CHAPTER IV.

RENEE, if God gives me life, I will return; I will return here to thee.’

So said Gaspard Botta as he parted from his promised wife in the cavern on the cliff.

He had stayed long enough to gather them a store of wood and firing. He had even crept down in the darkness to the ruined home, and, with the silent hunter-craft of his nation, had managed to evade the Savoy soldiers while he loaded himself with things which he knew his mother and Rénée must need.

A dangerous service--yes, but existence was just one long course of danger in those months to the Vaudois.

Madeleine had urged him to go back to his father. She herself would have chosen to dare all things, and go also. To stay in that cliff-cage, hiding in silence, with no knowledge of how it fared with her nearest and dearest, would be a terrible strain and trial; the risks of crossing the Luserna valley and the heights of Roussina and Mount Vandalin, watched as they were by the duke’s troops, would be as nothing compared with the waiting and the longing for news there in the cave.

But Gaspard, who had threaded the passes and forded the torrents swelled with melting snows, who had doubled and dived and scrambled like the hunted thing that he was, implored her to stay in the comparative safety of their hiding-place.

‘It is far to where I left him,’ he said; ‘out there below La Vachère. And if thou didst reach him, mother, they would but tear thee from his side. The men were driven off in gangs to Luserna, and the women----’ He paused, and the dark look came again into his face. ‘The women were taken too, some of them, and the little ones---- Oh, mother, be satisfied! rest here, thou and Rénée, and if God pleases to hear my prayer I will come again, and bring my father, should I carry him on my shoulders.’

And so he left them; and for days, and yet again for days, they watched and waited for his coming back across the torrent, and round by the huge rocks that rose sharp and sheer from the water to the fringes of the pines. But they waited in vain.

And as the time wore on they saw from their point of vantage that the soldiers had left Rora, or only scoured the land at intervals; and Rénée ventured down from time to time to the desolated village, filling her basket with such fruits and food that the ruthless robbers had chanced to spare. Seeking, too, if there might be other fugitives perhaps more helpless and terror-stricken than themselves--to whom Madeleine and she could give a word of cheer or hand of help.

And so the spring deepened into summer, and the skies were stainless blue above them; and the sunlight of many blossoms shone over the grass; the pines shook their yellow dust in clouds into the scented air; and the brooms opened their dry seed-pods with sharp reports, as of fairy artillery.

It was hard to believe that only so few weeks ago human lives had been sobbed out in agony--there in that beautiful world--and that rage and cruelty had wrought their worst wickedness in the sacred name of Christ.

So quiet was it, that at last the two women went back to Rora, finding shelter amongst the ruins of what had once been their home. One or two other hunted and bereaved ones crept back also, like them waiting for news, hoping still in their faithful hearts that better times would come, and those so dear to them would be delivered from the jaws of death.

Rénée would look wistfully northward and westward, where the great violet peaks rose into the summer sky. Would Gaspard come that day? the next? Deferred hope that maketh the heart sick was heavy upon her; she longed to find her way down the valley to the outer world, and learn for herself what had befallen. Inaction and waiting were the hardest of trials to this girl, child of the mountain as she was.

Patience, Rénée! The time for doing will come. The blood of heroes does not flow uselessly in your young veins; ‘to do’ comes by nature to hearts like yours; ‘to wait’ is a lesson taught by care Divine.

Some stray reports penetrated even to the far recesses of this valley, the most southern of all the Vaudois dwelling-places. Some wandering folk would come from Vigne or Villaro, outcasts like themselves, whom they might question. Any well-to-do traveller, any body of men, any strangers who looked happy and well-fed, must be avoided and hidden from, for they would certainly prove to be enemies, who considered all the Vaudois to be under the ban of the Church, and therefore to be driven to a Luserna prison, or hunted down and slain.

But from one and another the story was brokenly gathered--the story of what had chanced beyond the hills, and what sort of measure the duke had dealt to his conquered people.

Exile. That had been the final decree.

The Vaudois were to be driven out; their hills should harbour heretics no more. Once and for all Savoy should be cleared from them and their doctrine. As Louis had purified the soil of France, so Victor Amadeus would purge Piedmont.

The prisons were to be emptied. The twelve thousand men, women, and children shut up in the several fortresses must go. To Switzerland, since the Swiss would receive them--but across the Alps, and out of the valleys at any cost, and any whither.

Twelve thousand? Could there really be so many? Henri Botta and his son Gustave were amongst that great and dreary company.

The sentence fell on the hearts of those two women like a leaden weight.

They, too, must go to Switzerland.

That was the resolve that grew strong in each before they dared to say the words one to the other. They were silently counting the miles, the mountains, the dangers that lay between them and the country where their dear ones had been driven. And each dreaded the objections which the other might urge.

‘But, Rénée,’ Madeleine Botta held out her withered hands imploringly, and her sunken eyes were moist as she spoke--‘Rénée, we must go to them, since it may not be that they can come to us.’

The girl’s face shone with the swift up-leaping of the hope that was strong in her.

‘Yes, mother, we will go; and God will lead us safely through!’ was her answer, spoken with the fervent simple faith that had sprung strongly up in Vaudois hearts under that red-rain of martyr blood.

But not yet was the ‘leading’ to come.