The Secret of Sarek

Gertrude had plenty of strength left, for she was twisting Véronique's arm:

"And Corréjou? He came back, didn't he, and went away again? Why didn't anyone come to look for us? It would have been easy enough: everybody knew where we were; and we called out at the least sound. So what does it all mean?"

Véronique hesitated what to reply. Still, why should she conceal the truth?

She replied:

"The two boats went down."

"What?"

"The two boats sank in view of Sarek. All on board were drowned. It was opposite the Priory.. after leaving the Devil's Passage."

Véronique said no more, so as to avoid mentioning the names of François and his tutor or speaking of the part which these two had played. But Clémence now sat up, with distorted features. She had been leaning against the door and raised herself to her knees.

Gertrude murmured:

"And Honorine?"

"Honorine is dead."

"Dead!"

The two sisters both cried out at once. Then they were silent and looked at each other. The same thought struck them both. They seemed to be reflecting. Gertrude was moving her fingers as though counting. And the terror on their two faces increased.

Speaking in a very low voice, as though choking with fear, Gertrude, with her eyes fixed on Véronique, said:

"That's it.. that's it.. I've got the total.. Do you know how many there were in the boats, without my sisters and me? Do you know? Twenty.. Well, reckon it up: twenty.. and Maguennoc, who was the first to die.. and M. Antoine, who died afterwards.. and little François and M. Stéphane, who vanished, but who are dead too.. and Honorine and Marie Le Goff, both dead.. So reckon it up: that makes twenty-six, twenty-six.. The total's correct, isn't it?.. Now take twenty-six from thirty.. You understand, don't you? The thirty coffins: they have to be filled.. So twenty-six from thirty.. leaves four, doesn't it?"

She could no longer speak; her tongue faltered. Nevertheless the terrible syllables came from her mouth; and Véronique heard her stammering:

"Eh? Do you understand?.. That leaves four.. us four.. the three sisters Archignat, who were kept behind and locked up.. and yourself.. So – do you follow me? – the three crosses – you know, the 'four women crucified' – the number's there.. it's our four selves.. there's no one besides us on the island.. four women.."

Véronique had listened in silence. She broke out into a slight perspiration.

She shrugged her shoulders, however:

"Well? And then? If there's no one except ourselves on the island, what are you afraid of?"

"Them, of course! Them!"

Véronique lost her patience:

"But if everybody has gone!" she exclaimed.

Gertrude took fright:

"Speak low. Suppose they heard you!"

"But who?"

"They: the people of old."

"The people of old?"

"Yes, those who used to make sacrifices.. the people who killed men and women.. to please their gods."

"But that's a thing of the past! The Druids: is that what you mean? Come, come; there are no Druids nowadays."

"Speak quietly! Speak quietly! There are still.. there are evil spirits."

"Then they're ghosts?" asked Véronique, horror-stricken by these superstitions.

"Ghosts, yes, but ghosts of flesh and blood.. with hands that lock doors and keep you imprisoned.. creatures that sink boats, the same, I tell you, that killed M. Antoine, Marie Le Goff and the others.. that killed twenty-six of us.."

Véronique did not reply. There was no reply to make. She knew, she knew only too well who had killed M. d'Hergemont, Marie Le Goff and the others and sunk the two boats.

"What time was it when the three of you were locked in?" she asked.

"Half-past ten.. We had arranged to meet Corréjou in the village at eleven."

Véronique reflected. It was hardly possible that François and Stéphane should have had time to be at half-past ten in this place and an hour later to be behind the rock from which they had darted out upon the two boats. Was it to be presumed that one or more of their accomplices were left on the island?

"In any case," she said, "you must come to a decision. You can't remain in this state. You must rest yourselves, eat something.."

The second sister had risen to her feet. She said, in the same hollow and violent tones as her sister:

"First of all, we must hide.. and be able to defend ourselves against them."

"What do you mean?" asked Véronique.

She too, in spite of herself, felt this need of a refuge against a possible enemy.

"What do I mean? I'll tell you. The thing has been talked about a lot in the island, especially this year; and Maguennoc decided that, at the first attack, everybody should take shelter in the Priory."

"Why in the Priory?"

"Because we could defend ourselves there. The cliffs are perpendicular. You're protected on every side."

"What about the bridge?"

"Maguennoc and Honorine thought of everything. There's a little hut fifteen yards to the left of the bridge. That's the place they hit on to keep their stock of petrol in. Empty three or four cans over the bridge, strike a match.. and the thing's done. You're just as in your own home. You can't be got at and you can't be attacked."

"Then why didn't they come to the Priory instead of taking to flight in the boats?"

"It was safer to escape in the boats. But we no longer have the choice."

"And when shall we start?"

"At once. It's daylight still; and that's better than the dark."

"But your sister, the one on her back?"

"We have a barrow. We've got to wheel her. There's a direct road to the Priory, without passing through the village."

Véronique could not help looking with repugnance upon the prospect of living in close intimacy with the sisters Archignat. She yielded, however, swayed by a fear which she was unable to overcome:

"Very well," she said. "Let's go. I'll take you to the Priory and come back to the village to fetch some provisions."

"Oh, you mustn't be away long!" protested one of the sisters. "As soon as the bridge is cut, we'll light a bonfire on Fairies' Dolmen Hill and they'll send a steamer from the mainland. To-day the fog is coming up; but to-morrow."

Véronique raised no objection. She now accepted the idea of leaving Sarek, even at the cost of an enquiry which would reveal her name.

They started, after the two sisters had swallowed a glass of brandy. The madwoman sat huddled in the wheel-barrow, laughing softly and uttering little sentences which she addressed to Véronique as though she wanted her to laugh too:

"We shan't meet them yet.. They're getting ready.."

"Shut up, you old fool!" said Gertrude. "You'll bring us bad luck."

"Yes, yes, we shall see some sport.. It'll be great fun.. I have a cross of gold hung round my neck.. and another cut into the skin of my head.. Look!.. Crosses everywhere.. One ought to be comfortable on the cross.. One ought to sleep well there.."

"Shut up, will you, you old fool?" repeated Gertrude, giving her a box on the ear.

"All right, all right!.. But it's they who'll hit you; I see them hiding!."

The path, which was pretty rough at first, reached the table-land formed by the west cliffs, which were loftier, but less rugged and worn away than the others. The woods were scarcer; and the oaks were all bent by the wind from the sea.

"We are coming to the heath which they call the Black Heath," said Clémence Archignat.

"They live underneath."

Véronique once more shrugged her shoulders:

"How do you know?"

"We know more than other people," said Gertrude. "They call us witches; and there's something in it. Maguennoc himself, who knew a great deal, used to ask our advice about anything that had to do with healing, lucky stones, the herbs you gather on St. John's Eve."

"Mugwort and vervain," chuckled the madwoman. "They are picked at sunset."

"Or tradition too," continued Gertrude. "We know what's been said in the island for hundreds of years; and it's always been said that there was a whole town underneath, with streets and all, in which they used to live of old. And there are some left still, I've seen them myself."

Véronique did not reply.

"Yes, my sister and I saw one. Twice, when the June moon was six days old. He was dressed in white.. and he was climbing the Great Oak to gather the sacred mistletoe.. with a golden sickle. The gold glittered in the moonlight. I saw it, I tell you, and others saw it too.. And he's not the only one. There are several of them left over from the old days to guard the treasure.. Yes, as I say, the treasure.. They say it's a stone which works miracles, which can make you die if you touch it and which makes you live if you lie down on it. That's all true, Maguennoc told us so, all perfectly true. They of old guard the stone, the God-Stone, and they are to sacrifice all of us this year.. yes, all of us, thirty dead people for the thirty coffins.."

"Four women crucified," crooned the madwoman.

"And it will be soon. The sixth day of the moon is near at hand. We must be gone before they climb the Great Oak to gather the mistletoe. Look, you can see the Great Oak from here. It's in the wood on this side of the bridge. It stands out above the others."

"They are hiding behind it," said the madwoman, turning round in her wheel-barrow. "They are waiting for us."

"That'll do; and don't you stir.. As I was saying, you see the Great Oak.. over there.. beyond the end of the heath. It is.. it is."

She dropped the wheel-barrow, without finishing her sentence.

"Well?" asked Clémence. "What's the matter?"

"I've seen something," stammered Gertrude. "Something white, moving about."

"Something? What do you mean? They don't show themselves in broad daylight! You've gone cross-eyed."

They both looked for a moment and then went on again. Soon the Great Oak was out of sight.

The heath which they were now crossing was wild and rough, covered with stones lying flat like tombstones and all pointing in the same direction.

"It's their burying-ground," whispered Gertrude.

They said nothing more. Gertrude repeatedly had to stop and rest. Clémence had not the strength to push the wheel-barrow. They were both of them tottering on their legs; and they gazed into the distance with anxious eyes.

They went down a dip in the ground and up again. The path joined that which Véronique had taken with Honorine on the first day; and they entered the wood which preceded the bridge.

Presently the growing excitement of the sisters Archignat made Véronique understand that they were approaching the Great Oak; and she saw it standing on a mound of earth and roots, bigger than the others and separated from them by wider intervals. She could not help thinking that it was possible for several men to hide behind that massive trunk and that perhaps several were hiding there now.

Notwithstanding their fears, the sisters had quickened their pace; and they kept their eyes turned from the fatal tree.

They left it behind. Véronique breathed more freely. All danger was passed; and she was just about to laugh at the sisters Archignat, when one of them, Clémence, spun on her heels and dropped with a moan.

At the same time something fell to the ground, something that had struck Clémence in the back. It was an axe, a stone axe.

"Oh, the thunder-stone, the thunder-stone!" cried Gertrude.

She looked up for a second, as if, in accordance with the inveterate popular belief, she believed that the axe came from the sky and was an emanation of the thunder.

But, at that moment, the madwoman, who had got out of her barrow, leapt from the ground and fell head forward. Something else had whizzed through the air. The madwoman was writhing with pain. Gertrude and Véronique saw an arrow which had been driven through her shoulder and was still vibrating.

Then Gertrude fled screaming.

Véronique hesitated. Clémence and the madwoman were rolling about on the ground. The madwoman giggled:

"Behind the oak! They're hiding.. I see them."

Clémence stammered:

"Help!.. Lift me up.. carry me.. I'm terrified!"

But another arrow whizzed past them and fell some distance farther.

Véronique now also took to her heels, urged not so much by panic, though this would have been excusable, as by the eager longing to find a weapon and defend herself. She remembered that in her father's study there was a glass case filled with guns and revolvers, all bearing the word "loaded," no doubt as a warning to François; and it was one of these that she wished to seize in order to face the enemy. She did not even turn round. She was not interested to know whether she was being pursued. She ran for the goal, the only profitable goal.

Being lighter and swifter of foot, she overtook Gertrude, who panted:

"The bridge.. We must burn it.. The petrol's there.."

Véronique did not reply. Breaking down the bridge was a secondary matter and would even have been an obstacle to her plan of taking a gun and attacking the enemy.

But, when she reached the bridge, Gertrude whirled about in such a way that she almost fell down the precipice. An arrow had struck her in the back.

"Help! Help!" she screamed. "Don't leave me!"

"I'm coming back," replied Véronique, who had not seen the arrow and thought that Gertrude had merely caught her foot in running. "I'm coming back, with two guns. You join me."

She imagined in her mind that, once they were both armed, they would go back to the wood and rescue the other sisters. Redoubling her efforts, therefore, she reached the wall of the estate, ran across the grass and went up to her father's study. Here she stopped to recover her breath; and, after she had taken the two guns, her heart beat so fast that she had to go back at a slower pace.

She was astonished at not meeting Gertrude, at not seeing her. She called her. No reply. And it was not till then that the thought occurred to her that Gertrude had been wounded like her sisters.

She once more broke into a run. But, when she came within sight of the bridge, she heard shrill cries pierce through the buzzing in her ears and, on coming into the open opposite the sharp ascent that led to the wood of the Great Oak, she saw.

What she saw rivetted her to the entrance to the bridge. On the other side, Gertrude was sprawling upon the ground, struggling, clutching at the roots, digging her nails into the grass and slowly, slowly, with an imperceptible and uninterrupted movement, moving along the slope.

And Véronique became aware that the unfortunate woman was fastened under the arms and round the waist by a cord which was hoisting her up, like a bound and helpless prey, and which was pulled by invisible hands above.

Véronique raised one of the guns to her shoulder. But at what enemy was she to take aim? What enemy was she to fight? Who was hiding behind the trees and stones that crowned the hill like a rampart?

Gertrude slipped between those stones, between those trees. She had ceased screaming, no doubt she was exhausted and swooning. She disappeared from sight.

Véronique had not moved. She realized the futility of any venture or enterprise. By rushing into a contest in which she was beaten beforehand she would not be able to rescue the sisters Archignat and would merely offer herself to the conqueror as a new and final victim.

Besides, she was overcome with fear. Everything was happening in accordance with the ruthless logic of facts of which she did not grasp the meaning but which all seemed connected like the links of a chain. She was afraid, afraid of those beings, afraid of those ghosts, instinctively and unconsciously afraid, afraid like the sisters Archignat, like Honorine, like all the victims of the terrible scourge.

She stooped, so as not to be seen from the Great Oak, and, bending forward and taking the shelter offered by some bramble-bushes, she reached the little hut of which the sisters Archignat had spoken, a sort of summer-house with a pointed roof and coloured tiles. Half the summer-house was filled with cans of petrol.

From here she overlooked the bridge, on which no one could step without being seen by her. But no one came down from the wood.

Night fell, a night of thick fog silvered by the moon which just allowed Véronique to see the opposite side.

After an hour, feeling a little reassured, she made a first trip with two cans which she emptied on the outer beams of the bridge.

Ten times, with her ears pricked up, carrying her gun slung over her shoulder and prepared at any moment to defend herself, she repeated the journey. She poured the petrol a little at random, groping her way and yet as far as possible selecting the places where her sense of touch seemed to tell her that the wood was most rotten.

She had a box of matches, the only one that she had found in the house. She took out a match and hesitated a moment, frightened at the thought of the great light it would make:

"Even so," she reflected, "if it could be seen from the mainland.. But, with this fog."

Suddenly she struck the match and at once lit a paper torch which she had prepared by soaking it in petrol.

A great flame blazed and burnt her fingers. Then she threw the paper in a pool of petrol which had formed in a hollow and fled back to the summer-house.

The fire flared up immediately and, at one flash, spread over the whole part which she had sprinkled. The cliffs on the two islands, the strip of granite that united them, the big trees around, the hill, the wood of the Great Oak and the sea at the bottom of the ravine: these were all lit up.

"They know where I am.. They are looking at the summer-house where I am hiding," thought Véronique, keeping her eyes fixed on the Great Oak.

But not a shadow passed through the wood. Not a sound of voices reached her ears. Those concealed above did not leave their impenetrable retreat.

In a few minutes, half the bridge collapsed, with a great crash and a gush of sparks. But the other half went on burning; and at every moment a piece of timber tumbled into the precipice, lighting up the depths of the night.

Each time that this happened, Véronique had a sense of relief and her overstrung nerves grew relaxed. A feeling of security crept over her and became more and more justified as the gulf between her and her enemies widened. Nevertheless she remained inside the summer-house and resolved to wait for the dawn in order to make sure that no communication was henceforth possible.

The fog increased. Everything was shrouded in darkness. About the middle of the night, she heard a sound on the other side, at the top of the hill, so far as she could judge. It was the sound of wood-cutters felling trees, the regular sound of an axe biting into branches which were finally removed by breaking.

Véronique had an idea, absurd though she knew it to be, that they were perhaps building a foot-bridge; and she clutched her gun resolutely.

About an hour later, she seemed to hear moans and even a stifled cry, followed, for some time, by the rustle of leaves and the sound of steps coming and going. This ceased. Once more there was a great silence which seemed to absorb in space every stirring, every restless, every quivering, every living thing.

The numbness produced by the fatigue and hunger from which she was beginning to suffer left Véronique little power of thought. She remembered above all that, having failed to bring any provisions from the village, she had nothing to eat. She did not distress herself, for she was determined, as soon as the fog lifted – and this was bound to happen before long – to light bonfires with the cans of petrol. She reflected that the best place would be at the end of the island, at the spot where the dolmen stood.

But suddenly a dreadful thought struck her: had she not left her box of matches on the bridge? She felt in her pockets but could not find it. All search was in vain.

This also did not perturb her unduly. For the time being, the feeling that she had escaped the attacks of the enemy filled her with such delight that it seemed to her that all the difficulties would disappear of their own accord.

The hours passed in this way, endlessly long hours, which the penetrating fog and the cold made more painful as the morning approached.

Then a faint gleam overspread the sky. Things emerged from the gloom and assumed their actual forms. And Véronique now saw that the bridge had collapsed throughout its length. An interval of fifty yards separated the two islands, which were only joined below by the sharp, pointed, inaccessible ridge of the cliff.

She was saved.

But, on raising her eyes to the hill opposite, she saw, right at the top of the slope, a sight that made her utter a cry of horror. Three of the nearest trees of those which crowned the hill and belonged to the wood of the Great Oak had been stripped of their lower branches. And, on the three bare trunks, with their arms strained backward, with their legs bound, under the tatters of their skirts, and with ropes drawn tight beneath their livid faces, half-hidden by the black bows of their caps, hung the three sisters Archignat.

They were crucified.

CHAPTER VI

ALL'S WELL

Walking erect, with a stiff and mechanical gait, without turning round to look at the abominable spectacle, without recking of what might happen if she were seen, Véronique went back to the Priory.

A single aim, a single hope sustained her: that of leaving the Isle of Sarek. She had had her fill of horror. Had she seen three corpses, three women who had had their throats cut, or been shot, or even hanged, she would not have felt, as she did now, that her whole being was in revolt. But this, this torture, was too much. It involved an ignominy, it was an act of sacrilege, a damnable performance which surpassed the bounds of wickedness.

And then she was thinking of herself, the fourth and last victim. Fate seemed to be leading her towards that catastrophe as a person condemned to death is pushed on to the scaffold. How could she do other than tremble with fear? How could she fail to read a warning in the choice of the hill of the Great Oak for the torture of the three sisters Archignat?

She tried to find comfort in words:

"Everything will be explained. At the bottom of these hideous mysteries are quite simple causes, actions apparently fantastic but in reality performed by beings of the same species as myself, who behave as they do from criminal motives and in accordance with a determined plan. No doubt all this is only possible because of the war; the war brings about a peculiar state of affairs in which events of this kind are able to take place. But, all the same, there is nothing miraculous about it nor anything inconsistent with the rules of ordinary life."

Useless phrases! Vain attempts at argument which her brain found difficulty in following! In reality, upset as she was by violent nervous shocks, she came to think and feel like all those people of Sarek whose death she had witnessed. She shared their weakness, she was shaken by the same terrors, besieged by the same nightmares, unbalanced by the persistence within her of the instincts of bygone ages and lingering superstitions ever ready to rise to the surface.

Who were these invisible beings who persecuted her? Whose mission was it to fill the thirty coffins of Sarek? Who was it that was wiping out all the inhabitants of the luckless island? Who was it that lived in caverns, gathering at the fateful hours the sacred mistletoe and the herbs of St. John, using axes and arrows and crucifying women? And in view of what horrible task, of what monstrous duty? In accordance with what inconceivable plans? Were they spirits of darkness, malevolent genii, priests of a dead religion, sacrificing men, women and children to their blood-thirsty gods?

"Enough, enough, or I shall go mad!" she said, aloud. "I must go! That must be my only thought: to get away from this hell!"

But it was as though destiny were taking special pains to torture her! On beginning her search for a little food, she suddenly noticed, in her father's study, at the back of a cupboard, a drawing pinned to the wall, representing the same scene as the roll of paper which she had found near Maguennoc's body in the deserted cabin.