"Very well," she said. "Let's go. I'll take you to the Priory and come back to the village to fetch some provisions."
"Oh, you mustn't be away long!" protested one of the sisters. "As soon as the bridge is cut, we'll light a bonfire on Fairies' Dolmen Hill and they'll send a steamer from the mainland. To-day the fog is coming up; but to-morrow…"
Veronique raised no objection. She now accepted[Pg 102] the idea of leaving Sarek, even at the cost of an enquiry which would reveal her name.
They started, after the two sisters had swallowed a glass of brandy. The madwoman sat huddled in the wheel-barrow, laughing softly and uttering little sentences which she addressed to Veronique as though she wanted her to laugh too:
"We shan't meet them yet… They're getting ready…"
"Shut up, you old fool!" said Gertrude. "You'll bring us bad luck."
"Yes, yes, we shall see some sport… It'll be great fun… I have a cross of gold hung round my neck… and another cut into the skin of my head… Look!… Crosses everywhere… One ought to be comfortable on the cross… One ought to sleep well there…"
"Shut up, will you, you old fool?" repeated Gertrude, giving her a box on the ear.
"All right, all right!… But it's they who'll hit you; I see them hiding!…"
The path, which was pretty rough at first, reached the table-land formed by the west cliffs, which were loftier, but less rugged and worn away than the others. The woods were scarcer; and the oaks were all bent by the wind from the sea.
"We are coming to the heath which they call the Black Heath," said Clemence Archignat.
"They live underneath."
Veronique once more shrugged her shoulders:
"How do you know?"
"We know more than other people," said Gertrude. "They call us witches; and there's something in it. Maguennoc himself, who knew a great deal, used to ask our advice about anything that had to do with healing, lucky stones, the herbs you gather on St. John's Eve…"
"Mugwort and vervain," chuckled the madwoman. "They are picked at sunset."
"Or tradition too," continued Gertrude. "We know what's been said in the island for hundreds of years; and it's always been said that there was a whole town underneath, with streets and all, in which they used to live of old. And there are some left still, I've seen them myself."
Veronique did not reply.
"Yes, my sister and I saw one. Twice, when the June moon was six days old. He was dressed in white… and he was climbing the Great Oak to gather the sacred mistletoe… with a golden sickle. The gold glittered in the moonlight. I saw it, I tell you, and others saw it too… And he's not the only one. There are several of them left over from the old days to guard the treasure… Yes, as I say, the treasure… They say it's a stone which works miracles, which can make you die if you touch it and which makes you live if you lie down on it. That's all true, Maguennoc told us so, all perfectly true. They of old guard the stone, the God-Stone, and they are to sacrifice all of us this year… yes, all of us, thirty dead people for the thirty coffins…"
"Four women crucified," crooned the madwoman.
"And it will be soon. The sixth day of the moon is near at hand. We must be gone before they climb the Great Oak to gather the mistletoe. Look, you can see the Great Oak from here. It's in the[Pg 104] wood on this side of the bridge. It stands out above the others."
"They are hiding behind it," said the madwoman, turning round in her wheel-barrow. "They are waiting for us."
"That'll do; and don't you stir… As I was saying, you see the Great Oak… over there… beyond the end of the heath. It is… it is…"
She dropped the wheel-barrow, without finishing her sentence.
"Well?" asked Clemence. "What's the matter?"
"I've seen something," stammered Gertrude. "Something white, moving about."
"Something? What do you mean? They don't show themselves in broad daylight! You've gone cross-eyed."
They both looked for a moment and then went on again. Soon the Great Oak was out of sight.
The heath which they were now crossing was wild and rough, covered with stones lying flat like tombstones and all pointing in the same direction.
"It's their burying-ground," whispered Gertrude.
They said nothing more. Gertrude repeatedly had to stop and rest. Clemence had not the strength to push the wheel-barrow. They were both of them tottering on their legs; and they gazed into the distance with anxious eyes.
They went down a dip in the ground and up again. The path joined that which Veronique had taken with Honorine on the first day; and they entered the wood which preceded the bridge.
Presently the growing excitement of the sisters[Pg 105] Archignat made Veronique understand that they were approaching the Great Oak; and she saw it standing on a mound of earth and roots, bigger than the others and separated from them by wider intervals. She could not help thinking that it was possible for several men to hide behind that massive trunk and that perhaps several were hiding there now.
Notwithstanding their fears, the sisters had quickened their pace; and they kept their eyes turned from the fatal tree.
They left it behind. Veronique breathed more freely. All danger was passed; and she was just about to laugh at the sisters Archignat, when one of them, Clemence, spun on her heels and dropped with a moan.
At the same time something fell to the ground, something that had struck Clemence in the back. It was an axe, a stone axe.
"Oh, the thunder-stone, the thunder-stone!" cried Gertrude.
She looked up for a second, as if, in accordance with the inveterate popular belief, she believed that the axe came from the sky and was an emanation of the thunder.
But, at that moment, the madwoman, who had got out of her barrow, leapt from the ground and fell head forward. Something else had whizzed through the air. The madwoman was writhing with pain. Gertrude and Veronique saw an arrow which had been driven through her shoulder and was still vibrating.
Then Gertrude fled screaming.
Veronique hesitated. Clemence and the mad[Pg 106]woman were rolling about on the ground. The madwoman giggled:
"Behind the oak! They're hiding… I see them."
Clemence stammered:
"Help!… Lift me up… carry me… I'm terrified!"
But another arrow whizzed past them and fell some distance farther.
Veronique now also took to her heels, urged not so much by panic, though this would have been excusable, as by the eager longing to find a weapon and defend herself. She remembered that in her father's study there was a glass case filled with guns and revolvers, all bearing the word "loaded," no doubt as a warning to Francois; and it was one of these that she wished to seize in order to face the enemy. She did not even turn round. She was not interested to know whether she was being pursued. She ran for the goal, the only profitable goal.
Being lighter and swifter of foot, she overtook Gertrude, who panted:
"The bridge… We must burn it… The petrol's there…"
Veronique did not reply. Breaking down the bridge was a secondary matter and would even have been an obstacle to her plan of taking a gun and attacking the enemy.
But, when she reached the bridge, Gertrude whirled about in such a way that she almost fell down the precipice. An arrow had struck her in the back.
"Help! Help!" she screamed. "Don't leave me!"
"I'm coming back," replied Veronique, who had not seen the arrow and thought that Gertrude had merely caught her foot in running. "I'm coming back, with two guns. You join me."
She imagined in her mind that, once they were both armed, they would go back to the wood and rescue the other sisters. Redoubling her efforts, therefore, she reached the wall of the estate, ran across the grass and went up to her father's study. Here she stopped to recover her breath; and, after she had taken the two guns, her heart beat so fast that she had to go back at a slower pace.