THE ALTAR OF IRON
And now what of Master Laurence, lately clerk in the Abbey of Dulce
Cor, presently in service with the great Lord of Retz, Messire Gilles
de Laval, Marshal and Chamberlain of the King of France?
Laurence had been a month at Machecoul and had not yet worn out his
welcome. He was sunning himself with certain young clerks and
choristers of the marshal's privy chapel of the Holy Innocents.
Suddenly Clerk Henriet appeared under the arches at the upper end of
the pretty cloisters, in the aisles of which the youths were seated.
Henriet regarded them silently for a moment, looking with special
approval upon the blonde curls and pink cheeks of the young Scottish
lad.
Machecoul was a vast feudal castle with one great central square tower
and many smaller ones about it. The circuit of its walls enclosed
gardens and pleasaunces, and included within its limits the new and
beautiful chapel which has been recently finished by that good
Catholic and ardent religionary, the Marshal de Retz.
As yet, Laurence had been able to learn nothing of the maids, not even
whether they were alive or dead, whether at Machecoul or elsewhere. At
the first mention of maidens being brought from Scotland to the
castle, or seen about its courts, a dead silence fell upon the
company of priests and singers in the marshal's chapel. It was the
same when Laurence spoke of the business privately to any of his new
acquaintances.
No matter how briskly the conversation had been prospering hitherto,
if, at Holy Mass or jovial supper board, Laurence so much as breathed
a question concerning the subject next his heart, an instant blight
passed over the gaiety of his companions. Fear momently wiped every
other expression from their faces, and they answered with lame
evasion, or more often not at all.
The shadow of the Lord of Machecoul lay heavy upon them.
Clerk Henriet stood awhile watching the lads and listening to their
talk behind the carved lattice of Caen stone, with its lace-like
tracery of buds and flowers, through which the natural roses pushed
their way, and over which the clematis tangled its twining stems.
"Stand up and prove on my body that I am a rank Irelander," Laurence
was saying defiantly to the world at large, with his fists up and his
head thrown back. "Saint Christopher, but I will take the lot of you
with one hand tied behind me. Stand up and I will teach you how to
sing 'Miserable sinners are we all!' to a new and unkenned tune."
"'Tis easy for you to boast, Irelander," retorted Blaise Renouf, the
son of the lay choir-master, who had been brought specially from Rome
to teach the choir-boys of the marshal's chapel the latest fashions in
holy song. "We will either fight you with swords or not at all. We do
not fight with our bare knuckles, being civilised. And that indeed
proves that you are no true lover of the French, but an English dog of
unknightly birth."
This retort still further irritated the hot-headed son of Malise.
"I will fight you or any galley slave of a French frog with the sword,
or spit you upon the rapier. I will cleave you with the axe, transfix
you with the arrow, or blow you to the pit with the devil's sulphur. I
will fight any of you or all of you with any weapons from a
battering-ram to a toothpick--and God assist the better man. And there
you have Laurence O'Halloran, at your service!"
"You are a loud-crowing young cock for a newcomer," said Henriet, the
confidential clerk of the marshal, suddenly appearing in the doorway;
"you are desired to follow me to my lord's chamber immediately. There
we will see if you will flap your wings so boldly."
Laurence could not help noticing the blank alarm which this
announcement caused among the youth with whom he had been playing the
ancient game of brag.
It was Blaise Renouf who first recovered. He looked across the little
rose-grown space of the cloister to see that Henriet had turned his
back, and then came quickly up to Laurence MacKim.
"Listen to me," he said; "you are a game lad enough, but you do not
know where you are going, nor yet what may happen to you there. We
will fight you if you come back safe, but meantime you are one of
ourselves, and we of the choir have sworn to stand by one another. Can
you keep a pea in your mouth without swallowing it?"
"Why, of course I can," said Laurence, wondering what was to come
next. "I can keep a dozen and shoot them through a bore of alder tree
at a penny without missing once, which I wot is more than any
Frenchman ever--"
"Well, then," whispered the lad Renouf, breaking in on his boast with
a white countenance, "hearken well to me. When you enter the chamber
of the marshal, put this in your mouth. And if nothing happens keep it
there, but be careful neither to swallow it nor yet to bite upon it.
But if it should chance that either Henriet or Poitou or Gilles de
Sillé seize hold of your arms, bite hard upon the pellet till you feel
a bitter taste and then swallow. That is all. You are indeed a cock
whose comb wants cutting, and if all be well, we will incise it for
your soul's good. But in the meanwhile you are of our company and
fellowship. So for God's sake and your own do as you are bid. Fare you
well."
As he followed Clerk Henriet, Laurence looked at the round pellet in
his hand. It was white, soft like ripe fruit, of an elastic
consistency, and of the largeness of a pea.
As Laurence ascended the stairs, he heard the practice of the choir
beginning in the chapel. Precentor Renouf, the father of Blaise, had
summoned the youths from the cloisters with a long mellow whistle upon
his Italian pitch-pipe, running up and down the scale and ending with
a flourished "A-a-men."
The open windows and the pierced stone railing of the great staircase
of Machecoul brought up the sound of that sweet singing from the
chapel to the ear of the adventurous Scot as through a funnel. They
were beginning the practice for the Christmas services, though the
time was not yet near.
"_Unto God be the glory
In the Highest;
Peace be on the earth,
On the earth,
Unto men who have good-will._"
So they chanted in their white robes in the Chapel of the Holy
Innocents in the Castle of Machecoul near by the Atlantic shore.
The chamber of Gilles de Retz testified to the extraordinary
advancement of that great man in knowledge which has been claimed as
peculiar to much later centuries. The window casements were so
arranged that in a moment the place could either be made as dark as
midnight or flooded with bright light. The walls were always freshly
whitewashed, and the lime was constantly renewed. The stone floor was
stained a deep brick red, and that, too, would often be applied
freshly during the night. At a time when the very word "sanitation"
was unknown, Gilles had properly constructed conduits leading from an
adjoining apartment to the castle ditch. The chimney was wide as a
peasant's whole house, and the vast fireplace could hold on its iron
dogs an entire waggon-load of faggots. Indeed, that amount was
regularly consumed every day when the marshal deigned to abide at
Machecoul for his health and in pursuance of his wonderful studies
into the deep things of the universe.
"Bide here a moment," said Clerk Henriet, bending his body in a
writhing contortion to listen to what might be going on inside the
chamber; "I dare not take you in till I see whether my lord be in good
case to receive you."
So at the stair-head, by a window lattice which looked towards the
chapel, Laurence stood and waited. At first he kept quite still and
listened with pleasure to the distant singing of the boys. He could
even hear Precentor Renouf occasionally stop and rebuke them for
inattention or singing out of tune.
"_My soul is like a watered garden,
And I shall not sorrow any more at all!_"
So he hummed as he listened, and beat the time on the ledge with his
fingers. He felt singularly content. Now he was on the eve of
penetrating the mystery. At last he would discover where the missing
maidens were concealed.
But soon he began to look about him, growing, like the boy he was,
quickly weary of inaction. His eye fell upon a strange door with
curious marks burnt upon its panels apparently by hot irons. There
were circles complete and circles that stopped half-way, together with
letters of some unknown language arranged mostly in triangles.
This door fixed the lad's attention with a certain curious
fascination. He longed to touch it and see whether it opened, but for
the moment he was too much afraid of his guide's return to summon him
into the presence of the marshal.
He listened intently. Surely he heard a low sound, like the wind in a
distant keyhole--or, as it might be (and it seemed more like it), the
moaning of a child in pain, it knows not why.
The heart of the youth gave a sudden leap. It came to him that he had
hit upon the hiding-place of Margaret Douglas, the heiress of the
great province of Galloway. His fortune was made.
With a trembling hand he moved a step towards the door of white wood
with the curious burned marks upon it. He stood a moment listening,
half for the returning footsteps of Clerk Henriet, and half to the
low, persistent whimper behind the panels. Suddenly he felt his right
foot wet, for, as was the fashion, he wore only a velvet shoe pointed
at the toe. He looked down, and lo! from under the door trickled a
thin stream of red.
Laurence drew his foot away, with a quick catching sob of the breath.
But his hand was already on the door, and at a touch it appeared to
open almost of its own accord. He found himself looking from the dusk
of the outer whitewashed passage into a high, vaulted chapel, wherein
many dim lights glimmered. At the end there was a great altar of iron
standing square and solemn upon the platform on which it was set up,
and behind it, cut indistinctly against a greenish glow of light, and
imagined rather than clearly defined, the vast statue of a man with a
curiously high shaped head. Laurence could not distinguish any
features, so deep was the gloom, but the whole figure seemed to be
bending slightly forward, as if gloating upon that which was laid upon
the altar. But what struck Laurence with a sense of awe and terror was
the fact that as the greenish light behind waxed and waned, he could
see shadowy horns which projected from either side of the forehead,
and lower, short ears, pricked and shaggy like those of a he-goat.
Nearer the door, where he stood in the densest gloom, something moved
to and fro, and as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness Laurence
could see that it was the bent figure of a woman. He could not
distinguish her face, but it was certainly a woman of great age and
bodily weakness, whose tangled hair hung down her back, and who halted
curiously upon one foot as she walked. She was bending over a low
couch, whereon lay a little shrouded figure, from which proceeded the
low whimpering sound which he had heard from without. But even at that
moment, as he waited trembling at the door, the moaning ceased, and
there ensued a long silence, in which Laurence could clearly
distinguish the beating of his own heart. It sounded loud in his ears
as a drum that beats the alarm in the streets of a city.
The figure of the woman bent low to the couch, and, after a pause,
with a satisfied air she threw a white cloth over the shrouded form
which lay upon it. Then, without looking towards the door where
Laurence stood, she went to the great iron altar at the upper end of
the weird chapel and threw something on the red embers which glowed
upon it.
"_Barran--most mighty Barran-Sathanas, accept this offering, and
reveal thyself to my master!_" she said in a voice like a chant.
A greenish smoke of stifling odour rose and filled all the place, and
through it the huge horned figure above the altar seemed to turn its
head and look at the boy.
Laurence could scarcely repress a cry of terror. He set his hand to
the door, and lo! as it had opened, so it appeared to shut of itself.
He sank almost fainting against the cold iron bars of the window which
looked out upon the courtyard below. The wind blew in upon him sweet
and cool, and with it there came again the sound of the singing of the
choir. They were practising the song of the Holy Innocents, which, by
command of the marshal himself, Precentor Renouf had set to excellent
and accordant music of his own invention.
"_A voice was heard in Ramah,
In Ramah,
Lamentations and bitter weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children,
Refused to be comforted:
For her children,
Because they were not._"
Obviously there was some mistake or lack of attention on the part of
the choir, for the last line had to be repeated three times.
"_Because they were not._"