Night Creatures Read online

  Fetlock-deep they splashed into the purling waters of the little brook that ran between the sown land and the pasture plot of Jacques’ small croft, and one of them burst into song:

  Nicolete o le gent cors,

  Por vous sui venuz eu bos . . .

  ‘Grand Dieu!’ the singer broke his song and tightened rein as he reached the brook bank. ‘What have we here? By sainted Denis his head, ’tis a pretty chit!’ The bright, hot blood rose like a tide through Fourchette’s throat and cheeks and mounted to her brow, for she was suddenly the focal point for twenty dancing, merry eyes.

  It was Pindare who spoke, the brown-eyed, black-haired, olive-skinned Messire Pindare who had come from Outremer to serve his squireship with Raymond de la Montagne, lord proprietor and seigneur of the estate to whose soil Fourchette and Jacques were nailed as serfs. Now, as he rode his horse across the little garden-plot of ripening corn, his eyes were shining with combined amusement and anticipation.

  ‘Nay, little mistress, be not frightful,’ he soothed as he drew rein in the dooryard and slipped down from the saddle with a merry clink of sword on spur. ‘We do but crave a dish of sweet, cool milk from your fair hand. Put by distaff and spindle and bring us a drink, I beseech thee.’

  ‘Nay, Messire—milord—your worship,’ Fourchette dropped a frightened curtsy, ‘we have but one jug of milk. The mother goat gives but a little, and the kid is ever hungry——’

  ‘Say you so in God’s truth?’ Pindare interrupted. ‘Why, then, ’tis easy to increase thy supply and give thee fresh meat at the same time.’ With the slightly grating hiss of metal scratching metal his sword flashed from its scabbard, and in two strides he had stepped across the doorway to the goat which nursed her wobbly-legged baby, seized the kid by a hind leg, and struck its head off with a single quick blow.

  ‘Ohé, le pauvre!’ screamed Fourchette as the headless little carcass twitched and quivered on the hard-packed earth. ‘My little one, my poor one, my sweet innocent!’

  With an outraged bleat the mother goat whirled round upon the murderer of her offspring, drew her hooves together, and launched herself like a small thunderbolt. Taken by surprise, Pindare went down before the furious onslaught, attempted to get up, and sprawled again beneath the impact of the maddened goat’s wild charge.

  ‘Bravo, Mamman Chèvre!’

  ‘Encore—to the attack again!’

  ‘A golden leopard Pindare flees!’

  ‘Taken, and another that he wins the joust!’

  Laughing, shouting, wagering, his companions made a ring around Pindare and the goat while Fourchette knelt upon her doorstep with her hands pressed to her mouth to stop her unavailing screams. The kid, the increase of their flock, was gone, and now the mother—the agonized, half screamed, half moaning cry of the goat drowned the men’s wild shoutings. Pindare had gained his feet and as the goat charged at him hewed her forelegs off at the knees. Now he leaped upon the crippled beast with iron-studded boots, staving in her ribs before he finished her with a slash of his blade.

  The circle opened to permit the victor’s exit, and the squire held his bloodied sword out to Fourchette. ‘Wipe me clean this blade, wench,’ he commanded, ‘then bring us drink. We have already tarried overlong at thy hovel.’

  She dried the sword upon her gown and handed it back to Pindare, then, weeping, went to fetch the crook of goat’s milk from the spring.

  From lip to lip the beaker passed until it came to Fabien, the youngest of the pages. Raising it, he pledged the company:

  ‘To your health, Messires!’ drained it, then dashed it on the ground so that it broke into a dozen fragments.

  ‘Messire!’ in desperation Fourchette dropped to her knees at Sir Giulio’s feet, ‘bid them be tender with our things, I prithee! We be good and lawful tenants of our lord the seigneur, our rent is paid upon the term-day, and all is given him which lawfully is his. Are we not entitled to protection in return?’

  His laughing gray eyes looked into her tear-filled blue ones. They were high-spirited, these lads; it was pleasant to observe their harmless pranks. ‘So much is bound to be paid to the seigneur as of right,’ he answered, speaking slowly, as to a dull child, ‘but he may take the rest too, if he likes. You are serfs of the body, you and your husband; you and all you have are his, and may be taken for his use and pleasure, or the use and pleasure of his servants. These be retainers of the seigneur, woman. They do but exercise his right of prehension in his absence and by his leave.’

  Two of the pages seized her underneath the arms, raised her to her feet, and urged her, half running, half falling, to the hut. They paused a moment, kicked the door back, thrust her across the threshold.

  II

  Ad Diabolum

  Fourchette knelt by her bed. Her fresh green gown was torn almost to tatters and soiled until it looked like a pot-rag; her long bright hair poured round her face and spilled in a bright pool upon the cabin’s earthen floor. Her arms were stretched across the broken bed, her fingers interlaced. Tears were rolling in big, slow drops down her cheeks. She did not sob or move in any way; she just knelt there, as still as if she were a carven figure of repentant Magdalene. Once or twice a heavy, hard breath rasped between her teeth, but it was neither sob nor moan, only the instinctive sighing of a body in which the soul has been crushed. Her world was broken into fragments as irrevocably as the pitcher which the thoughtless page had smashed; their little patch of corn was trampled in the earth, their goat was gone, their kid was gone, their house dishonoured . . . and she . . .

  Wearily she raised herself, holding to the broken bed for support. A mile away the river bawled and shouted through a gully set with saw-toothed rocks. There was her goal and destiny; no other refuge offered, there was no other place for such as she. She took a step and almost fell prone on her face; her tortured, fragile limbs could scarce support the dreadful burden lodged within her breast. Strange that a broken heart could so outweigh a whole one.

  ‘Adieu, mon Jacques,’ she murmured as she took a second painful step, ‘for this world and the next and all eternity——’

  ‘And are you really bent on self-destruction, little pretty Mistress? Nay, ’twere a foolish thing to do so soon!’ Softly, scarcely louder than the soughing of the breeze across the wheat fields, the words came to her, seemingly from just before her faltering feet.

  She glanced down. There he stood, a small figure, no taller than a hand’s-span, with long hooked nose and goggle eyes, hunched back, protruding chest. Dressed all in brilliant red he was, from tiny pointed shoon to the little curve-peaked cap, for all the world an animate replica of the puppet Punchinello she had seen a troupe of jongleurs from Italy present in their play of Pontius cum Judaeis at the carnival last Shrove Tuesday. But she recognized him, a follet—one of the small goblin-folk of whom her mother and her grandmother had whispered tales; little people who invested fields and forests, coming into human dwellings only stealthily at night, sometimes to bring a boon of money or help the housewife with her work, sometimes, if they were not made welcome, to wreak mischief on their hosts. Harmless little folk they were, not always truly good, but very seldom really bad. The gracious kindly God must tolerate them. She had heard of them since infancy, but never had she seen one, and now she was afraid—terribly afraid. The parish priest had warned her of them. They were truly demons, emissaries of the Arch Fiend’s self, bound by a righteous sentence to live until the Day of Judgment, then to be cast with Lucifer the Proud into a lake of everlasting seething brimstone. Meanwhile, anyone who trafficked with them or even failed to drive them off with prayers and invocations to the saints was guilty of a mortal sin; more, whoever saw a spirit would forthwith be stricken dead, or blinded, at the very least.

  And so she was afraid. Her small teeth ground together, her insides seemed contracting in upon themselves, her breath was still, every nerve and muscle in her body was as taut as a lute-string while she stood waiting for his next word.

  Nor was it
slow in coming. ‘Is there nothing you could ask of life, small mistress mine, no wish which you could name, that you are resolved to quit the good green earth thus suddenly?’

  Outraged anger burned the welling tears from Fourchette’s eyes. ‘Aye, that there is, three things, i’ sooth, but what can I, a serf and serf’s wife, do to gain them?’

  ‘Mayhap,’ the little fellow wagged his small ungainly head, ‘mayhap I can accomplish them for you, my little pretty one.’

  Fourchette remembered tales they told of Claude the miller’s son’s grandsire. Like Jacques and her he had been but a self-plowman, and like them he had struggled against poverty, want, and privation. His crops were filched, his house was wrecked, his only daughter carried off, all ‘for the service of the seigneur’. Then one day as he toiled behind the plow he cried in bitterness of heart, ‘Oh, if the clod I turn would only show a treasure underneath, enough for us to buy our freedom! The carven saints look on in stony silence when we make our plaint to them; if only the kind Devil——’

  From underneath the very clod his plowshare grated through a little man all dight in red rose suddenly, and standing in the furrow asked, ‘What would you of me, then?’

  And straightway, when the plowman told him of his plight the little Red One pointed to the earth, and there the poor serf saw an earthen pot which when he tore its cover off proved to be full of coins, not brass, as were the few groats which the villein saw on rare occasions, not silver such as merchants clinked upon their bancals at the city fairs, but broad gold pieces minted with the signum of St Louis, enough to buy their freedom from all quit-rents from that day, and with sufficient left to buy the water-mill on which the grandsire and his son and grandson lived in ease and luxury ever since. Folk said that at the end old Claude was snatched alive to hell by a great, fearsome fiend, and that his son died screaming pleas for mercy from a host of demons, seen by him alone, that hunched in deadly menace round his sick-bed. But did not the priests declare that many should be called but few chosen for salvation? What if one were among the host of the rejected already? Did not old Claude choose wisely? Damned though he was for all eternity, at least he had had ease and comfort in this world, and so did his son after him. Perchance he would have been damned anyway, and if he had rejected the fiend’s offer——

  The still, frail voice of the small red-clad man came to her, as from a great distance. ‘What would you give, my little, fair Fourchette, if I could promise you the three things which you crave: revenge on those who have so spitefully entreated you, honor for you, and affluence for yourself and your husband—behold him, how he toils and moils from sunup to sundown, yet makes no progress. Today the great folk from the château trampled his small patch of garden, killed his milch goat and his kid, broke his ewer, and used you for a plaything. How will he pay the quit-rent when it falls due? How will he feed you and himself? He can no more. He and you must die of very poverty unless——’

  The little voice stopped, but the small top-heavy head wagged at her, and the tiny, ugly face smiled knowingly. ‘We can save him, you and I. We can make him great and powerful, a man feared and respected; we can make you powerful, so that all who displease you shall bite the earth, so that all folk, from the smallest to the greatest, shall fear you. What would you give in return for these things, my little pretty mistress?’

  ‘What can I give—what have I? Our little store of wealth is gone; my body is a shame and a reproach to me; my soul—alas, my soul is burned to ashes in my breast!’

  ‘Nay, little mistress, say not so. Truly, your soul is a small thing, of little worth to you, of none at all to God, else He had not let such things befall you; but to me it is a pretty trinket. Come, give it to me, and all that I have named shall be yours, aye, and more too. I will give you things which in your simple innocence you have not conceived of.’

  ‘But, little man, you are so wee——’

  ‘Give that which I do crave of you, and you shall see me grow unto my rightful stature. Are you content? Is it a bargain?’

  Despite her misery she smiled. This little Puckish fellow, this Hop-o’-my-Thumb whom she could cover with her cupped hands as with a tent . . .

  ‘Great sir, if you will make these gifts to me I am your servant for all time. You shall be my master and my God, and I shall have none other. Gracious to me shall be the light of your countenance, and all your services sweet duties of delight.’

  ‘Then down upon the earth and do me reverence. Pledge me your soul for all time and eternity; vow yourself to my service without let or restraint!’ The voice of command grew and swelled. Like the diapason of a mighty organ when the stops are opened and the force or harmony turned forth without restraint, it swept through the small, darkened hut until it shook the mud-daubed walls and seemed to raise the rush-thatched roof.

  And as the voice enhanced so did the speaker. Like a shadow lengthening in the evening when the sun slants down behind the shoulders of the mountains he magnified until he was as great as a man, an ox, a war-horse—until his head pressed on the ridgepole of the roof and his shoulders hid the wall from sight. Nor was he now the little comic Punchinello with hunched back and ugly good-humored countenance, but a tall and august presence, garbed in red, with a close-fitting coif from which his face looked forth in solemn, awful majesty, unsmiling, but not cruel; sad, but more thoughtful than morose; arrogant and proud, but with a certain look of understanding and compassion in it.

  As the awe-inspiring change went forward Fourchette dropped upon her face, and with forehead pressed against the cabin’s earthen floor adored him, grovelling. She did him homage in accordance with the Templars’ rite, naming him her prince, her master, and her lord.

  He bent and breathed upon her, and his breath was like the rushing of a mighty wind. It burned her like a fire and froze her like a raging winter tempest at the same time.

  She would have shrieked aloud at the agony of it, but her throat was stopped, her tongue was paralyzed; she could neither scream nor speak nor move.

  Then, quickly as it came, the torment passed away. She was lying prone upon the cabin floor, alone. There was neither giant fiend nor tiny brownie with her. All was as it had been when she rose to throw herself into the river.

  But was it? She glanced toward the bed. It had been broken by the squires’ and the pages’ rowdy play. Now it was whole and sound . . . or had it really been crushed? Her green gown showed no rents, no stains. From the dooryard came a quick, impatient bleat. She ran stumbling from the cabin, and saw before the door the she-goat with the kid beneath her, nursing greedily, its small tail wagging like a reed blown by the wind. Scarecely crediting her senses she rushed to the spring. Safe, whole, and filled with curdling milk the pitcher stood in the cool, limpid water. The corn waved in the rising evening breeze. There were no tracks of wanton horses in it.

  Fourchette fell on her knees and joined her hands in thanksgiving. It had been a dream, a hideous nightmare. Sir Giulio and his squires and pages had not ridden by, the goat and kid were sound and well, she had not suffered indignity, her soul was still her own. ‘Praise be to Thee, most gracious, gentle, loving—’ she began, and stopped upon the word. She could not call the name of God, however hard she sought to frame it.

  III

  Satan Makes a Payment

  Presently came Jacques home from the field of labor, his face all pale despite his haste, his breath a rasping whistle in his throat, his clumsy wooden sabots clattering on the flints of the pathway.

  ‘Fourchette!’ he called, all out of breath so he could scarcely find the power to cry her name. ‘Fourchette, my little one, my babe, my treasure, are you truly here, and safe?’

  She came out to meet him from the cabin, white arms outstretched, bright hair agleam, her eyes alight with joy at his return. ‘Yea, husband mine, my love, my life, my all,’ she answered him, ‘why should I not be here and safe? Know you not I have a mighty champion and protector?’

  ‘Oh, aye,’ he repli
ed as he gathered her into his arms, ‘the blessed saints watch over us, but sometimes meseems they nod in their vigil. Guillaume the cotter’s wife was set upon by gallants from the seigneurie this afternoon, and so abused that she lies at death’s door. His little garden patch was trampled underfoot, his kid and milch-goat slain, and his stone ewer broken by a sportive page. They told me that another party of the gay young gentlemen had come this way . . . oh, Fourchette mine, my heart has been a stone within my breast all day since I heard that. Thou art my love, my life, my breath, my heart’s-blood, and the light of mine eyes. . . .’

  He drew her to him, holding her in his embrace as the dusk enfolds the fruit it guards, and she, her head upon his shoulder, murmured soft, meaningless words, the kind of words women have used since time began for comforting their children—or their men.

  From the great tower of the château on the hill a bell boomed sonorously, slowly, solemnly, as though it paused to catch its breath and sob with grief between each stroke. One—two—three—nine times its brazen throat cried out its peal of sorrow; a long pause, then another ninefold chant of woe. Nine tolls marked a man—and ten times nine the passing bell had tolled before the little cavalcade splashed through the brook and mounted the steep roadway leading to the castle, torchlight reddening the harness of the men-at-arms and casting fearful, creeping shadows on the grassed land by the roadway.