The Plowshare and the Sword: A Tale of Old Quebec

"Your princes of the Church are statesmen now rather than priests," said the master. "The Abbé La Salle comes of a renowned family. 'Twas said that he is wasted in this colony. I also heard it said – accept the rumour as you will – that his Holiness has set a cross against his name."

"What means that?" asked the commandant hastily.

"Urbano the Eighth, who, I may tell you, has recently bestowed the title of Eminence upon his Cardinals, having suitably enriched his family and acquired the Duchy of Urbino, now seeks strong men, priests who are fighters rather than scholars, to aid him in the execution of his plans, and he who has the cross set against his name may be assured of sudden promotion. A canon of Notre Dame, who is much in favour with Cardinal Richelieu, informed me that La Salle may immediately be recalled. His Holiness will raise a parish priest to the cardinalate, through the grades of canon, dean, and bishop, in a month or less, according to his necessity for that man's help."

"The St. Wenceslas now bears for home with my despatches," said Roussilac moodily. "I have mentioned the abbé as instrumental in holding heretics at bay."

"His Holiness loves a fighter," muttered D'Archand significantly, as he opened another flask of Burgundy.

A light glimmered here and there when Roussilac made his way homeward, and the murmur of the forest brushed his ears as he passed. The news of another man's advancement hurt his selfish nature as though it were a premonition of his own failure. He hesitated where the path split, then hastened to his house, entered, and immediately found himself in the presence of his aunt, who awaited his coming, knitting her fingers in the lamplight.

"So!" she snapped, her little face hard and wrinkled like a sour apple. "We have now open treachery at headquarters. Treachery against Church and State. You, the representative of the King, the upholder of the faith! You shall be stripped of your power and be disgraced. And I will walk a hundred miles barefoot, if there be need, to see sentence executed upon you."

Her attack was ill-timed. The commandant was then in no mood to bear with a mutinous subject, though she had been his own mother.

"Out of my sight," he said fiercely. "Out, I say. Madame, my forbearance is at an end, and I will be obeyed. Would you have me forget that you are a woman and a relative?"

"Since you have forgot your duty to God and the King, forget that also," screamed the little woman. "Seducer, what have you done with my daughter? Where have you hidden her? Abductor! You shall learn what it means to defy Holy Church. Tell me, where have you taken her?"

Roussilac's anger cooled at that, and he lowered his voice as he answered: "I left my cousin not three hours ago in the place where she is confined as an impenitent by the judgment of the Abbé Laroche. There you shall find her."

"Arnaud," shrieked Madame, "deceive your men, cheat a priest, you may, but you shall not so prevail upon me. I know your deeds and the vileness of your heart. As a child you were ever false; as a man you hated your own people, because you had risen and they remained obscure; and now you stand before the mother of the girl whose heart you have helped to harden, whom you have taken and hidden for your own purpose, and ask her what she means when she demands to know the truth."

"If you have information, I will in my official capacity hear it," Roussilac answered. "But forget not that my nature can be fiercer than yours, and do not tempt my power."

"Your power!" sneered Madame. "It has already departed from you. I thank you, Arnaud, for having disowned your honest family. How ill the cloak of innocence lies upon your shoulders! Madeleine's cell stands empty, as you know well. Beside the door the sentry lies stabbed through the heart, murdered by your hand as surely as though you yourself had driven home the dagger. I have but come from there, and none know what has been done, save you the doer, and I the accuser."

Roussilac caught up his cloak, and wrapped it about his shoulders. "What took you to her prison?" he demanded, his own nature being no less suspicious than hers.

Madame laughed furiously.

"You are a brave rogue, Arnaud. You plot, and murder, and seduce, and smile through it all, and act the innocent like a mime. Know that Father St Agapit came to me – a haughty priest, with no respect for age – to recommend that Madeleine should be entrusted to his care, that he might obtain her conversion by a new method. 'Let her not be crossed,' quoth he. ''Tis human nature to offend more deeply in the front of opposition. I would let her go free, and win her by gentle persuasion to the fold.' What does a priest know of the pride of a girl's heart? 'Is the branch broken by persuasion for the fire?' said I. 'No, you shall take it in hand strongly and break it by force.' To that the abbé said, 'You shall not compare the inanimate thing with the living creature whom God has gifted with free-will. Go now to her and be gentle. Try her with mother's milk rather than with the strong meat of human nature. I have bidden the sentry admit you.' So I went to win my erring child as the priest taught me, for I never yet have disobeyed a Churchman, and what I found you know."

"You are right, Madame, if what you say be true," said Roussilac sternly. "There is treachery here."

"Behold my hand! It points at the traitor," screamed the pale woman, her fury surging back upon her. "You shall not escape with your fellow-sinner. You shall not go from me until I hear from your own lips where you have placed Madeleine, my child."

"Woman, I know nothing," he snarled. "Is my position nothing to me that I should play so loosely?"

A cry of animal rage broke that instant from his throat. Madame had dashed upon him, and, before he could beat her back, had clawed his face like a maddened bird from cheek-bones to chin.

At that terrible indignity the pusillanimous spirit of the commandant was sobered into resolution. He hurled her back screaming, and put up a hand to his burning face. The finger-tips came away reddened.

He shivered from head to foot. Madame was raving. Roussilac steadied himself, then walked from that place, a cold, sinister figure, the howling of the mad woman pealing into his ears.

Scarce a minute had elapsed before he returned, accompanied by two soldiers; and again facing Madame Labroquerie, whose bloodless face was distorted with the fury of her terrible nature, issued his orders in a pitiless voice:

"Secure that woman, and keep her in ward this night." He raised his hand, and smiled vengefully at the marks on his fingers, as he drew off his ring, which he extended to the man nearest him with the words: "Take your authority. Spare not force, if force be wanted. Restore this ring to me after sunrise, when you shall have hanged this woman upon the eastern side of the fortress."

Again Roussilac smiled, and, turning quickly, passed outside. One terrible scream made him lift his hands to his ears, then he hurried up the steep path, to see with his own eyes the cold body of the sentry, and the empty cell, and to learn that Madame had not lied.

For a few moments he stood, like a man in a trance, seeing indeed his problem solved, but knowing that Madeleine was lost to him. He turned to the dead body, and commanded it to speak; and when he understood that the spirit had passed for ever from his discipline, he spurned the cold matter with his foot, and in a fury cried: "I would give my position and all I have to hear this dead man speak."

"Listen, then," said a cold voice. "The dead are not silent." And Roussilac cried out with superstitious fear, then started, when he beheld a tall figure proceeding from the shadow of the doorway, and recognised St Agapit, the priest.

"Who has done this?" he demanded. "What lover of this girl has dared to enter the fortress, to stab one of my guards, and carry her off beneath my eye?"

"I am no reader of riddles," said St Agapit. "I came here to reason with the maid, because it seemed to me that her heart, young as it is and tender, must surely respond to the message of love. Why she refuses the only faith by which mortals may be saved passed my understanding. But now I know that she has been driven into heresy by the neglect of a father and the unnatural spirit of a mother, and strengthened in her sin by the persecution of a cousin."

"Father, I loved her."

"Not so. You shall find at your heart passion, but not the warmth of love. It is not the ice which produces the plant and the flower. It is the warm rain and the sunshine. You offered her the storm, and wondered because she desired the sun."

"Where has she gone?" cried the blind man.

"To freedom. My blessing follows her, unbeliever though she be."

The ascetic moved forward, thin and stern, and made the sign of the cross over the fallen sentry.

"Bless me also," cried Roussilac, catching at his skirt. "Father, I have done much evil. Bless me before you go."

"I may pity where I may not bless," said St Agapit, and passed with that same dignified step which awed the Iroquois into silence when on a distant day they led him out to die. His shadow flickered once upon the slope, went out, and the governor was alone with the dead.

The soldiers who had been left to execute their commander's unnatural order glanced fearfully at one another, and he who held the ring muttered a charm against the evil eye. That cry of impotent rage, which had caused Roussilac to stop his ears, fell from the lips of Madame Labroquerie so soon as her mind caught the meaning of her sentence; and when the men at length advanced to take her, she writhed and bit the air, and hurled after her nephew words of execration which caused the soldiers to draw back and cross themselves in terror. All the hate and madness of the unhappy woman's ruined mind poured forth in one awful torrent, until she sank to the floor and settled there to silence.

Then the men took courage to seize her, believing that the blood which they saw issuing from her mouth was produced by the wounds which her own teeth had inflicted; but when the body fell limp in their arms they realised that nature had intervened.

One at the head, the other at the feet, they carried through the night the silent shape of Madame Labroquerie, who was never to move, never to rave, again. Yet so blindly obedient to their officer's word of command were these men in the ranks, that they carried the body out and executed sentence upon it an hour after sunrise in the valley of St. Charles.

At that same hour rumour went about the fortress – set in motion by a sentry, who had seen the governor rushing down to the forest during the night – to the effect that Roussilac was lying under a spell of witchcraft. This rumour became an established fact when the Abbé Laroche was seen proceeding from the church upon the hill with asperges brush and a shell of holy water.

"Such is the end of ambition," murmured St Agapit, when they had brought him the evil tidings. "Can a clay body resist free spirits of the dead?"

CHAPTER XXIX

WOMAN'S LOVE IS LIFE

Before we leave the fortress, to return thither no more, a glance must be taken at Madeleine, evading the power of the Church and the secular arm, escaping from the mother who had grown to hate her and the cousin who had not courage to shield her. Her rescuer was not a man – if it be true that man was made in the image of God – yet his actions upon that night went far to prove that he owned a human heart.

So soon as Roussilac had gone from his cousin's sight for ever, the tramp of the sentry's feet began again beating out the seconds like a clock. The girl was unable to see the soldier, but at regular intervals his shadow blackened the cracks along the door, and sometimes she heard him growl when a mosquito pricked his neck. Life became strangely mechanical as she lay half-asleep, her eyes opening and closing at intervals, her ears half unconsciously admitting the sounds of the outer world, her body subdued for the time and yielding to languor. But soon she stirred, hearing voices outside her cell. A grating laugh hurt her nerves, and after it came the order of the sentry calling on some unwelcome visitant to depart. Then the heavy tramp sounded monotonously again.

"Would rather be a toad gnawing the root of a tree, than a machine to pace a dozen yards of grass," taunted an ugly voice. "Admit me into the hut, Sir Sentry. Know you I have this day been ordained a priest of Holy Church, and 'tis my duty to reason with the fair impenitent. Shall defy me, rascal? I can mutter a spell that shall knock the sword from your hand and shake your body with ague."

"Begone!" muttered the soldier. "I talk with none while on my duty."

Madeleine stirred uneasily. Something fell lightly against her arm, and she looked up to the aperture which made a window. Nothing unusual met her eyes; but when she moved again a soft odour brushed her face, and her delighted hand caught up a bunch of wild bush roses.

"I go." The fully aroused girl felt that the hideous voice was intended for her ears. "There is no moon to-night, and after dark, when none shall see, I will be here to ease your duty by a song of roses and woman's love, brave comrade. Mayhap I shall then meet with a less churlish welcome."

"That may be," answered the soldier sullenly. "Another shall have taken my place. Sing to him if you will."

"Oh, the lovely flowers!" murmured Madeleine. The blooms had opened since noon and their yellow hearts were wet, because the gatherer had dipped each one into the river, before tying them together with a blade of scented grass.

She brushed these sweet companions against her cheek, wondering who could have dared to show himself her friend. The time passed happily while she waited in tingling expectancy for the coming of dark.

First came Laroche, full of bluster and talk of the wickedness of self-will, of the fate of the unbeliever in the next world, and the punishment of the heretic in this. The abbé had employed the afternoon in putting an edge to his sword with his own clerical hands, and his mind was fully occupied with the fineness of the bright steel and the excellence of the point while he talked.

"We must save a soul from the everlasting burning," he said with menace, as he made to depart. "When the body is put to pain the mind is said to yield with wondrous readiness, and there is joy in Heaven over the sinner that repenteth. Impenitence in one so young is surely the work of the devil. The power of exorcism has been conferred upon the priests of Holy Church. Pray to our Lady and the saints, daughter, that they strengthen you for the ordeal."

Laroche swaggered out conscious of having well performed an unpleasant duty, and hurried down to the street of fishermen, to convince himself that Michel had not again dared to adulterate his wine.

After vespers came St Agapit. He had spent the day over his manuscripts, endeavouring to unravel some of the perplexities of the human mind. The ascetic was liberal beyond his time. He regarded Madeleine as rather an object for pity than for punishment. Her brain had been worked upon and her mind possessed by some spirit of darkness; and it became his duty to deliver her from the benumbing influence and to point out to her the way of life.

But when he came to leave the stone hut, he was for the first moment in his life a doubter. Madeleine had spoken with such happiness of the joy of life; had held out to his colourless face her blushing rosebuds, bidding him note that their smell was as fragrant to her the Protestant as to him the Catholic; had dwelt upon her faith, which was pure and perfect even though it excluded the aid of saints and the help of the Mother of God. And thus had she answered his final argument:

"In the free country birds would surround me, and each one had its own way of showing me affection. One would peck at my gown, another caress me with its wings, another, too shy to approach, would sit on a bough and sing as best it could. But I loved them all, and the shyest the best. Father, if the birds have each a different way of showing us love, may not we, who are better than many sparrows, be allowed to worship God after our own different promptings?"

St Agapit blessed her less sternly than usual, and returned perplexed to his studies, there to search for proof of what Madeleine had said, praying like the holy man he was for light and understanding. Reluctantly he was compelled to admit that it was an evil spirit which had spoken to him out of the mouth of Madeleine. So he went into his little chapel and prayed for her and for himself that the doubt of his heart might be forgiven him.

But in years to come, after those days when the Islanders had stirred up the Iroquois to avenge their wrongs, a sachem of the Oneidas would narrate the story of the death of the white doctor, dwelling upon those last moments when the priest had turned to him to say: "Tell me, is it true that you worship the sun?"

"Surely," answered the sachem. "For the sun is our life."

"In worshipping the sun," cried the exultant priest, "you have surely worshipped the one God."

And over the horde of bloodthirsty natives, who were preparing his fiery torment, St Agapit made the sign of the cross.

Evening came, soft and fragrant, with a rush of sweet wind when the door opened to admit food and drink for the prisoner. Madeleine caught a glimpse of the sentry who took up his post after the proclamation of the evening gun; a thick-set man, swarthy and black-bearded, a Cyclops in appearance, but a Cerberus for watchfulness, as the girl knew; for once, when she had timidly tried the door, the brute had growled at her like a dog.

Darker grew the air. Madeleine stood against the wall, listening to the rush of water far beneath, the drone of beetles, and the scarcely audible murmur from the heart of the fortress. The last beam went out, the tired day was asleep, and Cerberus tramped, growling out his thoughts.

It became so dark that the walls disappeared. Clouds hung low, dark as the under-world; the stars were blotted out; not a gleam of phosphorus nor a smoky ray shot upward from the north. The land whirled blackly into space.

Madeleine moved her forehead from the cold stone and sighed softly. She crept to her bed and sat shivering gently, holding fast her treasured blooms. The night damp had revived the flowers and drawn out their odour, so that the girl pleased herself with the fancy that she was sitting in a rose-bower.

She heard the screech of an owl far away, the rattle and splash of oars, the running out of a chain, the snap of a belated locust. She heard the ticking of an insect in the walls; and she heard the growl of Cerberus:

"A plague upon that ghost-light!"

She heard a sound which made her shiver, though it might have been nothing more than a heavy foot struck sharply upon the turf; but hardly had the thrill passed when a gasp and a great groan made the dark night wild, and the hill-top and every stone in the building seemed to jar as the ground was smitten. The silence that followed was unbroken by the solemn tramp which had become a part of the girl's life. The human clock was broken.

Then a subdued voice began to sing, harsh and unmusical, straining to be sympathetic, and its song was of peace and love in an old-world garden. Harsher grew the voice, though the effort to be tender underlay each note.

"Friend," whispered Madeleine

The song was stilled.

"Oh, friend, open the door and let me feel the air."

"Prepare your eyes for a hideous sight," muttered the voice, dull and grating like a saw.

"My deliverer cannot make me fear," she murmured.

The iron bolt grated, the door opened, and Madeleine beheld in the gloom the shapeless outline of the dwarf.

"Thank the night, lady," he said. "It is kind because it hides one of nature's failures. A spider, they say, once saved a Scotchman. A hunchback may do as much for a queen."

Madeleine stepped out to the balmy night.

"What made you come to my aid?" she murmured. "It is death for you."

"Lady," said Gaudriole, "I bow to the Church, because hypocrisy drives many a sinner to play the saint. When the fat Laroche calls me to my duty, I confess with my tongue in my cheek and burn a rushlight. That is for policy. Before you I am a Protestant. By myself I am a believer in living long and cheating the gallows. That again is policy. I hate the Church and its priests, therefore I have released you. Also, by some strange mischance, nature has placed a man's heart within this contemptible body. But let us hasten."

"The sentry!" exclaimed Madeleine.

"Look not in that direction," said Gaudriole. "Lady, which way? I will guide you to safety, stay by your side while I can serve you, and when you say, 'Back, dog!' I disappear."

"You have done murder," cried the girl. "Let me see. Stand aside. Ah, poor wretch! He was but doing his duty, and his blood is on my head."

"The deed is mine, both in this world and the next," said Gaudriole. "I had a grudge against the knave. He stunned me once with his fist when I stumbled by mischance across his foot. Lady, you must come quickly. I see lights moving yonder. There is no time to lose."

"Geoffrey!" murmured Madeleine softly to her self.

"For his sake," urged the dwarf. Then he paused and ground his teeth.

"But you?" she exclaimed.

"I!" Gaudriole uttered his malevolent chuckle. "To-morrow I shall be hopping about the fortress, full of wild fancies which shall mightily impress the superstitious. I shall say how, as I lay on the hillside, I saw lightning strike the sentry dead, and how at the roll of thunder the door of this hut burst open and you passed out in a flame of fire. Laroche shall worship you as a saint to-morrow, if he worship aught but his belly and his sword, and shall keep the day holy in honour of Sainte Madeleine. Fear not for me. I have a clever tongue, lady, and a brave imagination, and if I am pushed can devise twenty men to do this deed. Come!" he whispered sharply. "The lights approach."

Madeleine permitted herself to be hurried away, and the ill-matched pair made no stop until the forest had closed behind. Not a sound came from the heights; only the watch-fires flickered gently in the wind.

"Which way?" cried Gaudriole.

"The sea," said Madeleine.

"There lies your path. 'Tis a mountainous country yonder. If you hide to-night, I will after dark to-morrow bring down a boat, and in that you may escape."

"I know how to find food, and the Indians will not harm me," she replied. "I have made myself friendly with them, and carry a marked stone which one of their sachems gave me."

"Say now the words, 'Back, dog!' and I leave you."

Madeleine turned reluctantly to the dwarf.

"Go, friend," she said, with her pitying smile Gaudriole went down on his sharp knees, and his crooked shoulders heaved.

"Lady, I am no man, but a beast who has done you what little service it might. My life shall continue as nature has fitted me, but when I come to die on the gallows, as such as I must end, I would have one blessed memory to carry with me into hell. Suffer me to kiss your hand."

Madeleine hesitated, her lips parting pitifully, her eyes wet as the grass which brushed her skirt. Then, as the poor villain raised his hideous face, she bent and swiftly kissed his grimy brow. Her glorious hair for a moment streamed upon his elfin locks, then she was gone, breathing a little faster, while Gaudriole lay humped upon the ground.

CHAPTER XXX

LAND-LOCKED

With the life of Master William Grignion, alderman, and subsequently sheriff, of the City of London, these annals are not concerned. The merchant's existence cannot, however, be altogether ignored, owing to a certain venture on his part, which resulted in an English ship being cast upon the shore of Acadie at the beginning of winter. Master Grignion was an austere man, who, by dint of miserly practice and sharp dealing, had amassed what in those days was a considerable fortune. After marrying his only daughter to an impecunious peer, he occupied a shameful old house upon Thames bank, the greater part of which was stocked with bales of merchandise. From the single window of the living-room, which was furnished below the degree of discomfort, the old man could view the overtoppling houses upon London Bridge; and here Master Grignion counted his gains each night, while his starved dog slunk from corner to corner sniffing uselessly for a scrap of food.