THE WHODUNIT COLLECTION: British Murder Mysteries (15 Novels in One Volume)
where Taven, the witch, kept and cured of illness the girl loved by Mireio.
I didn't know who Mireio was, except that he lived in songs and legends of Old Provence, but the story sounded like a beautiful romance; and then, the guide had added that some people thought the Kabre d'Or, or Phoenician treasure, was hidden somewhere between Les Baux and the "Fairy Grotto," or the "Gorge of Hell," near by.
Caves have always had the most extraordinary, magical fascination for me. When I was a child, I believed that if I could only go into one I should be allowed to find fairyland; and even in an ordinary, every-day cellar I was never quite without hope. The smell of a cellar suggested the most cool, delightful, shadowy mysteries to me, at that time, and does still.
It was as if the ghostly hand that had been pulling me back, begging me not to leave Les Baux, led me gently but insistently through the doorway of the rock house.
It was not yet dark inside. I tiptoed my way through some rough bits of debris, to the back of the big room, crudely cut out of stone. There were shelves where the dwellers had set lights or stored provisions, and there was nothing else to see except a square hole in the floor, below which a staircase had been hewn. A glimmer of light came up to me, gray as a bat's wing, and I knew that there must be some opening for ventilation below.
I felt that I would give anything to go down those rough stone stairs, only half way down, perhaps; just far enough to see what lay underneath. It was as if Taven herself had called me, saying: "Come, I have something to show you."
I put a foot on the first step, then the other foot wanted a chance to touch the next step, and so on, each demanding its own turn in fairness. I had gone down eight steps, counting each one, when I heard a faint rustling noise. I stopped, my heart giving a jump, like a bird in a cage.
There were no windows in the underground room, which was much smaller and less regular in shape than the one above, but a faint twilight seemed to rain down into it in streaks, like spears of rain, and I guessed that holes had been made in the rock to give light and ventilation. Something alive was down there, moving. I was frightened; I hardly dared to look. And I had a nightmare feeling of being struck dumb and motionless. I tried to turn and run up the stairs but I had to look, and the gray filtering light struck into a pair of eyes.
Chapter XIV
They were great black eyes, sunken into the face of an old woman. She stood in a corner, and it occurred to me that she had perhaps run there, as much afraid of me as I was of her. No eyes were ever like those, I thought, except the eyes of a gipsy.
"What are you doing?" I stammered, in French, hardly expecting her to understand and answer me; but she replied in an old, cracked voice that sounded hollow and unreal in the cavern.
"I have been asleep," she said. "I am waiting for my sons. We are in Les Baux on business. I thought, when I heard you, it was my boys coming to fetch me. I can't go till they are here, because I have dropped my rosary with a silver crucifix down below, and the way is too steep for me. They must get it."
"Do they know you are here?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," she returned. "They will come at six. We shall perhaps have our supper and sleep in this house to-night. Then we will go away in the morning."
"It is only a little after five now," I told her. "You frightened me at first."
She cackled a laugh. "I am nothing to be afraid of," she chuckled. "I am very old. Besides, there is no harm in me. If you have the time, I could tell your fortune."
"I'm afraid I haven't time," I said, though I was tempted. To have one's fortune told in a cavern under a rock house where Romans had lived, told by a real, live gipsy who looked as if she might be a lineal descendant from Taven, and who was probably fresh from worshipping at the tomb of Sarah! It would be an experience. No girl I knew, not even Pam herself, who is always having adventures, could ever have had one as good as this. If only I need not miss it!
"It would take no more than five minutes," she pleaded in her queer French, which was barely understandable, and evidently not the tongue in which she was most at home.
"Well, then," I said, hastily calculating that it was no more than ten minutes since Lady Turnour and Sir Samuel left me, and that the water for their punch couldn't possibly have begun to boil yet. "Well, then, perhaps I might have five minutes' fortune, if it doesn't cost too much; but I'm very poor—poorer than you, maybe."
"That cannot be, for then you would have less than nothing," said the old woman, cackling again. "But it is your company I like to have, more than your money. I have been waiting here a long time, and I am dull. No fortune can be expected to come true, however, unless the teller's hand be crossed with silver, otherwise I might give it you for nothing. But a two-franc piece—"
"I think I have as much as that," I cut her short, as she paused on the hint; and deciding not to ask her, as I felt inclined, to come to the upper room lest we should be interrupted, I went down the remaining five or six high steps, and got out my purse under a long, straight rod of gray light.
There were only a few francs left, but I would have beggared myself to buy this adventure, and thought it cheap at the price she named. I found a two-franc piece—a bright new one, worthy of its destiny—and looking up as I shut my purse, I saw the old woman's eyes fixed on me, and sharp as gimlets. Used to the dusk now, I could see her dark face distinctly, and so like a hungry crow did she look that I was startled. But it was only for a second that I felt a little uncomfortable. She was so old and weak, I was so young and strong, that even if she were an evil creature who wanted to do me harm, I could shake her off and run away as easily as a bird could escape from a tied cat.
"Make a cross with the silver piece on my palm," she said.
I did as she told me, and it was a dark and dirty palm, in the hollow of which seemed to lie a tiny pool of shadow. Her eyes darted to the bracelet-watch as my wrist slipped out of the protecting sleeve, and I drew back my hand quickly. She plucked the coin from my fingers, and then told me to give her my left hand.
"You can't see the lines," I said. "It's too dark."
"I see with my night eyes," she answered, as a witch might have answered. "And I feel. I have the quick touch of the blind. I can feel the pores in a flower-petal."
Impressed, I let her hold my hand in one of her lean claws while she lightly passed the spread fingers of the other down the length of mine from the tips to the joining with the palm, and then along the palm itself, up and down and across. It was like having a feather drawn over my hand.
"You have foreign blood in your veins," she said. "You are not all French. But you have the charm of the Latin girl. You can make men love you. You make them love you whether you wish or not, and whether they wish or not. Sometimes that is a great trouble to you. You are anxious now, for many reasons. One of the reasons is a man, but there is more than one who loves you. You make one of them unhappy, and yourself unhappy, too. The man you ought to love is young and handsome, and dark—very dark. Do not think ever of marrying a fair man. You are on a journey now. Something very unexpected will happen to you at the end—something to do with a man, and something to do with a woman. Be careful then, for your future happiness may depend on your actions in a moment of surprise. You are not rich, but you have a lucky hand. You could find things hidden if you set yourself to look for them."
"Hidden treasure?" I asked, laughingly, and venturing to break in because she was speaking slowly now, as if she had come to the end of her string of prophecies.
"Perhaps. Yes. If you looked for the hidden treasure here, you might be the one to find it after all these hundreds of years. Who knows? These things happen to the lucky ones."
"Well, if I believed that I'd been born for such luck, I'd try to come back some day, and have a look," I said. "I should begin in this house, I think."