Not till two hours later did Du Guesclin at last come down from the sick-room, and, then putting several gold pieces into the hand of the bowing host, he bade him go quickly and find a stout horse for the hurt knight.
Spurred alike by the hope of pleasing “Messire Bertrand,” and the inspiring prospect of making at least twenty-five per cent. profit on the job, the worthy host was so active that ere Alured—who now looked and spoke quite like a rational man—was fully equipped for the journey, his horse stood ready at the inn door.
“I owe thee more than I can ever repay, noble Sir Bertrand,” said he; “and I vow to God, Our Lady, and Monseigneur St. George of England, that never will I cleanse this armour from rust, till I have done some deed by which I may know that I can hope to be forgiven.”
CHAPTER XIX
In a Robber Camp
On a low ridge overlooking the town of Carcassonne—girt then, as now, by the huge, dark-grey walls, against which, a century and a half before, Simon de Montfort’s destroying hosts had beaten in vain—was pitched the camp of one of those terrible “Free Companies” which, as the old peasant of the Loire had truly said, were the bane of France.
At every period of the Dark Ages, Europe swarmed with robber bands; but the fourteenth century alone could have exhibited such a phenomenon as robber bands six, eight, and ten thousand strong, with tents, banners, waggon-trains, generals, officers, and even clergymen of their own. For so strange a thing is human nature, that each of these brigand-armies had its own chaplain (usually as ruffianly as his bandit flock), and these double-dyed villains, who set at nought all the laws of God and man, would have shuddered at the thought of going forth to rob and murder till this model Churchman had solemnly blessed the enterprise, and prayed Heaven to aid them to steal and slay.
The strong walls of Carcassonne itself had defied these plunderers; but all around it they had been terribly busy—seizing castles, burning villages, sacking towns, wasting what miserable remnants of cultivation the ceaseless wars had left, inflicting tortures too hideous to name on all whom they suspected of having any money, and, in a word, draining the very life-blood of the ill-fated land on which all calamities known to men seemed outpoured at once.
Apart from the brutal faces of the men themselves, unmistakable proofs of what they were lay all around. Splendid armour, flecked with ominous drops of red, rich gold and silver plate, gay clothing and costly jewels, lay scattered in the dirt like things of no value, and, farther on, appeared a bound and helpless mass of men, women, and children, some dissolved in tears, others plunged in silent despair, who had been prosperous burghers, thriving farmers, or well-to-do craftsmen, till the clutch of the Free Company changed them in a moment to beggared and broken-hearted captives.
On one side, two old comrades were fighting hand to hand, and mangling each other with ghastly wounds over a sudden and senseless quarrel about the division of their plunder. On the other, a ruffian who had been losing heavily at dice, had just ended the game by the simple method of stabbing the winner to the heart, and was rummaging from the dead man’s pockets, with a wolfish grin, all the coin they held. From end to end of the camp brutal oaths, blasphemous songs, ribald tales, savage abuse in half a dozen languages, and jests too horribly foul to quote, made the air ring; and, in the midst of this hell on earth, a filthy and half-drunken cut-throat, supporting himself by the shoulder of an equally drunken comrade, was boisterously drinking the health of the Evil One, while his companion, holding a plundered church-chalice to his lips with a hand still wet from recent murder, hoarsely added, “May he send us a long and bloody war!”
A little apart sat the leader of that wolfish host—a leader fully worthy of them, who, so far as he differed from his fellow-brutes, differed for the worse.