CHAPTER III.

Victor Amadeus did not obey King Louis without a struggle. He was content with his Vaudois subjects; they were industrious and law-abiding, and they were a valuable defence against invasion from the west, and a check upon the bandits of the Alps. Why should he harry and hunt them forth to soothe the sore conscience of that tyrannical old man in Versailles?

But the French ambassador put the matter in a light which speedily convinced Victor Amadeus. His master, he said, King Louis, had resolved that heresy should be stamped utterly out. He would send an army to the Savoy valleys, an army quite strong enough to accomplish the purpose. The Duke of Savoy need not trouble himself at all. The work should be done, and thoroughly done, by the French alone, but--and the addition had a strong and grave significance--but the King of France would retain the Piedmont valleys for his trouble!

What could Duke Victor say? These Vaudois, after all, were heretics; his own father had done exactly what King Louis was now urging upon him to do; hesitation might be another name for lukewarmness in a holy cause. And at all risks he must avoid giving Louis an excuse for making good his footing on the soil of Savoy.

Therefore the proclamation was signed.

A terrible proclamation it was. It ordained complete cessation of every religious service, save that of the Romish faith; the immediate destruction of the churches; the banishment of the pastors, and the baptism of every child by Romish priests, who were henceforth to educate and control all young people.

The punishment for disobeying or evading this edict was death.

Dismay entered all hearts. Rome was once more to whet her savage sword. And the mountaineers, helpless, defenceless, could only die, since submission to such edicts could not be.

They remembered 1655, and the way in which a handful of men had beaten back Pianezza and his hordes.

The courage that had nerved Janavel and his heroes was still alight in the valleys. They too would fight for their homes and their churches, for the honour of their wives, for the faith of their little ones.

So entrenchments were thrown up in the ravines, and turf and rough stones piled up on every point of vantage; stores were hastily collected, and the corn-stacks were threshed out. The women did their part; even the children were busy as bees.

Henri Botta heard the careless laughter of a string of boys and girls as they ran up the steps of the mill, carrying each one a burden of wheat or rye, and his grave face grew sterner still as he harkened.

‘Little they know! little they know!’ he muttered in his beard. ‘Laugh! ‘tis the last laughter that will sound in Luserna for many and many a day.’

The horrors of the months that followed cannot here be told. Is it not an awful thing that men have committed atrocities of which one cannot speak--that living bodies and tortured souls have borne what our ears cannot suffer to hear--what our minds cannot endure to conceive? Frail women, modest and gentle girls, the babies too young to know the terror of the sword that slew them, the old men whose white hairs were but signals for scoff and insult--all these helpless ones were the butt and playthings of the brutal soldiers, whose most merciful dealing was death. Aye, happy were those whose doom was _only_ death!

Botta and his two sons fought at the barricade which crossed the road above Casiana. Emile was amongst the first to fall. His father saw him stagger, and rushed forward to his help; but, as he reached upwards to where Emile lay on the ridge of the earthwork, a second ball crashed into the prostrate figure. The boy was shot through the heart.

‘Let him lie there,’ muttered Botta, with a quietude more sad than tears. ‘Let him lie there, on the crest of the barricade. Even in death he shall defend the valleys.’

Yet the heroism and devotion so lavishly poured out in those days and weeks of struggle were in vain. Once more the valleys were swept from north to south, from the Palavas Alps to the Po River--once more the red flames raged and triumphed above the cottage roofs; and over the fields, and by the swift torrent water, the flying people were hunted down and slain.

* * * * *

It was the end of April, 1686. The home of the Bottas was a blackened heap of ruin; the orchards, where the tufts of pink apple-blossom should be already showing, were hacked and hewed away, and the down-trodden vines lay in long trailing lines amid the wrecks of the village.

A few soldiers lounged and laughed in their encampments hard by; they were roasting a goat that they had shot for their supper, and their rude jokes as they did so roused noisy mirth. Their task of blood and cruelty had brutalized them to a degree hard to believe, did not one know how low human nature can fall when riot and licence cut away the cords of gentleness and justice, and the blood-thirst is awakened--that thirst which men share with the tigers.

Henri, the house-master, was gone from Rora; where, none could tell, for the Vaudois troops had been scattered like clouds before the tempest. Gaspard had come back alone, creeping up the passes in the night, hiding, and groping his dangerous way, to find out what had befallen his mother and Rénée.

He knew every nook and crevice of the ridges that rose grim and almost inaccessible between the ravine and Villaro; somewhere hereabouts he hoped to find them, unless--indeed----

And the young man’s haggard eyes gleamed with the look that it is ill to see on mortal face as he counted out what that ‘unless’ might mean.

His search was long, and his heart grew heavier hour by hour. Perhaps they had already been driven off to prison in Turin; or, perhaps--and if he were not to find them Gaspard knew that he ought to pray that it might be so--perhaps they had already joined Emile in the land where fighting and desolation and death is over for ever, where God Himself will give comfort and the calmness of His peace.

The dawn was breaking, the glad, sweet dawn of the spring morning, and Gaspard slowly dragged himself beneath the shelter of the pines. He must not stand there, exposed, under those shafts of clear, keen light, unless he were willing to take his chance of a musket-ball from the duke’s soldiers, whose orders were to clear the country as a broom sweeps over a floor.

There was a cavern here, up under the cliff, a place where he might lie and rest, and eat the crust of bread he carried in his wallet. Rest--food--they were sorely needed, yet he felt as though rest were impossible, and food would choke him.

He lifted the ivy trails and stood a moment, peering into the dimness. These mountain caves held strange creatures now and then.

From out of the darkness came a sudden cry.

‘O Gaspard, O Gaspard! is it thou?’

He staggered. He was worn and faint, and just at that moment the hope was dim of finding those he sought. His brain whirled round; he put his hand to his eyes, bewildered.

Then a woman’s arms reached out to him, and confused words, and little cries of joy, and short sobs came in broken gusts and silences.

‘Gaspard! Oh, thanks be to God! Thou art living then, Gaspard! Mother, mother, awake! here is he, our Gaspard.’ And Rénée clung to him and hid her face against his breast.

They were safe then, as yet! And his voice came back to him as he knelt to kiss his mother’s hand and cheek. Ah, the swords of the duke were sharp, the desolation of the valleys was drear, the house-father was an exile, and Emile lay in his gory grave; but an offering of heartfelt praise went up to God’s throne as the re-united ones held each other’s hands and thanked the Lord that day.

There was much to hear on either side, and the women’s faces grew very grave when Gaspard told them what had happened in the valleys of Luserna and Angrogna. Cannon and cavalry had been too much for the mountaineers in the villages and on the roads, and treachery had beguiled them from the entrenchments on the heights to which they had fled. The Savoy general had offered, in the duke’s name, safe and honourable treatment for themselves, their wives, and children, if they would throw themselves on their conquerer’s clemency. The words were fair, the terms all they dared expect. They trusted the promise and laid down their arms.

How their trust was betrayed is a long and shameful tale. Some were led in chains to the fortresses of the plains, some were executed then and there, many were destroyed by the brutal soldiers, and two thousand little children were handed over to Roman Catholic families to be trained in that religion.

Thus it was that Victor Amadeus conquered--for the same thing had occurred in all the valleys, although Gaspard only knew what had happened near at home. Perosa and San Martino had been treated with like barbarity and deceit. The scenes at the rocks of Vadolin were to the full as heart-rending as what Gaspard could describe.

‘And thy father?’ Madeleine’s eyes asked the question which her lips could scarcely frame. ‘Thy father, what of him?’

Gaspard rose to his feet and leant against the rock where the dark cave-shadow almost hid his countenance.

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘I have been well-nigh torn in twain betwixt my desire to find you, to know that thou and Rénée were out of the clutches of yon----’

‘Name them not, my son,’ said Madeleine; ‘hard words hurt only the heart from which they come.’

‘Words? Aye, it is not with words I would meet them!’ the young man said between his teeth.

‘And thy father?’

‘He is wounded. He was thrust at with a lance when trying to defend Marie Rozel. You remember old Marie? the widow who gave us goat’s milk when we were lost in the hill-mist long ago, Emile and I, and Rénée--thou wert a tiny child then, Rénée. They--well, they killed her at last, in spite of all that my father could do.’

‘Where is he?’ Madeleine Botta had come close to her son and was holding his arm. ‘Oh, Gaspard, ill, wounded as he is, surely he is not alone? Let us go to him.’

‘Mother, to cross the valley, to go down by the river in broad daylight--it is death, certain death, or worse. Nay, I will creep back to him, and bring him word how you fare. He will revive when once he knows that you and Rénée are safe. It was to get news for him that I am come. But how have you lived here? Have you food? fire?’

So they showed him their store, the bag of rye-bread Rénée had stolen down to Rora to fetch from a secret hiding-place; the dried grapes, the chestnuts, the flour--which last was useless, since they dared not light a fire; and then, stepping forward, the girl called softly once and again. Presently two or three goats came pushing their way through the ivy, rustling beneath the glossy leaves, and nodding their sage sharp heads as they came.

‘The others have been killed, I suppose,’ said Rénée sadly; ‘but these give us milk enough and to spare.’

Gaspard watched her as she stroked the creatures that were pressing against her knees. All dumb things seemed ready to love Rénée, and it was no wonder.

Madeleine sat silently. Her heart was full; her lips were quivering; the iron was entering her very soul. God had required much from her--her happy home, the quiet contentment of her failing years; then the life of Emile, her eldest born; and now Henri, the husband of her youth, her strong Henri, was stricken. Was his life to be taken too?

This woman had come of a race of martyrs: she had been cradled in terror, and reared amongst dangers and blood-spilling. She knew, none better, what it meant to take up Christ’s cross and follow Him along the path that leads to where the shadow lies across the shining Threshold. Her nature was brave, as befitted a child of the hills; her soul was filled with a high and sacred faith that had been lighted by God’s Gospel and nourished by His grace.

But now, there, in the cavern, the grief, the pity, the despair of it well-nigh overcame her.

‘O Lord, how long, how long? Must Thy people be outcasts for ever? for ever down-trodden and slain? Canst Thou not hear in heaven Thy dwelling-place, and when Thou hearest wilt Thou not aid?’

Just now, in her hour of agony and sore dismay, she was too near to pain to see its glorious crown, too close to the shadow of death to behold the shining gate. Not only for her and hers that crown and shining should be, but for ever unto the uttermost ages the Church of Christ is fairer for what then the Vaudois bore! Not a tear nor drop of martyr blood fell then unmarked, for not only on earth but in heaven is the death of God’s saints held ‘right dear.’