Part 45 (1/2)
A little farther on they came to two pillars, and between these was a huge wheel closely studded with iron p.r.o.ngs; and entangled in these were bones and fragments of cloth miserably dispersed over the wheel.
Gerard hid his face in his hands. ”Oh to think those patches and bones are all that is left of a man! Of one who was what we are now.”
”Excusez! a thing that went on two legs and stole; are we no more than that?”
”How know ye he stole? Have true men never suffered death and torture too?”
”None of my kith ever found the way to the gibbet, I know.”
”The better their luck. Prithee how died the saints?”
”Hard. But not in Burgundy.”
”Ye ma.s.sacred them wholesale at Lyons, and that is on Burgundy's threshold. To you the gibbet proves the crime; because you read not story. Alas! had you stood on Calvary that b.l.o.o.d.y day we sigh for to this hour, I tremble to think you had perhaps shouted for joy at the gibbet builded there; for the cross was but the Roman gallows, Father Martin says.”
”The blaspheming old hound!”
”Oh fie! fie! a holy and a book-learned man. Ay, Denys, y'had read them, that suffered there, by the bare light of the gibbet. 'Drive in the nails!' y'had cried: 'drive in the spear! Here be three malefactors.
Three ”roues.”' Yet of those little three one was the first Christian saint, and another was the Saviour of the world which gibbeted him.”
Denys a.s.sured him on his honour they managed things better in Burgundy.
He added too after profound reflection, that the horrors Gerard had alluded to had more than once made him curse and swear with rage when told by the good cure in his native village at Easter-tide; ”but they chanced in an outlandish nation; and near a thousand years agone. Mort de ma vie, let us hope it is not true: or at least sore exaggerated. Do but see how all tales gather as they roll!”
Then he reflected again, and all in a moment turned red with ire. ”Do ye not blush to play with your book-craft on your unlettered friend, and throw dust in his eyes, evening the saints with these reptiles?”
Then suddenly he recovered his good humour. ”Since your heart beats for vermin, feel for the carrion crows! they be as good vermin as these: would ye send them to bed supperless, poor pretty poppets? Why, these be their larder: the pangs of hunger would gnaw them dead, but for cold cutpurse hung up here and there.”
Gerard, who had for some time maintained a dead silence, informed him the subject was closed between them and for ever. ”There are things,”
said he, ”in which our hearts seem wide as the poles asunder, and eke our heads. But I love thee dearly all the same,” he added with infinite grace and tenderness.
Towards afternoon they heard a faint wailing noise on ahead: it grew distincter as they proceeded. Being fast walkers they soon came up with its cause: a score of pikemen, accompanied by several constables, were marching along, and in advance of them was a herd of animals they were driving. These creatures, in number rather more than a hundred, were of various ages, only very few were downright old: the males were downcast and silent. It was the females from whom all the outcry came. In other words the animals thus driven along at the law's point were men and women.
”Good Heaven!” cried Gerard. ”What a band of them! But stay, surely all those children cannot be thieves: why there are some in arms. What on earth is this, Denys?”
Denys advised him to ask that ”bourgeois” with the badge. ”This is Burgundy: here a civil question ever draws a civil reply.”
Gerard went up to the officer and removing his cap, a civility which was immediately returned, said, ”For our Lady's sake, sir, what do ye with these poor folk?”
”Nay, what is that to you, my lad?” replied the functionary suspiciously.
”Master, I'm a stranger, and athirst for knowledge.”
”That is another matter. What are we doing? ahem. Why we--Dost hear, Jacques? Here is a stranger seeks to know what we are doing,” and the two machines were tickled that there should be a man who did not know something they happened to know. In all ages this has tickled. However the chuckle was brief, and moderated by their native courtesy, and the official turned to Gerard again. ”What we are doing? hum!” and now he hesitated not from any doubt as to what he was doing, but because he was hunting for a single word that should convey the matter.
”Ce que nous faisons, mon gars?--Mais--dam--NOUS TRANSVASONS.”
”You decant? that should mean you pour from one vessel to another.”
”Precisely.” He explained that last year the town of Charmes had been sore thinned by a pestilence, whole houses emptied and trades short of hands. Much ado to get in the rye; and the flax half spoiled. So the bailiff and aldermen had written to the duke's secretary; and the duke he sent far and wide to know what town was too full. ”That are we,” had the baillie of Toul writ back. ”Then send four or five score of your townsfolk,” was the order. ”Was not this to decant the full town into the empty, and is not the good duke the father of his people, and will not let the duchy be weakened, nor its fair towns laid waste, by sword nor pestilence; but meets the one with pike, and arbalest (touching his cap to the sergeant and Denys alternately), and t'other with policy?
LONG LIVE THE DUKE!”