CHAPTER I.

The sunlight was fading from the hills, and the pine-forests were growing grey in the creeping shadow.

A northerly breeze had been blowing from the mountains, but it had died down, as north winds do, with the sunsetting; a great stillness had fallen upon the valleys.

One could hear the torrent as it leapt from the snows above, rushing and gurgling in the gorge it had graven for itself on its way to the Pélice River. One could hear too, faint and far away, the cry of the ravens as they circled over a meadow; and one might catch the jarring call of a night-hawk as it woke from its daylight sleep.

But these sounds rather blended with than broke upon the silence. And there seemed besides no sign of life or motion in all the width of the valley.

There were traces of cultivation on the hill-sides where careful hands had terraced and tilled the stony soil, winning from the wilderness fields for pastures and for corn.

There were also buildings that had the semblance of cottages, a group of ruins here by the stream-side, and single ones standing yonder beyond the spurs of the pine-woods.

But in those fields were now neither flocks nor herds, nor any sign of corn; and from those broken chimneys no smoke-wreaths drifted to tell of human lives about the warm hearth-stones.

It was the year 1687, and the valley was the Valley of Luserna, in the Piedmontese Alps.

This was the country of the Vaudois, and it was indeed desolate after the bitter persecution which had followed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.

Storms of cruelty and the bitterness of superstition had swept the valleys at various times, but never a storm so devastating and terrible as this. From Fenestrelle to Rora, from the Pra Pass to the plains of Piedmont, fire and sword had driven forth the remnant of the Vaudois. Hundreds had fallen, fighting for their faith and for their homes; hundreds had perished under the white pall of the winter snows; and hundreds more had died on the scaffold or in the prisons of the plain.

And the remnant, the poor harried and hunted souls, had gone forth to seek an asylum--if such there might be found--where they might worship their God according to His Word.

The sun sank lower yet; the line of light retreated farther up the mountain-peaks. The ravens sullenly stooped and settled on the rocks. The torrent kept its noisy way, charged with the blue snow-water that came glancing from the hills.

Suddenly a woman’s voice rose on the air, clear, and very sweet. It came through the sprays of creeping plants that veiled a crag so steep that one might marvel how human being could have climbed there. It was a haunt fit only for the chamois or the hill-sheep; and on either hand spread dense forests and ravines where the snow-wreaths lay yet unmelted.

The song rang forth. It was no wavering strain, no uncertain sound, but a chant of triumph that held also a note of defiance--

‘God’s Name is great! He breaketh the arrow of the bow, The shield, the sword and the battle. Thou art of more honour and might than the mountains of prey. Thou, even Thou art to be feared. The earth trembled and was still when God arose To help the meek upon the earth. The fierceness of man shall turn to Thy praise, And the fierceness of the violent shalt Thou restrain. God shall refrain the spirit of princes. The Lord our God is terrible unto the kings of the earth.’

The voice ceased; as the last note died away the last sun-shaft touched the highest peak. The day was done. Night had fallen on the Valley of Luserna.

Behind the ivy-sprays and the clinging rock plants there was a path on the face of the cliff widening as it rose, until--some fifty feet above the stream--it spread into a platform or tiny amphitheatre completely hidden from any prying eye that might search the cliff from below.

From above one might perhaps peer into its recesses; but then no living thing ever did look from above, save the falcons and the ravens, or perhaps a wild goat, tempted by the tufts of mountain flowers which bloomed against the edges of the snow.

Presently, far back in the hill-cleft, a small red flame leaped up, fed on dried grasses and fir-cones.

‘Rénée, Rénée,’ called a woman’s voice, ‘thou art too rash, dear child. May not that light betray us after all?’

‘Oh, no, mother! No one comes here now; we are safe, quite safe. And see where Tutu creeps forward to the blaze! Thou art cold, my poor Tutu? Then rest thee, none will harm thee here.’

A dormouse lifted its beadlike eyes to the speaker’s face, as if well understanding that it was loved and safe. It was a sort of friend to these poor refugees, here in their mountain hiding-place, a creature even more weak and helpless than themselves.

Again the woman’s voice was heard.

‘Dear child, be not stubborn. Have we endured so much only to perish now for lack of a little further patience? A fire even by daylight is rash, at night its glow is almost certain to be seen.’

The girl she addressed stood silent for a moment, the flicker of the fire fell on her slender figure and on the graceful lines of her head and throat. Then she stooped and flung earth upon the flame, treading out the scarcely kindled heap, and scattering the fir-cones till their brightened edges died into little rims and coils of grey.

Rénée Janavel had learnt how to obey and how to suffer, but to-night one word of pleading forced its way from her lips.

‘It is in the night,’ she said, ‘in the dark night that we need the cheer and the warmth. Oh, mother, I lit the fire to keep away my fear----’

The words sank in a broken whisper; it was strange for Rénée Janavel to speak of fear.

The woman paused in wonder.

Why should Rénée be afraid of aught but the danger which the blaze might bring--the danger of cruel men who were thirsting for their blood: men who had sworn that no remnant of the proscribed race should be left in the valleys, and who had swept the fields and forests again and again in their search for any Vaudois in hiding there? Rénée, child of the mountains as she was, why should she fear anything but this? The winter was past, and the prowling wolves had withdrawn themselves; the shy black bears that haunted the hills were not creatures to be greatly affrighted at. What ailed the girl?

Rénée came to her side, and hid her face against the woman’s knee.

‘It is so lonely,’ she murmured brokenly. ‘Lately, at night, I have thought over many things, terrible things--and I have been frightened even to turn my head, too frightened to call to you. Oh, mother, mother dear! will these days never have an end? Shall we never be happy again, Gaspard and you and I?

‘I know that it is cowardly,’ she went on in pathetic appeal. ‘But, mother, you are well now, almost quite strong again: could we not creep away and gain the Swiss country where the rest are gone; and see the dear friendly faces, and sleep in peace, afraid of no man?’

She stopped, for her throat was full of sobbing, and her head sank lower yet upon the trembling hands.

Just then some remaining spark of fire was kindled into blaze by the wind that swept into the cave, and the dried grass leapt into a red flame that threw dancing gleams and shadows on the rocks around, and touched the trunk of a pine overhanging the place with a glow as of deepest orange. Little Tutu, the dormouse, curled himself up in soft satisfaction, a nut which Rénée had given him held tight in his tiny paws.

The woman looked at the fire, but she did not again ask that it should be extinguished.

‘Rénée,’ she said, ‘it is out of all possibility that I should climb the hill passes. I can never see the Swiss country. And, indeed, here in mine own land I would choose to stay, that my last earthly look should rest on the valley I love so well. And for yourself, dear child, how could you go all that long and dangerous way? It was for my sake that you stayed, Rénée. But now--I would not keep you, child, if it were possible for you to gain safety, to reach friends, there in the land where one may worship the good God in peace. But as it is----’

‘Mother! do not speak so! Never, never can I desert you! You know I will not leave you while life holds us together.’

She rose to her feet. One might see the stateliness of her figure as she stood betwixt the fire-glow and the twilight, her head erect, her face full of the strength of love and trust.

‘Sing it again, mother,’ she said, ‘the hymn that you sang just now. And forget that Rénée has been afraid of shadows.’

The woman took her hand and held it tenderly between her own.

‘Tell me, Rénée,’ she said, ‘why were you frightened? Has any new thing chanced?’

‘No, no; it is the long weariness, the uncertainty, the remembering--oh, it is just everything! Whilst you were ill, mother, I had no time to be frightened; but now, when we sit and watch the sun go down, I remember all that has happened, and I turn sick at my very heart.’

She shuddered. They had passed, those two women, through terror enough to try any mortal nerves, and privations sufficient to exhaust the strongest frame. It was small marvel that Rénée trembled as she remembered the past.

‘Sing, mother,’ she said again; ‘Gaspard was always wont to say that your songs uplifted his courage.’

So ‘The Psalm of Strong Confidence’ was chanted once more, the notes of the woman’s voice filling the place with its rich volume of sound. The quick blaze had died down, and the dark shades fell across the cavern. But without, beyond the stooping pines, the sky was brightening. The stars stole out on the deep vault of blue, those glittering stars which tell through all speech and language that the statutes of the Lord are true, and that in keeping of them there is great reward.

And the two women sat, hand in hand, serene in spite of trouble; content, although they were homeless and hunted on the earth. Nay, just now they were more than ‘content!’ they could rejoice that they, like their martyred ancestors, were found worthy to bear the cross of suffering for their Master’s sake.

Rénée Janavel was an orphan. Madeleine Botta, the woman she called ‘mother,’ was bound to her not by ties of blood, but by the stronger ties of love and gratitude. She had inherited a name which was known throughout the length and breadth of the valleys. Her grandfather, ‘the hero of Rora,’ Joshua Janavel, had led the patriot bands who battled against enormous odds in the persecution of 1655 and the few following years. Her father had been sentenced by the Inquisition, and if he were not dead, his miserable existence, chained to an oar as a galley-slave, was worse a hundred times for him than death itself.

Her young mother had perished in the prisons of Turin, and Rénée, a mere child when the Duke of Savoy stopped for a time those terrible deeds of blood, had lived always at Rora with the Bottas.

Madeleine Botta had lost her own daughter, and she had taken Rénée to her heart instead, loving and cherishing her until the desolate child almost forgot that Madeleine was not in very truth what she always called her, ‘her mother.’ And was she not Gaspard’s mother? and were not Gaspard’s people to be her people? his life, her life? She would have been Gaspard’s wife at Easter-tide, had not this new time of death and danger come upon the valleys. Now he was swept off with the fighting men, none exactly could tell whither; and she was here, hidden in the rock-ledges, seeking shelter with Madeleine from the ravaging hordes that had sworn to ‘exterminate the heretics as they would exterminate all other sorts of noxious beasts.’

The home at Rora was a heap of ashes; the peaceful days when Rénée drove the goats down the hill in the shadowy afternoon, or sat busily spinning the flax at Madeleine’s knee, were gone for ever. There had been troubles then, of course, but troubles so tiny that now in comparison they seemed to be positive pleasures.

Henri Botta, the house-master, was a hard-featured man, whose rare words were sometimes wont to be hard; he looked on the world as a vale of sighing, a place where evil reigned, and no man should desire to be happy. Rénée used to shrink from his warning words, and strive to avoid his grim glances. Now how glad she would have been to have heard the sound of his voice, or to have seen the outline of his rugged face!

Then there was Emile, the eldest son, almost as hard and silent as his father; and even Gaspard had a trick of shutting his lips tightly together and frowning till his black brows met, when the talk was of the future or the past.

But Gaspard had never been hard to Rénée--never. He had been to Turin learning his trade, a carpenter he was, and the best carpenter, as Rénée proudly said, in all the commune. He was away for years, for such delicate work as his is not learned in a hurry, and on his return he found the child Rénée grown into a fair and gracious maiden, the realisation of the dreams which had haunted his young manhood.

And so he loved her, and wooed her, and won her; learning from her gentleness to unbend his sternness, teaching her girlish heart to be staunch and earnest.

They had built and plenished their future home in the simple fashion of the valley folk. Rénée was already stitching at the wedding gear, and Madeleine Botta had proudly piled the homespun linen which was to be her marriage gift to the girl who was already as her dear daughter.

And then--

But the tale is dark in the telling. One must go back some way in Europe’s history to understand how such deeds came to be done, how such devastation fell ever and again on the devoted people of the Vaudois valleys.