THE TOWER OF DEATH
Throughout La Vendée and all the country of Retz had run a terrible rumour. "The Marshal de Retz is the murderer of our children. He has a thousand bodies in the vaults of his castles. The Duke of Brittany has given orders that they shall be searched. His soldiers are forsaking him. The names of the dead have been written in black and white, and are in the hands of the headmen of the villages. Hasten—it is the hour of vengeance! Let us overwhelm him! Rise up and let us seek our lost ones, even if we find no more than their bones!"
And terrible as had been the gathering of the were-wolves in the dark forests around Machecoul upon the night of the fight by the hollow tree, far more threatening and terrible was the uprising of the angry commons.
In whole villages there was not a man left, and mothers too marched in that muster armed with choppers and kitchen knives, wild eyed and angry hearted as lionesses robbed of their cubs. From the deep glens and deeper woods of the country of Retz they poured. They disgorged from the caves of the earth whither the greed and rapacity of their terrible lord had driven them.
Schoolmasters were there with the elder of their pupils. For many of the vanished children had disappeared on their way to school, and these men were in danger of losing both their credit and occupation.
Towards Tiffauges, Champtocé, Machecoul, the angry populace, long repressed, surged tumultuously, and with them, much wondering at their orders, went the soldiers of the Duke.
But it is with the columns that concentrated upon Machecoul that we have chiefly to do. Our three Scots accompanied these, and here, too, marched John of Brittany himself with his Councillor Pierre de l'Hopital by his side.
Night fell as they journeyed on, ever joined by fresh contingents from all the country round. In the van pressed forward the folk of Saint Philbert, warm from the utter destruction of the house of the witch woman, La Meffraye, so that not one stone was left upon another. Guided by these the Duke and his party made their way easily through the forest, even in the darkness of the night. And as they passed hamlet or cottage ever and anon some frenzied mother would rush upon them and fall on her knees before the Duke, praying him to look well for her darling, and bringing mayhap some pitiful shred of clothing or lock of hair by which the searchers might identify the lost innocent.
As they went forward the soldiers pricked on ahead, and caused the people to fall to the rear, lest any foreknowledge of their purpose might reach the wizard and warn him to escape.
The woods of Machecoul were dark and silent that night. Not the howl of a questing wolf was heard. Truly the marshal's demons had forsaken him, or mayhap they were all busy at that last carnival in the keep of the Castle of Machecoul.