The Arm and the Darkness

by Taylor Caldwell

  Crequy brought forth the best wine, hams, breads and poultry which he had been hoarding for this day. He lumbered among his guests. They stood about the fires and ate with hearty but preoccupied abandon. Now one or two of the more volatile laughed a little. The scene was full of vivacious movement, all in umber, brown, black and scarlet, the glistening of bold eyes. Crequy looked at them with venomous and contented satisfaction. He was filled with excitement.

  Arsène stood a little apart, his face still haggard and sunken, heavy with the apathy of grief, but somber with coming vengeance. He drank wine, but did not eat. Finally, he approached Crequy, said a few words. Crequy nodded. From a hidden place he brought forth coils of rope, went to the door. Arsène waited, and listened. Finally, from a place near the tavern came a dull and ominous hammering. Arsène felt the blow on his heart, and he breathed with difficulty.

  Then he had the strangest and most terrible sensation. He felt that Paul de Vitry was suddenly present in that crowded and steaming assemblage, that he was gazing upon them gravely, with a pale countenance and despairing eyes. So vivid was that sensation, that Arsène turned away, and cried vehemently in his heart to that silent and watching ghost: “No! Go away! This is not for you, Paul! No, I shall not listen to you!”

  His breath came in painful gasps. He drank deeply of the cup he held in his hands. “Go away!” he cried again, and now with enraged despair.

  The rain suddenly halted. But the skies grew darker. The wind was silenced. Now the distant groaning of the river could be clearly heard. Crequy re-entered the room, rubbing his enormous hands. He was a massive figure of evil, the firelight glittering on his naked skull.

  Arsène glanced at the narrow wooden stairway near at hand, and Crequy inclined his head. They moved away from the talking and drinking young nobles, and climbed upwards in the dusty darkness. They entered a small bedroom under the eaves, where the dim wailing and whistling of wind and the sharp cracking of crows could be heard. A candle glimmered on the table, striping the walls with broken shadows. Young Roselle, her curls disordered and wet, was seated on a stool beside the trundle bed. Her cheeks were running with crystal drops. Two elderly nuns, black robed and veiled, with pale calm faces and steadfast eyes and long pale hands, were bending over the bed ministering to the girl who lay there, sunken in profound unconsciousness. They looked up as Arsène and Crequy entered, but did not speak or move. Basins of water were at hand, and fresh dressings.

  “Monsieur,” said Crequy, “these are Sister Eloise and Sister Michele, good nuns of the abbey, sent to nurse Mademoiselle by the old abbess, who was much devoted to Monsieur le Comte. They have done what they could. Sister Eloise is much learned in the arts of medicine.”

  “The rest is in the hands of God, Monsieur,” said Sister Eloise, with a sigh.

  Arsène glanced about the poor bare room, which was like a cell under the eaves. He approached the bed with a sinking heart. He stood in gloomy black silence and gazed down at the young girl who lay there, motionless in her white shift. Her light brown hair, tinged with gold, was braided, and lay on the coarse pillows in a supple frame about her thin pale face, drawn with suffering. Her golden lashes swept her hollow cheeks; her white lips were parted and the breath hardly drifted between them. But even in her painful sleep, there was a nobility about that young chin and mouth and closed eyes, an aloof and reticent withdrawal, a coldness on the smooth wide brow, which even the hovering shadow of death could not dim.

  A thick and pulsating agony sprang up in Arsène’s heart, and an overwhelming passion. But his expression was closed and dark, for all his internal upheaval. Here, wounded and crushed, almost done to death, was all that he loved, all that he had ever truly desired. A bursting fire flashed before his eyes. He gripped the bedpost in one wet hand, and that hand crawled and clenched like a murderous thing. Now, in the candlelight, his teeth glistened between his pale lips.

  Cecile murmured, drew a deep and shivering breath, and half turned her head. Then, on the top of that small and shining head Arsène saw the wound, still oozing through its fresh dressings. A muffled and terrible sound escaped him. The nuns, Roselle and Crequy looked at him with compassion.

  He knelt down beside the bed, and lifted the cool slack hands of the girl. Their delicate fineness was scarred with toil. He turned up the lifeless palms and pressed his lips to them, at first feebly and slowly, and then with wild grief and torment. He held them against his cheeks, in a numb desire to warm them with his own warmth. He kissed the thin veined wrists, the white soft arms about them. He abandoned himself to his fear and his love. He touched the smooth brow with his fingers, and then his mouth. He laid his cheek against hers. His shaking lips approached her ear, and he cried aloud: “Cecile!”

  She stirred uneasily at his broken voice and appeal. Her head turned slowly in his direction, as if even in her unconsciousness she knew he was there. A dim smile fluttered on her lips. She sighed.

  He could not restrain himself. He wept. But they were the iron tears of rage and hatred. He rose and looked at the nuns. “They who have done this shall die,” he said.

  Sister Eloise regarded him with white sorrow. “Monsieur, you are not God.”

  But Arsène gazed down again at the young girl, and his face was an evil thing to see. There was a raucous sound in the room, and it was his breathing.

  “God in His mercy can still save this poor child,” said Sister Eloise. “But He may punish you, Monsieur, if you allocate His powers to yourself.”

  But Arsène saw nothing but Cecile. The smile still lingered in a fugitive light on her dwindled face. He bent and kissed her lips, and they quivered feebly under his. Then he turned away. He stared before him, with a fixed look, and his nostrils were so dilated that the red membrane was visible in his dark pallor.

  He descended the staircase, with Crequy at his heels. “Take comfort, Monsieur, she is no worse,” growled Crequy. “The bleeding has almost stopped. She has swallowed wine today. Yesterday, she could take not even water. The nuns have been good.”

  But Arsène said nothing. If his hatred or his lust for vengeance had ever slackened, they were stronger now.

  The gray and coiling heavens still darted with lightning in a frightful dim silence, broken only by the constant threatening mutter of the river. No rain fell; even the trees were hushed. The young nobles were resuming their cloaks. Now their faces were hard again, and secret.

  Arsène swung on his dripping cloak. They followed him outside.

  A strange crowd awaited him. While the young nobles had been drinking and eating, orders had been given by Crequy to the two hundred followers. They had, at the point of sword and pistol, gathered up the villagers, who had been cringing in the dark depths of their cottages. They had anticipated some beastlike resistance, and had been surprised at the despairing docility of their prisoners. Now they had herded them before the tavern, which commanded a view of the whole length of the village street.

  A wan and spectral light, glimmering, evanescent and uncertain, lay over the earth, which crouched in its drenched silence away from the heavens. Only in those heavens was any movement, and that was darting, writhing, glittering with serpentine lightning. The baleful flashes lit up the thronged faces huddled together. Their bodies were lost; only those pale ovals were visible in the flashing light.

  Arsène stood among his companions, looking down upon the faces of the villagers, whom Paul had loved. He could hardly recognize them. Only a little while ago, those faces had been filled with simple pleasure, simple and ingenuous happiness, simple affection and contentment. Now, as he looked at them, in the shifting darkness and vivid light, he saw how natural human emotions can change the false aspect of benevolence and peace and simplicity into primordial visages. He gazed at them steadfastly, with a slow rising burn in his heart, and saw them for what they were in truth: dull, sullen, wary, defiant, sly, terrified, blank and hating, and a fierce pang rose from that burning into a frightful flame.

 
“Liberty, enlightenment and mercy!” Paul had said, with his pure exalted virtue bright on his ingenuous and gentle face. And so, he had bestowed these upon his people. How they must have secretly writhed under them! How, under their apparent affection, they must have hated him for declaring that they were men! In the consuming rage and hatred that mounted in Arsène, so that the dark and spectral scene shifted before him in a bloody mist, he forgot everything except that Paul de Vitry had been a fool.

  For he saw in these crowded countenances before him all the mean viciousness of mankind, all its cupidity, lust and eager cruelty, all its bestiality and hatred, all its uncleanness and treachery and degradation, all its ingratitude, savagery and contempt for kindness and gentleness, all its virulency and violence, all its debased evil. And as he saw, he was filled with a passionate loathing, a kind of horror and repulsion, a wild denial that he belonged to this unspeakable species, and a wilder shame at the confession that he did so belong. No man, he thought, dare say: I am apart from these! He shared the common heritage. He belonged among these hideous creatures that must set God vomiting among His clean and fiery stars.

  And then he was seized with a pure vast hatred for his kind, hatred which is necessary to create the great soldier, the great statesman, the great tyrant, the great priest and the great criminal. And, as he so hated, he felt an enormous liberation in himself. Acknowledging his oneness with these other men, he was yet freed from them. Their malignant littleness became in him a malignant immensity.

  By these beasts, by these unformed and degraded horrors, by these dogs and swine, the Comte de Vitry had been done to death. Paul de Vitry, so ingenuous, so kind, so tender and merciful, so full of sweetness and gentleness and peace and justice, had been mercilesly trampled by this cattle, this herd of hogs. Their ravening fangs had torn away the life of their benefactor. They had destroyed the only hand in France lifted to succor them. They had silenced the only voice that had cried out against their suffering. For this, then, he had deserved death. For this, he, the aristocrat, the lord, the man of letters and tenderness, had been befouled by the touch of their stinking corruption.

  As these ghastly thoughts raced like lines of fire through Arsène’s mind, the villagers, watching him frenziedly, were transfixed by the glittering ferocity of his eye. Involuntarily, each man and woman shrank back, defiance and cunning lost in a voiceless terror. For they saw in that eye a full understanding of them. They wet their lips; their hearts pounded. They glanced about them in hunted despair. But they were surrounded by drawn swords and smiling inhuman faces. Then, for the first time, one of them discerned the hasty gibbet set up before the door of the tavern. A wooden beam had been nailed at a sharp angle against the trunk of a tree. From it dangled a rope swinging in the heavy gusts of wind.

  The one who first perceived this set up a great animal cry, and pointed with a shaking finger. Others saw, took up the cry. But their captors were silent. Behind Arsène stood Crequy, grinning, flexing his hands in eager and monstrous anticipation. The crowd swayed, pushed, heaved and milled against each other, each desperate eye fixed in nightmare horror upon the gibbet.

  Arsène watched this upheaval of bestial terror with virulency. He waited until it had subsided a little. He heard the sobbing of women, the groaning and whimpering of men. Then he advanced a pace, and, in the thundrous gloom, he said clearly and quietly:

  “Dogs, I have come to do justice to you.”

  A sick and portentous silence fell. Arsène looked at his companions. They were regarding the villagers with the aristocrat’s loathing, disgust and contempt. They had known Paul de Vitry, and had loved and followed him. But they had not come to avenge his tragic death. They had come out of the aristocrat’s rage at the rebellion of the canaille against the power of the privileged and the noble. Arsène, pondering this, felt as if a fist had been struck hard against his chest. He had come to avenge Paul. These had come to destroy a rebellion which threatened themselves. They did not know this, themselves, but the evidence was there on their narrow fine faces and hooded eyes.

  It does not matter why they have come, thought Arsène. It is enough for me that they have come. But for the first time he felt a peculiar illness, a trembling of his flesh.

  He spoke again, his voice hollow and echoing in the windless gloom and silence:

  “Your lord was gracious and just. He was kind and benevolent. He freed you, shared what he had with you. He liberated you, and administered mercifully to you. In return, you murdered him. You have struck against France, in striking against the Comte de Vitry.”

  He paused, and from his doublet he withdrew a roll of paper. “I have here a warrant for your deaths. You shall die ignobly and speedily. Thus, then, all like you will beware forever of lifting a hand against the majesty and authority of France.”

  There was a silence. Then, from the depths of the trembling and pallid throng, a man cried out: “It was the priest!”

  The others stirred thankfully, hopefully, murmuring. But Arsène smiled grimly.

  “The Comte de Vitry liberated you many years ago. This priest was among you for a few short weeks. Yet, how easily you were seduced! Had not the wicked desire been strong among you, this thing would not have happened. You are to die. I regret,” he added ironically, “that there is no priest at hand to shrive you.”

  They gazed up at him with abysmal despair. But they saw only the iron sword of France standing against them, the iron power of the magnates and the oppressors. The women sobbed and clasped their hands; the men groaned. Some of the women cried out: “What shall become of our children?”

  As he looked at them, Arsène saw no remorse, no bitterness, no sorrow, but only the frenzied fear of the hunted. His hatred grew more uncontrolled. He looked at the faintly smiling faces of his companions. Their followers, ringed about the villagers, moved impatiently.

  “One out of every ten men and women shall die for the murder of the Comte de Vitry, his steward, Grandjean and the cruel assault upon Cecile, the steward’s granddaughter. However, it is fitting that you deliver up your leaders first. Name them.”

  Hoping despairingly that in some way they might be saved, the craven villagers searched each face eagerly. Then frantic hands seized a young man, who, of all of them, had retained a black composure. But he shook off their hands contemptuously. He thrust those about him aside. He walked towards Arsène with a quick firm step, holding his head high. Arsène, in spite of himself, felt some surprise, for this young man, in his white shirt and woolen britches, his brown muscular body and strong swinging arms, had dignity and pride. His square and belligerent face, burned deep brown by the sun, his active black eyes, filled with passion and fierceness, and his heavy stern mouth betrayed no fear, no cowardice. He had a presence, commanding and strong.

  He paused below Arsène, and spoke quietly, his uplifted eyes glistening in the wan light: “I am Jean Dumont, Monsieur. The priest persuaded me, who have some influence among these wretches, that Monsieur le Comte de Vitry had evil designs upon us, that his merciful measures were merely designed to delay the liberating doctrines proposed by his Majesty, the King. I have discerned there was another, and more evil plot, Monsieur, and that plot was against Monsieur le Comte, and ourselves. I am guilty of my part in arousing these contemptible wretches. I have perceived that they are not worthy of any liberation, however small. Nevertheless, I seek no mercy for myself. I am guilty. I deserve to die.”

  He spoke with such pride, such somber sadness, such weary contempt, that Arsène was taken aback. He looked down into those unswerving black eyes, that coarse but intelligent face, strong with health and youth. He saw the dark disillusion in that grim and quiet expression. Then he turned away, with an uplifted hand.

  Crequy seized Jean Dumont by the arm, but the young peasant shook off his hand with a look of blazing outrage. He walked calmly beneath the gibbet, and waited. Crequy tied the rope about his neck. The crowd watched, holding their breath. Then Crequy took hold of the rope, afte
r spitting on his hands. Jean Dumont turned slowly, and he looked upon those thronged pale faces, contorted with animal fear. He suddenly closed his eyes, as though sickened and revolted.

  Crequy tugged on the rope. Jean Dumont was jerked swiftly into the air. His convulsively sprawling figure jerked against the gray and shifting skies in a contorted black silhouette. With horror, the people saw the convulsions slowly begin to diminish. Everywhere was utter silence. In this hushed cemetery of human passions there was only that feebly declining movement of the hanged man, the man, who, in his small and turbulent way, had hoped to succor them, and who, at the last, had ended by despising them.

  Crequy lowered the rope. The body fell in a contorted heap upon the ground. Crequy lifted it, flung it aside.

  Now there were wild frantic cries in the center of the mob, and struggles; Several eager men dragged forward two others, crying aloud, incoherently. One was Guy La Farge, the former overseer, and the other, Pietre Dubonnet, the former steward.

  Arsène looked down upon the first struggling man, whose mouth was open on a long delirious scream. He saw the emaciated leanness of La Farge, the attenuated grayness of his countenance. He looked upon the other, Dubonnet, that small rotund and formerly ruddy man, whose face was now like streaming tallow. The two men struggled and bent their knees, dragging their feet like animals led to the slaughter, striking out feebly and desperately, their last human instincts lost in the welter of primitive terror. Somewhere, in the press, a woman was shrieking with a prolonged and insane howl.