CHAPTER XVIII

A Phantom Warrior

All turned round with a start, and saw the helmeted head of a knight in full armour leaning out of the window just above them.

This knight had been, ever since he entered the little inn an hour before, an object of much curiosity and some fear to its whole household. He was sheathed in black armour from head to foot; he kept his visor closed, and through its bars the few words that he spoke sounded strangely hollow and grim; and there was about the whole man something so weird and gloomy and overawing that the host was moved to remark to his equally impressed wife that, had not the stranger crossed himself and murmured a prayer as he entered, and paid his reckoning in advance, he would certainly have taken him for the dreaded “Phantom Knight” himself!

Ere any of the astounded peasants could reply, the stranger went on—

“Hark ye, good fellows; which of ye will guide me to yon haunted spot? Rich shall be his reward.”

The stupefied silence that followed was at last broken by old Pierre, who spoke the unanimous verdict of the whole party.

“Fair sir, all the gold in the king’s treasury could not bribe any man of these parts to venture yonder after nightfall; and if your worship will heed a plain man’s counsel, you will not venture it either. Think! what avails the bravest man on earth against a demon?”

“Were he the worst demon ever seen on earth,” said the knight, undauntedly, “he can do nought beyond what God permits him to do; and one man who puts his trust in God is a match for all the spirits of evil. It is not meet that the Wicked One should play his pranks in this Christian land, and hinder honest folk from their lawful goings; and if none else can be found to drive him hence, I, with the aid of Heaven, will do it myself!”

So nobly confident, yet so devoutly humble, were the speaker’s tone and bearing that a murmur of applause broke from his hearers, and even crabbed old Pierre eyed him admiringly, though still muttering—

“Would to Heaven it might be so! But bethink you, noble sir, a demon’s arm is mighty to smite.”

“So, perchance, is mine,” said the unknown, quietly; and, snatching up a battle-axe so heavy that few men could have even lifted it, he hewed, at one blow, from a tree by the window a huge limb as easily as if he were slicing a peach.

A cry of amazement broke from the lookers-on, and Paul said eagerly—

“But one man in this realm could deal such a blow! Is your worship, then, our Bertrand du Guesclin?”

“I am,” said the hero, to whose large human heart this tribute of simple affection from the down-trodden peasantry whom he had always pitied and defended was dearer than all the triumphs of his glorious life.

Instantly all were pressing around him, kissing his gauntleted hands, or begging to be allowed only to touch the famous weapon that had fought so well for the oppressed. Some would even have knelt at his feet; but the brave man drew back, and said simply—

“Kneel to God, friends, not to a poor sinner like me, and pray to Him to be with me this night when I go forth to fight with the powers of evil. And now,” added he, in a lighter tone, “tell me my road, that I may go quickly to this haunted spot, and see if I can meet there anything uglier than myself; for I trow this demon (if he be one) hath as good cause to be scared at my face as I at his.”

The peasants laughed at the great captain’s rough jest on his own ugliness; and he, stamping on his memory the directions given him by old Pierre, rode off toward the dreaded spot, watched by the group as if he were entering a lion’s den.

On fair ground, six miles would have been a trifle to such a horse and rider; but the high-roads of that age were on a par with the dirtiest country lane of our time, and the byways far worse, and Bertrand knew better than to tire his steed on the eve of such a combat by putting it to speed over bad ground. So perplexing, too, were the paths he followed, that, in spite of the directions given him, he was forced to halt and look about at every turn, so that, though the sun was still high when he started, it was growing dark when he at last neared the Haunted Circle.

Whether from the deepening gloom or the ghastly associations of this evil spot, or both combined, it seemed to the bold intruder that he had never seen so ghostly a place. The broken path, barely wide enough for one man, wound steeply up through a tangled mass of black, shadowy thickets, the over-arching boughs of which took weird and spectral forms in the dim twilight. Here a monstrous snake reared up to enfold him; there a demon’s clawed hand clutched at him as he passed; and, farther on, the gaping jaws of a wolf menaced him, or the thick, clumsy head of a huge black bear. The night wind moaned drearily through the dark tree-tops above, the hoarse rush of the unseen river came sullenly through the tomb-like silence from below, and the boding shriek of a raven from the deeper shadows seemed to claim as its prey the rash mortal who had dared to brave a power that was not of earth.

On went the bold Breton, fearless as ever, through the deepening blackness and the threatening phantoms, till all at once the matted boughs around him seemed to melt away, and he stood on the edge of a bare, open space—the famous Haunted Circle itself.

There it was at last, that spot of fearful memories, revealed in all its terrors by the bursting of the full moon through the gloom that had veiled it till then.

The minstrel’s grim legend had described it truly enough. It was a circular clearing rather more than a hundred yards across, shut in on all sides by tall, dark trees, and in the centre stood a low mound of crumbling stones, overgrown with weeds and long grass—the pagan altar, no doubt, of the ballad.

Bold as he was, Bertrand felt his heart beat quicker as he set foot on the haunted ground; but he rallied his courage, and, stepping into the circle, was about to smite the ruined altar with his axe, according to the form prescribed for summoning the haunting spirit, when a fearful cry, half shriek and half roar, broke from the gloomy thickets, and into the ring came leaping, with frantic bounds, and gestures more frantic still, a figure that made even Du Guesclin’s brave blood run cold.

It was a tall form in full armour, with closed visor and drawn sword, just as the peasants had described it; but the armour was stained with mould, and red with rust from helm to heel, giving to the spectre, in the fitful moonlight, an aspect horribly suggestive of being steeped in blood. In place of plumes there clung to the helmet a bunch of weeds clotted with earth, as if he had torn them up by the roots in bursting from his grave; and the glistening scales of a dead snake twined about his neck made around it a foul and corpse-like rainbow.

“Who and what art thou?” cried Du Guesclin, crossing himself with a hand that trembled in spite of all his courage.

“A demon,” replied a hollow voice from the barred helmet, in a tone of unutterable horror.

Bertrand fully believed the ghastly assertion, but it could not make him waver for a moment.

“If thou art indeed a demon,” said he, firmly, “I, as a Christian man, bid thee defiance; but if thou art spellbound by enchantment, my good steel may break the spell and set thee free. Tarry till I alight, for thou art on foot, and it shall never be said that I fought Satan himself unfairly.”

He leaped from his horse, and in a moment his axe and the stranger’s sword were clashing fiercely together and sending showers of sparks into the encircling gloom.

At the first crash and shock of blows the Breton hero was his own daring self once more. Demon or no demon, this strange foe could smite and be smitten; and at the familiar feeling of hand-to-hand combat all the ghostly terrors that had haunted him vanished like morning mist.

But, strong and brave as he was, he had for once met his match. The storm of strokes showered on him were dealt with the savage force of one who cared not for his own life could he but strike down his foe. Again and again did the great warrior reel back from such a blow as he had never felt before, and he might be pardoned if the conviction rose anew in his mind that he had to do with no mortal enemy.

How this strange combat might have ended it would be hard to say; but all at once, as the Phantom Knight dealt a tremendous blow right at his opponent’s head, his rusted sword snapped off at the hilt with a sharp crash, leaving him defenceless.

But this mishap, so far from daunting him, seemed to goad him to fury. With a cry of rage he hurled the broken weapon far away, and, springing like a tiger on Du Guesclin, seized him in a clutch that made every joint of his armour crackle.

But this mode of attack was not likely to take by surprise the best wrestler in Brittany. Quick as thought Bertrand dropped his axe, and, in turn, seized his foe in a hug worthy of a Polar bear, and the grapplers swayed to and fro, stamping, struggling, gasping, now one and now the other seeming to have the mastery.

But with this grapple body to body the last of Bertrand’s doubts vanished. This strange foe, whoever he might be, was plainly flesh and blood like himself, and he now began to suspect that he had to do with neither demon nor ghost, but simply with a madman.

Nerved by this thought, the hero put forth all his strength, and, bringing into play a dexterous trip that he had learned long ago, bore his formidable enemy clear off his feet, and hurled him to the earth with crushing force, falling right upon him.

As the unknown lay stunned and motionless, Du Guesclin, bending over him, unbarred his visor, eager to see what features it hid. But when the stranger’s face lay bare before him, fully revealed in the glorious moonlight, the Breton started as if stung, and muttered tremulously—

“Heaven help us! Can this be indeed he?”

Late that night the host of the one small inn at St. Barnabé was startled by a succession of thundering strokes on his barred door, and an imperious summons, in a loud, harsh voice, to open at once. Nor was he much reassured, when he did at last open the door (which seemed likely to be beaten down about his ears if he did not), to see an armed man on foot leading a horse on which lay another man seemingly dead or sorely wounded.

But the name given by the new-comer was a passport to the heart of every Frenchman, and a handful of silver set at rest any lingering doubts of the worthy host, who declared himself ready to “do aught that might pleasure the worshipful Messire Bertrand du Guesclin.”

The senseless man was carefully undressed and laid in a small upper room, where Bertrand watched by his side all that night, still uncertain if the crazed, haggard, ghastly sufferer before him could really be the same man whom he had last seen in the pride of youth and vigour and beauty, with all the fairest gifts of life within his reach.

Toward morning the sick man began to mutter uneasily, and then poured forth a flood of wild and rambling talk, amid which came words that, broken and confused as they were, thrilled Bertrand’s bold heart with horror.

But as he listened, stronger and stronger grew the conviction that his wild guess was right, and that this distracted sufferer was really the man he thought; and when at last the rising sun streamed into the sick-room, lighting up the helpless man’s sunken face—that face, ravaged and ruined as it was, retained enough of its former self to change his suspicions into certainty.

“Alured de Claremont!” cried he. “Is it thus that we meet again?”

“Who speaks my name?” asked a hollow voice, as the sick man started half erect, with a visible gleam of reviving reason in his haggard eyes. “I was called thus while I lived; but now I am a dead man, and given over, body and soul, to the powers of evil.”

The simple, downright intellects of the fourteenth century knew nothing of “immutable laws of being,” “workings of nature,” “fortuitous conjunction of atoms,” and the other neat little phrases with which God’s creatures are now doing their best to blot Him out of His own world. To them, God was God, and Satan Satan; and whatever befell them, good or ill, was directly traceable to one or the other.

Hence Bertrand never doubted for a moment that the wretched man’s fearful words were literally true; nor would he have been surprised had the Evil One started up in bodily form to claim his prey. But this only made the devout warrior all the more determined to wrest from Satan a soul that belonged to God.

“Not so!” cried he, sturdily. “There can be no true compact with one that is a liar from the beginning, and Satan hath nought to do with a soul that our Lord hath redeemed. I tell thee, if the Wicked One were to rise before us this moment, and claim thee for his, he should not have thee! In a cause that is good and holy, I fear neither man nor foul fiend!”

“And who art thou who speak’st so boldly?” asked Alured, gazing admiringly at the glow of manly enthusiasm which, for the moment, fairly transfigured the other’s harsh features.

“I am a poor knight of Brittany, named Bertrand du Guesclin.”

“Du Guesclin?” echoed Alured, with the first sign of returning energy that he had yet shown. “Art thou indeed he?”

“I am; and thou and I are acquainted of old. Thou wert a guest long since in my father’s castle of Motte-Brun, and I met thee afterwards at Rennes and Dinan. Tell me thy tale, I pray; and whatever aid I can give thee shall be given right gladly.”

“No help can avail me now,” replied the other, relapsing into his former gloom. “Hast thou the courage to hear what I have done?”

“I have,” said the hero, simply. “When a man hath done amiss, what better can he do than confess and repent? And Heaven forbid that I, a sinful man, should be harsh to thee when God hath been merciful to us all. Tell thy tale, and when it is told we will take counsel what to do.”

Not till two hours later did Du Guesclin at last come down from the sick-room, and, then putting several gold pieces into the hand of the bowing host, he bade him go quickly and find a stout horse for the hurt knight.

Spurred alike by the hope of pleasing “Messire Bertrand,” and the inspiring prospect of making at least twenty-five per cent. profit on the job, the worthy host was so active that ere Alured—who now looked and spoke quite like a rational man—was fully equipped for the journey, his horse stood ready at the inn door.

“I owe thee more than I can ever repay, noble Sir Bertrand,” said he; “and I vow to God, Our Lady, and Monseigneur St. George of England, that never will I cleanse this armour from rust, till I have done some deed by which I may know that I can hope to be forgiven.”