else do you want to concoct it? You wanted the blood of a young child; the young son of one of my serfs has been delivered to you – "
"The child must be prepared for the sacrifice by magic formulas."
"In a word, can you tell me when will that marvelous philter, that you have promised me, be ready?"
"I shall work upon it this very night, during the hours between the rising and the going down of the moon; that's to say, for several hours."
"That's another delay! My ailment grows apace! I suspect you of having cast upon me the evil spell under which I struggle, and which drives me to deeds of furious folly."
"You are wrong in attributing to me such an influence over your fate."
"Was it not you who incited me to kill my eldest son Gonthram?"
"Your son tried to violate me. Of course I had to appeal to your intervention for protection against fresh outrages."
"Had not my equerry Eberhard the Tricky thrown himself between me and Gonthram, I would have killed my son on his return from the hunt. He has insisted that you offered to yield yourself to him if he consented to stab me to death."
"That was a dastardly calumny!"
"Perhaps I should have plunged my dagger in your heart and be done with you."
"And why did you not?"
"Because you read in the stars that our lives were bound together, and that your death would precede mine by only three days. But if I am to die of the distemper that oppresses me, a curse upon you, sorceress! You shall not survive me. Garin the Serf-eater is charged with my vengeance. Oh, you will not leave this castle alive!" Neroweg pressed his forehead with both hands and proceeded in a spirit more and more dejected as he spoke: "The philter – Will it heal me? Since you cast your diabolical spell upon me, the days seem endless. I am indifferent to everything. After I make the rounds of my domains, shut in among the seigniories of my neighbors, all of them my enemies; after I have ravaged their lands, burned their houses, killed their serfs; after I have levied ransom on the travelers, had justice executed by my bailiff, my provost and my hangman; after all that I feel sadder, wearier, more than ever tired of life. I have even surprised myself wishing for death!"
"You wage war, you eat, you drink, you hunt, you sleep and you take your female serfs to your bed when they marry. What is it you lack?"
"I am tired, cloyed with gross enjoyments. Wine tastes sour to me. I feel uneasy when I hunt in my forests, fearful of some ambush prepared by my neighbors. I find my donjon sepulchral like a tomb. I choke under its stone vaults. If I leave the manor, I have ever under my eyes the same saddening landscape."
"Leave the country, you stupid and savage wolf!"
"Whither shall I go and be happier? Here I am master. What would my fate be elsewhere? During my absence, my neighbors would descend upon my domains like a flock of vultures. The devil! I am bound to my seigniory like my serfs to the glebe!"
"Your fate is that of all the nobles, your peers."
"But they are not weighed down by their existence like I. Only a few years ago, during the life of my wife Hermengarde, I attacked my neighbors as much for the pleasure of it as to appropriate their lands and to sack their castles. I went on the hunt for caravans of merchants with joy and spirit. I put the prisoners to the torture and delighted at their grimaces. In short, I felt that I lived; I was happy; I ate and drank enormously, and then fell asleep in the arms of one of my female serfs. The next morning I attended mass and departed for the chase, to battle or on a pillaging expedition; that is, on a new round of pleasures." After a moment's silence the seigneur of Plouernel added, with a sigh: "Those days I was a good Catholic! I practiced the faith of my fathers, and every morning, after mass, the chaplain gave me absolution for the deeds of the previous day! To-day, thanks to your wicked contrivances, all my beliefs are overthrown. I have become a pagan! – Aye, a pagan!"
"You, poor imbecile, who carry under your hauberk four relics blessed by the Pope!"
"Will you dare to mock me for my faith in relics?" bellowed Neroweg in a towering rage. "Without the relics that I carry about me you might by this time have dragged me to the bottom of hell, you worthy wife of Satan!"
"Maychance you speak truth, seigneur Count!"
"There is nothing human about you! Your lips are cold as marble; your kisses are frozen!"
"When a reciprocal love shall inflame my veins, then my lips will grow purple, and my kisses will be of fire!"
"Oh, I know it; you never loved me!"
"As well love a wolf of the forest as a Neroweg. You carried me off by force, and I have had to submit to your lust. The man whom I adore, whom I have long loved, even without seeing him, is William the Ninth, the handsome Duke of Aquitaine."
"William!" exclaimed Neroweg in an accent of ferocious jealousy. "That sacrilegious wretch, who carries on his shield the portrait of Malborgiane, his mistress!"
"William is a poet; he is young, handsome, bold, bright and gay. All women dream of, and all men dread him. You are his vassal. Woe unto you should you dare cross him! He would leave not one stone on the other in your castle. He would make you grovel on the ground on hands and knees; he would clap a saddle on you and ride on your back a hundred steps at a stretch, agreeable to the right of a sovereign over his revolted vassal. You are as far removed from the handsome Duke of Aquitaine as the dull buzzard is from the noble falcon that darts towards the sun making its golden bells tinkle!"
Neroweg uttered a cry of rage, and, drawing his dagger, rushed upon Azenor. But her marble figure remained impassive, her white lips curled in disdainful smile. "Kill me, coward knight, assassin!"
After a moment of savage irresolution, Neroweg returned his dagger to the scabbard: "Oh, damned be the day I captured you on the road to Angers. It is you who brought down the curse that rests upon this castle. But will ye, nill ye, you shall yourself break the spell you have thrown upon me and my children, who, like their father, are becoming somber and silent."
"That's the business of the philter, which I am preparing."
The conversation was at this point interrupted by two raps on the door from without. Neroweg asked roughly: "Who's that?"
"Seigneur Count," a voice answered, "you are waited to open the session of the court in the stone hall!"
Neroweg made a gesture of impatience, and, donning the iron casque which he had laid on a settee, replied: "Once the homage of my vassals pleased my vanity. To-day everything annoys, everything is irksome to me. Oh, sad is my life!"
"To-morrow, thanks to my philter, nothing more will weigh upon you – nor upon yours," observed Azenor, and, placing in the Count's hands the two little wax images, she added: "Your two enemies – the Sire of Castel-Redon and the Bishop of Nantes – will soon fall into your hands, provided you yourself place these magic figures where I have told you, while you pronounce three times the names of Judas, of Astaroth and of Jesus."
"It is hard for me to pronounce the name of Jesus in connection with this sorcery," remarked Neroweg, raising his head and receiving almost fearfully the two little figures. "To-night the philter; if not, you die to-morrow!" Then, bethinking himself, "Where is the child?"
"In that alcove," answered Azenor.
Neroweg walked towards the turret, raised the curtain and saw little Colombaik, the son of Fergan the Quarryman, lying on the floor. The innocent creature was sound asleep at the foot of a stand loaded with vases of bizarre form. The walls of the turret, paneled with marble slabs, rose bare to the ceiling, the floor of whose upper story was on a level with the platform of the donjon. Neroweg, after contemplating the child for an instant, stepped out of the donjon, double-locking the door after him, and taking care to withdraw the key and place it in his jerkin.
CHAPTER VI.
FEUDAL JUSTICE
Eberhard the Tricky, one of the equerries of the seigneur of Plouernel, awaited his master outside of the retreat of Azenor, in company with Thiebold, justiciary provost of the seigniory.