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  Jacques ran down to the water-ford and hailed a varlet who led a pack animal. The load the beast bore was wrapped round in a long winding-sheet of linen, and through the whiteness of the fabric showed the stain of fresh-spilt blood. ‘What passes, Héraclide?’ he called.

  ‘Alas, it is the good Sir Giulio de Lac, and Messires Ormond and Pindare—they and their company of seven other pages and esquires were set upon by the thrice-cursed Patrinonnes as they rode through the wildwood, and cut down to a man. May God have pity on their souls, and on the souls of all good Christians!’

  ‘Amen,’ responded Jacques, and signed himself with the Cross.

  Jacques was long at his devotions that night, giving thanks that he and his had been spared the cruel fate of Guillaume the cotter and his wife, thanks that his humble home still stood intact, especially that he still had Fourchette in her beauty and sweet innocency.

  Her prayer was brief but heartfelt as she knelt beside the crude bedstead before she crept between the coarse flax sheets and into Jacques’ embrace: ‘Tenez, Messire le Diable, if so be we have made a pact I thank thee for the earnest-money thou hast paid. Thy full requital on my bond shall be made when thou makest demand. Meantime, thou shalt pay through the nose. Amen.’

  IV

  Wealth, Health, and Happiness

  Consternation reigned throughout the Pays de la Montagne; the seigneur had declared his quit-rents be paid in money, not in kind. Never in the memory of a living man had such a thing been asked, for to the wretched serfs who tilled the fields and worked the roads, drew water and hewed wood one day—and sometimes two—in every three in their lord’s service the sight of a brass farthing was rarer than a glimpse at a blue moon. Many passed their whole lives without ever handling a coin. How should they obtain cash now to meet their lord’s demands? Geese, hens, sheep, goats, and even cows were driven to the town for sale, the peasants stripped their poor homes of the barest rudiments of comfort to raise the pelf for their quit-rents.

  Jacques was in despair. All year he’d toiled to save enough to buy two stools and a bancal for their home. Now not only must he toss this little hoard of copper on the checkered table of the seigneur’s steward, the sheep must go to the money-changers, and the goat and kid as well; perhaps also their little brood of chickens and their hive of bees. Then wherewith should they feed themselves when icy winter came?

  Fourchette smiled confidently. ‘He who watches over us will surely see we are not left in desolation,’ she encouraged. And when he asked her how it was she put such faith in the saints who maugre prayers and entreaties had made no move to help Guillaume the cotter’s wife when she was sore beset, she only smiled the more and kissed him and replied, ‘You will see!’

  And see they did. One week before the rent fell due, as Jacques was laboring in the field his mattock clinked on metal as he struck it in the earth, and there before his startled eyes was a small iron casket, brimful of silver angels; enough to pay his quit-rents for a five-year term, with something over to lend poor Guillaume the cotter, who had nothing left to put in pawn to raise the rent the lord demanded.

  Their fortunes grew apace. Fourchette went to the market town each handsel day, at first with a few eggs and a cast of wheaten bread in a small wicker hamper, later with a flock of chickens and a pile of fresh-spun woolen yarn, and always the best trade was hers. Buyers seemed to come to her instinctively and she sold at any price she chose to ask, nor was there any bickering.

  When Jean the cobbler, long collector of the seigneur’s moneys from the peasants, was caught red-handed in a defalcation and summarily hanged by the neck, the seigneur cast about for his successor, and elected Jacques to sit beneath the feudal tree each Saturday and settle accounts with the little folk. Surely, reasoned Sire Raymond, a man who can lay by a store of sixteen silver angels in a single year, and on a daily wage of nothing, would be the very one to squeeze the last groat from the farmerers and crofters.

  Fourchette’s heart swelled with pride. Her Jacques, but yesterday a grubber in the fields, was now a little lord in his own right, sitting—sometimes harshly—in judgment upon the very men who aforetime had looked down on him because he had but a few sheep and some goats while they had cows and even horses in their stables.

  But they were lonely in their new grandeur. The neighbors louted low to them when they passed by, but they were avoided and shunned. At first they felt a thrill of pride at this, but soon the isolation of their station saddened them. The castle gentry scorned and hated them, especially Fourchette. Somehow the story of the visit of Sir Guilio and the squires and pages to her house—and the fate that overtook them afterward—leaked out, and while they feared to offend her lest misfortune strike them, too, they named her witch and devil’s-mistress in private. Their former gossips held no traffic with them—when has the tax-collector ever had a friend? Their only safety lay in the lord’s favor, and this was measured strictly by the money they leeched from the peasants for him. So, between the hatred of the serfs and suspicion of the gentry they lived hemmed in by dangers in the midst of awful loneliness.

  V

  Three Golden Hairs—Three Hundred

  Golden Leopards

  ‘I tell thee, man, thou must raise it!’ Sire Raymond de la Montagne glowered at the cowering Jacques. ‘Silver will no longer serve, I must have gold, two hundred golden leopards, and by this day fortnight.’ Sir Raymond meant to make a brave show when he joined the King to drive the English back into the sea. He must have fine weapons from Damasco, horses of pure Arab blood, arms and armor for his men-at-arms, and a silk tent for his own use when camp was made. Such luxuries were not to be had in all France, but they could be bought in Outremer by those who had the price, and for the price he needed gold, not silver.

  ‘But, good my lord,’ the wretched Jacques pleaded, ‘where am I to find gold? Have I an army which can raid it from the Flemish cities—where am I to dig the earth to find its treasures?’

  Sire Raymond looked at him, and there was little friendship in his glance. ‘See thou to it,’ he replied. ‘Mayhap the place where you found silver to pay five years’ quit-rent in advance will yield another hoard. But comes it from the peasantry or Jews, or from the Devil’s coffers, I will have the sum of two hundred gold leopards, or’—he glanced up at the battlements—‘you see yon embrasure? The rope you may not see, but it is ready. Lay in my hand two hundred golden leopards ere the fortnight passes, or by’r Lady thou shalt dangle out of one at the other’s end. Make thy choice and go thy ways, my Jacques.’

  Abarbanel the banker squatted on the floor of his counting-house. His cap was jammed awry upon his head, covering one ear, leaving a patch of white hairless scalp exposed upon the other side; his gabardine was ripped to tatters, his plaited gray beard stained with blood. When he put trembling hands up to his cheeks as he rocked to and fro, blood welled from crushed fingertips. ‘Oi!’ he murmured miserably. ‘Oi, oi, oi!’

  A knocking at the door aroused him for a moment, but he sank back, keening, on his haunches as the portal swung back and a woman entered. With rheumy, lack-luster eyes he looked at her. From crown to heel she was enveloped in a hooded cloak of rough green stuff; he could not say if she were young or old, base-born or noble, he knew only that from the shadow of her updrawn camail her eyes burned at him like twin points of blue flame, and that something feverish had seemed to come into the room with her.

  He felt a sudden fear. Two hours since the armed men of the count had gone away, but—the chilly little fireless room seemed stifling with a sudden heat—even their rough cruelty had been less frightening than this woman who stood glare-eyed like Medea of the heathen fable. . . . ‘What would ye of me, Lady?’

  ‘Two hundred golden leopards upon such usury as you may name!’

  ‘Two hundred leopards!’ He looked at her in dismay. ‘How should I have so much, or even one-tenth of it? Behold my empty, bleeding gums. The soldiers of the count have just been here, and jerked my teeth out one
by one to force me to disclose the hiding-place of my gold—oi! See my maimed hands. They laid my fingertips between hewed boards and jumped on them until the blood burst forth as it had been tears shed from grieving eyes, but . . . think ye I could have withstood such torment if I had a store of hidden gold to buy them off?’

  ‘Yea, that do I,’ she answered simply. ‘I know your breed, good Jew; I know that only in the might of gold can you and yours find protection. I know full well that rather than consign your wife and children to a life of penury you would let them tear you limb from shuddering limb with red-hot pincers, and keep silent.’

  She let the capote of her cloak fall back, and down around her shoulders spilled a cataract of what seemed minted gold, so bright and yellow was her hair. ‘Behold, good usurer, if you will let me have the loan I crave, I’ll pay you back with interest of a half-part, and’—the glare in her eyes was intolerably bright—‘those who tormented you shall die the death ere they have reached the count his castle’s barbican.’

  ‘How? Will you strike them with a curse, Milady?’

  She drew a little phial from her dress, set her teeth in the cork and opened it, then poured a scruple of black liquid in her cupped palm. ‘Look, Jew,’ she ordered as she held her hand out to him. ‘Gaze into yon pool and tell me what it is you see.’

  The inky liquid seemed to cloud with gray, as though a drop of cream had been spilled in it; then it boiled suddenly, and from it came a little puff of acrid steam that stung his eyes until they watered, but through the tears he seemed to look down a long vista at the end of which a wooden bridge was swung across a torrent which ran howling through a rocky gorge. He saw a little troop of horsemen clatter out upon the bridge, and at their head he saw Hans Peter, captain of the count’s Swiss mercenaries, at whose orders his teeth had been plucked out as a child or lover plucks the petals from a daisy when he seeks to know his fortune. He saw the cavalcade ride to the center of the bridge, saw the stout timbering of the causeway break as if it had been reeds beneath the weight of the mailed hooves, saw men and horses tumble through the wreckage to the rocks that seemed to gnash like teeth of a voracious maw. . . .

  ‘Are you satisfied, good usurer?’ he heard the lady’s mocking voice.

  ‘Nay, Lady, what I saw may have been sooth, or may have been a wish which took on seeming as I gazed into the liquor,’ he answered cautiously. ‘How shall I know Hans Peter and his fell crew perished thus?’

  She smiled—a thin, slow smile. ‘Before the horologe upon the Town House sounds the curfew you will have confirmation of your vision, Jew,’ she told him. ‘If it cometh not, forget I ever asked a loan of you, but if it comes, bring you the gold to Jacques the steward’s house within the hour, and you shall have repayment with full usury before a fortnight passeth.’

  The tale of how the count’s men perished stem and branch when the bridge crashed under them was bruited through the city streets that evening, and shortly after sunset Abarbanel came to Jacques’ house with two hundred golden leopards. ‘What will you give in pledge of payment, Lady mine?’ he asked Fourchette as he put the metal in her hands.

  She smiled on him again, and he felt little chills of terror chase small thrills of fright up his spine as she pulled three hairs from her head, knotted them together, and dropped them in his open palm. ‘Put them in your strong box, usurer,’ she bade, ‘and at the hour of sundown this day seven-night open the casket and see what you shall see.’

  Grumbling he shuffled back to his house. Too late for regrets now, she had the money . . . but she had shown him how Hans Peter and the count’s men died, perhaps . . . he was a fool to trust such things, but he would put the three hairs in his strong box. . . .

  The sun had scarce had time to sink behind the gambreled roofs when, one week later, he rushed to his treasure chest, undid its fourteen locks, and flung the lid back. Where three golden hairs had rested on the notes of hand and foreign bills of exchange were now three piles of golden coins, three hundred leopards minted with the sign of English Edward’s majesty—his loan repaid with half again the principal for usury.

  VI

  ‘. . . and an Haughty Spirit Before Destruction’

  Fourchette had been a pretty girl, but with maturing womanhood she flowered royally. Her dazzling fairness was always set off by a gown of green, her wondrous hair was plaited in two long, full braids that fell below her knees; she wore bracelets of fine gold on either wrist and round her neck a chain of beaten gold as heavy as a fetter. Men marveled at her fascination and admired and obeyed her without question. She was a woman of fire, her face was a pale flame, her eyes blue lightning-flashes, her speech a shower of scintillating sparks. As by a miracle Abarbanel the usurer had become open-handed.

  Tight-fisted, grasping, holding out for ruinously high interest with all others, he lent money in whatever sum she asked without demur. She it was, and she alone, who kept the château solvent by her credit with the Jewish banker. No demand the seigneur made was too fantastic, he needed but to voice his wants and straightway she supplied them. Nor—miracle of miracles!—did Abarbanel ever press for payment; indeed, the only thing that seemed to give him greater pleasure than renewing an old loan was making fresh advances.

  Sire Raymond had gone to the English wars, and with him rode his might of knights and squires and men-at-arms. In his absence the Lady Iseult, chatelain of the castle, ruled his house and lands and people, and: ‘I will have naught of this Jacques jackanapes and his proud upstart wife,’ quoth she. ‘Too long my lord has let them have their high and mighty way, collecting rents and tribute-moneys from our people, factoring loans from usurers, and holding back a noble portion of the whole for their own behoof. Henceforth I will be both reeve and bailiff, overseer and collector.’

  So Jacques was driven from his seat beneath the feudal tree and the proud Lady Iseult took his place upon the bancal to receive the seigneur’s moneys. But however nobly born she be, a woman is a woman still, and the tenants slacked in payment of their rents, and presently the harvests failed, and the English took Sire Raymond captive and held him for a mighty ransom, and when the lady chatelain approached Abarbanel with demands for a loan, he would not let her have a groat until he had an earnest-payment on the principal and interest which was long past due. They resorted to the mild persuasions of the times, and then he swore he was a ruined man with only a few pence laid by to feed his starving wife and children, and persisted in this stubbornness until he fainted three times under torment. So, at her wits’ end for the necessary metal, the Lady Iseult left him swooning on the floor, applied the torch to his house and in no highly Christian temper called upon Fourchette.

  Not as villein-wife to her lady, nor as equal to an equal, but as superior to suppliant Fourchette received the Lady Iseult. She kept her waiting in the chilly common room for more than half an hour, and when she finally appeared made no obeisance to her noble visitor, but addressed her coldly, almost with contempt. ‘I know full well you come to me because all other means have failed you, Milady. You are hard-pressed for money, and in desperate case. Hear, then, the terms on which I will relieve you: My man shall be restored to his reeveship, but with authority to collect moneys from the gentle, as well as the base-born, and for his service he shall have the third, no longer a fourth merely, of the moneys he collects. Whenever business calls him to the château all shall do him honor, from the highest to the lowest, and at his approach the horns shall blow and all the castle guard turn out. Me you shall greet with gentle courtesy, and all your people, from belted knight to scullery lad, shall lout low at my coming. These be my terms, Milady, and not for less will I procure thee one stiver.’

  The Lady Iseult ground her teeth in rage, but poverty takes no denial, and her need was very great. So she curtsied low to Fourchette, as to a bishop or a princess, and went her ways in silent anger.

  Next day five thousand silver pounds were paid in her hand by Abarbanel the usurer.

  VII


  A Doctrinal Discussion

  They made high holiday at the château, for Sire Raymond, ransomed from the English, had come again to his own place. Above the common table where the squires and men-at-arms were seated rose the seigneur’s board, and on it were heaped brimming platters of roast meat and fowl, fish, comfits, sweetmeats, and marchpane, while the pages passed from bench to bench with silver flagons of strong, heady wine.

  Beside the Lady Iseult sat her chaplain Frère Ambroise, and by him Frey Tomás de Astorga, fresh from Prague and Cologne, where his zeal as Grand Inquisitor had spread terror and dismay in every witches’ coven between the Rhine and Elbe. ‘Meseemeth thy shrewd powers might be used to good purpose in this our city, good father,’ Lady Iseult told the dour Spaniard. ‘There walks one amongst us who might merit thy investigation. But five years since she was a serf’s wife, toiling for her keep like any of her kind, but suddenly she blossomed forth with sudden wealth, and since that day the times make fair for her. Does any lack for gold? Only through her may the Jewish banker be approached; to others he turns a deaf ear—myself have been denied a paltry loan by him—but at her word he opens up his coffers and disgorges precious metal as if it had been brass or copper. When others’ crops failed in the blight her corn and vines bore bounteously; when the black death stalked our towns and countryside she walked forth unafraid and unscathed; yea, though the best and holiest of all our folk were smitten by the plague.’