The Scourge of God

"I ask your pardon," he said, speaking very low, "that I have come near to you again. That I must address you. Yet, 'traitor' as I am, my place is still by your side. I interfered to save you yesterday. I must go on with what I have begun. One moment to warn the commandant-if-they have not slain him-then-then-mademoiselle-to save you from these men of my own faith."

But now she spoke no more, only-her eyes were fixed upon him with a strange look-he could have sworn that in the almost absolute darkness of the night which was upon them he saw her bosom heave pitiably. Then from her lips he heard beyond all doubt a gasp come.

"Fear not," he said, "they will not murder a woman. Can not, at least, murder you while I still live. Remain behind the door while I re-enter the room."

Whereon, leaving her, he pushed open the door and advanced within, his sword in his hand. As he did so he saw he had no chance; believed that he was doomed.

The room was full of men, of the mock soldiers-the Camisards disguised in the uniforms of De Broglie and of Hérault; doubtless they had entered by the main door while he had been in the passage. Also there were lights in it-two flambeaus placed in old sockets in the walls, and white-wax candles in a great lustre on the table.

In front of him was the "nephew of M. de Broglie," his powdered wig off now and his head showing a mass of long fair hair, while in his hand he too held his drawn sword. At the table, his face fallen forward upon it and his arms outstretched, was the old man, the commandant, done to death.

"You craven hound!" hissed Martin, and as he spoke his rapier darted full at the other. "You craven hound, you eat of that old man's dish, drink of his cup, and murder him! Defend yourself, assassin!"

And, forgetful of any wrong that this man's (his own) faith might have suffered at the hands of those of the commandant's creed, remembering only that he was a gentleman face to face with one whom in his heart he deemed the canaille, remembering, too, that he was a murderer, he lunged full at him.

"Malédiction!" the Camisard exclaimed, driven back by the skill of the other (skill acquired in many a cours d'escrime in Paris, and the fence school of the Guards at Kensington gravel-pits), and knowing too, himself, but little of sword play except the rough cut-and-thrust which he had practised in the mountains. "Malédiction! You shall pay dearly for this! Au sécours mes frères."

He called for succour none too soon. In another moment Martin's blade would have been through his breast. None too soon! Fortunately for him it was at hand. Like tigers rushing on their prey, half a dozen of the disguised Camisards hurled themselves upon Martin; two threw themselves on him behind, one knocked up his sword arm, two more secured him. He was disarmed, captured, at their mercy.

"Shall we knock him on the head or cut his throat, brother Cavalier?" one asked, while as he did so Martin knew that he stood before one of the two chiefs of the Cévenoles, a man whose name was a terror by now to all Languedoc, and, two centuries afterward, is still remembered.

"No," Jean Cavalier replied, "he is a bold man, of the tyrants' side though he be. Most of them will be ours now we have risen. We will spare him, for the present at least."

Then he turned to Martin, who stood there calm and contemptuous (remembering that the fellow before him had been a baker's apprentice a year or two back, as he had heard-the latter almost felt degraded at having his life spared by such a man as this), and said with an attempt at ease which he invariably adopted, and with, also, the fury he had shown gone:

"Monsieur, it is the fortune of war which puts you in our power. You must abide by it. What parish do you belong to?"

"None you ever heard of. One in the north of France. I am a stranger here."

"A stranger!" Cavalier repeated incredulously, "a stranger!" And as he did so Martin saw all the followers of the Camisards' chief gazing astonishedly at him. "A stranger! If so, what are you doing here? What have the affairs of this unhappy province to do with you? Also, why in this château?"

What answer Martin might have made to his questions, if any, was not given, since at this moment three of the men who had left the room returned, bringing with them Urbaine Ducaire. They had found her outside the door listening tremblingly to all that had happened within, rooted to the spot, almost insensible.

Yet now, as she advanced between those men, something had given her courage, had nerved her to strength. She trembled no more and, although very white and with still a strange gleam in her eyes, she walked erect; almost, to Martin observing her, it seemed defiantly. What, he wondered, had stung her to this courage? Perhaps the contempt that she too felt for her captors.

With a bow, Cavalier welcomed her, then asked:

"Have I the honour to stand face to face with the daughter of his Excellency the Intendant?"

"I am the adopted daughter of the Comte de Baville," she answered calmly. "When do you intend to slay me, as you have slain the others?" and her eyes stole to where the commandant's body lay stretched over the table.

For a moment Cavalier looked at her with a strange glance, surprised, perhaps, at her calmness; it may be, stung by her absolute indifference to his power. Then he said:

"Mademoiselle mistakes those whom she addresses. Doubtless, in these surroundings, thinks she has fallen into the hands of papists or those of similar faith. People who slay women burn them on the grandes places, belabour their bare backs. I would not be discourteous, yet mademoiselle will pardon me if I remind her that we are not of the same religion as herself, or monsieur by her side."

Or monsieur by her side! Unanswering her captor, scarcely regarding him, she stood there, a look impenetrable to Cavalier upon her face, yet with her mind full of wonderment.

Or monsieur by her side! They did not know then that he was one of them, in faith and belief at least-that-that-

"God!" she whispered to herself, still gazing beyond-through-the Camisard chief, yet with no thought of him in her mind. "God! what awful wrong have I done him again to-night, how misjudged him? To be by my side as a protection still, to share my fate, he does not avow himself a Protestant; consents to be deemed their enemy-a Catholic. And he is not a woman. There is naught to save him."

Even as she so thought her eyes stole round and rested on him standing there calmly near her side, avowing, denying nothing.

CHAPTER XVIII

LA DIVINÉRESSE

The violets and the primroses grow in the chestnut woods that fringe the base of La Lozère, yet disappear as the roads wind up to the summit, giving place to the wild foxglove and heather which, in their turn, disappear as still the ascent continues. Also, the chestnuts themselves become more sparse and infrequent, until at last the woods cease altogether, and the mountaineer trends only on the soft, crisp brown grass that, lying warm beneath the winter's snows, springs but into existence to be consumed later by the fierce southern sun that beats on it.

Finally, with far beneath his feet the valleys basking in the warm sun, the wanderer stands upon a dreary upland with, around him, the mountain tops of the Cévennes huddled in wild confusion, as though thrown down from the palm of some great giant. A confusion of barren crags in some places, of, in others, great hills clothed with forests or upland pasturages, or, in a few cases, plots of cereals-a confusion over which in summer sweeps, without warning, a torrent of hail, or amidst which rise fogs that envelope all; that in winter is buried in snow over which the tempests howl. Here, too, wherever the eye turns, torrents are seen that, when Spring unlocks their floods and turns the frozen snow to water, leap down and hurl themselves over boulders and, in some cases, precipices until at last they reach the rivers beneath. Here also are bare walls of rock in which are the caverns that sheltered the Camisards whom Louis and Louvois, Chamillart and De Maintenon had driven forth into the mountain deserts. Yet not only Louis, le Dieudonné and his myrmidons, but, before him, that other Louis, his father, surnamed "The Just," who had, under the sword of the brutal Marshal de Thémines, also driven countless Huguenots to take refuge in these wild, stony citadels, and had forced them to fortify their mountains against their persecutors. To close their caverns with bronze doors secretly conveyed to them by Jeanne d'Albret, Protestant Queen of Navarre.

It was in one of these vast caves, a week after the Château de Servas had been burnt to the ground by the orders of Jean Cavalier (of how the garrison was put to death, none being spared, the peasants still tell nightly to all who care to hear), that there was gathered a vast company of men and women. A company assembled to sit in judgment on another man and woman who were in their power, to say whether the hour had come for the death of those captives or was still to be postponed. Postponed, not abandoned! For they were Catholics, persecutors. And, therefore, doomed, sooner or later. But first the prophets and the prophetesses had to speak. On them depended much; a swift doom that night or one that might be reserved for another day.

"You understand, mademoiselle?" the man said to his companion, seated by his side; "you understand? Our sentence depends on those gathered together round Cavalier. After they have spoken we shall know whether 'tis now or later."

"I understand," Urbaine Ducaire answered, the cold tone in which he spoke causing more grief to her heart than the awful import of his words. "I understand." Then her eyes sought his, met them, and were swiftly withdrawn.

They had been here a week, being treated well, allowed to roam about the vast caverns unmolested, yet never once allowed to form the most illusory hopes that there could be but one end to their captivity. The knowledge had been conveyed to them by now and then a word from one or from another, by a look from a third, by even a glance from Cavalier himself or from Roland, that for some of the Protestant men and women slaughtered by the Papists they were to furnish an expiation-a retaliation-as many other Catholics had already done who had fallen into their captors' hands.

Yet it was not the crowds of fierce Camisards who now surrounded them in this great cavern, lit by torches at its farthest end, and by the rays of the October sun which streamed in from where the great antique bronze doors, placed there a hundred years ago, stood at the hither end; nor the unpitying, cruel glances cast by the prophetesses at the girl, which caused the grief she felt. That came from another cause; from the cold disdain of the man by her side-the man to whom she owed it that she had not been slain in the attack made upon her escort. Disdain for the words she had uttered against him that night in the passage outside the banqueting hall of the Château St. Servas, for the manner in which she had misjudged him. Misjudged him as she had recognised well from that night itself, from the moment when, being himself a Protestant, he had refused to profit by the fact, but, instead, had remained silent when accused of being one of their captors' enemies. And his reason for doing so was certain; not to be doubted. So that he might still be by her side, still near to protect her, still near, if any chance should arise, to aid her escape. And now the time was at hand when their doom was to be determined, and yet he continued to hold his peace, would be ready to share her fate, and, she told herself, to despise her to the end.

"You are very noble," she had said to him that morning when they had been brought into the great cavern from the cells which each had had assigned to them, "and I, oh, God, how base! I wish the world had ended on that night, ere I uttered the words I did."

"It matters not," he said; "is worth no thought. You misjudged me, that is all."

She bowed her head before him, meaning thereby to acknowledge how utterly she had indeed misjudged him. Then she said, her eyes fixed on his:

"Yet-yet you will not let them continue in their ignorance of what you are? If-if they decide to slay, you will announce your fellowship with them? Is it not so?"

But to this he would make no answer, turning away his head from her.

"It needs but one word," she continued, "and you are free-free to go in peace."

He knew as well as she that it needed but one word; nay, he knew more. It needed but another word-the statement that he was an Englishman-to make him something more than free, to cause him to be received with acclamation by their captors, welcomed as a friend. For England was Louis' bitterest foe and the most powerful; a force slowly crushing the life out of France and her king, as she had been doing since first she shattered his great fleet at Barfleur and La Hogue. Also she was the home of every outlawed refugee and Huguenot; her people supplied them with help and succour; even to this remote spot money and arms were often secretly sent. And, further, 'twas whispered among the Protestants that an attack was to be made ere long on France's Mediterranean coast by one of England's admirals, after which there would not remain one frontier or border of the land that did not bristle with Protestant enemies.

It did indeed need but the words "I am an Englishman" for his safety to be assured. Yet he had sworn to himself that he would die at his captors' hands ere he uttered them or made the statement that he was of their faith, ere he would go forth and leave this girl here, alone and doomed.

"I do not desire," he said, "to earn my release by proclaiming myself a Protestant. I pity them for what they have suffered; yet-yet I am not in sympathy with their retaliation. I shall not proclaim myself."

But now the hum of voices from the crowd near them became hushed; from their midst one of the prophets, or, as they called them, "Les Extasés," was speaking. "Mes Frères," they heard him say, "the God of Battles fights on our side, even as once he fought upon the side of Joshua. Also he has inspired me to read the future. I see," he went on, extending his hands, "the time approaching when over all the land of France the Huguenots shall worship in peace in the way that most befits them; when no longer a tyrannous king, his married mistress by his side, shall send forth armies to crush them. Nay, more, I see the time at hand, ay, even in that king's lifetime, when he, reaping the fruits of his errors, shall find us the allies of his bitterest foes. I see our brother, Cavalier, leading his troops to victory against France, against France's own children in a distant land. I see a plain strewed with their bodies, crimson with their blood shed against France. But not yet, not yet."[2 - Doubtless the Prophet's visions foresaw the Battle of Almanza, whereon many hundreds of Camisards fell fighting for England and the allies against France. A strange battle this! in which the French were led by an Englishman, the Duke of Berwick, and the English by a Frenchman, Ruvigny, afterward the Earl of Galloway.]

"Ay! not yet. And, my brother, tell us what of the present your holy visions disclose," Cavalier exclaimed. "I too can forecast the future when inspired by God. Speak, therefore, my brother; let us see if God has revealed to both of us alike."

Whereupon, again, the seer took up his strain.

"Languedoc shall be free at last," he said. "I see in the far distant future the altars overturned at which the children of the Devil worship, the priests of Baal slain, the gibbets empty, the flames burned out. Yet blood must be shed-the blood of all who bow to false gods, idols of wood and stone, cruel gods who have spared none of our faith, as now we will spare none of theirs. 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for tooth.' It is the Mosaic law; let it be carried out. Spare none." And even as he spoke his own eyes lighted on the man and woman sitting there awaiting their doom. Then, lifting up his voice, he sang, all joining in his song who stood around him, all holding up their hands to heaven:

Seigneur, entend ma plainte, écoute ma prière,