The Scourge of God: A Romance of Religious Persecution
precious."
"So are horses. Yet I will descend. I have a good animal, but it cost
me much."
A moment later he appeared at his door, a thick cudgel in his hand as
though to guard against any sudden attack that might be made upon him,
and said:
"The animal I have is worth a hundred gold pistoles."
"Bah! I have not so much about me."
"How much have you?"
"Twenty."
"Twenty for such an animal! Father of Abraham and Isaac! Twenty gold
pistoles for such a creature!" and he made as though he would re-enter
his house.
"Let him go, monsieur," whispered the boy with a grin, "he will come
back. _N'ayez pas peur_. Oh! _avec ça_, we know him."
The lad spoke truly, for even as Martin, cursing himself for
trafficking thus at such a moment, resolved to fling his purse of
fifty pieces down before the man and bid him bring out the horse, the
Jew's vulpine beak and pendulous underlip appeared again from behind
the door.
"Will you give twenty-five?"
"Show me the horse."
A little later, in accordance with some whispered instructions to
another person behind the door, a Jewish maiden was seen leading a
horse from out the stable yard at the side, an animal of an ordinary
type, yet looking sturdy and as though quite capable of carrying
Martin to Alais and the mountains beyond.
"Twenty-five?" the Jew asked, leering.
"Yes, twenty-five. Help me"--to the boy--"to change saddle and
bridle," which the lad did willingly enough. But the Hebrew's
instincts were stronger than aught else. As they began to do this he
shrieked:
"Ah, mother of Moses, the girl is mad. She has brought the wrong
beast. Oh! Oh! Oh! This can not go under fifty pistoles."
"It is too late to change," Martin said grimly. "The beast is mine,"
and he produced his purse and told out twenty-five pistoles. Then,
tossing the boy a crown, he said: "Keep my horse for me until I come
this way again or send for it, and I will reward you well. Treat it
carefully. Farewell. The road to Nîmes and Alais? Where is the gate?"
The boy indicated it amid the shrieks of the Jew, who now yelled he
was robbed; that he meant twenty-five gold pistoles with the other's
horse thrown in; how else could he part with such an animal for a
beggarly twenty-five? And amid a tussle between the lad on one side
and the Abrahamite and the girl on the other, in which the former
seemed quite able to hold his own and retain his charge, Martin rode
down the street to the Nîmes gate.
Once more he was upon the road. Nearer to his love, to her who had
dawned a star above his life--the woman in deadly peril for whom, as
he tightened rein and pressed flank, he prayed God's mercy. Prayed
also that he might not be too late, not too late.
The autumn sun beat down upon his head, fierce as July suns in more
northern lands. The skies were like brass. There was no air to fan his
cheek except that which his own swift passage caused. Yet he never
felt or heeded the former, nor missed the latter; there was but one
thought in his mind--Urbaine! Urbaine! Urbaine!
Lunel was left behind him, had dwindled to a spot. He cursed the
leagues of _détour_ he had to make to reach Nîmes first, find Baville,
and warn him of the awful danger of the girl if still she lived--oh,
God! if still she lived!--procure his order to those battue-making
butchers to hold their hands, possess himself of it, and hurry on to
the mountains, That, that was all he could do, yet he would accomplish
it or reel from his saddle to the road--dead.
Through Vergese he went, seeing the cool wooden slopes of Les
Vaquerolles on his left, shouting the password he had by Heaven's
grace learned so opportunely to all who endeavoured to arrest his
flight; on, on to Milbaud and Saint Cesare. And at last Nîmes was
ahead of him. He saw it now. The Temple of Diana rose before his eyes,
solitary and majestic as the Romans had left it two thousand years
before; rose, too, beneath the brassy shimmer, the white marble
columns of Agrippa's sons and the city walls.
Yet also arose something else toward the heavens which startled,
amazed him.
Stealing up into the yellow haze, a spiral column twined snakily until
it seemed to be merged in the sky, a column white and fleecy at first,
then black at its base, and, later, black up all its length. Next,
tinged flame-colour--soon flame itself. Flame which leaped up in
countless tongues as though with its great flecks and flickers it
aspired to lick the canopy above, flame in which now were mixed black
specks and daubs borne up upon its fiery breath.
Nîmes was burning. It was impossible to doubt it.
Set on fire by whom? Camisards descending from the mountains, or
perchance, though that seemed impossible, by Camisards returning from
Cette. Or by the King's forces. Yet, why that? It was the royalist
stronghold, the royalist base. It could scarce be that.
Spurring his horse, he urged it to its fullest speed through
the last remaining half-league of road running through fields of
crimson-flowered sainfoin and beneath the yellow-green, sweet-scented
limes. On, while now above the broadleaved trees the smoke rose
thicker and thicker. On, scarce knowing why he rode thus or what he
had to do in Nîmes except to find Baville if he were there; to tell
him no burning city mattered one jot to him in comparison with what
was doing, might be done by now, up in those mountains five leagues
off which lay bathed in the golden haze of the noontide heat.
He saw the great southern gate open before him, no warders by it.
Doubtless they were in the city trying to save it from the flames;
from the gate itself he saw people issuing, running. Some--among
others two old gray-haired people, man and woman--wringing their
hands; also a great burly _cordelier_, his fat face suffused with an
oily smile.
"What--what is it?" he cried, reining in his horse. "What fresh horror
now?"
"Murder! Cruelty unparalleled!" the old gray-haired man said, his look
of terror awful to behold. "Wickedness extreme! Montrevel is there,
Julien is there; they have caught the Protestants in the great mill,
have barred them in, they can not escape. And they are burning it.
All, all must perish."
"Montrevel--Julien--there! It is impossible. They are in the mountains
burning the Protestants _there!_" Martin exclaimed.
"Nay, nay, my son," the greasy monk exclaimed, chiming in, "that was
but a heaven-inspired ruse to catch the others in the trap. They are
here. They slaughter the heretics, _par le fer et par le feu_, as
Montrevel says. Here! Here! My son, make your way in. Join the good
work."
CHAPTER XXV.
PAR LE FER ET PAR LE FEU.
He made his way in.
Entered by the Porte des Carmes, to find himself in the midst of a
seething mass of people who shouted and gesticulated while pushing
each other to and fro, some doing so in their anxiety to escape from
out the city, others endeavouring to force themselves farther into it
and toward the Canal de la Gau, which was near the gate. A mass of
people who seemed infuriated, beyond the bounds of reason, to frenzy,
who shouted and screamed, "_Au glaive, au glaive avec les héritéques_.
Kill all! Burn all! Now is the time." While others shrieked, "To the
mill, to the mill!" as onward they went in the direction of the canal.
He had put his horse up in a stall behind the gate, tethering it to a
peg alongside one or two other animals which, by their trappings,
evidently belonged to some dragoons; and now, borne on by the crowd,
Martin went the same way, keeping his feet with difficulty yet still
progressing, progressing toward where he saw the flames ascending,
darting through dense masses of black smoke, roaring as a vast furnace
roars. Toward the mill that, all said, was the place which was on
fire; the mill in which there were three hundred people--women,
children, and old, decrepit, useless men, old, aged Protestants who
could not take to the mountains--being burned to death; the mill in
which they had been worshipping God in their own fashion.
"Tell me," Martin besought a bystander, big, brawny, and muscular,
whom he found by his side and who, in spite of his splendidly
developed manhood, wept, dashing the tears fiercely away from his eyes
every moment. "Tell me what has happened. Tell me, I beg you."
"Murder! Butchery! A crime that will ring down the ages. Montrevel is
burning three hundred helpless ones in Mercier's mill." Then he
paused, casting his eyes over Martin's riding dress (stained now with
the dust of his long rides) and upon his lace at breast and throat,
smirched and dirty from continued wear. Paused to say: "What are you?
a _seigneur_, I see. But of which side? The butchers or the
slaughtered?"
"I am of the Reformed faith."
"Of Nîmes?" the man asked. "If so, God help you. Your mother or your
babe may be burning there and you powerless to succour them.
Montrevel's wolves surround the mill. He is there too, mad with wine
and lust of blood. If there is any woman or child you love in Nîmes at
this moment, God help you."
"She whom I love is not here. But, alas! can we do nothing? You wear a
sword as I do? We can strike a blow----"
"Do! What can we do? There are two hundred dragoons there. What will
our blades avail, though we were the best _ferrailleurs_ in France?"
Then suddenly he cried, "See, there is the slaughter-house!"
He spoke truly. The burning mill was before them.
A sight to freeze one's blood, to turn that blood to ice even beneath
the sky of brass, even before the hot flames that darted forth,
licking up, devouring all.
It stood, an ancient building of stone foundations and wooden
superstructure. They said the former dated back to Cæsar's day, the
latter to that of Charles le Bel, upon the banks of the canal as it
would never stand again, since now it was nothing but a mass of
burning fuel. Also a human hecatomb, there being within it the ashes
of three hundred human beings whose bodies had that morning been
consumed. And Martin blessed God that he had not been there to hear
their piercing shrieks, their cries for mercy and their supplications.
Around the nearly destroyed mill, except on one side where it adjoined
an inn, "La Rose de Provence," the front of which was all singed and
scarred, he saw the executioners, the men who had been soldiers,
fierce yet valiant, until this morning, but who were now worthy of no
nobler name than that of cowardly murderers. Dragoons, Croatian
Cravates, now Prance's most bloody swashbucklers with one exception,
the Miquelets, those fierce Pyrenean tigers, as well as
_chevaux-légers_ and countless numbers of the _milice_. And near them,
his sword drawn, his face inflamed with drink and fury, his breast a
mass of ribbons and orders, was Montrevel upon his horse, a scandal to
the _bâton_ he had lately gained.
"Murderer! Assassin! Brave butcher of women and babes," howled many in
the crowd, one half of which was Protestant, "noble papist! you have
done your work well. Yet beware of Cavalier and Roland!"
And even as they so shouted, from more than one window high up in the
roofs there came little puffs of smoke and spits of flame, showing
that he was aimed at. Only the devil protected him. His time was not
yet come. He was mad now with fury or drink, or thirst for human
blood. Mad, stung to frenzy by resistance and contempt, even in spite
of all that he had done that morning, of having glutted his ire on the
helpless, which should have sufficed, all heard him roar:
"_Finissons!_ Nîmes is heretic to the core. Make an end of it.
_Avancez, mes soldats_. Burn, destroy, slaughter. Kill all." And he
turned his horse toward where the crowd was thickest and bade the
carnage begin, marshalling his troops into companies the better to
distribute them about the doomed city.