The Scourge of God

"Be sure your uncle shall be avenged. Let them flee to the mountains, yet we will have them. Extirpate them like rats in a granary. Julien, the field marshal, has left Paris to assist in the holy work. Meanwhile, de Peyre, send your men into every house in the place; see if this abandonment is true. If not, if you find any, bring them before me. As for you, and you," directing a glance at the pastor and Martin, "you will sleep to-night in Alais. To-morrow a court will be held." Then he added, under his breath, as though talking to himself:

"You must be bold men. Otherwise you would have decamped too."

"Or innocent ones," Martin replied, hearing his words, low as they were. "You yourself have said it. Asked but now, 'Do the innocent flee?'"

The Intendant bit his lips; the riposte had gone fairly home. Then, while de Peyre gave his orders and told off some of the dragoons to enter and search every house in the village, and the marquis, who was in command of the milices, bade them take up the bodies carefully and cover them decently with their capes, Baville glanced down at Martin, saying:

"Monsieur, I do not know you. You are not, I think, of this locality. Yet I observe you are of the better classes. Where is your property?"

"In La Somme, department of the Ile de France. I am a proprietor; the property of Duplan La Rose is mine, such as it is."

Had he not in truth been the owner of this property he would have scorned to shelter himself beneath a falsehood. Had he been asked his faith it was his fixed resolve to declare it, as, had it been possible for Baville to recognise that he was an Englishman-which, after his earliest years being spent in France, was not so-he had determined to avow his nationality, no matter what the consequences might be. But so far the truth alone was necessary.

When his father waited long and eagerly for the time to come for the Stuart Restoration-as no follower of the Stuarts ever doubted it would come, sooner or later-he, hating Paris and all its garish dissipations under the then young and immoral king (the king now so old and self-righteous!), purchased this property from the Baron Duplan La Rose, a man himself broken and ruined by his participation in the outbreaks of the Fronde. Purchased it because all the Ile de France and the Pas de Calais were full of English refugees waiting like himself for happier days to come; also because, when the time did come, it would be near to England. And he dying, it became Martin's property.

Baville touched his hat as an acknowledgment of Martin's explanation, perhaps also as an acknowledgment of his position, since he was a great believer in les propriétaires as men who were almost always opposed to the murmurings and discontents of the canaille and les ordres bas, such as the wretches belonged to who had massacred the abbé and the others. And as he did so he said:

"Monsieur is therefore a visitor here only-to-perhaps" – and his eyes rested piercingly on Martin-"Monsieur Buscarlet?"

"Monsieur is," Martin replied, "a visitor here seeking for a lost person. A connection by marriage. A man who has been wronged, has partly wronged himself. Monsieur has lodged with Monsieur Buscarlet before."

"May I demand the name of the lost man?"

"Alas, monsieur, I do not know it. He discarded his own over forty years ago. That which he has adopted I can not tell you. Also he may be dead and my quest in vain."

"Would he be," and again his eyes stared fixedly into the eyes of the other man, "would he be, do you think, of-of-well-of Monsieur Buscarlet's religious faith?"

"He would."

"I hope you will find him, sir. If you do so, use your utmost endeavours to persuade him to abjure that faith. Otherwise the province of Languedoc will be no pleasant refuge for him henceforth, even though he has been here for the forty years you speak of. Now, sir," and he left this subject to speak of that which had brought him to Montvert, "I must beg you will accompany us to Alais. As a visitor to the neighbourhood and, as I suppose, a person not interested in our unhappy local troubles, you can give us much information as to how last night's murder was perpetrated. You are, I presume, willing to do so?"

"I am willing to speak as truthfully as I can on the matter. To speak as I do now, when I tell you that neither Monsieur Buscarlet nor any of the inhabitants of this place had any hand whatever in last night's doings."

"I shall-the Court will be-glad to be assured of that," Baville replied.

CHAPTER X

THE LIGHTED TORCH

The night had come, and, with the exception of one troop of dragoons and one company of the milices, also with the exception of the Marquis du Chaila, who had remained behind with the intention of having his uncle's body properly interred, all were on their way to Alais.

And behind Baville and de Peyre rode Martin and Buscarlet, the former on his own horse, the pastor on one which had belonged to the dead man.

It was a night such as those who dwell in the south-in Languedoc, or Provence, or Dauphiné-in the height of its summer know well. A night when, up from the Mediterranean, but a few leagues away, there come the cool breezes that sunset invariably brings, and when, from the caps of the purple mountains, the soft evening air descends, passing over cornfields and meadows and woods after it has left the sterile and basaltic summits until, when it reaches the valleys, its breath is perfumed and odorous. Summer nights so calm and soft that here the nightingale remains later than is its wont in other spots and sings sometimes far into August and September, the throats of hundreds of birds making the whole valley musical.

Now, however, their trills were drowned by the clank of sabres against the flanks of the horses bestridden by the dragoons, by the rattle of chain and bridle, the occasional neigh of the animals, and by various orders given as all went forward. Also by the hum of conversation as the men talked to one another.

Suddenly upon the night air, however, there came now another sound, silencing and deadening all else-a sound that subdued and deadened even the clatter of harness and accoutrements, the voices of the men, the songs of the birds of night. The sound of the deep booming of a bell not far off which swelled and rose in the summer calm, as sometimes it rang violently and sometimes slowly and intermittently, sometimes ceased, too, and then began again, with sharp, hurried clangs, as though rung by some frightened, terror-stricken hand.

"It is the tocsin," one hoarse-throated dragoon called out, who rode in the troop behind the leaders, "the tocsin from some village church. Is more murder being done? Are more abbés being slaughtered?"

"The fellow speaks truly," de Peyre said, then roared himself at the top of his voice: "Who among you knows the locality? What village is near?"

From twenty mouths the answer came at once: "It is Frugéres. The place is close at hand. The steeple is the highest for miles around."

Even as these men spoke, their voices were in their turn silenced or drowned by still more numerous shouts from others in the cavalcade.

"See, see!" those other voices yelled. "There is a fire-a church that burns. Behold!"

"My God!" Martin heard Baville whisper to himself, though not so low but that the words were distinguishable. "The fanatics have attacked another priest, another church. This is no riot, but a rebellion."

Then he turned at once to de Peyre and said hurriedly but authoritatively:

"Order all forward. They are there. We may be in time to save some. Also to trap these mountain wolves. Forward, I say! Give the word of command."

From de Peyre that word went forth, harsh and raucous as bellowed from the lips of the rough soldier who had fought at Senef and Ensisheim and had himself taken orders from Turenne and Condé. A moment later every man who was mounted was spurring toward the thin streak of flame that rose in the night air half a mile ahead, while the milice followed on foot as fast as they were able.

"Pray God, no more horrors are being perpetrated," Buscarlet muttered as he rode by Martin's side down the dusty road. Then murmured: "God forgive them. God forgive them. They are mad."

"He may forgive them," said Baville, who had caught his words, and paraphrasing unconsciously as he spoke the words of one by whose side he would have been accounted obscure and humble. "He may. I never will. Oh, that Julien arrives ere long! Then-then-then-they shall know what it is to outrage Languedoc thus."

The flames grew more furious as all neared the tower whence they issued. It was the tower of the church at Frugéres; behind those flames rose the thick white smoke from the burning material below. Also great pieces of the copings were falling from the summit, and sometimes a pinnacle or gargoyle fell too. And once as they drew near there came a smothered clang, followed a moment later by a deep sonorous clash, and those approaching rapidly knew that the great bell had fallen from its beam, probably by now burned through, and had been hurled far down below.

Upon the air as this happened there rose a psalm, a hymn of praise, telling how the false priests of Baal had been consumed by the flames of God's wrath in ages long since past, also the shouts and cries of many voices. Yet none of those shouts were derisive, none scornful or contemptuous. Instead, the shouts and cries of avengers who testified to justice being done on sinners; who approved of the justice, yet saw no reason for adding rejoicing to that approval.

"See," cried Baville, "they are there. Behold! They move below the tower. We have them. De Peyre, give the order to charge. At them, among them, spare none."

The belief in witchcraft was not yet dead in the world. People still believed in sorcery and enchantment. What wonder, then, that the dragoons thought there was some necromancy in the fact that, as they tore down the dusty road, their blades gleaming in the light cast by the flames, all against whom they rode vanished suddenly? Were there one moment, gone the next. It seemed incredible. Half a hundred men had been before them when they were five minutes' distance off; now that they had reached the burning church, not a living soul was to be seen. Truly it savoured of the miraculous. Yet, ere many months had passed-indeed, but a few weeks-these soldiers, and others too who were soon to join them, learned that no foe against whom they had ever been opposed possessed so thoroughly the art of sudden disappearance as did these fanatics, known later as the Camisards. For, trained in their mountain homes to every physical feat-to leaping great chasms, climbing dizzy heights unaided by aught but their strong and agile feet and hands, descending giddy precipices as easily as their own goats-they could disappear, disperse, as quickly and as thoroughly as the snow wreath under the spring sun. Could lure on bodies of their enemies to sports fraught with danger to all but themselves, into quagmires and morasses, lonely mountain passes and fatal hilltops, then themselves vanish and be no more seen.

It was so now upon this second night of their uprising.

As the dragoons charged down upon the paved, open place outside the church of Frugéres they charged upon empty space alone, encountered nothing that offered resistance either to their onrush or their gleaming blades. Nothing but the dead body of a man, a priest, lying on those stones beneath the tower, the head broken in, the limbs twisted and contorted.

"Grand Dieu! what are we dealing with?" exclaimed the Lieutenant General, wiping the sweat from his face as his men pulled up around him, while some rushed into the church on foot, their long swords in their hands, ready to be thrust through any breast that they encountered, and others to the presbytery, thinking the attroupés might be hiding there. "With human beings or devils?"

"Nay," said Baville, "with the children of the desert and the mountains. Yet also the children of the devil. They escape but for a time, however. Even these jugglers can not disappear when they are surrounded. And," he added, striking one white-gloved hand into the palm of another, "they shall be surrounded by such a fast-closing circle that ere long not one shall escape. I swear it here before this murdered man."

Easy to swear such an oath. More difficult to keep it. As, at last, Baville found.

"Who is he?" Martin asked. Then added in a whisper to Buscarlet: "This is murder, not justice. Cruelty, not retribution. See, he is an old man."

"You are right, sir," Baville replied, whose ears nothing ever escaped. "Yet be sure their time will come." Then, looking down at the dead priest, he also asked, "Who is he?"

"It is the reverend curé," one of the dragoons said, regarding the old man and wiping from his face at the same time the beads of perspiration, even as his leader had done a moment before. "I know him well; am of the next parish. He has thrown himself from the tower. As well have staid for the flames as perished thus, broken all to pieces."

All gazed down also as the man uttered these words, and as they did so, none speaking, they recognised that they were face to face with an awakened fury, with a vengeance that had slumbered but which now awoke even as the baited lion awakes and turns at last to rend its foes.

For more than sixteen years the affectés, the New Religionists, the Heretics, had bowed their heads beneath the yoke of him whom they called the Scourge of God, as well as of the priests and the De Maintenon, the woman whom Louvois and La Chaise had once used as an instrument to work on her lover's intolerance, but who, since she had become that lover's wife, had herself carried on the system. Born a Protestant, she had seen that the king's mind became more sunken in superstition as he grew near his end, and that, to keep that mind under her subjection, the surest way was to persecute those whom she had deserted and whom she hated. Therefore she revelled in their suppression, therefore she boasted to her sister bigot, the Princesse des Ursins, that in twenty years, if Louis' life was spared, there would be no more Huguenots in France.