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Updated: May 1, 2025
With a great cry he hurried back to alarm the village, but when men gathered with scythes and rude weapons of the chase, the beast's track was lost in the depth of the forest. Little Jean Verger of Saint Benoit was never seen again, unless it were he who, half hidden under the long black cloak of La Meffraye, was brought at noon by the private postern of the baron into the Castle of Machecoul.
Suddenly from the adjoining chamber a cry burst forth, so shrill and terrible that not only Sholto but Malise also leaped to his feet. "Mercy mercy! Have mercy, La Meffraye!" it wailed. Sholto rushed across the floor, striding the body of James Douglas in his haste.
As the soundless lightning wavered and brightened, the shadows of the wolves appeared simultaneously to start forward and then retreat, while the noise of their howling carried with it some diabolic suggestion of discordant human voices. "La Meffraye! La Meffraye! Meffraye!" So to the excited minds of the three Scots the wolf legions seemed to be crying with one voice as they came nearer.
The very trees are red with it. The skies are red. All is red. Come up make yourselves fair for the eyes of the great lord to behold!" Then behind La Meffraye entered Gilles de Sillé and Poitou, the marshal's servants. "Make ready in haste you are both to go instantly before my lord, who abides your coming!" said Gilles de Sillé.
"Did you chance to be awake yester-even?" she went on. "Aye, I know well that you were awake. La Meffraye saw right carefully to that. And you heard the crying that rang out of yonder high window, from which the light streamed all through the night. Wait, wait, my pretties, till it is your turn to be sent for up thither, when the shining knife is sharpened and the red fire kindled.
When the hurly burly's done, When the battle's lost and won." Are not the mummeries of the witches about the cauldron in Macbeth, and Talbot's threat pour la Pucelle, "Blood will I draw on thee, thou art a witch," uttered so long ago, echoed in the wailing cry of La Meffraye in the forests of Machecoul, in the maledictions of Grio, and of the Saga of the Burning Fields?
Then La Meffraye approached the maids and would have touched the dress of the little Margaret, as if to order it more daintily for the pleasing of her master's eye. But Maud Lindesay thrust her aside like an unclean thing. Whereat La Meffraye laughed till her rusty black cloak quivered and rustled from hood to hem.
No, nor yet silly village innocents who follow La Meffraye from the play-fields through the woodlands to the Paradise of our Lord Gilles! Hasten not the joy! Let these pearls of youth and beauteousness die indeed, but let them die slowly and deliciously. And in the last blood of an ancient race let our master bathe and find the new life he seeks. Hear us, O Barran-Sathanas, and grant our prayer!"
Know you not, silly fool, that both your brothers are long since dead and under sod in the castle of your city of Edinburgh. I tell you my master set his little finger upon them and crushed them like flies on a summer chamber wall!" Maud Lindesay rose to her feet as La Meffraye spoke these words. "It is not true," she cried; "you lie to us as you have done from the first.
"My wife my wife," he quavered; "I bid you be silent, or at least speak not so loud. La Meffraye she is called she can hear all things. See " He made a sudden movement and bared his right arm. It was withered to the shoulder and of a dark purple colour approaching black. "La Meffraye did that," he gasped; "she blasted it because I would not do the evil she wished."
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