Gilles de Retz glanced once through the uncurtained doorway, and cast a look of murderous hate at his judge. But a pallor more sallow than that of rage overspread his face; for the low wooden bench in the alcove was the rack, and the masked men beside it were the official torturers of the court.
Gilles de Retz, who delighted in the sight of suffering children, and joyed in the sound of their death-moans, had no stomach for the rack.
"I will answer," he said, attempting to compose his features, "Torture me not, good Monsier de l'Hospital, I implore you.
"As to the charges I shall say nothing. They are simply false and calumnious."
"Indeed?" answered his judge. "And am I to believe that all these people who complain of having lost their children lied under oath?"
"Undoubtedly," replied the marshal, his equanimity restored, now that the curtain had been again drawn before the rack. "What am I to know of their brats? Am I their keeper?"
"Cain made the same answer," remarked Pierre de l'Hospital, "However, as you solemnly deny these charges, we must question Henriet and Pontou."
"Henriet! Pontou!" cried the marshal, trembling. "Surely, they accuse me of nothing?"
"Not as yet; they have not been questioned. But they are about to be brought into court, and I do not think they will lie in the face of justice."
"I demand that my servants be brought not forward as witnesses against their master!" stormed the marshal, his brow wrinkling and his beard bristling blue upon his chin. "A master is above the gossiping tales of his servants."
"Do you think, Monsieur, your servants will accuse you?"
"I demand that I, a marshal of France, a baron of the duchy, should be sheltered from the slanders of small folk, whom I disown as my servants if they are untrue to me."
"Justice knows no small folk, and no great. We shall see what Henriet and Pontou have to say." Pierre de l'Hospital nodded meaningly toward the curtain concealing the rack. "There are means of gleaning the truth."
At a sign from the judge, guards led the Sire de Retz back to his prison.
In the corridor outside the court room the marshal passed Henriet and Pontou, escorted by agents d'armes. Henriet averted his eyes; but Pontou burst into tears at sight of his master.
De Retz held out his hand, which Pontou kissed affectionately. "Remeber all I have done for you, my children," said the marshal, "and be good and faithful servants." Again Pontou covered his hands with kisses; but Henriet shrank from him with a shudder.
In silence the two culprits were conducted to the bar of the court. Pierre de l'Hospital looked sharply from one to the other, then signed to the clerk to read the indictment which charged them as accomplices of the Sire de Retz. Never for an instant did the eyes of the president of the court leave the face of Henriet while the clerk droned out the charge.
Henriet was a sharp contrast to Pontou. Pontou's bullet head, short, thick neck and undershot jaw betokened a nature innately cruel and bestial; nothing but torture, carried past the limit of human endurance, would wring the truth from him.
Henriet, on the other hand, was as fragile and as prettily made as a girl. Slender and tall, with tapering, white fingers and blonde hair falling in loose curls about his ears, he looked anything but the criminal he was accused of being. His blue eyes, though set too close together, were mild and timid in expression, and the slope of his beardless chin bespoke a nature rather weak than wicked.
"What say ye, wretched men, guilty or not guilty?" asked Pierre de l'Hospital, still gazing fixedly at Henriet.
"Alas, mon juge," exclaimed Henriet, "I am even as you say! I shall tell all; for I have another master besides my poor master of Retz and I shall soon be with the heavenly one."
He would have continued, had not a shout from Pontou interrupted him.
"Messieurs les juges," he cried, "my poor friend is touched in the head—he is mad! All he says is but the raving of a lunatic!"
"Ah, Pontou, out of thine own mouth hast thou convicted thyself," returned Pierre de l'Hospital. "For hadst thou not been concerned in deviltry thou wouldst not have feared thy friend's ravings.
"Proceed," he nodded to Henriet. "And see to it that thou speak'st but the truth."
But Henriet seemed to have lost the power of speech. Only incoherent murmurings came from his nervously working lips. At last he managed to gasp:
"Monsieur le juge, I can not speak the abominable words I have to utter while that is in my sight—" he pointed a trembling finger to the great crucifix suspended above the judges' bench.
Led by Pierre de l'Hospital, the court rose, and stood with bared heads while, amid a deathlike silence, the image of the Lord was veiled in black bunting.
Condensed, Henriet's testimony was as follows:
On graduating from the university of Angus, he had taken the situation of reader in the household of the Sire de Retz. From the first, the marshal had taken a liking to him, and soon made him his chamberlain and confidant.
When he had been in the household about six months the marshal decided to deed the castle of Chantonce to the duke of Brittany. The night preceding the morning the duke took possession, the marshal summoned Henriet, Pontou and one Petit Robin to his bed chamber. When all were assembled, de Retz compelled Henriet to kneel on the bare floor and take a solemn and horrible oath never to reveal what was about to be told him.
The oath taken, the Sire de Retz told them he was expecting the duke's officers to take over the chateau the following day, and, before that happened, there were certain "matters" which had to be disposed of. Pontou and Robin grinned knowingly at this, but Henriet was in the dark until the other two servants procured ropes and poles tipped with hooks. They then led the way to an old disused well. Giving Henriet a torch and one of the grappling hooks, they lowered him into the well, with instructions to pass up all he found there.
What was his horror to find the hole filled with bodies of children, long dead. Almost fainting from fright and horror, he had, nevertheless, proceeded with the task assigned him and before daybreak the well was emptied and the little bodies, all of them terribly mutilated, burned to ashes in a great bonfire the other two servitors built. He had counted thirty-six heads in the well, but more bodies than heads.
Following this horrifying experience, life went on as usual within the marshal's household for several months. De Retz was deeply religious, and attended daily masses in his private chapel, accompanied by his entire suite. But one day, just at dusk, the marshal summoned Henriet to a room in a remote tower, where a great fire was blazing on the hearth.
"Fetch me a child," his master ordered curtly.
Not daring to ask an explanation, Henriet went outside the castle, seized a little boy he found in a nearby road, and carried him to his lord.
