As Jean del' Peyra rode along, he shook his head and passed his hand over his face, as though to free it from cobwebs that had gathered about his eyes and were irritating him. But these were no spider-threads: what teased and confused him were other fibres, spun by that brown witch, Noémi.
He was angry, indignant with her, but his anger and indignation were, as it were, trowel and prong that dug and forked the thoughts of her deep into his mind. He thought of her standing before him, quivering with wrath, the fire flashing and changing hue in her opalescent brown eyes, and the hectic flame running through her veins and tinging cheek and brow. He thought of her voice, so full of tone, so flexible, as opalescent in melodious change as her eyes iridescent of light.
That she – she with such a smooth face, such slim fingers – should talk of crime as a joke, exult over the misery of her fellows! A very leopard in litheness and in beauty, and a very leopard in heart.
Jean del' Peyra's way led down the head stream of the Lesser Beune. The valley was broad – one level marsh – and, in the evening, herons were quivering in it, stooping to pick up an eft or a young roach.
"Ah! you vile creature!" sang forth Jean, as a black hare rose on his left and darted past him into the wood. "Prophet of evil! But what else in these untoward times and in this evil world can one expect but omens of ill?"
The track by which Jean descended emerged from the dense woods upon open ground. As the Beune slid to a lower level, it passed under precipices of rock, about a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet high; and these cliffs, composed of beds of various softness, were horizontally channelled, constituting terraces, each terrace unsupported below, or rather thrown forward over a vault. Moreover, there was not one of these platforms of rock that was not tenanted. In the evening, peasants returning from their work were ascending to their quarters by scrambling up the rocks where vertical, by means of notches cut in the stone, into which they thrust their hands and feet. Where the ledges overhung, the men were drawn up by ropes to the platforms above.
But not only was this the case with men, but with their oxen. Jean passed and saluted a farmer who was in process of placing his beasts in a position of security for the night. His wife was above, in the rock, and was working a windlass by means of which an ox was being gradually lifted from the ground by broad bands passed under its belly, and so was raised to the height of some thirty feet, where the beast, accustomed to this proceeding, quickly stepped on to a narrow path cut in the rock, and walked to its stable, also rock-hewn in the face of the cliff.
In another place was a woman with her children closing up the opening of a grotto that was level with the soil. This was effected by a board which fitted into a rebate in the rock, and then the woman, after putting her children within, heaped stones and sods against the board to disguise it; and when this had been done to her satisfaction, she crawled in by a hole that had been left for the purpose, and by a cord pulled after her a bunch of brambles that served to plug and disguise this hole.
Bitterness welled up in the heart of Jean as he noticed all these efforts made by the poor creatures to place themselves in security during the hours of darkness.
"Ah, Fontaineya!" called Jean to the farmer who was superintending the elevation of his second ox. "How goes the world with you?"
"Bad, but might be worse – even as with you."
"With me things are not ill."
"Whence come you, then?"
"From La Roque."
"Aha! Not from Ste. Soure?"
"No, I have been from home these fourteen days."
"Then do not say things are not ill with you till you have been home," remarked the peasant dryly.
"What has happened?" asked Jean, his blood standing still with alarm.
"The wolves have been hunting!"
"What wolves?"
"The red. Le Gros Guillem."
"He has been to Ste. Soure?"
"He has been to where Ste. Soure was."
CHAPTER IV.
IN NOMINE BEELZEBUB
It was strange. The first recoil wave of the shock caused by this tidings broke into foam and fury against Noémi. Jean del' Peyra did not think of his loss, of the ruin of his home, of the sufferings of his people, but of Noémi laughing, making light of these things.
It was strange. Instead of striking spurs into his steed's flank and galloping forward to the scene of desolation, involuntarily, unconsciously, he turned his horse's head round, so that he faced the far-off Gageac, and with set teeth and flashing eye and lowering brow, wiped his lips with the sleeve of his right arm – wiped them not once nor twice, but many times as to wipe off and wipe away for ever the sensation, the taint, the fire that had been kindled there by the kisses he had received.
Then only did he wheel his horse about and gallop – where galloping was possible – down the valley of the Beune. The Beune is a stream rather than a river, that flows into the Vézère. It has a singular quality: so charged are the waters with lime that they petrify, or rather encrust, the roots of all plants growing in the morass through which they flow, by this means forming dams for itself, which it gradually surmounts to form others. The original bottom of the ravine must be at a considerable depth under the flat marsh of living and dead waterweed, of active and paralysed marsh plants, of growing and petrified moss that encumbers it, and extends to the very faces of the rocks.
At the present day a road laboriously constructed, and where it crossed the valley perpetually sinking and perpetually renovated, gives access to the springs of the Beune. It was not so in the fifteenth century. Then a track lay along the sides where the ground was solid – that is to say, where it consisted of rubble from the hill-sides; but where the marsh reached the abrupt walls of cliff, there the track clambered up the side of the valley, and surmounted the escarpments.
Consequently progress in former ages in that part was not as facile as it is at present.
Jean was constrained speedily to relax the pace at which he was proceeding.
As long as he was in forest and rough place he was secure: the brigands did not care to penetrate, at all events at nightfall, into out-of-the-way places, and where they might fall into ambuscades.
It was otherwise when he came to where the Beune distilled from its sponge of moss into the rapidly flowing Vézère. Here was a great amphitheatre of scarped sides of rock, all more or less honeycombed with habitations and refuges.
Here, on his left-hand side, looking north, scowling over the pleasant and smiling basin of the Vézère, was the castle of the Great Guillem. It consisted of a range of caves or overhanging ledges of rock, the faces of which had been built up with walls, windows, and crenelations, and a gate-house had been constructed to command the only thread of a path by which the stronghold could be reached.
From this castle watch was kept, and no one could ascend or descend the valley unobserved. Jean was on the same bank as the fortress of Guillem, though considerably above it. He must cross the river, and to do this, ascend it to the ford.
He moved along carefully and watchfully. The dusk of evening concealed his movements, and he was able, unnoticed, or at all events unmolested, to traverse the Vézère and pass on the further side of the river down stream, in face of the strong place of Le Gros Guillem.
A couple of leagues further down was a hamlet, or rather village, called Le Peuch Ste. Soure, clustered at the foot of a cliff or series of cliffs that rose out of a steep incline of rubble. The houses were gathered about a little church dedicated to Ste. Soure. The white crags above were perforated with habitations. A scent of fire was in the air, and in the gloaming Jean could see the twinkle of sparks running, dying out, reappearing where something had been consumed by flames, but was still glowing in places, and sparks were wandering among its ashes. As he drew nearer he heard wailing, and with the wailing voices raised in cursing.
A sickness came on the lad's heart; he knew but too well what this all signified –