HIS DEMON HATH DESERTED HIM
The soldiers of the Duke of Brittany stood with bared swords and
deadly pikes around the Marshal de Retz and those of his servants who
had been taken--that is to say, round Poitou, Clerk Henriet, Blanquet,
and Robin Romulart. About them surged ever more fiercely the angry
populace, drunk with the hot wine of destruction, having been filled
with inconceivable fury by that which they had seen in the round tower
wherein stood the filled bags of little charred remains.
"Tear the wolves into gobbets! Kill them! Burn them! Send them quick
to Hell!" So ran the cry.
And twice and thrice the villagers of the Pays de Retz charged
desperately as men who fight for their lives.
"Stand to it, men!" cried Pierre de l'Hopital. "Gilles de Retz shall
have fair trial!
"_But I shall try him!_" he added, under his breath.
Never was seen such a sight as the procession which conducted Gilles
de Retz to the city of Nantes. The Duke had sent for his whole band of
soldiers, and these, in ordered companies, marched in front and rear.
A triple file guarded the prisoners, and even their levelled pikes
could scarce beat back the furious rushes of the populace.
It was like a civil war, for the assailants struck fiercely at the
soldiers--as if in protecting him, they became accessory to the crimes
of the hated marshal.
"_Barbe Bleu! Barbe Bleu!_" they cried. "Slay _Barbe Bleu_! Make his
beard blood-red. He hath dipped it often in the life-blood of our
children. Now we will redden it with his own!"
So ran the tumult, surging and gathering and scattering. And ever the
pikes of the guard flashed, and the ordered files shouldered a path
through the press.
"Make way there!" cried the provost marshals. "Make way for the
prisoners of the Duke!"
And as they entered the city, from behind and before, from all the
windows and roofs, rose the hoarse grunting roar of the hatred and
cursing of a whole people.
But the object of all this rested calm and unmoved, and his cruel grey
eye had no expression in it save a certain tolerant and amused
contempt.
"Bah!" he muttered. "Would that I had slain ten millions of you! It is
my only regret that I had not the time. It is almost unworthy to die
for a few score children!"
During the journey to Nantes, Gilles de Retz kept the grand reserve
with which, when he came to himself, he had treated those who had
captured him. To the Duke only would he condescend to reply, and to
him he rather spoke as an equal unjustly treated than as a guilty
prisoner and suppliant.
"For this, Sire of Brittany," he said, "must you answer to your
overlord, the King of France, whose minister and marshal I am!"
The Duke would have made some feeble reply, but Pierre de l'Hopital
cut across the conversation with that stern irony which characterised
him.
"My lord," he said, "remember that before you were made Marshal of
France you were born a subject of the Duke of Brittany! And as such
you shall be judged."
"I decline to stand at your tribunal!" said the marshal, haughtily.
"_Soit!_" said the President, indifferently, "but all the same you
shall be tried!"
Duke John, knowing well that while his court was being held in the
capital city of his province, and especially during the trial of
Gilles de Retz, Nantes was no place for young maidens who had suffered
like Maud Lindesay and Margaret Douglas, sent them under escort to the
Castle of Angers.
Sholto MacKim and his father were allowed to accompany them, that they
might not be without some of their own country to speak with during
their sojourn in France. The Lord James, however, elected to abide
with the court. For there were many ladies there, and, having nobility
of address and desiring to perfect himself in the niceties of
fashionable speech (which changed daily), he had great pleasure in
their society, and rode in the lists by the side of the Loire with
even more than his former gallantry and success.
For, as he said, he needed some compensation for the long abstinence
enforced upon him by his habit of holy palmer. And right amply did he
make himself amends, and was accounted by dames fair and free the
lightsomest and properest Scot who had ever come into the land of
France.
With him Laurence remained, both because his father was still angry
with him on account of his desertion of them in Paris, and also
because having been so long in the Castle of Machecoul, there were
important matters concerning which in the forthcoming trial he alone
could give evidence.
Pierre de l'Hopital would have detained the Lady Sybilla as a possible
accomplice of the Sieur de Retz, but by the intercession of the
Scottish maidens, as well as by the sworn evidence of Sholto and the
Lord James, testifying that wholly by her means Gilles de Retz had
finally been caught red-handed, she was permitted to depart whither
she would.
"I will go to my sister," she said to Sholto, who came to know how he
could serve her. "It matters little. My work is nearly done!"
So, riding as was her custom all alone upon a white palfrey, she
passed out of their sight towards the south.
* * * * *
In the city of Nantes the rumour of the taking of Gilles de Retz had
spread like wild-fire, and as the cavalcade rode through the streets,
the windows rained down curses and the citizens hooted up from the
sidewalks. But the marshal kept his haughty and disdainful regard,
appearing like a noble nature who perforce companies for the nonce
with meaner men. He sat his favourite charger like a true companion of
Dunois and De Richemont, and, as more than one remarked, on this
occasion he looked like the royal prince and the Duke of Brittany the
prisoner.
So in the New Tower of the Castle of Nantes, Gilles de Retz was placed
to wait his trial. There is no need to give a long account of it. The
documents have been printed in plain letter, and all the world knows
how Clerk Henriet faltered under the stern questioning of Pierre de
l'Hopital, and how finally he declared fully all these iniquities
without parallel in which he had borne so cruel a part.
Poitou, more faithful to his master, held out till the threat of
torture and the appeals of his friend Henriet broke him down. But the
attitude and bearing of the chief culprit deserve that the historian
should not wholly pass them over.
Even in his first haughty and contemptuous silence, Gilles de Retz was
shifting his ground, and with a cool unheated intelligence orienting
himself to new conditions. It soon became evident to his mind that the
powers of Evil in which he trusted, and to whose service he had
consecrated his life and fortune, had befooled and betrayed him.
Well--even so would he fool them--if, by the grace of God, there were
yet any merit or hope in the service of Good. The priests said so. The
Scripture said so, and they might be right after all. At least, the
thing was worth trying.
For a cold and calculating brain lay behind the worst excesses of the
terrible Lord de Retz. The religion of the Cross might not be of much
final use--still, it was all that remained, and Gilles de Retz
determined to avail himself of it. So once more he apostasised from
Barran-Sathanas to Jehovah.
With an effrontery almost too stupendous for belief, he arrayed
himself in the white robes of a Carmelite novice and spent his prison
days in singing litanies and in private confession with his religious
adviser.
When the great day of the trial at last arrived, the marshal, who had
expected on the bench the weak kindly countenance of Duke John, was
called upon to confront the indomitable judicial rectitude of Pierre
de l'Hopital, President and Grand-Seneschal of Brittany.
Gilles de Retz appeared at his trial dressed in white of the richest
materials and with all his military decorations upon him. But his
judge, habited in stern and simple black, was not in the least
intimidated.
Then came the great surprise. After the evidence of Henriet and Poitou
had been read to him, the marshal was asked to plead. To the surprise
of all, the accused claimed benefit of clergy.
"I have been a great sinner," he said, "I have indeed deserved a
thousand deaths. But now I am a man of God. I have confessed. I have
received absolution for all my sins. God has forgiven me, and my soul
is cleansed!"
"Good!" answered Pierre de l'Hopital, "I have nothing to do with your
soul. I must leave that, as you very pertinently remark, to God. But I
am here to try your body, and if found guilty to condemn that body to
suffer the penalties by law provided according to the statutes of
Brittany."
Then Clerk Henriet was brought in to testify more fully of the crimes
beyond parallel in the history of mankind.
The court had been hung round with black, and the only object which
appeared prominent was a beautiful ivory crucifix with a noble figure
of the Redeemer of Men carved upon it. This was suspended, according
to the custom, over the head of the President of the Tribunal.
Henriet had not proceeded far with his terrible relation of well nigh
inconceivable crimes when he stopped.
"I cannot go on," he said, in a broken appealing voice; "I cannot tell
what I have to tell with That Figure looking down upon me!"
So, with the whole Court standing up in reverence, the image of the
Most Pitiful was solemnly veiled from sight, that such deeds of
darkness might not be so much as named in that holy and gracious
presence.
And during the ceremony Friar Gilles of the order of the Carmelites
stood up more reverently than any, for now, seeing that no better
might be, he had definitely renounced Barran-Sathanas and cast in his
lot with God Almighty.
* * * * *
"The sentence of this court is that you, Gilles de Laval, Lord of
Retz, Marshal of France, and you, Poitou and Henriet, be carried to
the meadow of La Biesse at nine of the clock on the morning of
to-morrow, and that you be there hanged and burned till you be dead.
And to God the Just One be the glory!"
The voice of Pierre de l'Hopital rang out through the silence of the
hall of judgment.
"Amen!" said Friar Gilles, devoutly crossing himself.
And so in due course on the meadow of La Biesse, by the side of the
blue Loire, the evil soul of Gilles de Retz went to its own place with
all the paraphernalia of repentance and in the full odour of a
somewhat hectic sanctity.
* * * * *
The day after the burning, a little company of riders left the city of
Angers, journeying westward along the Loire. It consisted of the
maidens Margaret Douglas and Maud Lindesay, with Sholto MacKim and a
dozen horsemen belonging to his Grace of Brittany. It had been
arranged that they were to be joined, upon an eminence above the river
on the right bank, by the Lord James, Malise, and Laurence, with the
escort which was to accompany them to the port of Saint Nazaire. There
(as was necessary in order to escape the troublesome navigation of the
swift and treacherous upper reaches) they would find vessels ready to
set sail for Scotland.
As the little cloud of riders left behind them the black towers of
Angers, they passed through woodland glades wherein, in spite of the
lateness of the season, the birds were singing. The air was mild and
delightsome. At last, leaving the river, they struck away inland,
having the frowning towers of Champtocé on their left as they rode.
Presently they came to a forest, wherein in days before the great
cruelty, Gilles de Retz had often hunted the wolf and the wild boar.
Here the woodland paths were covered deep with fallen leaves, and the
naked branches spoke of the desolation of a dead year.
As the maids rode forward first of their company and talked, as was
natural, of that which had taken place the day before at Nantes, they
became aware of the Lady Sybilla riding towards them on her palfrey of
white. She would have passed them without speech, with her head
downcast and her eyes fixed upon the dank ground with its covering
drift of dead autumnal leaves.
But Margaret, grateful for that which the Lady Sybilla had done for
them at Machecoul, spurred her steed and rode thwartwise to intercept
her.
"Sybilla," she said, "you will come with us to Scotland. I have many
castles there, and, they tell me, a princessdom of mine own. We shall
all be happy together and forget these ill times. Maud and I can never
repay that which you have done for us."
"Yes, I pray you come with us," said Maud, a little more slowly, "we
will be your sisters, and the ill times shall not come again."
The Lady Sybilla smiled a sad subtle smile and shook her head.
"I thank you. I thank you more than you know. It eases my heart that
you should forgive a woman such as I for all the evil she has brought
you and yours. But I am now no fit companion for you or any. I am
become but a wandering shape, speaking to one who cannot answer, and
seeking him whom I can never find."
The little Maid, being but a child, mistook her meaning.
"No, no," she cried, "your life is not done. If the one whom you love
hath left you unkindly--well, bide awhile, and when the first smart is
passed, we will marry you to some braver and more handsome knight.
There are many such in Scotland. I pray you come with Maud and me even
as we wish you. Why, there would not be three like us in all the land.
I wager we will set kings by the ears between us. Though, as for me, I
can only marry a Douglas!"
The smile of the Lady Sybilla grew ever sadder and ever sweeter.
"The man whom I loved, and who loved me, I betrayed to the death.
There is no forgiveness for such as I in this life. Perhaps there may
be in the next. At least, _he_ forgave me, and that is enough. He
believed in me against myself, and I will wait. Till then I go hither
and thither and none shall hinder me or molest--for upon Sybilla de
Thouars God hath set the seal of Cain!"
Margaret Douglas flicked her steed impatiently, causing the spirited
little beast to curvet.
"I think it is very ill-done of you not to come to Scotland with us,"
she said petulantly, "when we would have been so good to you!"
"Too good, too kind," said the Lady Sybilla, very gently; "such
kindness is not for such as I am. But if I may, while I live I will
keep the golden cross you lent me--the crucifix your brother gave to
you on your birthday!"
"Keep it--it is yours! I do not want it!" cried Margaret, glad to have
found some way of evidencing her gratitude.
"I thank you," said Sybilla de Thouars; "some day I may come to
Scotland. And if I do, you shall come out from Thrieve and meet me by
the white thorns of the Carlinwark at the hour when the little
children sing!"
And so, without other farewell, she turned and rode slowly away down
the avenues of fallen leaves, till the folding woodlands hid her from
the sight of those two who watched her with tear-blurred eyes and
hearts strangely stirred with pity for the fate of her whom they had
once hated with such good cause.