THE LAST SACRIFICE TO BARRAN-SATHANAS
And as Laurence MacKim, crouched in the dim obscurity of the curtained
doorway, looked forth, this is what he saw.
Maud Lindesay and Margaret Douglas advanced into the centre of the
temple where was a slab of white marble let into the floor. As if by
instinct the two maids stopped upon it, standing hand in hand before
the iron altar and the vast shadowy image which gloomed above and
appeared to reach forward in act to clutch them. After the first check
in his hideous incantations, Gilles de Retz had returned to his own
chamber, in which, after his entrance, the light gleamed brighter and
more fiercely red than ever. As the maidens stood on the marble square
La Meffraye went to the door and called certain words within,
conveying some message which Laurence could not hear.
Then with an assured carriage and haughty stride came forth the
marshal, his grey hair and blue-black beard in strong contrast with
his haggard corpse-pale face, from which the momentary glow of youth
half-restored had already faded, as fades a footprint upon wet sand.
Gilles de Sillé and Poitou bowed silently before him as men who have
done their commission, and who retire to await further orders. But La
Meffraye, once more apparent, stood her ground.
"Here are the dainty maids from the far land; no beggars' brats are
they. No strays and pickings from the streets. No, nor yet silly
village innocents who follow La Meffraye from the play-fields through
the woodlands to the Paradise of our Lord Gilles! Hasten not the joy!
Let these pearls of youth and beauteousness die indeed, but let them
die slowly and deliciously. And in the last blood of an ancient race
let our master bathe and find the new life he seeks. Hear us, O
Barran-Sathanas, and grant our prayer!"
Then La Meffraye approached the maids and would have touched the dress
of the little Margaret, as if to order it more daintily for the
pleasing of her master's eye. But Maud Lindesay thrust her aside like
an unclean thing.
Whereat La Meffraye laughed till her rusty black cloak quivered and
rustled from hood to hem.
"Ah, my proud lady," she croaked, "in a little, in a very little, you
too will be calling upon La Meffraye to save you, to pity you. But I,
La Meffraye, will gloat over each drop of blood that distils from your
fair neck. Aha, you shall change your tone when at the white
throat-apple which your sweetheart would have loved to kiss, you feel
the bite of the sharp slow knife. Then you will not thrust aside La
Meffraye. Then you shall cry and none shall pity. Then she will spurn
you from her knees."
"Out!" said Gilles de Retz, briefly, and like some inferior imping
devilkin before the great Master of Evil, La Meffraye retreated
hobbling to the doorway of the marshal's chamber, where she crouched
nodding and chuckling, mumbling inaudible words, and mingling them
ever with her dry cackling laughter.
Gilles de Retz stopped at the corner of the platform and looked long
at Maud and Margaret where they stood on the great central square of
marble. It was the Maid who spoke first.
"Dear Messire," she said sweetly and almost confidently, "you have a
little girl of your own. I know, for I have played with her. I love
her. Therefore you will not hurt us. I am sure you will not hurt us.
You are going to send us back in a ship to our own country, because it
is lonely here where Maud and I know no one!"
The marshal smiled upon her his inhuman inscrutable smile. He leaned
against a pillar of strangely twisted design, and contemplated the two
victims at his ease.
"Life is sweet to you, is it not?" he said at last; "you are truly
happy, being young, and so have no need to be made young again."
"Oh, but I am very old," cried the Maid, gaining some confidence from
the quiet of his voice, "I am nearly eight years old. And our Maudie
here, she is--oh, a dreadful age! She is very, very old!"
"You would not like to die?" suggested Gilles de Retz, with a certain
soft insinuation.
"Oh, no," said Margaret Douglas, "I am going to live long and
long--till every one in the world loves me. I am going to help every
one to get what he most desires. And you know I can, for I shall be
very rich. And if what they say is true, and I am Princess of
Galloway, I shall marry and be a very great lady. But I shall never
marry any one who is not a Douglas."
The marshal nodded.
"I do not think that you shall marry any one who is not a Douglas!" he
said, with a certain grave and not discourteous irony in his tones.
"Yes," the little Maid went on. She had lost all fear in the very act
of speech. "Yes, and Maud, she is going to marry Sholto--and they will
be very happy, for they love each other so. I know it, for she told me
to-night just before you sent for us to come to your feast. That was
kind of you to remember us, though it was past bed-time. But now, good
marshal, you will send us back, will you not? Now, look kind to-night.
You will be glad afterwards that you were good to two maids who never
harmed you, but are ready to love you if you prove kind to them."
"Hush, Margaret," said Maud Lindesay. "It is useless to speak such
words to such a man."
The Marshal de Retz turned sharply to her.
"Ah," he said, with a curious bite in his speech, "then, my young
lady, you would not love me, even if I were to let you go!"
"I should hate and abominate you for ever and ever, even if you helped
me into Paradise!" quoth Maud Lindesay, giving him defiance in a full
eye-volley.
"So," he said calmly, "I am indeed likely to help you into Paradise
this very night. That is, unless Saint Peter of the Keys makes up his
mind that so outspoken and tricksome a maid had best take a few
thousand years of purgatory--as it were on her way upwards, _en
passant_."
A sudden lowering passion at this point altered his countenance.
"No," he thundered, standing up erect from the pillar against which
he had been leaning, and his whole voice and bearing changing past
description, "it is enough--listen! I will be brief with you. I have
brought both of you here that you may die. I cannot expect of you that
you will understand or appreciate my motives, which are indeed above
the knowledge of children. This is a temple to a Great God, and he
demands the sacrifice of the noblest and most innocent blood. I do you
the honour to believe that it is here to my hand. Also, your deaths
will cause a number of people both in Scotland and elsewhere to sit
easier in their seats. Lastly, I had sworn that you should die if your
friends from Scotland came to trouble me. They have come, and Gilles
de Retz keeps his word--as doth the Master whom he serveth!"
He bowed in the direction of the vast shadowy figure, which to
Laurence's eye appeared to turn towards his niche with a leer, as if
to say, "Listen to him. What a fool he is!"
The maids stood silent, not comprehending aught save that they were to
die. Then suddenly Gilles de Retz cried out in his loudest military
tones--"Henriet, Poitou, De Sillé, bind these maidens upon the iron
altar, that Barran-Sathanas may feed his eyes on their beauty and
rejoice!"
And as they stood motionless upon the square of white marble, the
servitors came forward and led them to the great altar of iron. They
lifted the maidens up and laid their bodies crosswise upon the vast
grid, the bars of which were as thick as a man's arm, arranging them
so that their heads hung without support over the bar next the shadowy
image.
As they bound them rudely hand and foot, the long and beautiful hair
of Maud Lindesay escaped from its fastenings and fell down till it
reached the bath of red porphyry which extended underneath the whole
length of the altar of iron.
Then through all the Temple of Evil there ensued sudden silence. Not a
sob or a moan escaped from the doomed maidens, and the feet of the
assistants fell silent and soft as the paws of wild beasts upon the
ebon floor.
Gilles de Retz waited till his acolytes had retired to their appointed
places, where they stood like carven statues watching what should
happen. Then slowly and deliberately he ascended to the broad platform
from which the iron altar rose, and stood with his arms folded over
his flame-coloured robe, looking gloatingly down, upon his innocent
victims. Maud Lindesay was the nearer to him, and her unbound hair
fell back and touched the peak of his pointed shoe of crimson Cordovan
leather.
With a quick movement he caught up a handful of its rich luxuriance
and allowed it to run through his fingers like sand again and yet
again, with apparent delight in the sensation.
Even as he did so the dim figure of the horned demon above appeared to
lean forward as if to touch him, and with a rushing noise the great
hour-glass set upon a pedestal at the foot of the image turned itself
completely over. Gilles with a startled air turned also, and seeing
what it was he laughed a strange hollow laugh.
"It is indeed the hour, the hour of doom, fair maids," he said,
looking down upon them as deferentially as if he had been paying his
court in the great hall of Thrieve, "but it shall not pass without
taking with it your souls to another, and I trust a higher, sphere!"
He paused, but no complaint or appeal reached his cruel and inexorable
ear. The certain graciousness of Providence to those in extreme peril
seemed to have blunted the edge of fear in the innocent victims. They
lay still and apparently without consciousness upon the iron altar.
The red glow played upon their faces, shining through from the inner
chamber, and the figure of the marshal stood out black against it.
On the floor lay the goblet from which he had drunk the Red Milk.
"Give me the knife!" he cried, sudden as a trumpet that is blown.
And reaching a withered hand within the marshal's chamber as if to
detach something from the wall, La Meffraye hobbled quickly across the
altar platform, bearing in her hand a shining weapon of steel, broad
of blade and curved at the point. She placed the ebony handle in the
marshal's hand, who weighed it lovingly in his grasp.
Then for the first time since the men had bound her, the sweet
childish eyes of little Margaret were unclosed and looked up at Gilles
de Retz with the touching wonder of helplessness and innocence.
At that moment the image appeared to Laurence to beckon to him out of
the gloom. A quick and nervous resolve ran through his veins. His
muscles became like steel within his flesh. He rose to his feet, and,
without pause for thought, rushed across the chapel from the niche
where he had been hidden.
"Murderer! Fiend! I will kill you!" he cried, and with his dagger bare
in his hand he would have thrown himself upon the marshal. But swifter
than the rush of the young man in his strength there came another from
the door of the inner chamber.
With a deep-throated roar of wholly bestial fury, Astarte the she-wolf
sprang upon Laurence, and, though he sank his dagger twice to the hilt
in her hairy chest, she over-bore him and they fell to the ground with
her teeth gripping his shoulder. Laurence felt the hot life-blood of
the beast spurt forth and mingle with his own. Then a flood of
swirling waters seemed to bear him suddenly away into the unknown.
* * * * *
When Laurence MacKim came to himself he emerged into a chill world in
which he felt somehow infinitely lonely and forsaken. Next he grew
slowly conscious that his feet and arms were bound tightly with cords
that cut painfully into the flesh. Then he realised that he, too, had
taken his place beside the maids upon the altar of iron. Strangely
enough he did not feel afraid nor even wish himself elsewhere. He only
wondered what would happen next.
He opened his eyes and lo! they looked directly into the leering
countenance of the monstrous image. Yet there seemed something
curiously encouraging and even beneficent about the aspect of the
demon. But so often as Gilles de Retz passed the triple array of his
victims with his back to the image, the regard of the sculptured devil
followed him, grim and mocking.
Words of angry altercation came to the ears of Laurence MacKim.
"I tell you," cried the voice of Gilles de Retz, "I will not spare
them. Well nigh had I succeeded. Almost I was young again. I was
tasting the first sweetness of knowledge wide as that of the gods. I
felt the new life stirring within me. But I had not enough of the
blood of innocence, which is the only worthy libation to
Barran-Sathanas, who alone can bestow youth and life."
Then the Lady Sybilla answered him. "I pray you, Gilles de Retz, as
you hope for mercy, slay not these maidens and this youth. Take me,
and bind me, instead, for the sacrifice of death. I have wrought
enough of evil! Take of my blood and work out your purpose. Let me
give you the libation you desire. Gilles de Retz, if ever I have aided
you, grant me this boon now. I beseech you, let these innocents go,
and bind me upon the altar in their places."
Long and loud laughed Gilles de Retz, a hard, evil, and relentless
laugh.
"Sybilla de Thouars an innocent maiden's sacrifice! Barran-Sathanas
himself laughs at the jest. He would have no pleasure in your death.
Soul and body you are his already. He desires only the blood and
suffering of the innocent--of those on whom he has never set his mark.
Nay, these three shall surely die, and in that bath of porphyry
hollowed out under his altar I will lave me from head to foot in the
Red Milk of innocence. I have no more need of you, Sybilla mine. You
have done your work, and for your reward you can now depart to your
own place. Out of my way, I say. Henriet, Poitou, quick! Remove this
woman from before the altar!"
Then, struggling strongly in their hands, the servitors carried the
Lady Sybilla to the farther end of the chapel, where they abode on
either side, holding her fast. And as the last grains of sand began to
swirl towards their fall and a little whirlpool to form funnel-wise in
the midst of the hour-glass, the butcher was left alone with his
victims upon the platform of the iron altar.
Gilles de Retz turned towards the image, and, lifting up his hand
solemnly, he cried in a great voice, "O Barran-Sathanas, be pleased to
behold this innocent blood spilled slowly in thine honour. As the red
fount flows and the red fire burns, restore my youth and make me
strong. Faithfully will I serve thee and thee alone, renouncing all
other. O Barran-Sathanas, great and only Lord, receive my sacrifice.
It is the hour!"
And so saying he laid hold of Maud Lindesay by the hair, and raised
the curved knife on high.
Then from the end of the chapel to which the Lady Sybilla had been
taken there came a sound. With a great despairing effort she burst
from her captors' hands and ran forward. She knelt down on the marble
slab whereon the maids had stood at their first entering, and as she
knelt she held aloft a golden crucifix.
"If there be a God in heaven, let him manifest himself now!" she
cried, "by the virtue of this cross of His son Jesus Christ, I call
upon Him!"
Then suddenly all the place was filled with a mighty rushing noise.
The last grains ran low in the hour-glass. It shifted in its stand and
turned over. A tremor like that of an earthquake shook all the castle
to its foundations. The solid keep itself rocked like a vessel in a
stormy sea. The great image overturned, and by its fall Gilles de
Retz was stricken senseless to the earth. The next moment, like
flood-gates burst by a mighty tide, the doors of the temple were
opened with a clang, and through them a crowd of armed men came
rushing in with triumphant shouts and angry cries of vengeance.
Sholto was far ahead of the others, and, as if led by the unerring
instinct of love, he ran to the altar whereon his love lay white as
death, but without a mark upon her fair body.
It was the work of a moment to cut their cords and chafe the numbed
wrists and ankles. James Douglas took the little Margaret. Sholto had
his sweetheart in his arms, while Laurence recovered quickly enough to
aid his father in securing Gilles de Retz and his servants. La
Meffraye they took not, for she lay dead within the inner chamber,
where yet burned the great fire which was used to consume the bodies
of the demon's victims. Two gaping wounds were found in her breast, in
the same place in which the dagger of Laurence MacKim had smitten the
she-wolf as she sprang upon him. But Astarte, woman witch or
were-wolf, was never seen again, neither by starlight, moonlight, nor
yet in the eye of day. Truly of Gilles de Retz was it said, "His demon
hath deserted him."
Beneath in the courts and quadrangles, swarming through the towers and
clambering perilously on the roofs, surged the press of the furious
populace. It was all that Duke John and his officers could do to keep
the prisoners in ward, and to prevent them from being torn limb from
limb (as had perhaps been fittest), and tossed alive into the flaming
funeral pyre of Castle Machecoul, which, lighted by a hundred hands,
presently began to flame like a volcano to the skies.
For the hour that comes to every evil-doer had come to Gilles de Retz.
And in that hour, as it shall ever be, the devil in whom he trusted
had forsaken him.
But the Lady Sybilla stood on the garden tower that in happier days
had been her pleasaunce, and beheld. And as she watched she kissed the
golden crucifix of the child Margaret. And her heart rejoiced because
the lives of the innocent as well as the death of the guilty had been
given her for her portion.
"And now, O Lord, I am ready to pay the price!" she said.