Under the Flag of France: A Tale of Bertrand du Guesclin

by David Ker

  CHAPTER V

  A Timely Rescue

  The later autumn of that year was already stripping the Breton woods oftheir leaves, and Bertrand du Guesclin's fifteenth birthday was not faraway, when a band of horsemen, twelve in number, rode into the town ofDinan, under the lowering sky of a gloomy October morning, at aflagging pace, which told that they had already ridden long and hard.

  Two knights in complete armour; two stalwart esquires in plainer but asserviceable harness; a brace of handsome, smooth-faced boy-pages,barely twelve years old, lightly and daintily armed, and visibly proudof their finery; and half a dozen sturdy men-at-arms, whoseweather-beaten faces and battered steel caps showed them to be nonovices in war.

  Such a train would have been, in that age, a scanty following for oneknight, much more for two. But, small as it was, it drew much attentionfrom the passers-by; for the dress, arms, and faces of the travellersmarked them as English, and English faces and weapons, soon to befatally familiar to the people of this quiet region, were a noveltyamong them as yet.

  It was plain, however, that neither knights nor squires, but the twoyoung pages, were the chief objects of attention, and certainly notwithout cause; for, apart from the gorgeous and somewhat foppishrichness of their dress, they were as exactly alike as the twins inShakespeare's "Comedy of Errors."

  Both had the same ruddy complexion, the same clear-cut, delicatefeatures, the same bright blue eyes and wavy golden hair, the sameheight and build, the same precociously dignified and almost haughtybearing. Their very voices were the same; and, as if to make theconfusion worse, they were dressed just alike! In a word, the closestobserver could not have told which was which; and as idealtwin-brothers (which was just what they were), they might have matchedthe famous twins whose mishaps are chronicled in a popular song--

  "And when I died, the neighbours came And buried brother John!"

  Of the two knights, the younger seemed a brisk, comely, jovial youth,whose rather weak face told that his arm would be worth more than hishead in the stirring times that were at hand. The very reverse mighthave been said of his companion, a tall, spare, sinewy man, with agrave and rather sombre face, which would have been handsome but forthe sinister look given to it by the thin, pinched lips and small,deep-set, crafty eyes. A keen observer might have noted that, evenwhile talking gaily with his young comrade, Sir Simon Harcourtcontrived to keep a close though unobtrusive watch on his two pages,whom he ever and anon addressed as "fair nephews."

  Even before reaching the town gate the travellers met more than onestartling example of the pleasant ways of that age.

  On a huge tree by the wayside (whence a swarm of foul carrion birdsflew screaming at their approach) hung the rotting corpse of a man,with his severed right hand nailed above him to show that he had beenexecuted for highway robbery. Barely a hundred yards farther, a ragged,half-starved, wretched-looking creature begged alms of them in alisping, whistling voice, fearfully explained by one glance at hisdisfigured face, the upper lip having been slit right up to thenostrils by the hangman's knife--the punishment then awarded by thelaws of France to "all such as speak blasphemies against God and theholy Church."

  A few minutes later a faint cry, half-drowned in a roar of savagelaughter, drew their eyes to a deep, miry pool in a hollow below, inwhich a dozen ruffianly peasants were ducking a poor old paralyticwoman on suspicion of being a witch; and as they came up to the gatethey beheld another sight even more characteristic.

  Just outside the gate sat a man wrapped in a long mantle of coarse greyfrieze, with a heavy stick beside him; and as they were about to passhe rose and said, with a bow not at all in keeping with his roughdress--

  "I pray you of your courtesy, fair sirs, to have pity on a poor sinner,and give me, each of you, as ye pass, one handsome blow with this goodcudgel for the health of my soul."

  "Thou art doing penance, then?" said Harcourt, showing no surprise at arequest that would have startled not a little any man of our day.

  "Even as you say, Sir Knight," replied the man in grey. "In this town,well-nigh a year agone, I did a grievous sacrilege (may the saintsforgive me!) and confessed it not, nor thought more of it, making lightof Heaven's justice. But therein I erred greatly; for a sore sicknessfell upon me, and, with the terror of death on my soul, I confessed mysin to a holy monk, and he appointed me this penance--that I shouldabide at the gate of this town, where my fault was wrought, with noneother shelter than this mantle, craving a thwack from every one thatwent in or out, till I should have made up the full tale of threehundred stripes, according to the number of the days that passedbetwixt the doing of my sin and the confessing thereof."

  "And how much lack'st thou yet of the number?" asked the younger knight.

  "No more than forty and four, God be thanked," said Grey-cloak.

  "No more?" cried the young cavalier. "Nay, if that be all, I willgladly aid thee, as one Christian man should aid another, bydischarging on thy shoulders, with mine own hand, the whole remainingdebt."

  "I thank you humbly for your goodness, fair sir," said the penitent, asgratefully as if the other had offered him the highest possibleservice; "but alack! it may not be. But one stroke may I have from eachman who passeth, and all else is nought."

  "'Tis pity," replied the young knight; "but, sith better may not be, wewill do what we can. Here be some twelve of us, and we will at leasthelp thee a dozen stripes nearer to the balancing of thine accompt."

  One by one the twelve whacks were duly administered, and then the trainrode on again--the knights exchanging meaning glances, the pagestittering audibly, and the men-at-arms (who had evidently no idea ofanything ludicrous in what had passed) grave as judges, while thethrashed man, as he rubbed his bruised shoulders, called after them,obviously in perfect good faith--

  "May Heaven requite you for your goodness, kind sirs, and help you inyour need as ye have helped me."

  Hardly had the riders entered the town when they were almost swept awayby the rush of a mob of townspeople--men, women, and children--allhurrying so eagerly toward the great market-place, that they scarcelyheeded Sir Simon's inquiry to what spectacle they were thronging insuch haste.

  But the answer, when it did come, was amply sufficient. These eagersightseers were running to see a man put to death.

  The French wit who caustically said that he had "witnessed all thepublic amusements of England, from the quiet cheerfulness of a funeralto the boisterous gaiety of a hanging," might have uttered his crueljest as sober earnest, had he lived in the "good old days" of EdwardIII. In that iron age, the mere sport of which was a mimicry of war inwhich brave men were constantly falling by the hands of their bestfriends or nearest kinsmen, all classes alike ran to enjoy the sight oftortures and executions, as we should now enjoy a circus or apantomime; and crippled beggars, and mothers with babes at theirbreasts, would drag themselves for miles through dust or rain to see acriminal broken on the wheel or burned alive.

  Thus it was now. As the knights and their train rode on through thenarrow, crooked, filthy streets, the ever-growing crowd thickenedaround them, till at last Harcourt was fain to place at the head of thetroop his three strongest men-at-arms, who cleared the wayunceremoniously with their stout spear-shafts. Thus they continued toadvance slowly, till a sudden turn round the corner of the great squarebrought the whole dreadful scene before them at once.

  Just in front of the town hall, at the very spot where Bertrand duGuesclin afterwards fought his famous combat with the English champion,Thomas of Canterbury, rose like an island out of the sea of upturnedfaces a high wooden platform, on which, in an iron frame filled withblazing wood, stood a huge cauldron, big enough to cook an ox whole.

  All around this scaffold (for such it was) glittered the weapons of adouble row of halberdiers in steel caps and buff-coats, as a barrieragainst the surging crowd. Above them, on one side of the platform,stood the Governor of Dinan hims
elf (a portly, middle-aged, ratherstern-looking man in a suit of embroidered velvet) amid a group ofrichly dressed officials; and beside him was his secretary, a prim,grave man in black.

  On the farther side of the scaffold, close to the now steaming cauldron(on which their eyes were fixed with a look of hungry, wolfishexpectation) stood three short, sturdy, ill-looking fellows, ominouslyclad in blood-red shirts and hose, with their brawny arms bare to theshoulder. There was no need to ask who they were; a child would haveknown them at a glance for the executioner and his two assistants.

  But it was neither the gaily dressed officials nor their grimsatellites who drew the chief attention of the crowd. All eyes werefixed on a bare-headed, half-stripped figure just behind the men inred, with heavy fetters on its wrists and ankles. This wretchedcreature lay helplessly heaped together as if paralyzed by weakness, orbenumbed with terror; and the deathlike paleness of his coarse face,with the fixed stare of blank, stony horror in his bloodshot eyes,would have told to the most careless observer that this was the man whowas doomed to die.

  "Mother, mother!" cried a young girl, who stood at a window of a tallcorner-house, "hither, hither quickly! The water is nigh to theseething, and it were pity for thee to miss the sight of thepunishment."

  "Thou art right, Jeanneton," said a buxom matron, stepping up besideher, "and the better luck ours that our window looks right down on thescaffold. From hence I can see the fellow's very face (and marry! 'tisas pale as a spectre!) at mine ease, without being trampled in yoncrowd as one treads grapes in the vintage."

  Just then the blast of a trumpet echoed through the still air, and afantastically dressed man, stepping to the front of the platform, madeproclamation as follows:--

  "Oyez, oyez, oyez (hearken)! Hereby let all men know that forasmuch asPierre Cochard, of the town of Dinan-le-Sauveur, in the bishopric ofSt. Malo, hath been found guilty of sundry crimes and misdeeds, andnotably of clipping and debasing the coin of our lord the king,therefore hath the king's grace ordained, of his great clemency andjustice, that even as the said Pierre Cochard hath melted and defacedthe good and lawful coin of this realm, so shall he be himself meltedand defaced in like fashion, till no trace of him remain; to wit, thathe die by water and by fire, being plunged into yon cauldron, andtherein boiled alive. God save the king!"

  Of all the countless listeners, not one had the least perception of thehorrible irony that lurked in this prayer to the God of mercy for thewelfare of a king who could doom his fellow-men to a death like this.All they saw in the whole affair was a rogue receiving his due; norcould far more civilized ages triumph over them on that score, since,as much as three centuries later, seven men were hanged and a womanburned for the same offence in England itself.

  When the herald's voice had died away, there sank over that greatmultitude a dead hush of terrible expectation, amid which theexecutioner's harsh tones were plainly heard to the farthest corner ofthe square, as he said to the governor, with a clumsy obeisance--

  "My lord, the water boils, and all is ready!"

  At the words, as if that dread signal had broken the spell thatparalyzed him, the doomed man sprang to his feet with a long, wildscream of mortal agony, so terrific that even the brutal mob shudderedas they heard it.

  But the executioner and his mates, to whom such horrors were a mereeveryday matter, remained wholly unmoved, and advanced to their fellwork with perfect unconcern. Already they had clutched the victim tohurl him into the boiling cauldron, when his eyes, as they wandereddespairingly over the unpitying crowd below, lighted up with a suddenflash of recognition, and, wrenching himself with a mighty effort fromthe grasp of his tormentors, he flung out his fettered arms wildly, andshrieked, in tones more like the yell of a wounded wild beast than ahuman voice--

  "Brother Michael! Pilgrim of God! save me, save me!"

  "Who calls me?" replied a clear, commanding voice from the other sideof the square. "If any man need mine aid, I am here."

  At the same instant the crowd, close-packed as it was, parted likewater, and through it came the mysterious monk whom Bertrand duGuesclin had met in the wood seven months before.

  As he came up the steps of the scaffold, it was strange to see how allthe actors in that horrible drama, from the pompous, self-importantgovernor down to the brutal, soulless headsman, shrank from his look,and cast down their eyes as if detected in some shameful misdeed. True,they were only obeying the law; but perhaps, in the presence of thishigher and purer nature, even these bigoted upholders of a law that wasitself a fouler crime than any that it punished had, for one moment,some dim perception of a truth that the world has always been slow tolearn--viz. that to treat men like wild beasts is hardly the way tomake them better.

  "Yon grey friar is a _man_," said one of Sir Simon's pages approvinglyto the other, little dreaming how strangely he and Brother Michael wereone day to come in contact. "Mark you, brother, how boldly he stands upin the midst, and how one and all give way to him? There was a goodsoldier lost to France, methinks, when he donned frock and cowl."

  And his brother fully agreed with him.

  As soon as the pilgrim-monk was seen to mount the scaffold, he at oncebecame the leading figure of this grim tableau, casting all others intothe shade. The stately governor, the richly attired officers, the ranksof helmeted spearmen, dwindled into mere accessories, and all eyes werefixed in breathless expectation on the solitary monk himself.

  "Peace be with ye, my children," said he, in a voice which, low andgentle as it was, was heard over the whole square amid that tomb-likesilence. "What man called to me for aid but now? and what is this thatye do here?"

  For the first time in his life the worthy governor found somedifficulty (to his own great amazement) in saying plainly that he wasabout to torture a man to death in the name of justice. But the ghastlyaccessories of the scene spoke for themselves, and a few words sufficedto put Brother Michael in possession of the whole case.

  "What ill-luck brought him here?" growled a savage-looking fellow inthe crowd, as he marked and rightly interpreted the effect of themonk's sudden intervention. "What if he plead for this dog's pardon,and so lose us the sport of seeing the rogue die, after all?"

  "Hush, for thy life, Gaspard!" muttered tremulously the man to whom hespoke. "Know'st thou not that yon monk hath such power as had theblessed saints of old, and that, had he heard these sacrilegious wordsof thine, it had cost him but the lifting of his finger to smite theewith palsy where thou standest? Heed well thy tongue, I counsel thee,lest it be withered betwixt thy jaws."

  Meanwhile the governor and his officers had fallen back to one side ofthe scaffold, and the three executioners to the other, leaving monk andcriminal alone in the midst.

  "Art thou guilty of what they lay to thy charge, my son?" askedMichael, bending over the prisoner, who was grovelling at his feet andclinging to them with the frantic energy of utter desperation.

  "I am, I am!" moaned the doomed wretch, looking up at him imploringly."But thou canst save me if thou wilt."

  "Even so spake the leper unto our Lord Himself," said the monk, with astrange smile on his worn face; "and as he said, so it was done to him."

  Then he turned to the officials with a look so solemn and commanding,that to their startled eyes his slight form seemed to grow larger asthey gazed.

  "Hearken, my sons. Ye know that to me, all unworthy as I am, hath beengiven power to claim a man's life from the law when fit cause shallappear. Now, methinks it were better for this man to live and repentthan to be cut off in his sins, wherefore I claim him as the Church'sprisoner."

  In that age and that region there could be but one answer to such aclaim, especially when made by one who was held to be little, if atall, less than a saint himself; and though the governor flushed angrilyat this trespass on his privilege of destruction, and the hangmanscowled sullenly to see his prey snatched from him, no one dared toobject.

  "He is thine," said the governor, sulkily. "Clerk, make entry to thateffect."

>   But the scratching of the clerk's ready pen on the parchment wassuddenly drowned by the thud of a heavy fall, as the rescued criminal,unable to sustain the terrific shock of this unexpected deliverance,fell down in a fit.

  He recovered, however, to live long and peacefully in the monasterywhere his rescuer placed him, extolled by its prior as the best of hislay-servants. But that day's vision of death had been too close and tooghastly for its influence ever to pass wholly away; and to the end ofhis days, he could never hear, without shuddering and swooning, thehiss and bubble of boiling water.