CHAPTER XIX

In a Robber Camp

On a low ridge overlooking the town of Carcassonne—girt then, as now, by the huge, dark-grey walls, against which, a century and a half before, Simon de Montfort’s destroying hosts had beaten in vain—was pitched the camp of one of those terrible “Free Companies” which, as the old peasant of the Loire had truly said, were the bane of France.

At every period of the Dark Ages, Europe swarmed with robber bands; but the fourteenth century alone could have exhibited such a phenomenon as robber bands six, eight, and ten thousand strong, with tents, banners, waggon-trains, generals, officers, and even clergymen of their own. For so strange a thing is human nature, that each of these brigand-armies had its own chaplain (usually as ruffianly as his bandit flock), and these double-dyed villains, who set at nought all the laws of God and man, would have shuddered at the thought of going forth to rob and murder till this model Churchman had solemnly blessed the enterprise, and prayed Heaven to aid them to steal and slay.

The strong walls of Carcassonne itself had defied these plunderers; but all around it they had been terribly busy—seizing castles, burning villages, sacking towns, wasting what miserable remnants of cultivation the ceaseless wars had left, inflicting tortures too hideous to name on all whom they suspected of having any money, and, in a word, draining the very life-blood of the ill-fated land on which all calamities known to men seemed outpoured at once.

Apart from the brutal faces of the men themselves, unmistakable proofs of what they were lay all around. Splendid armour, flecked with ominous drops of red, rich gold and silver plate, gay clothing and costly jewels, lay scattered in the dirt like things of no value, and, farther on, appeared a bound and helpless mass of men, women, and children, some dissolved in tears, others plunged in silent despair, who had been prosperous burghers, thriving farmers, or well-to-do craftsmen, till the clutch of the Free Company changed them in a moment to beggared and broken-hearted captives.

On one side, two old comrades were fighting hand to hand, and mangling each other with ghastly wounds over a sudden and senseless quarrel about the division of their plunder. On the other, a ruffian who had been losing heavily at dice, had just ended the game by the simple method of stabbing the winner to the heart, and was rummaging from the dead man’s pockets, with a wolfish grin, all the coin they held. From end to end of the camp brutal oaths, blasphemous songs, ribald tales, savage abuse in half a dozen languages, and jests too horribly foul to quote, made the air ring; and, in the midst of this hell on earth, a filthy and half-drunken cut-throat, supporting himself by the shoulder of an equally drunken comrade, was boisterously drinking the health of the Evil One, while his companion, holding a plundered church-chalice to his lips with a hand still wet from recent murder, hoarsely added, “May he send us a long and bloody war!”

A little apart sat the leader of that wolfish host—a leader fully worthy of them, who, so far as he differed from his fellow-brutes, differed for the worse.

He was a man of giant size, whose heavy, low-browed, bulldog face, seamed with scars and bloated with habitual excess, was half hidden by a shaggy beard and a mane of coarse black hair. By him lay his stained and battered armour, and his mighty limbs were thrown carelessly on a torn and muddied altar-cloth of embroidered velvet, as he drank his wine from a sacramental cup—proceedings watched with visible dismay by some of his followers, who, steeped as they were in the foulest crimes, could still tremble at the thought of sacrilege.

But whatever they might think, no one dared to say a word; for Croquart (the Cruncher)—as this ruffian was named, from the ravages that had made him the terror of the whole country—was not a safe man to provoke at any time; and just then it was plain by the black frown which darkened his low brow, that he was, if possible, in a worse temper than usual.

In fact, the worthy cut-throat was finding out, to his great disgust, that even robbers cannot get a living where there is no one to rob; and such was now the case in his present field of operations.

As soon as it was known that the dreaded Croquart and his men were encamped by Carcassonne, all alike—travellers, traders, pilgrims, labourers, and even beggars—avoided the town as if the plague were in it, preferring to make a circuit of many miles rather than risk falling into the hands of a man whose pet sport was to burn people alive, or tie them to a tree to be shot full of arrows!

For three days the wide sweep of bare upland overlooked by the robber camp had lain voiceless and lifeless as a desert. No living thing was to be seen, and Croquart, not having robbed or murdered any one for three whole days, found time hang heavy on his unwashed hands.

“Where loiter these dog scouts of mine?” growled the ruffian, glaring round with his bloodshot eyes in quest of the two swift riders whom he had sent forth to watch for any sign of prey. “If they bring not word of some game afoot, it shall go ill with them! Swords and halberds! a man may as well be a stone or a stock as sit here doing nought till his sinews wax rusty through idleness!”

Hardly had he spoken when two riders were seen approaching, but so slowly and unwillingly that it was plain they had no success to report. Keeping at a safe distance—for this savage, in his fits of drunken fury, cared as little for the lives of his own men as for those of his wretched captives—they shouted to him that they had scoured the whole district and found nothing.

Croquart growled a fearful curse, and gripped his sword-hilt as if about to kill them both. Then his mood suddenly changed, and he gave a hoarse laugh.

“Since my guests are so long in coming, it is meet they be well received when they do. May I never take plunder more if I bind not to a tree the first man who passes, and shoot as many arrows into him as there be quills on a hedge-hog!”

As the wretch uttered his cruel vow—which all who heard it knew he would keep—a single figure was seen advancing, in the dark robe of a monk. A nearer view showed the white hair and beard of an old man; and then the startled robbers recognized the pilgrim-monk, Brother Michael!