As she spoke the heads of the three Scots bent lower and closer to catch every word, for the voice of the Lady Sybilla was more like the cooing of a mating turtle as it answers its comrade than that of a woman betrayed, denouncing vengeance and death upon him whom her soul hated.

“Be of good heart, then, and depart as I shall bid you.  None can help or hinder here at Machecoul but I alone.  Be sure that at the worst the unnameable shall not happen to the maids.  For in me there is the power to slay the evil-doer.  But slay I will not unless it be to keep the lives of the maids.  Because I desire for Gilles de Retz a fate greater, more terrible, more befitting iniquity such as the world hath never heard spoken of since it arose from the abyss.

“And this is it given to me to bring upon him whom my soul hateth,” she went on.  “I have seen the hempen cord by which he shall hang.  I have seen the fire through which his soul shall pass to its own place.  Through me this fate shall come upon him suddenly in one night.”

Her face lighted up with an inner glow, and shone translucent in the darkening of the day and the dusk of the trees, as if the fair veil of flesh wavered and changed about the vengeful soul within.

“And now,” she went on after a pause, “I bid you, gentlemen of the house of Douglas, to depart to John, Duke of Brittany, and having found him to lay this paper before him.  It contains the number and the names of those who have died in the castles of de Retz.  It shows in what hidden places the bones of these slaughtered innocents may be found.  Clamour in his ear for justice in the name of the King of France, and if he will not hear, then in the name of the folk of Brittany.  And if still because of his kinship he will not listen, go to the Bishop of Nantes, who hates Gilles de Retz.  Better than any he knows how to stir the people, and he will send with you trusty men to cause the country to rise in rebellion.  Then they will overturn all the castles of de Retz, and the hidden things shall come to light.  This do, and for this time depart from Machecoul, and entrust me (as indeed you must) with the honour and lives of those you love.  I will keep them with mine own until destruction pass upon him who is outcast from God, and whom now his own fiend from hell hath deserted.”

Then, having sworn to do her bidding, the three Scots conducted the Lady Sybilla with honour and observance to her white palfrey, and like a spirit she vanished into the sea mists which had sifted up from the west, going back to the drear Castle of Machecoul, but bearing with her the burden of her revenge.

CHAPTER LIV

THE CROSS UNDER THE APRON

The face of Gilles de Laval, Lord of Retz, had shone all day with an unholy lustre like that of iron in which the red heat yet struggles with the black.  In the Castle of Machecoul his familiars went about, wearing expressions upon their countenances in which disgust and expectation were mingled with an overwhelming fear of the terrible baron.