THE JESTING OF LA MEFFRAYE
It was in the White Tower of Machecoul that the Scottish maidens were
held at the mercy of the Lord of Retz. At their first arrival in the
country they had been taken to the quiet Chateau of Pouzauges, the
birthplace of Poitou, the marshal's most cruel and remorseless
confidant. Here, as the marshal had very truly informed the Lady
Sybilla, they had been under the care of--or, rather, fellow-prisoners
with--the neglected wife of Gilles de Retz, and at Pouzauges they had
spent some days of comparative peace and security in the society of
her daughter.
But at the first breath of the coming of the three strangers to the
district they had been seized and securely conveyed to Machecoul
itself--there to be interned behind the vast walls and triple bastions
of that fortress prison.
"I wonder, Maudie," said Margaret Douglas, as they sat on the flat
roof of the White Tower of Machecoul and looked over the battlements
upon the green pine glades and wide seaward Landes, "I wonder whether
we shall ever again see the water of Dee and our mother--and Sholto
MacKim."
It is to be feared that the last part of the problem exceeded in
interest all others in the eyes of Maud Lindesay.
"It seems as if we never could again behold any one we loved or wished
to see--here in this horrible place," sighed Maud Lindesay. "If ever I
get back to the dear land and see Solway side, I will be a different
girl."
"But, Maud," said the little maid, reproachfully, "you were always
good and kind. It is not well done of you to speak against yourself in
that fashion."
Maud Lindesay shook her pretty head mournfully.
"Ah, Margaret, you will know some day," she said. "I have been
wicked,--not in things one has to confess to Father Gawain,
but,--well, in making people like me, and give me things, and come to
see me, and then afterwards flouting them for it and sending them
away."
It was not a lucid description, but it sufficed.
"Ah, but," said Margaret Douglas, "I think not these things to be
wicked. I hope that some day I shall do just the same, though, of
course, I shall not be as beautiful as you, Maudie; no, never! I asked
Sholto MacKim if I would, and he said, 'Of course not!' in a deep
voice. It was not pretty of him, was it, Maud?"
"I think it was very prettily said of him," answered Maud Lindesay,
with the first flicker of a smile on her face. Her conscience was
quite at ease about Sholto. He was different. Whatever pain she had
caused him, she meant to make up to him with usury thereto. The others
she had exercised no more for her own amusement than for their own
souls' good.
"My brother William must indeed be very angry with us, that he hath
never sent to find us and bring us home," went on the little girl. "It
is three months since we met that horrible old woman in the woods
above Thrieve Island, and believed her when she told us that the Earl
had instant need of us--and that Sholto MacKim was with him."
"None saw us taken away. Margaret," said the elder, "and perhaps, who
knows, they may never have found any of the pieces of flower garlands
I threw down before they put us in the boats from the beach of
Cassencary."
But the eyes of the little Maid of Galloway were now fixed upon
something in the green courtyard below.
"Maud, Maud, come hither quickly!" she whispered; "if yonder be not
Laurence MacKim talking to the singing lads and dressed like
them--why, then, I do not know Laurie MacKim!"
Maud came quickly now. Her face and neck blushed suddenly crimson with
the springing of hope in her heart.
She looked down, and there, far below them indeed, but yet distinct
enough, they saw Laurence daring Blaise Renouf to single combat and
vaunting his Irish prowess, as we have already seen him do. Maud
Lindesay caught her companion's hand as she looked.
"They have found us," she whispered; "at least, they are seeking for
us. If Laurence is here, I warrant Sholto cannot be very far away. Oh,
Margaret, am I looking very ill? Will he think I am as--(she paused
for a word)--as comely as he thought me before in Scotland? Or have I
grown old and ugly with being shut up so long?"
But the Maid of Galloway heard her not. She was pondering on the
meaning of Laurence's presence in the Castle of Machecoul.
"Perhaps William hath sent Laurence to spy us out, and is even now
coming from his French duchy with an army. He is a far greater man
than the marshal, and will make him give us up as soon as he finds out
where we are. Shall I call down to Laurie to let him know that we are
here?"
Maud put her hand hastily over her companion's mouth.
"Hush!" she said, "we must not appear to know him, or they will surely
kill him--and perhaps the others, too. If Laurence is here, I wot well
that help is not far away. Let us be patient and abide. Come back from
the wall and sit by me as if nothing, had happened."
But all the same she kept her own place in a spot where she could
command the pleasaunce below, and looked longingly yet fearfully to
see Sholto follow his brother across the green sward.
* * * * *
"Sweet and fair is the air of the evening," purred behind them a low
voice--that of the woman who was called La Meffraye. "It brings the
colour to the cheeks of the young. But I am old and wise, and I would
advise that two maids so fair should not look down on the sports of
the youths, lest they hear and see more than is fitting for such
innocent eyes."
The girls turned away without looking at their custodian, who stood
leaning upon her little hand crutch and smiling upon them her terrible
soft smile.
"Ah," she said, "proud, are you? 'Tis an ill place to bring pride to,
this Castle of Machecoul. You will not deign to speak a word to a poor
old woman now. But the day is not far distant when I shall have my
pretty spitfire clinging about these old trembling knees, and
beseeching me whom you despise, as a woman either to save you or kill
you--you will not care which. _As a woman!_ Ha! ha! How long is it
since La Meffraye was a woman? Was she ever rocked in a cradle? Did
she play about any cottage door and fashion daisy chains, as I have
seen you do, my pretties, long ere you came to Machecoul or even heard
of the Sieur de Retz? Hath La Meffraye ever lain in any man's
bosom--save as the tigress crouches upon her prey?"
She paused and smiled still more bitterly and malevolently than before
upon the two maidens.
"Did you chance to be awake yester-even?" she went on. "Aye, I know
well that you were awake. La Meffraye saw right carefully to that. And
you heard the crying that rang out of yonder high window, from which
the light streamed all through the night. Wait, wait, my pretties,
till it is your turn to be sent for up thither, when the shining knife
is sharpened and the red fire kindled. You will not despise La
Meffraye when that day comes. You will grovel and weep, and then will
La Meffraye spurn you with her foot, till the noise of your crying be
borne out over the forest, and for very gladness the wolves howl in
the darkness."
The little Maid of Galloway was moved to answer, and her lips
quivered. But Maud Lindesay sat pale and motionless, looking towards
the north, from which she hoped for help to come.
"Our brother, the Earl of Douglas, will bring an army from his dukedom
of Touraine, and sweep you and your castle from the face of the earth,
if your master dares to lay so much as a finger upon us."
La Meffraye laughed a low, cackling laugh, and in the act showed the
four long eye-teeth which were the sole remaining dental equipment of
her mouth.
"Oh, Great Barran--" she chuckled, "listen to the pretty fool! Our
brother will do this--our brother will do that. _Our_ brother will
lick the country of Retz as clean as a dog licks a platter. Know you
not, silly fool, that both your brothers are long since dead and under
sod in the castle of your city of Edinburgh. I tell you my master set
his little finger upon them and crushed them like flies on a summer
chamber wall!"
Maud Lindesay rose to her feet as La Meffraye spoke these words.
"It is not true," she cried; "you lie to us as you have done from the
first. The Earl of Douglas is not dead!"
It was now little Margaret who showed the spirit of her race, and put
out her hand to clasp that of her elder comrade.
"Do not let her even know that she has power to hurt us with her
words," she whispered low to Maud Lindesay. Then she spoke aloud:
"If that which you say be true and my brothers are dead--there are yet
Douglases. Our cousins will deliver us."
"Your cousins have entered into your possessions," jeered the hag; "it
is indeed a likely thing that they will desire your return to Scotland
in order to rob them of that which is their own."
"We are not afraid," said the little maid, stoutly; "there are many in
the land of the Scots who would gladly die to help us."
"Aye, that is it. They shall die--all die. Three of them died
yester-even, torn to pieces by my lord's wolves. Fine, swift,
four-footed guardians of the Castle of Machecoul--La Meffraye's
friends! And one young cock below there of the same gang hath gone
even now to my lord's chamber. He hath mounted the stairs he will
never descend."
"Well," said the Maid of Galloway, "even so--we are not afraid. We can
die, as died our friends."
"Die--die!" cried the hag, sharply, angered at the child's
persistence. "'Tis easy to talk. To snuff a candle out is to die.
Poof, 'tis done! But the young and beautiful like you, my dearies, do
not so die at Machecoul. No; rather as a dying candle flickers
out--falls low, and rises again, so they die. As wine oozes drop by
drop from the needle-punctured wine-skin--so shall you die, weeping,
beseeching, drained to the white like a dripping calf in the shambles,
yet at the same time reddened and shamed with the shame deadly and
unnameable. Then La Meffraye, whom now you disdain to answer with a
look, will wash her hands in your life's blood and laugh as your tears
fall slowly upon the latchet of her shoon!"
But a new voice broke in upon the railing of the hideous woman fiend.
"_Out, foul hag! Get you to your own place!_" it said, with an accent
strong and commanding.
And the affrighted and heart-sick girls turned them about to see the
Lady Sybilla stand fair and pale at the head of the turret stair which
opened out upon the roof of the White Tower.
At this interruption the eyes of La Meffraye seemed to burn with a
fresher fury, and the green light in them shone as shines an emerald
stone held up to the sun.
The hag cowered, however, before the outstretched index finger of
Sybilla de Thouars.
"Ah, fair lady," she whimpered, "be not angry--and tell not my lord, I
beseech you. I did but jest."
"_Hence!_" the finger was still outstretched, and, in obedience to the
threatening gesture, the hag shrank away. But as she passed through
the portal down the steps of the turret, she flung back certain words
with a defiant fleer.
"Ah, you are young, my lady, and for the present--for the present your
power is greater than mine. But wait! Your beauty will wither and grow
old. Your power will depart from you. But La Meffraye can never grow
older, and when once the secret is discovered, and my lord is young
again, La Meffraye is the one who with him shall bloom with immortal
youth, while you, proud lady, lie cold in the belly of the worm."
* * * * *
"It is true--all too true," said Sybilla de Thouars, sadly, "they are
dead. The young, the noble were--and are no more. I who speak saw them
die. And that so greatly, that even in death their lives cease not.
Their glory shall flow on so that the young brook shall become a
river, and the river become a sea."
Then in few words and quiet, she told them all the heavy tale.
But when the maids made as though they would cleave to her for the
sympathy that was in her words and because of her tears, she set the
palms of her hands against their breasts and cried, "Come not near one
whom not all the fires of purgatory can purify--one who, like
Iscariot, hath contracted herself outside the mercy of God and of our
Lord Christ!"
But all the more they clave to her, overpassing her protestations and
clasping her, so that, being deeply moved, she sat down on the steps
of a corner turret which rose from the greater, and wept there, with
the weeping wherewith women are wont to ease the heart.
Then went Maud Lindesay to her and set her hand about her neck, and
kissed her, saying: "Do not be sorry any more. Confess to the minister
of God. I also have sinned and been sorry. Yet after came forgiveness
and the unbound heart."
Then the Lady Sybilla ceased quickly and looked up, as it had been,
smiling. Yet she was not smiling as maidens are wont to smile.
"Pretty innocent," she said, "you mean well, but you know not what the
word 'sin' means to such as I. Confess--absolve! Not even the Holy One
and the Just could give me that. I tell you I have eaten of the apple
of the knowledge of good and evil--yes, the very core I have eaten. I
have the taste of innocent blood upon my lips. I have seen the axe
fall, the axe which I put into the headsman's hands. I am condemned,
and that justly. But one of you shall live to taste sweet love, and
the crown of life, and to feel the innocent lips of children at her
breasts. And the other--but enough. Farewell. Fear not. God, who has
been cruel in all else, has given your lives to Sybilla de Thouars,
ere in His own time He strike that guilty one with His thunderbolt."
And as she went within, the eyes of the maids followed her; but the
masked man with the naked sword never so much as turned his head,
gazing straight forward over the battlements of the White Tower into
the lilac mist which hung above the Atlantic.