The Scourge of God: A Romance of Religious Persecution
to fill. Soon they were gone.
The hoped-for chance was lost, and lost forever. The tide no longer
served; nothing could have been then landed from the English ships,
nor could they have remained where they were. Already the galleys
armed to the teeth had put out in dozens to attack them. On the
horizon there rose the topmasts of a great French fleet coming swiftly
from Toulon.
And by Martin's side upon the desolate shore stood Cavalier, the
picture of despair.
"The opportunity is gone," he said; "gone also our last chance for
making peace. It is war now to the end. Yet had your countrymen but
got ashore the struggle would have been over; hampered on all sides,
Louis must have yielded, have made terms. God help us all!" and he
turned away to bid his followers disperse and make their way back by
the routes and by-paths which they knew of to the mountains.
As he did so there came through the crowd of Camisards one whom Martin
had seen before, a gaunt, haggard man, with an arm missing--an arm
which, it was said, had withered under the cruelties the Abbé du
Chaila had practised on this Cévenole while he had him in his power at
Montvert, so that, when at last the man was freed, it had to be
removed.
"Cavalier," he said, "Cavalier, friend and leader, bid them also
hasten on their way; lose no time. You have heard the news?"
"No! What?"
"Montrevel and Julien have forced the passes, taking advantage of our
absence. Roland, too, is away. The caverns are besieged. All in them
are lost."
"Lost! Pshaw! They will stand a siege of all Louis' armies."
"Ay, they will. But it is not for siege that the _battue_ is arranged.
Those in the caverns are caught in a _blocus_; they can make no
_sortie_. Outside, fires have been made. Hurry! or you will find
nothing but smoke-dried corpses when you return."
As he spoke there fell upon his ears a heartbroken gasp. Turning his
eyes, they lighted upon Martin--Martin who, white to the lips and
palsied with horror, could only mutter, "Urbaine! Urbaine. And she is
there!"
"Ay!" said Cavalier fiercely, "she is there. The blow falls as heavily
on Baville as on us----" Then paused in his speech. Paused to say in
an altered, gentle tone a moment later to Martin, "I see! See all! You
love her?"
"Love her! My God," Martin replied, "beyond all thought! And she is
there!"
CHAPTER XXIV.
"AN ERRAND OF LIFE OR DEATH."
Through the fair, sweet land known as the _Département Hérault_ Martin
rode north, toward where the mountains lay, in the darkness of the
autumn night, like purple shadows hovering over the earth; rode
recklessly, as though caring little whether he or the horse he
bestrode found death at the next step. Recklessly, as it seemed to the
startled shepherds guarding their flocks of Narbonne sheep in their
huts of reeds and clay, and peering out as the horseman dashed by, the
moon illuminating his pale face so that, but for the clatter of the
creature's hoofs, they would scarcely have known whether 'twas a
spectre or a living thing which flew past. Recklessly, too, as it
seemed to peasants sleeping in their cottages, and aroused by that
clatter only to turn on their beds and sleep again. Recklessly,
threateningly, as perhaps it may have seemed to startled fawns and
timorous hares and rabbits, fleeing helter-skelter into vineyards
where grew the luscious Lunel and Genistoux grapes, or into underbush
where lurked the famed and dreaded viper of the south.
But reckless as that hurried course might seem, wild and furious as
the ride of Gary from London to Edinburgh, to tell James that the
great Queen was dead and he was King of England as well as of
Scotland, it was not so in truth, and, though swift and unhalting, was
neither foolhardy nor rashly impetuous. He was too good a horseman,
also too kindly-hearted a man, to spur a willing beast above its best
endeavours. Yet he knew well enough that beyond breathing spells in
cool copses, where the moon flung down on to the thick grass the
shadowy lacery of leaves which quivered in the night breezes, and
beyond halts at trickling rivulets so that the panting creature might
drink and be refreshed, there must be no delay. None if he would reach
Montrevel or Julien ere the worst had fallen; if he would be in time
to tell them that, amid those whom they sought to murder and burn in
the caves they had surrounded, was the fairest woman in all Languedoc,
the child of Baville's heart, Urbaine Ducaire.
Also he knew the dangers that lurked in his path; knew how, all along
the road he went, were countless soldiers out seeking for _attroupés_;
men who, not knowing what his mission was and perceiving that he bore
no signs about him of royal scarlet, or lace, or accoutrements, would
send a dozen bullets at his back, any one of which would hurl him from
his saddle to the ground a corpse. Nay, once such had almost been the
case. Refusing to halt at the village of St. Jean le Bon, from a
tavern had come a shower of such missiles, which, by God's mercy, had
only hissed harmlessly past, though by the shock he felt beneath him
he knew that his saddle had been struck.
The dawn was nigh as at last he neared Lunel. He knew it by the deeper
chill of the air, by the changing lividness of the summits of the
distant mountains, and by the vanishing of the purple darkness from
their caps and spurs and ridges. If the horse he rode could reach that
town he might get a change of animal and so ride on and on, and on
again, until he was within the outlines of Montrevel and Julien.
"Away!" Cavalier had said to him as, after weary waiting, the evening
fell over Cette and he was free at last to commence his journey. All
day he had fretted and stormed at having to remain until the night
came, though forced to do so, since to have started on that wild ride
by daylight would have been, in the state of the locality, simply to
invite destruction. "Away! God grant you may be in time! If they spare
her they must spare the others, as, if they slay them, they must slay
her. And--and--we shall be close behind you. If Montrevel and Julien
have got into our mountains, may the devil, their master, help them!
They will never get out again; we have them in a trap."
And he laughed bitterly while repeating aloud the word "Away!" Also he
added, "If you can but induce them to hold their hands for twenty-four
hours we will do the rest."
Lunel came nearer and nearer now. He thanked God again and again that
still the horse beneath him did not falter, still swept on in an even,
easy stride. Already he could see in the morning air, now clear and
bright, the great wooden spire of its church, which up to now had
escaped destruction. And he remembered how Cavalier had told him to
have no fear in entering it, since neither papists nor Protestants had
made any attack upon it because it was principally inhabited by Jews
from Marseilles, who, from the days of Philip of Valois, had been
permitted to dwell within it, they taking, as was natural, no share in
the troubles with which the province was torn.
Nearer and nearer, close now, its one peaked, _calotte_-roofed tower,
which faced to the south, standing up like an arrow pointing to the
sky in the cool light of the swift advancing dawn.
Close now, and hammering on the great gray storm-beaten door of the
ramparts, against which for centuries the _mistral_ and the _bise_ had
howled and flung themselves on winter nights and days; on which all
through the summer the southern sun had glared. Hammering with
pistol-butt and clenched hand, loud enough to arouse the dead, and
calling:
"Awake! Open! Open! In God's name open!"
"_Hola!_" a voice shouted answeringly from within. "No more. Cease. I
come! 'In God's name.' Good! You give the password. 'Tis well!" the
utterance being mingled with the grating of a key in a lock and the
rumbling of a bar. And Martin divined that by a chance, a miracle, he
had uttered the royalist sign.
A moment later the gate was open wide. Before it stood a lean,
gray-haired warder, the very counterpart of Cervante's hero, fastening
the tags of his jacket with one hand as he threw back the door with
the other.
"Monsieur rides in haste," he said, seeing that he had a gentleman to
do with, though no soldier clad in _bleu royal_ or scarlet, as he had
expected. "What is the news you carry? Have the accursed English
landed, the vile Protestants captured the port?"
"Nay," answered Martin, "but I ride on an errand of life or death. I
must reach Baville; above all, Montrevel or Julien. They know not what
they do."
"What they do! What is't? I have heard they barricade themselves in
Uzès and Alais, yet thousands strong! Soldiers! Bah! Tosspots and
_vauriens_, afraid of a beggarly set of goatherds. _Dieu des Dieux!_
'twas not so when I rode behind Condé."
"You are mistaken. They are in the mountains, putting all to fire and
sword. Above all, to fire. And among those whom they will slay--they
know her not--is Baville's child. Friend, as you have loved ones of
your own, help me to a fresh horse. This one is spent."
"It is," the warder said, all action now and regarding the smoking
flanks of the poor beast. "Antoine, _petit_," he called, "out of your
bed, _dindon_. A bucket of water, quick. And for you, monsieur, a
sup," whereon he ran into his lodge and came back carrying a great
_outre_, from out of which he poured a flask of amber-coloured liquor.
"'Tis of the best," he said, and winked as he did so. "Hein! 'tis
Chastelneuf. Three years in vat. Down with it."
"Another horse, another horse!" Martin exclaimed after he had
swallowed the wine and thanked the man. "In Heaven's name put me in
the way of that. I must on--on."
"Off!" said the man to a boy who had now come from his lodge, half
dressed, as though he had but just tumbled out of his bed; a boy who
was by now holding a bucket to the horse's thirsty mouth. "Off,
Antoine, to the Jew. He has the cattle. If you have money," he added
to Martin. "Without it you will get naught from any of his tribe."
"I have enough. Fifty gold pistoles."
"Show them not to him, or he will want all. Bargain, traffic,
_marchandise_. 'Tis the only way."
Led by the boy and leading now the steed, with the warder calling
after him that it was strange he had heard naught of what he related,
"for his part, he believed he was misinformed, and that Montrevel and
Julien were doing nothing but eating and drinking up all in the land
like locusts," Martin went down the street, none of the inhabitants
seeming yet awake. It was as silent and empty as a deserted city.
In front of a cross in a market place--a cross which the fiery Anjou
had caused to be erected there to remind the Jews of their fathers'
sins, as he said--the boy paused and, pointing to a house with large,
capacious stables by its side, observed:
"'Tis there that Elie lives. Beat him up, monsieur, beat him up," and
Martin, following his advice, seized the great copper knocker and
hammered with it as lustily as, some minutes earlier, he had hammered
to arouse the warder.
Because strange, fantastic thoughts and memories come to us even in
our most bitter moments, so to Martin there came now the thought that
the face, which a moment later appeared at a window above, might well
have served Nokes, the comedian, whom he had often supped with at
Pontac's, for a model of the apothecary in Mantua. A face lean and
hatchet-nosed, fleshless almost as the face of one dying of
starvation, the eyes deep sunken above the beak-like nose.
"What is't?" this man asked. "What does monsieur desire at such an
hour?"
"A horse. A horse at once that will carry me to----"
"Horses are dear just now. The army needs all."
"I will pay well. Come down and supply me. Quick, every moment is