CHAPTER XLVII
CAESAR MARTIN'S WIFE
Presently he returned and conducted them to a decent stable, wherethey saw their beasts bestowed and well provided with bedding andforage for the night. Then the old cripple, more than ever bent uponhis stick, but nevertheless chuckling to himself all the way, precededthem into the house.
"Ah, she is clever," he muttered; "she thinks her demon tells hereverything. But even La Meffraye will not know where I have hiddenthat beautiful gold."
So he sniggered senilely to himself between his fits of coughing.
It was a low, wide room of strange aspect into which the old manconducted his guests. The floor was of hard-beaten earth, but cleanlykept and firm to the feet. The fireplace, with a hearth round it ofbuilt stone, was placed in the midst, and from the rafters dependedmany chains and hooks. A wooden settle ran half round the hearthstoneon the side farthest from the draught of the door. The weary three satdown and stretched their limbs. The fire had burnt low, and Sholto,reaching to a faggot heap by the side wall, began to toss on boughs ofgreen birch in handfuls, till the lovely white flame arose and the sapspat and hissed in explosive puffs.
_"Birk when 'tis green Makes a fire for a king!"_
Malise hummed the old Scots lines, and the cripple coming in at thatmoment raised a shrill bark of protest.
"My good wood, my fuel that cost me so many sore backs--be careful,young sir. Faggots of birch are dear in this country of Machecoul. Mylord is of those who give nothing for naught."
"Oh, we shall surely pay for what we use," cried careless James; "letus eat, and warm our toes, and therewith have somewhat less of thyprating, old dotard. It can be shrewdly cold in this westerly countryof yours."
"Pay," cried the old man, holding up his clawed hands; "do you mean_more_ pay--more besides the beautiful gold angel? Here--"
He ran out and presently returned with armful after armful of faggots,while his guests laughed to find his mood so changed.
"Here," he cried, running to and fro like a fretful hen, "take it all,and when that is done, this also, and this. Nay, I will stay up allnight to carry more from the forest of Machecoul."
"And you who were so afraid to open to three honest men, would youventure to bring faggots by night from yon dark wood?"
"Nay," said the old man, cunningly, "I meant not from the forest, butfrom my neighbours' woodpiles. Yet for lovely gold I would evenventure to go thither--that is, if I had my image of the BlessedMother about my neck and the moon shone very bright."
"Now haste thee with the barley brew," said Lord James, "for mystomach is as deep as a well and as empty as the purse of a youngerson."
The strange cripple emitted another bird-like cachinnation, resemblingthe sound which is made by the wooden cogwheels wherewithal boysfright the crows from the cornfields when the August sun is yellowingthe land.
"Poor old Caesar Martin can show you something better than that," hecried, as he hirpled out (for so Malise described it afterwards) andpresently returned dragging a great iron pot with a strength whichseemed incredible in so ramshackle a body.
"Ha! ha!" he said, "here is fragrant stew; smell it. Is it not good?In ten minutes it will be so hot and toothsome that you will scarcehave patience to wait till it be decently cool in the platters. Thisis not common Angevin stew, but Bas Breton--which is a far betterthing."
Malise rose, and, relieving the old man, with one finger swung the potto a crook that hung over the cheerful blaze of the birchwood.
The old cripple Caesar Martin now mounted on a stool and stirred themess with a long stick, at the end of which was a steel fork of twoprongs. And as he stirred he talked:
"God bless you, say I, brave gentlemen and good pilgrims. Surely itwas a wind noble and fortunate that blew you hither to taste my broth.There be fine pigeons here, fat and young. There be leverets juicy andtender as a maid untried. There--what think you of that?" (he heldeach ingredient up on a prong as he spoke). "And here be larks,partridge stuffed with sage, ripe chestnuts from La Valery, andwhisper it not to any of the marshal's men, a fawn from the park of amonth old, dressed like a kid so that none may know."
"I suppose that so much providing is for your four sons?" said Sholto.
The cripple laughed again his feeble, fleering laugh.
"I have no sons, honest sir," he said; "it was but a weakling's policyto tell you so, lest there should have been evil in your hearts. But Ihave a wife and that is enough. You may have heard of her. She iscalled La Meffraye."
As he spoke his face took on an access of white terror, even as it haddone when he looked out of the window.
"La Meffraye is she well named," he repeated the appellation with aharsh croak as of a night-hawk screaming. "God forfend that she shouldcome home to-night and find you here!"
"Why, good sir," smiled James Douglas, "if that be the manner in whichyou speak of your housewife, faith, I am right glad to have remained abachelor."
Caesar the cripple looked about him and lowered his voice.
"Hush!" he quavered, breathing hard so that his words whistled betweenhis toothless gums, "you do not know my wife. I tell you, she is thefamiliar of the marshal himself."
"Then," cried James Douglas, slapping his thigh, "she is young andpretty, of a surety. I know what these soldiers are familiar with. Iwould that she would come home and partake with us now."
"Nay," said the old man, without taking offence, "you mistake, kindsir, I meant familiar in witchcraft, in devilry--not (as it were) inlevity and cozenage."
The fragrant stew was now ready to be dished in great platters ofwood, and the guests fell to keenly, each being provided with a woodenspoon. The meat they cut with their daggers, but the most part was,however, tender enough to come apart in their fingers, which, as allknow, better preserves the savour.
At first the cripple denied having any wine, but another gold angelfrom the Lord James induced him to draw a leathern bottle from somesecret hoard, and decant it into a pitcher for them. It was resinousand Spanish, but, as Malise said, "It made warm the way it went down."And after all with wine that is always the principal thing.
As the feast proceeded old Caesar Martin told the three Scots why thelong street of the village had been cleared of children so quickly atthe first sound of their horses' feet.
"And in truth if you had not come across the moor, but along thebeaten track from the Chateau of Machecoul, you would never havecaught so much as a glimpse of any child or mother in all SaintPhilbert."
At this point he beckoned Sholto, Malise, and the Lord James to comenearer to him, and standing with his back to the fire and their threeheads very close, he related the terrible tale of the Dread that foreight years had stalked grim and gaunt through the westlands ofFrance, La Vendee, and Bas Bretagne. In all La Vendee there was not avillage that had not lost a child. In many a hamlet about the shoresof the sunny Loire was there scarce a house from which one had notvanished. They were seen playing in the greenwood, the eye was lifted,and lo! they were not. A boy went to the well. An hour after hispitcher stood beside it filled to the brim. But he himself was nevermore seen by holt or heath. A little maid, sweet and innocent, lookedover the churchyard wall; she spied something that pleased her. Sheclimbed over to get it--and was not.
"Oh, I could tell you of a thousand such if I had time," shrilled thethin treble of the cripple in their eager ears, "if I dared--if I onlydared!"
"Dared," said Malise; "why man--what is the matter with you? Nonecould hear you but we three men."
"My wife--my wife," he quavered; "I bid you be silent, or at leastspeak not so loud. La Meffraye she is called--she can hear all things.See--"
He made a sudden movement and bared his right arm. It was withered tothe shoulder and of a dark purple colour approaching black.
"La Meffraye did that," he gasped; "she blasted it because I would notdo the evil she wished."
"Then why do you not kill her?" said Malise, whose methods were notsubtle. "I
f she were mine, I would throttle her, and give her body tothe hounds."
"Hush, I bid you be silent for dear God's sake in whom I believe,"again came the voice of the cripple. "You do not know what you say. LaMeffraye cannot die. Perhaps she will vanish away in a blast of thefire of hell--one day when God is very strong and angry. But shecannot die. She only leads others to death. She dies not herself."
"You are kind, gentlemen," he went on after a pause, finding themcontinue silent; "I will show you all. Pray the saint for me at hisshrine that I may die and go to purgatory. Or (if it were to adifferent one) even to hell--that I might escape for ever from LaMeffraye."
His hand fumbled a moment at the closely buttoned collar of his blueblouse. Then he succeeded in undoing it and showed his neck. From chinto bosom it was a mass of ghastly bites, some partially healed, moreof them recent and yet raw, while the skin, so far as the three Scotscould observe it, was covered with a hieroglyphic of scratches, clawmarks, and, as it seemed, the bites of some fierce wild beast.
"Great Master of Heaven!" cried James Douglas. "What hell hound hathdone this to you?"
"The wife of my bosom," quoth very grimly Caesar the cripple.
"A good evening to you, gentlemen all," said a soft and winning voicefrom the doorway.
At the sound the old man staggered, reeled, and would have swayed intothe fire had not Sholto seized him and dragged him out upon the floor.All rose to their feet.
In the doorway of the cottage stood an old woman, small, smiling,delicate of feature. She looked benignly upon them and continued tosmile. Her hair and her eyes were her most noticeable features. Theformer was abundant and hung loosely about the woman's brow and overher shoulders in wisps of a curious greenish white, the colour almostof mouldy cheese, while, under shaggy white eyebrows, her large eyesshone piercing and green as emerald stones on the hand of some duskymonarch of the Orient.
The old woman it was who spoke first, before any of the men couldrecover from their surprise.
"My husband," she said, still calmly smiling upon them, "my poorhusband has doubtless been telling you his foolish tales. The saintshave permitted him to become demented. It is a great trial to a poorwoman like me, but the will of heaven be done!"
The three Scots stood silent and transfixed, for it was an age ofbelief. But the cripple lay back on the settle where Sholto had placedhim, his lips white and gluey. And as he lay he muttered audibly, "LaMeffraye! La Meffraye! Oh, what will become of poor Caesar Martin thisnight!"