THE TOWER OF DEATH
Throughout La Vendée and all the country of Retz had run a terrible
rumour. "The Marshal de Retz is the murderer of our children. He has a
thousand bodies in the vaults of his castles. The Duke of Brittany has
given orders that they shall be searched. His soldiers are forsaking
him. The names of the dead have been written in black and white, and
are in the hands of the headmen of the villages. Hasten--it is the
hour of vengeance! Let us overwhelm him! Rise up and let us seek our
lost ones, even if we find no more than their bones!"
And terrible as had been the gathering of the were-wolves in the dark
forests around Machecoul upon the night of the fight by the hollow
tree, far more threatening and terrible was the uprising of the angry
commons.
In whole villages there was not a man left, and mothers too marched in
that muster armed with choppers and kitchen knives, wild eyed and
angry hearted as lionesses robbed of their cubs. From the deep glens
and deeper woods of the country of Retz they poured. They disgorged
from the caves of the earth whither the greed and rapacity of their
terrible lord had driven them.
Schoolmasters were there with the elder of their pupils. For many of
the vanished children had disappeared on their way to school, and
these men were in danger of losing both their credit and occupation.
Towards Tiffauges, Champtocé, Machecoul, the angry populace, long
repressed, surged tumultuously, and with them, much wondering at their
orders, went the soldiers of the Duke.
But it is with the columns that concentrated upon Machecoul that we
have chiefly to do. Our three Scots accompanied these, and here, too,
marched John of Brittany himself with his Councillor Pierre de
l'Hopital by his side.
Night fell as they journeyed on, ever joined by fresh contingents from
all the country round. In the van pressed forward the folk of Saint
Philbert, warm from the utter destruction of the house of the witch
woman, La Meffraye, so that not one stone was left upon another.
Guided by these the Duke and his party made their way easily through
the forest, even in the darkness of the night. And as they passed
hamlet or cottage ever and anon some frenzied mother would rush upon
them and fall on her knees before the Duke, praying him to look well
for her darling, and bringing mayhap some pitiful shred of clothing or
lock of hair by which the searchers might identify the lost innocent.
As they went forward the soldiers pricked on ahead, and caused the
people to fall to the rear, lest any foreknowledge of their purpose
might reach the wizard and warn him to escape.
The woods of Machecoul were dark and silent that night. Not the howl
of a questing wolf was heard. Truly the marshal's demons had forsaken
him, or mayhap they were all busy at that last carnival in the keep
of the Castle of Machecoul.
As the storming party approached nearer, and while yet they were
several miles distant, they became aware of a great red light that
gleamed forth above them. They could not see whence it came, but the
peasants of Saint Philbert with affrighted glances told how it
beaconed only after the disappearance of some little one from their
homes, what strange cries were heard ringing out from that lofty
tower, and how for days after the smoke of a great burning would hang
about the gloomy turrets of devil-haunted Machecoul.
Fiercer and ever fiercer shone the red glare, and the faces of the
soldiers were lit up so that Pierre de l'Hopital ordered them to keep
to the more gloomy arcades of the forest.
Then by midnight the cordon was drawn so closely that none might pass
in or out. And behind the soldiery the common folk lay crouched, anger
in their hearts, and their eyes turned towards the open windows in the
keep of Machecoul, from which flared the red light of bale.
Then, covering their lanterns, the three Scots, with Duke John, Pierre
de l'Hopital, and a score of officers, stole silently towards the
tower by which the Lady Sybilla had promised that an entrance should
be gained to the Castle of Machecoul.
It was situated at the western corner towards the south, and was
joined to its fellows at the corresponding angles of the fortress by
galleried walls of great height. Ten feet above the ground was a
little door of embossed iron, but ordinarily no steps led to it when
the castle was in a state of defence. Yet when Sholto adventured into
the angle of the wall, he stumbled upon a ladder that leaned against
the little landing-ledge, above which was the entrance denoted on the
plan.
Sholto ascended first, being the lightest and most agile of all. As he
had expected, he found the door unlocked and a narrow passage leading
within the tower. He lay a moment and listened, and then, being
certain there was a light and the sounds of labour within, he crawled
back to the ladder head, and whispered to the Lord James an order for
total silence.
Whereupon, Sholto holding the ladder at the top, Duke John and his
Councillor mounted like shadows, and with Malise and James Douglas to
guard them they were presently crouched in the passage with the door
shut behind them, and the officers keeping watch at the foot of the
tower without.
These five listened to the sounds of busy picks within the tower. They
could hear the ring of iron on stones and the panting of men engaged
in severe toil.
"The marshal is preparing for flight," whispered the Duke, exultantly.
"He is interring his treasures. He has been warned. But we will be
overspeedy for him."
And he chuckled in his satisfaction so loudly that Malise, using no
ceremony with Duke or varlet at such a season, put his hand over his
mouth.
Then one by one they crawled along the narrow passage on their hands
and knees, and presently from a little balcony, plastered like a
swallow's nest on the inner wall of the tower, they found themselves
looking down upon a strange scene.
A flight of steps led slantwise to the bottom, and at the foot of the
tower, stripped to the waist, they beheld two men busily filling great
sacks with a curious cargo.
The turret had never been finished. It contained nothing whatever
except the staircase. So far as Sholto could see there was not even a
window anywhere. The door by which they had entered and another which
evidently led into the interior of the castle were its only outlets.
The earth at the bottom had remained as it had been left by the
builders, who surely must have thought that no madder architectural
freak was ever planned than this shut tower of the Castle of Machecoul
with its blank walls and sordid accoutrement.
But most strange of all, the original earth had been covered to the
depth of a foot or more with dark objects, the true significance of
which did not appear from the distance of the little gallery where the
party of five had stationed themselves.
The two men at work below had brought torches with them, which were
fastened to the walls by iron spikes. The smoke from these hung in
heavy masses about the tower, still further diminishing the clearness
with which the watchers aloft could observe what went on below.
One of the workmen was tall and spare, with the forward thrust of head
and neck seen in vultures and other unclean birds. The other, who held
the sacks while his companion shovelled, was on the contrary stout and
short, of a notably jovial, rubicund countenance, in habit like the
hostler of an inn, or perhaps a well-to-do carrier upon the roads.
The two worked without speaking, as if the task were distasteful. When
one sack was full, both would seize their picks and dig furiously at
the floor of the tower. Then when they had enough loosened, they
would fall to shovelling the curiously shaped objects into the sacks
again.
As Sholto looked down he heard a hissing whisper at his ear.
"These be Blanchet the sorcerer and Robin Romulart. But last week they
took notice of my little Jean and praised him for a noble boy."
Sholto turned round, and there at his elbow, having followed them in
spite of all orders and precautions, he discerned the woodman Louis
Verger, whose little son had been carried off by the grey she-wolf.
Sholto motioned him back, and at a sign from the Duke, his father and
he began to descend. So silently did they make their way down the
stone steps, and so intent were the men upon their work, that in a
minute after leaving the little gallery Malise stood behind the taller
and Sholto stole like a shadow along the wall nearer to the little
rotund man who had been called Robin Romulart.
The Duke held up his hand. Sholto and Malise each took their man about
the throat with their left arms and pulled them backward, at the same
time covering their mouths with their right hands. Blanchet never
moved in the strong arms of Malise. But Robin, whose rotund figure
concealed his great muscular development, might have escaped from
Sholto had not the woodman Verger flung himself at the little man's
throat and brought him to the ground. Then the Duke and the others
descended, and as they did so they became conscious of a choking
mephitic vapour which clung dank and heavy to the lower courses of the
tower.
Suddenly a wild cry made all shiver. It came from Louis Verger, who
had sprung upon something that lay tossed aside in a corner.
"Silence, man--on your life! Silence!" hissed Pierre de l'Hopital.
"Whatever you have found, think only of revenge and help us to it!"
"I have found him. He is dead! The fiends! The fiends!" sobbed Louis
Verger, covering a small partially charred object with the curtmantle
of which he had rapidly divested himself for the purpose.
Then it came upon those who stood on the floor of the tower that they
were in the marshal's main charnel-house. These vague forms, mostly
charred like half-burned wood, these scraps of white bone, these
little crushed skulls, were all that remained of the innocent children
who, in the freshness of their youth and beauty, had been seduced into
the fatal Castle of Machecoul.
And what wonder that an appalling terror sat on the heart and mastered
the soul of Sholto MacKim. For how did he know that he was not
treading under foot at each step the calcined fragments of the fair
body of Maud Lindesay?
Twenty sacks had been filled ready for transport, and as many more lay
folded and empty in a heap in a corner. The marshal, uneasy perhaps as
to the suspicions against him, and anxious to remove evidence from the
precincts of his castle, had ordered this Tower of Death to be
cleared. But truly his devil had once more forsaken him. The order had
been given a day too late.
"God's grace, I stifle. Let us get out of this, and seize the
murderer," quoth Duke John, making his way towards the door.
"Wait a moment," said Pierre de l'Hopital, "we must consider. We
cannot let the commons see this or they will sack the castle from
foundation to roof tree, and slay the innocent with the guilty. We
must seize and hold for fair trial all who are found within. _And I,
Pierre de l'Hopital, will try them!_"
"What then do you propose?" said the Duke, getting as near the door as
possible.
"Let us bring in hither the officers and what soldiers you can
trust--that is not my business," answered the President. "Then we will
go through the castle, and after we have secured the prisoners and
made sure of sufficient pieces of justificative evidence, of which we
have infinite supply in these sacks, we may e'en permit the people to
work their will."
As it was Sholto who had first entered, so it was Sholto who first
left the Tower of Death. He it was also who, at the head of a strong
band, surprised the marshal's sleepy inner guard, and helped to bind
them with his own hands. It was Sholto who, at the foot of the stairs
of the great keep, stood listening that he might know the right moment
to lead the besiegers upward.
But even as he stood thus, down the stairway there came pealing a
terrible cry, the shriek of a woman in the final agony, shrill,
desperate, unavailing.
And at the sound Sholto flew up the stone steps in the direction of
the cry, not knowing what he did, save that he went to kill.
And scarce a foot behind him followed the woodman, Louis Verger, and
as they fled upward the red gloom grew brighter till they seemed to be
rushing headlong into a furnace mouth.