"Ah, she is clever," he muttered; "she thinks her demon tells her
everything. But even La Meffraye will not know where I have hidden
that beautiful gold."
So he sniggered senilely to himself between his fits of coughing.
It was a low, wide room of strange aspect into which the old man
conducted his guests. The floor was of hard-beaten earth, but cleanly
kept and firm to the feet. The fireplace, with a hearth round it of
built stone, was placed in the midst, and from the rafters depended
many chains and hooks. A wooden settle ran half round the hearthstone
on the side farthest from the draught of the door. The weary three sat
down and stretched their limbs. The fire had burnt low, and Sholto,
reaching to a faggot heap by the side wall, began to toss on boughs of
green birch in handfuls, till the lovely white flame arose and the sap
spat and hissed in explosive puffs.
_"Birk when 'tis green
Makes a fire for a king!"_
Malise hummed the old Scots lines, and the cripple coming in at that
moment raised a shrill bark of protest.
"My good wood, my fuel that cost me so many sore backs--be careful,
young sir. Faggots of birch are dear in this country of Machecoul. My
lord is of those who give nothing for naught."
"Oh, we shall surely pay for what we use," cried careless James; "let
us eat, and warm our toes, and therewith have somewhat less of thy
prating, old dotard. It can be shrewdly cold in this westerly country
of yours."
"Pay," cried the old man, holding up his clawed hands; "do you mean
_more_ pay--more besides the beautiful gold angel? Here--"
He ran out and presently returned with armful after armful of faggots,
while his guests laughed to find his mood so changed.
"Here," he cried, running to and fro like a fretful hen, "take it all,
and when that is done, this also, and this. Nay, I will stay up all
night to carry more from the forest of Machecoul."
"And you who were so afraid to open to three honest men, would you
venture to bring faggots by night from yon dark wood?"
"Nay," said the old man, cunningly, "I meant not from the forest, but
from my neighbours' woodpiles. Yet for lovely gold I would even
venture to go thither--that is, if I had my image of the Blessed
Mother about my neck and the moon shone very bright."
"Now haste thee with the barley brew," said Lord James, "for my
stomach is as deep as a well and as empty as the purse of a younger
son."
The strange cripple emitted another bird-like cachinnation, resembling
the sound which is made by the wooden cogwheels wherewithal boys
fright the crows from the cornfields when the August sun is yellowing
the land.
"Poor old Cæsar Martin can show you something better than that," he
cried, as he hirpled out (for so Malise described it afterwards) and
presently returned dragging a great iron pot with a strength which
seemed incredible in so ramshackle a body.
"Ha! ha!" he said, "here is fragrant stew; smell it. Is it not good?
In ten minutes it will be so hot and toothsome that you will scarce
have patience to wait till it be decently cool in the platters. This
is not common Angevin stew, but Bas Breton--which is a far better
thing."
Malise rose, and, relieving the old man, with one finger swung the pot
to a crook that hung over the cheerful blaze of the birchwood.
The old cripple Cæsar Martin now mounted on a stool and stirred the
mess with a long stick, at the end of which was a steel fork of two
prongs. And as he stirred he talked:
"God bless you, say I, brave gentlemen and good pilgrims. Surely it
was a wind noble and fortunate that blew you hither to taste my broth.
There be fine pigeons here, fat and young. There be leverets juicy and
tender as a maid untried. There--what think you of that?" (he held
each ingredient up on a prong as he spoke). "And here be larks,
partridge stuffed with sage, ripe chestnuts from La Valery, and
whisper it not to any of the marshal's men, a fawn from the park of a
month old, dressed like a kid so that none may know."
"I suppose that so much providing is for your four sons?" said Sholto.
The cripple laughed again his feeble, fleering laugh.
"I have no sons, honest sir," he said; "it was but a weakling's policy
to tell you so, lest there should have been evil in your hearts. But I
have a wife and that is enough. You may have heard of her. She is
called La Meffraye."
As he spoke his face took on an access of white terror, even as it had
done when he looked out of the window.
"La Meffraye is she well named," he repeated the appellation with a
harsh croak as of a night-hawk screaming. "God forfend that she should
come home to-night and find you here!"
"Why, good sir," smiled James Douglas, "if that be the manner in which
you speak of your housewife, faith, I am right glad to have remained a
bachelor."
Cæsar the cripple looked about him and lowered his voice.
"Hush!" he quavered, breathing hard so that his words whistled between
his toothless gums, "you do not know my wife. I tell you, she is the
familiar of the marshal himself."
"Then," cried James Douglas, slapping his thigh, "she is young and
pretty, of a surety. I know what these soldiers are familiar with. I
would that she would come home and partake with us now."
"Nay," said the old man, without taking offence, "you mistake, kind
sir, I meant familiar in witchcraft, in devilry--not (as it were) in
levity and cozenage."
The fragrant stew was now ready to be dished in great platters of
wood, and the guests fell to keenly, each being provided with a wooden
spoon. The meat they cut with their daggers, but the most part was,
however, tender enough to come apart in their fingers, which, as all
know, better preserves the savour.
At first the cripple denied having any wine, but another gold angel
from the Lord James induced him to draw a leathern bottle from some
secret hoard, and decant it into a pitcher for them. It was resinous
and Spanish, but, as Malise said, "It made warm the way it went down."
And after all with wine that is always the principal thing.
As the feast proceeded old Cæsar Martin told the three Scots why the
long street of the village had been cleared of children so quickly at
the first sound of their horses' feet.
"And in truth if you had not come across the moor, but along the
beaten track from the Chateau of Machecoul, you would never have
caught so much as a glimpse of any child or mother in all Saint
Philbert."
At this point he beckoned Sholto, Malise, and the Lord James to come
nearer to him, and standing with his back to the fire and their three
heads very close, he related the terrible tale of the Dread that for
eight years had stalked grim and gaunt through the westlands of
France, La Vendée, and Bas Bretagne. In all La Vendée there was not a
village that had not lost a child. In many a hamlet about the shores
of the sunny Loire was there scarce a house from which one had not
vanished. They were seen playing in the greenwood, the eye was lifted,
and lo! they were not. A boy went to the well. An hour after his
pitcher stood beside it filled to the brim. But he himself was never
more seen by holt or heath. A little maid, sweet and innocent, looked
over the churchyard wall; she spied something that pleased her. She
climbed over to get it--and was not.
"Oh, I could tell you of a thousand such if I had time," shrilled the
thin treble of the cripple in their eager ears, "if I dared--if I only
dared!"
"Dared," said Malise; "why man--what is the matter with you? None
could hear you but we three men."
"My wife--my wife," he quavered; "I bid you be silent, or at least
speak not so loud. La Meffraye she is called--she can hear all things.
See--"
He made a sudden movement and bared his right arm. It was withered to
the shoulder and of a dark purple colour approaching black.
"La Meffraye did that," he gasped; "she blasted it because I would not
do the evil she wished."
"Then why do you not kill her?" said Malise, whose methods were not
subtle. "If she were mine, I would throttle her, and give her body to
the hounds."
"Hush, I bid you be silent for dear God's sake in whom I believe,"
again came the voice of the cripple. "You do not know what you say. La
Meffraye cannot die. Perhaps she will vanish away in a blast of the
fire of hell--one day when God is very strong and angry. But she
cannot die. She only leads others to death. She dies not herself."
"You are kind, gentlemen," he went on after a pause, finding them
continue silent; "I will show you all. Pray the saint for me at his
shrine that I may die and go to purgatory. Or (if it were to a
different one) even to hell--that I might escape for ever from La
Meffraye."
His hand fumbled a moment at the closely buttoned collar of his blue
blouse. Then he succeeded in undoing it and showed his neck. From chin
to bosom it was a mass of ghastly bites, some partially healed, more
of them recent and yet raw, while the skin, so far as the three Scots
could observe it, was covered with a hieroglyphic of scratches, claw
marks, and, as it seemed, the bites of some fierce wild beast.
"Great Master of Heaven!" cried James Douglas. "What hell hound hath
done this to you?"
"The wife of my bosom," quoth very grimly Cæsar the cripple.
"A good evening to you, gentlemen all," said a soft and winning voice
from the doorway.
At the sound the old man staggered, reeled, and would have swayed into
the fire had not Sholto seized him and dragged him out upon the floor.
All rose to their feet.
In the doorway of the cottage stood an old woman, small, smiling,
delicate of feature. She looked benignly upon them and continued to
smile. Her hair and her eyes were her most noticeable features. The
former was abundant and hung loosely about the woman's brow and over
her shoulders in wisps of a curious greenish white, the colour almost
of mouldy cheese, while, under shaggy white eyebrows, her large eyes
shone piercing and green as emerald stones on the hand of some dusky
monarch of the Orient.
The old woman it was who spoke first, before any of the men could
recover from their surprise.
"My husband," she said, still calmly smiling upon them, "my poor
husband has doubtless been telling you his foolish tales. The saints
have permitted him to become demented. It is a great trial to a poor
woman like me, but the will of heaven be done!"
The three Scots stood silent and transfixed, for it was an age of
belief. But the cripple lay back on the settle where Sholto had placed
him, his lips white and gluey. And as he lay he muttered audibly, "La
Meffraye! La Meffraye! Oh, what will become of poor Cæsar Martin this
night!"