Noémi

by S. Baring-Gould

  CHAPTER XV.

  A THREATENED HORROR.

  WHEN Gros Guillem returned to the Castle of Domme, his feet were soswollen that the boots had to be cut off, and his feet swathed in linen.

  By his orders, Ogier del' Peyra was thrown into a dungeon for the night.The old Seigneur had been surrounded, disarmed, and captured by some ofthe _routiers_ while recovering their horses, which Ogier wasendeavouring to prevent by cutting their reins.

  As soon as he was taken he knew that his doom was sealed, and he borethe knowledge with his usual stolidity, amounting to indifference. Aquiet, plodding, heavy man he had ever been, only notable for hisrectitude in the midst of a tortuous generation; he had been roused toenergy and almost savagery by circumstances, and, thus roused, hadmanifested a power and prevision which no one had expected to find inhim. Now that all was done that he could do, he slid back into hisordinary quietude. He slept soundly in his prison, for he had greatlyexcited and tired himself during the day.

  "Man can die but once," he said; and the saying was characteristic ofthe man--it was commonplace. This was, perhaps, less the case when headded, "An honest conscience can look Death in the face withoutblushing."

  Consequently, when thrust into his dungeon, he took the blanketungraciously afforded him, and wrapped it round him, ate his portion ofbread, drank a draught of water, signed himself--said the peasant'sprayer, common in Quercy and Perigord as in England--

  Al let you me coutsi Cinq antsels y trobi: Doux al capt, tres as pes, Et la mayre de Diou al met.[6]

  [6] Equivalent to our "Four corners to my bed; two angels at my head; two to bottom; two to pray; two to bear my soul away."

  Then he threw up his feet on the board that was given him for bed, andin five minutes slept and snored.

  It was otherwise with Le Gros Guillem. He would tolerate no one near himbut his wife and daughter, and they came in for explosions of wrath. Thefever caused by pain had inflamed his head: he talked, swore, ragedagainst everyone and all things, and boasted of the example he wouldmake on the morrow of the man who was in his power. Noemi knew that someexpedition had been undertaken, and that it had failed, but she knew noparticulars, certainly had no idea that it had resulted in the captureof Jean del' Peyra's father.

  She bathed and bound up her father's feet, and applied cold water asoften as they began to burn. This gradually eased him, especially as helay with his feet raised. The wounds he had received were of no greatdepth, but they were painful, because the soles of the feet areespecially sensitive; and as all the grit and thorns had been removed bythe surgeon before he left Domme, there was no fear but that with resthe would be well again in a week or ten days; well enough at least towalk a little.

  The wife of Gros Guillem was a dreamy, desponding woman, who paid noattention to what he said, interested herself in no way in his affairs;neither stirring him to deeds of violence nor interfering to mitigatethe miseries wrought by him. She accepted her position placidly. She wasfond of Guillem in her fashion without being demonstrative, and it was amarvel to everyone how it was that he was so attached to her, and thatshe had maintained her hold on him through so many years.

  It was reported, and the report was true, that the lady had been carriedoff by Guillem from the Castle of Fenelon. Guillem had retained her, indefiance of the excommunication launched at him by the Bishop of Cahors,and in defiance of the more trenchant and material weapons wieldedagainst him by the Fenelon family, which was powerful in Quercy, and hada fortress on the Dordogne above Domme, and a house and rock castleabove La Roque Gageac, side by side with that belonging to the Bishop ofSarlat. In an affray with Guillem's company the husband had been killed;the widow accepted this fact as she had accepted the fact that she hadbeen carried off by violence. She sighed, lamented, pitied herself as averitable martyr, and acquiesced in being the wife of the man who,though he had not killed her husband with his own hand, had caused hisdeath.

  With morning Guillem was easier and his head cooler, but there was noalteration in his resolve with regard to Del' Peyra. He would deal withhim in such a signal manner as would from henceforth deter any man fromlifting a finger against himself.

  In his fever he had racked his brain to consider in what manner he wouldtreat him.

  He sent for his lieutenant and ordered that he should himself be carriedinto the keep.

  "And," said he, "bring up the prisoner--and call up the men, into thelower dungeon."

  Noemi was walking on the terrace of the castle that same morning; shehad been up late, had attended to the fevered man, her father, and nowwas sauntering in the cool under the shade of the lime-trees, clipped_en berceau_, that occupied the walk on the walls--a walk that commandedthe glorious valley of the Dordogne, that wondrous river which flowsthrough some of the most beautiful and wild scenery in Europe, and isalso the most neglected by the traveller in quest of beauty and novelty.

  At this time she knew something of the events of the previous day. Sheknew also of the taking and the destruction of l'Eglise Guillem. Twicehad the Del' Peyras measured their strength against the redoubtedCaptain, and twice had they forced him to fly. At the head of rawpeasants without rudimentary discipline they had defied and beaten thetroopers of a hundred skirmishes. She was not surprised. She had seenRossignol. Great wrongs wake corresponding forces that must expendthemselves on the wrong-doers. It is but a matter of time before thethunder-cloud bursts. Every crime committed sends up its steam to swellthe vaporous masses and carries with it the lightning.

  Nursed though Noemi had been in an atmosphere of violence, hearing of itas matter for exultation, the ruin of households and homesteads spokenof as a matter of course, she had never been brought face to face withthe wreckage till she was shown it at Ste. Soure.

  And did she feel anger against the Del' Peyras for having taken up armsto revenge their wrongs? Nothing was more natural: nothing more justwhere the Crown and law were powerless, than that men should rightthemselves. She would have despised the Del' Peyras had they sat downunder their wrong without any attempt to repay it.

  Noemi's nature was a good one, but it was undisciplined. Her mother hadallowed her to go her own way. Her father treated her with indulgence,and that precisely where she should have been checked.

  In a lawless society she had learned to fear neither God nor the king.Both were too far off. The one in Heaven, the other in England; toodistant to rule effectively. A certain perfunctory homage was claimed byboth, neither was regarded as exercising any control over men. A feudalservice was all that a bandit in those days, or indeed any baron orseigneur, thought of rendering to the Almighty. He would fight in acrusade for Him, he would do knightly homage in church, but he would nomore obey the laws of the Christian religion than he would those of therealm of France.

  Noemi had seen but little of Jean del' Peyra, and yet that little hadsurprised her, and had awoke in her thoughts that were to her strange,and yet, though strange, consonant with her instinctive sense of whatwas right and wrong.

  Jean del' Peyra not only surprised her, but occupied her thoughts: shesaw, almost for the first time, in him one of a different order from themen with whom she had been thrown. Even her cousins, the Tardes, wereakin in mind and consciencelessness to the _routiers._What they didthat was right was done rather out of blind obedience to instinct, orallegiance to their feudal lord, the Bishop of Sarlat. They were noble,for they had escutcheons over their doors, but all their nobility wasexternal. They were boastful, empty roysterers.

  On the other hand, the Del' Peyras were quiet, made no pretence to beingmore than they were, and were inspired with a moral sense and a regardfor their fellow-men.

  She saw how far greater was the influence exerted by the old man and hisson than was exercised by that remorseless man of war, Guillem, or thebraggart Jacques Tarde. Her father controlled men by fear; Ogier del'Peyra moved men by respect. The C
aptain was a destructive, and only adestructive element. Solely by means of men like the Del' Peyras couldhuman happiness and well-being be built up.

  Noemi was a thoughtful girl.

  At first, somewhat contemptuously, she had set down Jean del' Peyra as amilksop; from what she had heard, his father was but a country clown.But the country clown and the milksop had revealed in themselves aforce, an energy quite unexpected. Noemi laughed as her busy mindworked. She laughed to think of the discomfiture of professionalfighting men, accustomed to arms from their youth, by a parcel ofinexperienced peasants and charcoal-burners.

  She was glad that these oppressed beings had risen. It showed that therewas in them a nature above that of rabbits. She had seen a thousandtimes the holes into which they ran at the glint of a spearhead, at thejangle of a spur. But now they had issued from their holes and hadhunted like wolves.

  But these poor, ignorant timid peasants would never have done this hadthey not been led. It was the moral character, the true nobility of theDel' Peyras that had rallied the people around them, given them courage,and directed their blind impulse of revenge into proper forms ofretaliation.

  Was the execution of those ten men of her father's band to be accounteda wanton act of cruelty?

  Noemi could not admit this. Some such rude administration of justice wasrendered necessary by the times. The men who had suffered had meritedtheir death by a hundred deeds of barbarity.

  It was as though a spell had fallen on the girl. She was exultant, herheart was bounding with pride, and that because her father and hisruffians had been put to rout by their adversaries.

  The girl was unable to explain to herself the reason of this, but,indeed, she did not admit to herself that it was as has been described.Yet she was sensible that some spell was on her. She had proposed tocast one on Jean. That kiss she had given him had been intended to workthe charm. But, alack! there are dangerous spells which a witch mayweave that affect herself as much as her victim, and of such was eventhis.

  As Noemi paced the terrace, her mind in a ferment, she was accosted byRoger, the good-natured, somewhat impudent fellow who had attended heron her expedition to the Devil's Table.

  He had torn off his red cross, but he had not left Domme, nor, indeed,the castle. He would no longer share in an expedition against Ste.Soure, but he was not unwilling to do any other service for the Captain.

  He could now exult over his comrades who had returned from such anexpedition with diminished numbers, defeated.

  He approached the girl and accosted her.

  Noemi answered curtly that she did not desire to speak to him. Shedisliked the forwardness of the man.

  "But," said he, "I would save his life--he saved mine."

  "Save whom?"

  "The Seigneur del' Peyra."

  "What of him?"

  "He was taken yesterday."

  "The Seigneur--taken!"

  "And the Captain is now with him--in the dungeon under the keep."

  "Doing what?" asked Noemi in breathless alarm.

  "There is none in the world can save him but yourself; the Captain wouldlisten to no one else."

  "Save him--from what?"

  "The _oubliette_."