The Cloister and the Hearth Part 52

The landlord's hair rose visibly on his head like spikes, and his knees gave way as if his limbs had been struck from under him. But the archers dragged him fiercely up, and kept him erect under the torch staring fascinated at the dead skull which, white as the living cheek opposed, but no whiter, glared back again at its murderer, whose pale lips now opened, and opened, but could utter no sound.

"Ah!" said Denys, solemnly, and trembling now with rage, "look on the sockets out of which thou hast picked the eyes, and let them blast thine eyes, that crows shall pick out ere this week shall end. Now, hold thou that while I search on. Hold it, I say, or here I rob the gallows--" and he threatened the quaking wretch with his naked sword, till with a groan he took the skull and held it, almost fainting.

Oh! that every murderer, and contriver of murder, could see him, sick, and staggering with terror, and with his hair on end holding the cold skull, and feeling that his own head would soon be like it. And soon the heap was scattered, and, alas! not one nor two, but many skulls were brought to light, the culprit moaning at each discovery.

Suddenly Denys uttered a strange cry of distress to come from so bold and hard a man; and held up to the torch a ma.s.s of human hair. It was long, glossy, and golden. A woman's beautiful hair. At sight of it the archers instinctively shook the craven wretch in their hands: and he whined.

"I have a little sister with hair just so fair and s.h.i.+ning as this,"

gulped Denys. "Jesu! if it should be hers! There quick, take my sword and dagger, and keep them from my hand, lest I strike him dead and wrong the gibbet. And thou, poor innocent victim, on whose head this most lovely hair did grow, hear me swear thus, on bended knee, never to leave this man till I see him broken to pieces on the wheel even for thy sake."

He rose from his knee. "Ay, had he as many lives as here be hairs, I'd have them all, by G.o.d." And he put the hair into his bosom. Then in a sudden fury seized the landlord fiercely by the neck, and forced him to his knees; and foot on head ground his face savagely among the bones of his victims, where they lay thickest: and the a.s.sa.s.sin first yelled, then whined and whimpered, just as a dog first yells, then whines, when his nose is so forced into some leveret or other innocent he has killed.

"Now lend me thy bowstring, Philippe!" He pa.s.sed it through the eyes of a skull alternately, and hung the ghastly relic of mortality and crime round the man's neck; then pulled him up and kicked him industriously into the kitchen, where one of the aldermen of the burgh had arrived with constables, and was even now taking an archer's deposition.

The grave burgher was much startled at sight of the landlord driven in bleeding from a dozen scratches inflicted by the bones of his own victims, and carrying his horrible collar. But Denys came panting after, and in a few fiery words soon made all clear.

"Bind him like the rest," said the alderman sternly. "I count him the blackest of them all."

While his hands were being bound, the poor wretch begged piteously that "the skull might be taken from him."

"Humph!" said the alderman. "Certes I had not ordered such a thing to be put on mortal man. Yet being there I will not lift voice nor finger to doff it. Methinks it fits thee truly, thou b.l.o.o.d.y dog. 'Tis thy ensign, and hangs well above a heart so foul as thine."

He then inquired of Denys if he thought they had secured the whole gang or but a part.

"Your wors.h.i.+p," said Denys, "there are but seven of them, and this landlord. One we slew upstairs, one we tumbled down dead, the rest are bound before you."

"Good! go fetch the dead one from upstairs, and lay him beside him I caused to be removed."

Here a voice like a guinea-fowl's broke peevishly in. "Now, now, now, where is the hand? that is what I want to see." The speaker was a little pettifogging clerk.

"You will find it above, nailed to the door-post by a cross-bow bolt."

"Good!" said the clerk. He whispered his master, "What a G.o.dly show will the 'pieces de conviction' make!" and with this he wrote them down, enumerating them in separate squeaks as he penned them.

Skulls,--Bones,--A woman's hair,--A thief's hand,--1 axe--2 carcases,--1 cross-bow bolt. This done he itched to search the cellar himself: there might be other invaluable morsels of evidence, an ear, or even an earring. The alderman a.s.senting he caught up a torch and was hurrying thither, when an accident stopped him, and indeed carried him a step or two in the opposite direction.

The constables had gone up the stair in single file.

But the head constable no sooner saw the phosph.o.r.escent corpse seated by the bedside, than he stood stupefied: and next he began to shake like one in an ague, and, terror gaining on him more and more, he uttered a sort of howl and recoiled swiftly. Forgetting the steps, in his recoil, he tumbled over backward on his nearest companion: but _he_, shaken by the shout of dismay, and catching a glimpse of something horrid, was already staggering back, and in no condition to sustain the head constable, who, like most head constables was a ponderous man. The two carried away the third, and the three the fourth, and they streamed into the kitchen, and settled on the floor, overlapping each other like a sequence laid out on a card-table. The clerk coming hastily with his torch ran an involuntary tilt again the fourth man, who, sharing the momentum of the ma.s.s, knocked him instantly on his back, the ace of that fair quint: and there he lay kicking and waving his torch, apparently in triumph, but really in convulsion; sense and wind being driven out together by the concussion.

"What is to do now, in Heaven's name?" cried the alderman, starting up with considerable alarm. But Denys explained, and offered to accompany his wors.h.i.+p. "So be it," said the latter. His men picked themselves ruefully up, and the alderman put himself at their head and examined the premises above and below. As for the prisoners, their interrogatory was postponed till they could be confronted with the servant.

Before dawn, the thieves, alive and dead, and all the relics and evidences of crime and retribution, were swept away into the law's net, and the inn was silent and almost deserted. There remained but one constable, and Denys and Gerard, the latter still sleeping heavily.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

GERARD awoke, and found Denys watching him with some anxiety.

"It is you for sleeping! Why, 'tis high noon."

"It was a blessed sleep," said Gerard, "methinks Heaven sent it me. It hath put as it were a veil between me and that awful night. To think that you and I sit here alive and well. How terrible a dream I seem to have had!"

"Ay, lad, that is the wise way to look at these things, when once they are past, why they are dreams, shadows. Break thy fast, and then thou wilt think no more on't. Moreover I promised to bring thee on to the town by noon, and take thee to his wors.h.i.+p."

"What for?"

"He would put questions to thee; by the same when he was for waking thee to that end, but I withstood him earnestly, and vowed to bring thee to him in the morning."

"Thou shalt not break troth for me."

Gerard then sopped some rye bread in red wine and ate it to break his fast: then went with Denys over the scene of combat, and came back shuddering, and finally took the road with his friend, and kept peering through the hedges and expecting sudden attacks unreasonably, till they reached the little town. Denys took him to "The White Hart."

"No fear of cut-throats here," said he. "I know the landlord this many a year. He is a burgess, and looks to be bailiff. 'Tis here I was making for yestreen. But we lost time, and night overtook us--and--"

"And you saw a woman at the door, and would be wiser than la Jeanneton; she told us they were nought."

"Why, what saved our lives if not a woman? Ay, and risked her own to do it."

"That is true, Denys, and though women are nothing to me, I long to thank this poor girl, and reward her, ay though I share every doit in my purse with her. Do not you?"

"Parbleu."

"Where shall we find her?"

"Mayhap the alderman will tell us. We must go to him first."

The alderman received them with the most singular and inexplicable expression of countenance. However, after a moment's reflection, he wore a grim smile, and finally proceeded to put interrogatories to Gerard, and took down the answers. This done he told them that they must stay in the town until the thieves were tried, and be at hand to give evidence, on peril of fine and imprisonment. They looked very blank at this.

"However," said he, "'twill not be long, the culprits having been taken red handed." He added, "and you know in any case you could not leave the place this week."

Denys stared at this remark, and Gerard smiled at what he thought the simplicity of the old gentleman in dreaming that a provincial town of Burgundy had attraction to detain him from Rome and Margaret.

He now went to that which was nearest both their hearts. "Your wors.h.i.+p,"

said he, "we cannot find our benefactress in the town."

"Nay, but who is your benefactress?"

"Who? why the good girl that came to you by night and saved our lives at peril of her own. Oh sir, our hearts burn within us to thank and bless her: where is she?"

"Oh, _she_ is in prison."

CHAPTER x.x.xVI