Part 26

In spite of the threats which were made, I was not deterred from following them at a distance, without other precaution than carelessly sauntering down the same road, with my hands in my pockets, and whistling as if I were paying no attention to them or their affairs. I knew they would not let me get near enough to overhear their plots, but I wanted to make sure in what direction they meant to lie in wait, so as to get there later, if possible, unobserved. With that notion in my head, I signed to Leonard to keep the others at the tavern until I returned to call them. But my pursuit was soon ended. The inn stood on a street which ran down-hill to the river, and is now the mail route to Issoudun. In those days it was a breakneck little place, narrow and ill-paved, lined with old houses with pointed gables and stone mullions. The last of these houses was pulled down a year ago. From the river, which ran along the wall below the inn of the Bœuf Couronné, a steep ascent led to the market-place, which was then, as it is now, that long unevenly paved space, planted with trees, bordered on the left by old houses, on the right by the broad moat, full of water, and the great wall (then unbroken) of the castle. The church closes the market-place at the further end, and two alleys lead down from it, one to the parsonage, the other past the cemetery. The bagpipers turned down the latter path. They were about a gunshot in advance of me, that is to say, just time enough to pass along the path by the cemetery and out into the open country by the postern of the English tower, unless they chose to stop at this particular spot; which was not very convenient, for the path--which ran between the moat of the castle on one side and the bank of the cemetery on the other--was only wide enough for one person at a time.

When I judged that the bagpipers must have reached the postern, I turned the corner of the castle under an arcade which in those days was used as a footpath by the gentry on their way to the parish church. I found I was all alone when I entered the path by the churchyard, a place few Christian men would set foot in alone after nightfall,--not only because it led past the cemetery, but because the north flank of the castle had a bad name. There was talk of I don't know how many persons drowned in the moat in the days of the English war; and some folks swore they had heard the cocadrillos whistle on that particular path when epidemics were about.

You know of course that the cocadrillo is a sort of lizard, which sometimes seems no bigger than your little finger, and sometimes swells to the size of an ox and grows five or six yards long. This beast, which I have never seen, and whose existence I couldn't warrant, is supposed to vomit a venom which poisons the air and brings the plague. Now, though I did not believe much of this, I was not over-fond of going along this path, where the high wall of the castle and the tall trees of the cemetery shut out every speck of light. On this occasion I walked fast, without looking to the right or left, and passed through the postern of the English gate, of which, by the bye, not one stone upon another remains to the present day.

Once there, and notwithstanding that the night was fine and the moon clear, I could not see, either far or near, the slightest trace of the eighteen persons I was after. I looked in every direction; I even went as far as Père Begneux's cottage, the only house they could have entered. The occupants were all asleep, and nowhere about was there any noise, or trace, or sign, of a living person. I therefore concluded that the missing bagpipers had entered the cemetery to perform some wicked conjuring, and--though far from liking to do so, but determined to risk all for Thérence's relations--I returned through the postern and along the accursed path, stepping softly, skirting the bank so close that I touched the tombstones, and keeping my ears open to the slightest sound. I heard the screech-owl hooting in the casemates, and the adders hissing in the black water of the moat, but that was all. The dead slept in the ground as tranquilly as the living in their beds. I plucked up courage to climb over the cemetery bank and to give a glance round the field of death. All was quiet,--no signs whatever of the bagpipers.

Then I walked all round the castle. It was locked up, and as it was after ten o'clock masters and servants slept like stones.

Then I returned to the inn, not being able to imagine what had become of the guild, but determined to station my comrades in the path leading to the English gate, from which we could see what happened to Joseph when he reached the rendezvous at midnight at the gate of the cemetery. I found them on the bridge debating whether or not they should start for home, and declaring they could see no danger to the Huriels, because it was evident they had agreed amicably with the other bagpipers in the matter of the competition. As for what concerned Joseph, they cared little or nothing, and tried to prevent me from interfering. I told them that to my thinking the danger for all three would be when the tests were applied, for the evil intentions of the bagpipers had been plainly shown, and the Huriels, I knew, were there to protect Joseph.

"Are you already sick of the enterprise?" I said. "Is it because we are only eight to sixteen, and you haven't a heart for two inside of you?"

"How do you count eight?" asked Leonard. "Do you think the Head-Woodsman and his son would go with us against their fellow-members?"

"I did count wrong;" I answered; "for we are really nine. Joseph won't let himself be fleeced if they make it too hot for him, and as both the Huriels carry arms, I feel quite sure they mean to defend him if they can't be heard otherwise."

"That's not the point," returned Leonard. "We are only six, and they are twenty; but there's another thing which pleases us even less than a fight. People have been talking in the inn, and each had a story to relate of these tests. The monk denounced them as impious and abominable; and though Joseph laughed at what was said, we don't feel certain there is nothing in it. They told of candidates nailed on a bier, and furnaces into which they were tripped, and red-hot iron crosses which they were made to clasp. Such things seem hard to believe; and if I were certain that that was all I'd like to punish the fellows who are bad enough to ill-treat a neighbor in that way. Unfortunately--"

"There, there!" said I, "I see you have let yourself be scared. What is behind it all? Tell the whole, and let's either laugh at it or take warning."

"This is it," said one of the lads, seeing that Leonard was ashamed to own his fears. "None of us have ever seen the devil, and we don't want to make his acquaintance."

"Ho, ho!" I cried, seeing that they were all relieved, now the words were out. "So it is Lucifer himself that frightens you! Well, I'm too good a Christian to be afraid of him; I give my soul to God, and I'll be bound I'll take him by the horns, yes I myself, alone against the enemy of mankind, as fearlessly as I would take a goat by the beard. He has been allowed to do evil to those who fear him long enough, and it is my opinion that an honest fellow who dared to wrench off his horns could deprive him of half his power, and that would be something gained at any rate."

"Faith!" said Leonard, ashamed of his fears, "if you look at it that way I won't back down, and if you'll smash his horns I'll try to pull out his tail. They say it is fine, and we'll find out if it is gold or hemp."

There is no such remedy against fear as fun, but I don't deny that though I took the matter on that tone, I was not at all anxious to pit myself against "Georgeon," as we call the devil in our parts. I wasn't a bit more easy in mind than the rest, but for Thérence's sake I felt ready to march into the jaws of hell. I had promised her, and the good God himself couldn't have turned me back now.

But that's an ill way to talk. The good God, on the contrary, gave me strength and confidence, and the more anxiety I felt all that night, the more I thought on him and asked his aid.

When our other comrades saw that our minds, Leonard's and mine, were made up, they followed us. To make the affair safer, I went back to the inn to see if I could find other friends who, without knowing what we were after, would follow us for fun, and, if occasion came, would fight with us. But it was late, and there was no one at the Bœuf Couronné but Benoît, who was supping with the monk, Mariton, who was saying her prayers, and Joseph, who had thrown himself on a bed and was sound asleep with, I must own, a tranquillity that put us to shame.

"I have only one hope," said Mariton, as she got off her knees; "and that is that he will sleep over the time and not wake up till morning."

"That's just like all women!" cried Benoît, laughing, "they want life at the price of shame. But I gave my word to her lad to wake him before midnight, and I shall not fail to do so."

"Ah, you don't love him!" cried the mother. "We'll see if you push our Charlot into danger when his turn comes."

"You don't know what you are talking about, wife," replied the innkeeper; "go to bed and to sleep with my boy; I promise you I'll not fail to wake yours. You would not wish him to blame me for his dishonor?"

"Besides," said the monk, "what danger do you suppose there is in the nonsense they are going to perform? I tell you you are dreaming, my good woman. The devil doesn't get hold of anybody; God doesn't allow it, and you have not brought your boy up so ill that you need fear that he will get himself damned for his music. I tell you that the villanous tests of the bagpipers are really nothing worse than impious jokes, from which sensible people can easily protect themselves; and Joseph need only laugh at the demons they will set upon him, to put them all to flight."

The monk's words heartened up my comrades wonderfully.

"If it is only a farce," they said to me, "we will tumble into the middle of it and thrash the devil well; but hadn't we better take Benoît into our confidence? He might help us."

"To tell you the truth," I said, "I am not sure that he would. He is thought a worthy man; but you never know the secrets of a family, especially when there are children by a first marriage. Step-fathers don't always like them, and Joseph has been none too amiable this evening with his. Let's get off without a word to anyone; that's best, and it is nearly time we were there."

Taking the road past the church, walking softly and in single file, we posted ourselves in the little path near the English gate. The moon was so low we could creep in the shadow of the cemetery bank and not be seen, even if any one passed quite close to us. My comrades, being strangers, had no such repugnance to the place as the villagers, and I let them go in front while I hid within the cemetery, near enough to the gate to see who entered, and also near enough to call to them when wanted.

THIRTY-FIRST EVENING.

I waited a good long time,--all the longer because the hours go so slow in company with dead folks. At last midnight struck in the church steeple and I saw the head of a man rising beyond the low wall of the cemetery quite near the gate. Another quarter of an hour dragged along without my seeing or hearing anything but that man, who, getting tired of waiting, began to whistle a Bourbonnais tune, whereby I knew it was Joseph, who no doubt betrayed the hopes of his enemies by seeming so cool in presence of the dead.

At last, another man, who was stuck close to the wall inside the gate, and whom I hadn't seen on account of the big box-trees which hid him, popped his head quickly over the wall as if to take Joseph by surprise; but the latter did not stir, and said, laughing: "Well, Père Carnat, you are rather late; I came near going to sleep while waiting. Will you open the gate, or must I enter that 'nettle-field,' by the breach?"

"No," said Carnat, "the curate would not like it; we mustn't openly offend the church people. I will go to you."

He climbed over the wall and told Joseph he must let his head and arms be covered with a very thick canvas sack, and then walk wherever he was led.

"Very good," said Joseph in a contemptuous tone. "Go on."

I watched them from over the wall, and saw them enter the little path to the English gate; then I made a short cut to the place where I had left my comrades and found only four of them; the youngest had slipped off without a word, and I was rather afraid the others would do the same, for they found the time long and told me they had heard very queer noises, which seemed to come from under the earth.

Presently Joseph came along, with his head covered and led by Carnat. The pair got close upon us, but turned from the path about twenty feet off. Carnat made Joseph clamber down to the edge of the moat, and we thought he meant to drown him. At once we were on our legs to stop such treachery, but in a minute more we saw they were both walking in the water, which was shallow at that place, until they reached a low archway in the wall of the castle which was partly in the water of the moat. They passed through it, and this explained to me what had become of the others whom I had hunted for.

It was necessary to do as they did; which didn't seem to me very difficult, but my comrades were hard to persuade. They had heard that the vaults of the castle ran nine miles out into the country, as far as Deols, and that persons who did not know their windings had been lost in them. I was forced to declare that I knew them very well, though I had never set foot there in my life, and had no idea whether they were common wine-cellars or a subterraneous town, as my friends declared.

I walked first, without seeing where I set my feet, feeling the walls, which inclosed a narrow passage where one's head very nearly touched the roof. We advanced in this way for a short time, when a hullaballoo sounded beneath us like forty thunder-claps rolling round the devil's cave. It was so strange and alarming that I stopped short to try and find out what it meant; then I went quickly forward, not to let myself get chilled with the idea of some devil's caper, telling my companions to follow me. But the noise was so loud they did not hear me and I, thinking they were at my heels, went on and on, till, hearing nothing more, I turned to speak to them and got no answer. Not wishing to call aloud, I went back four or five steps; it was all dark. I stretched out my hands, and called cautiously; good-bye to my valiant contingent,--they had deserted me!

I thought I must be pretty near the entrance and could surely catch up with them within or without. I returned through the arch by which we had entered, and searched carefully along the little path beside the cemetery; but no! my comrades had disappeared just like the bagpipers; it seemed as if the earth had opened and swallowed them up.

I had a moment of horrid worry, thinking I must either give up the whole thing or return to those devilish caverns and take myself all alone into the traps and terrors they were preparing for Joseph. But I asked myself whether, even if the matter concerned only him, I could quietly leave him in danger. My soul answered no, and then I asked my heart if love for Thérence wasn't quite as real a thing as one's duty to one's neighbor, and the answer I received sent me back through the dark and slimy archway and along the subterranean passages--I won't say as gayly, but at any rate as quickly as if I were going to my own wedding.

While I was feeling my way forward I found, on my right, an opening to another passage, which I had not found before because I then felt to my left; and I thought to myself that my comrades in going out had probably found it and turned that way. I followed the passage, for there was no sign that the other way would bring me any nearer to the bagpipers. I did not find my comrades, but as for the bagpipers, I had not taken twenty steps before I heard their din much nearer than it sounded the first time; and presently a quivering kind of light let me see that I was entering a large round cave which had three or four exits, black as the jaws of hell.

I was surprised to see so clearly in a vault where there wasn't any light, but I presently noticed that gleams were coming from below through the ground I trod upon. I noticed that this ground seemed to swell up in the middle, and fearing it was not solid, I kept close to the wall, and getting near to a crevice, I lay down with my eye close to it and saw very plainly what was going on in another cavern just below the one I was in. It was, as I afterwards learned, a former dungeon, adjoining an oubliette or black hole, the mouth of which could still be seen thirty years ago in the upper hall of the castle. I thought as much when I saw the remains of human bones at the lower end of the cave, which the bagpipers had set up in rows to terrify the candidate, with pine torches inside their skulls. Joseph was there all alone, his eyes unbound, his arms crossed, just as cool as I was not, listened contemptuously to the uproar of eighteen bagpipes, which all brayed together, prolonging a single note into a roar. This crazy music came from an adjoining cave where the bagpipers were hidden, and where, as they doubtless knew, a curious echo multiplied the sound. I, who knew nothing about it then, fancied at first that all the bagpipes of Berry, Auvergne, and the Bourbonnais were collected together in that cave.

When they had had enough of growling with their instruments, they began to squeal and squall themselves, and the walls echoed them, till you would have fancied they were a great troop of furious animals of all kinds. But Joseph, who was really an unusual kind of man among our peasantry,--indeed, I hardly ever knew his like,--merely shrugged his shoulders and yawned, as if tired with such fool's play. His courage passed into me, and I began to think of laughing at the farce, when a little noise at my back made me turn my head. There I saw, at the entrance of the passage by which I had come, a figure which froze my senses.

It was that of a lord of the olden time, carrying a lance and wearing an iron breastplate and leathern garments of a style no longer seen. But the most awful part of him was his face, which was actually like a death's head.

I partly recovered myself, thinking it was only a disguise some of the enemy had put on to frighten Joseph; but on reflection I saw the danger was really mine, because, finding me on the watch, he would surely do me some damage. However, though he saw me as plain as I could see him, he did not stir, but remained stock-still like a ghost, half in shadow, and half in the light that came up from below; and as this light flickered according as it was moved about, there were moments when, not seeing him, I thought he was a notion of my own brain,--until suddenly he would reappear, all but his legs, which remained in darkness behind a sort of step or barrier, which made me fancy he was as it were floating on a cloud.

I don't know how long I was tortured with this vision, which made me forget to watch Joseph, and scared me lest I was going mad in trying to do more than it was in me to perform. I recollected that I had seen in the hall of the castle an old picture which they said was the portrait of a wicked warrior whom a lord of the castle in the olden time, who was the warrior's brother, had flung into the dungeon. The garments of leather and iron which I saw before me on that skeleton figure, were certainly like those in the picture, and the notion came into my head that here was a ghost in pain, watching the desecration of his sepulchre, and waiting to show his displeasure in some way or other.

What made this idea the more probable was that the ghost said nothing to me, and evidently took no notice of my presence,--apparently aware that I had no evil intentions against his poor carcass.

At last a noise different from all others attracted my eyes away from him. I looked back into the cave below me, where stood Joseph, and something near him very ugly and very strange.

Joseph stood boldly in front of an abominable creature, dressed in the skin of a dog, with horns sticking out of his tangled hair, and a red face, and claws and tail; the which beast was jumping about and making faces like one possessed of the devil. It was vile to see, and yet I wasn't the dupe of it very long, for though the creature tried to disguise his voice I thought I recognized that of Doré-Fratin, the bagpiper of Pouligny, one of the strongest and most quarrelsome men in our neighborhood.

"You may sneer as you please," he was saying to Joseph, "at me and at hell, but I am the king of all musicians, and you shall not play your instrument without my permission unless you sell me your soul."

Joseph answered, "What can such a fool of a devil as you do with the soul of a musician? You have no use for it."

"Mind what you say," returned the other. "Don't you know that down here you must either give yourself to the devil or prove that you are stronger than he?"

"Yes, yes, I know the proverb," said Joseph: "'Kill the devil or the devil will kill you.'"

As he spoke, I saw Huriel and his father come from a dark opening into the vault and go up to the devil as if to speak to him; but they were pulled back by the other bagpipers who now showed themselves, and Carnat the elder addressed Joseph.

"You have proved," he said, "that you don't fear witchcraft, and we will let you go free if you will now conform to the usual custom, which is to fight the devil, in proof that you, a Christian man, refuse to submit to him."

"If the devil wants to be well thrashed," replied Joseph, "let me go at him at once, and we'll see if his skin is any tougher than mine. What weapons?"

"None but your fists," replied Carnat.

"It is fair play, I hope," said the Head-Woodsman.

Joseph took no time to inquire; his temper was up. Enraged by the tricks that were played on him, he sprang on the devil, tore off his horns and head-dress, and caught him so resolutely round the body that he brought him to earth and fell on top of him.

But he instantly got up, and I fancied he gave a cry of surprise and pain; but the bagpipers all began to play, except Huriel and his father, who stood watching the encounter with an expression of doubt and uneasiness.

Joseph, meantime, was tumbling the devil about and seeming to get the better of him; but his rage seemed to me unnatural, and I feared he might put himself in the wrong through too much violence. The bagpipers seemed to help him, for instead of rescuing their comrade, who was knocked down three times, they marched round and round the fight, piping loudly, and beating with their feet to excite him.

Suddenly the Head-Woodsman separated the combatants by levelling a blow with his stick on the devil's paws, and threatening to strike harder the second time if he was not listened to. Huriel ran to his father's side, raising his stick also, while all the others stopped walking round and round and piping; and a moment's silence and stillness fell on all.

Then I saw that Joseph, overcome with pain, was wiping his torn hands and his face, which was covered with blood, and that he would have fainted if Huriel had not caught him in his arms, while Doré-Fratin merely threw aside his trappings, panting with heat, and wiping the sweat from his forehead with a grin.

"What does this mean?" cried Carnat, coming up to the Plead-Woodsman with a threatening air, "Are you a traitor to the guild? By what right do you interfere with the tests?"